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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Seats Of The Mighty, by G. Parker, v3
+#53 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Seats Of The Mighty, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6226]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 4, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEATS OF THE MIGHTY, PARKER, V3 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY
+
+BEING THE MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROBERT MORAY,
+SOMETIME AN OFFICER IN THE VIRGINIA REGIMENT,
+AND AFTERWARDS OF AMHERST'S REGIMENT
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+Volume 3.
+
+    XIV   Argand Cournal
+     XV   In the chamber of torture
+    XVI   Be saint or imp
+   XVII   Through the bars of the cage
+  XVIII   The steep path of conquest
+    XIX   A Danseuse and the Bastile
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+ARGAND COURNAL
+
+
+The most meagre intelligence came to me from the outer world. I
+no longer saw Gabord; he had suddenly been with drawn and a new
+jailer substituted, and the sentinels outside my door and beneath
+the window of my cell refused all information. For months I had no
+news whatever of Alixe or of those affairs nearest my heart. I
+heard nothing of Doltaire, little of Bigot, and there was no sign
+of Voban.
+
+Sometimes I could see my new jailer studying me, if my plans were
+a puzzle to his brain. At first he used regularly to try the bars
+of the window, and search the wall as though he thought my devices
+might be found there.
+
+Scarrat and Flavelle, the guards at my door, set too high a
+price on their favours, and they talked seldom, and then with
+brutal jests and ribaldry, of matters in the town which were not
+vital to me. Yet once or twice, from things they said, I came to
+know that all was not well between Bigot and Doltaire on one hand,
+and Doltaire and the Governor on the other. Doltaire had set the
+Governor and the Intendant scheming against him because of his
+adherence to the cause of neither, and his power to render the
+plans of either of no avail when he chose, as in my case.
+Vaudreuil's vanity was injured, and besides, he counted Doltaire
+too strong a friend of Bigot. Bigot, I doubted not, found in Madame
+Cournal's liking for Doltaire all sorts of things of which he never
+would have dreamed; for there is no such potent devilry in this
+world as the jealousy of such a sort of man over a woman whose
+vanity and cupidity are the springs of her affections. Doltaire's
+imprisonment in a room of the Intendance was not so mysterious as
+suggestive. I foresaw a strife, a complication of intrigues, and
+internal enmities which would be (as they were) the ruin of New
+France. I saw, in imagination, the English army at the gates of
+Quebec, and those who sat in the seats of the mighty, sworn to
+personal enmities--Vaudreuil through vanity, Bigot through cupidity,
+Doltaire by the innate malice of his nature--sacrificing the
+country; the scarlet body of British power moving down upon a
+dishonoured city, never to take its foot from that sword of France
+which fell there on the soil of the New World.
+
+But there was another factor in the situation which I have not
+dwelt on before. Over a year earlier, when war was being carried
+into Prussia by Austria and France, and against England, the ally
+of Prussia, the French Minister of War, D'Argenson, had, by the
+grace of La Pompadour, sent General the Marquis de Montcalm to
+Canada, to protect the colony with a small army. From the first,
+Montcalm, fiery, impetuous, and honourable, was at variance with
+Vaudreuil, who, though honest himself, had never dared to make open
+stand against Bigot. When Montcalm came, practically taking the
+military command out of the hands of the Governor, Vaudreuil
+developed a singular jealous spirit against the General. It began
+to express itself about the time I was thrown into the citadel
+dungeon, and I knew from what Alixe had told me, and from the
+gossip of the soldiers, that there was a more open show of
+disagreement now.
+
+The Governor, seeing how ill it was to be at variance with both
+Montcalm and Bigot, presently began to covet a reconciliation with
+the latter. To this Bigot was by no means averse, for his own
+position had danger. His followers and confederates, Cournal,
+Marin, Cadet, and Rigaud, were robbing the King with a daring and
+effrontery which must ultimately bring disaster. This he knew, but
+it was his plan to hold on for a time longer, and then to retire
+before the axe fell, with an immense fortune. Therefore, about the
+time set for my execution, he began to close with the overtures of
+the Governor, and presently the two formed a confederacy against the
+Marquis de Montcalm. Into it they tried to draw Doltaire, and were
+surprised to find that he stood them off as to anything more than
+outward show of friendliness.
+
+Truth was, Doltaire, who had no sordid feeling in him, loathed
+alike the cupidity of Bigot and the incompetency of the Governor,
+and respected Montcalm for his honour, and reproached him for his
+rashness. From first to last, he was, without show of it, the best
+friend Montcalm had in the province; and though he held aloof from
+bringing punishment to Bigot, he despised him and his friends,
+and was not slow to make that plain. D'Argenson made inquiry of
+Doltaire when Montcalm's honest criticisms were sent to France in
+cipher, and Doltaire returned the reply that Bigot was the only
+man who could serve Canada efficiently in this crisis; that he had
+abounding fertility of resource, a clear head, a strong will, and
+great administrative faculty. This was all he would say, save that
+when the war was over other matters might be conned. Meanwhile
+France must pay liberally for the Intendant's services.
+
+Through a friend in France, Bigot came to know that his affairs
+were moving to a crisis, and saw that it would be wise to retire;
+but he loved the very air of crisis, and Madame Cournal, anxious to
+keep him in Canada, encouraged him in his natural feeling to stand
+or fall with the colony. He never showed aught but a hold and
+confident face to the public, and was in all regards the most
+conspicuous figure in New France. When, two years before, Montcalm
+took Oswego from the English, Bigot threw open his palace to the
+populace for two days' feasting, and every night during the war he
+entertained lavishly, though the people went hungry, and their own
+corn, bought for the King, was sold back to them at famine prices.
+
+As the Governor amid the Intendant grew together in friendship,
+Vaudreuil sinking past disapproval in present selfish necessity,
+they quietly combined against Doltaire as against Montcalm. Yet at
+this very time Doltaire was living in the Intendance, and, as he
+had told Alixe, not without some personal danger. He had before
+been offered rooms at the Chateau St. Louis; but these he would
+not take, for he could not bear to be within touch of the Governor's
+vanity and timidity. He would of preference have stayed in the
+Intendance had he known that pitfalls and traps were at every
+footstep. Danger gave a piquancy to his existence. I think he did
+not greatly value Madame Cournal's admiration of himself; but when
+it drove Bigot to retaliation, his imagination got an impulse, and
+he entered upon a conflict which ran parallel with the war, and
+with that delicate antagonism which Alixe waged against him, long
+undiscovered by himself.
+
+At my wits' end for news, at last I begged my jailer to convey a
+message for me to the Governor, asking that the barber be let
+come to me. The next day an answer arrived in the person of Voban
+himself, accompanied by the jailer. For a time there was little
+speech between us, but as he tended me we talked. We could do
+so with safety, for Voban knew English; and though he spoke it
+brokenly, he had freedom in it, and the jailer knew no word of it.
+At first the fellow blustered, but I waved him off. He was a man
+of better education than Gabord, but of inferior judgment and
+shrewdness. He made no trial thereafter to interrupt our talk, but
+sat and drummed upon a stool with his keys, or loitered at the
+window, or now and again thrust his hand into my pockets, as if
+to see if weapons were concealed in them.
+
+"Voban," said I, "what has happened since I saw you at the
+Intendance? Tell me first of mademoiselle. You have nothing from
+her for me?"
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "There is no time. A soldier come an
+hour ago with an order from the Governor, and I must go all at
+once. So I come as you see. But as for the ma'm'selle, she is well.
+Voila, there is no one like her in New France. I do not know
+all, as you can guess, but they say she can do what she will at
+the Chateau. It is a wonder to see her drive. A month ago, a
+droll thing come to pass. She is driving on the ice with ma'm'selle
+Lotbiniere and her brother Charles. M'sieu' Charles, he has
+the reins. Soon, ver' quick, the horses start with all their might.
+M'sieu' saw and pull, but they go the faster. Like that for a mile
+or so; then ma'm'selle remember there is a great crack in the ice a
+mile farther on, and beyond the ice is weak and rotten, for there
+the curren' is ver' strongest. She see that M'sieu' Charles, he can
+do nothing, so she reach and take the reins. The horses go on; it
+make no diff'rence at first. But she begin to talk to them so sof',
+and to pull ver' steady, and at last she get them shaping to the
+shore. She have the reins wound on her hands, and people on the
+shore, they watch. Little on little the horses pull up, and stop at
+last not a hunder' feet from the great crack and the rotten ice.
+Then she turn them round and drive them home.
+
+"You should hear the people cheer as she drive up Mountain
+Street. The bishop stand at the window of his palace and smile at
+her as she pass, and m'sieu'"--he looked at the jailer and
+paused--"m'sieu' the gentleman we do not love, he stand in the
+street with his cap off for two minutes as she come, and after she
+go by, and say a grand compliment to her, so that her face go pale.
+He get froze ears for his pains--that was a cold day. Well, at night
+there was a grand dinner at the Intendance, and afterwards a ball in
+the splendid room which that man" (he meant Bigot: I shall use names
+when quoting him further, that he may be better understood) "built
+for the poor people of the land for to dance down their sorrows. So
+you can guess I would be there--happy. Ah yes, so happy! I go and
+stand in the great gallery above the hall of dance, with crowd of
+people, and look down at the grand folk.
+
+"One man come to me and say, 'Ah, Voban, is it you here? Who would
+think it!'--like that. Another, he come and say, 'Voban, he can not
+keep away from the Intendance. Who does he come to look for? But no,
+SHE is not here--no.' And again, another, 'Why should not Voban be
+here? One man has not enough bread to eat, and Bigot steals his
+corn. Another hungers for a wife to sit by his fire, and Bigot takes
+the maid, and Voban stuffs his mouth with humble pie like the rest.
+Chut! shall not Bigot have his fill?' And yet another, and voila,
+she was a woman, she say, 'Look at the Intendant down there with
+madame. And M'sieu' Cournal, he also is there. What does M'sieu'
+Cournal care? No, not at all. The rich man, what he care, if he has
+gold? Virtue! ha, ha! what is that in your wife if you have gold for
+it? Nothing. See his hand at the Intendant's arm. See how M'sieu'
+Doltaire look at them, and then up here at us. What is it in his
+mind, you think? Eh? You think he say to himself, A wife all to
+himself is the poor man's one luxury? Eh? Ah, M'sieu' Doltaire, you
+are right, you are right. You catch up my child from its basket in
+the market-place one day, and you shake it ver' soft, an' you say,
+"Madame, I will stake the last year of my life that I can put my
+finger on the father of this child." And when I laugh in his face,
+he say again, "And if he thought he wasn't its father, he would cut
+out the liver of the other--eh?" And I laugh, and say, "My Jacques
+would follow him to hell to do it." Then he say, Voban, he say to
+me, "That is the difference between you and us. We only kill men who
+meddle with our mistresses!" Ah, that M'sieu' Doltaire, he put a
+louis in the hand of my babe, and he not even kiss me on the cheek.
+Pshaw! Jacques would sell him fifty kisses for fifty louis. But sell
+me, or a child of me? Well, Voban, you can guess! Pah, barber, if
+you do not care what he did to the poor Mathilde, there are other
+maids in St. Roch.'"
+
+Voban paused a moment then added quietly, "How do you think I bear
+it all? With a smile? No, I hear with my ears open and my heart
+close tight. Do they think they can teach me? Do they guess I sit
+down and hear all without a cry from my throat or a will in my body?
+Ah, m'sieu' le Capitaine, it is you who know. You saw what I would
+have go to do with M'sieu' Doltaire before the day of the Great
+Birth. You saw if I am coward--if I not take the sword when it was
+at my throat without a whine. No, m'sieu', I can wait. Then is a
+time for everything. At first I am all in a muddle, I not how what
+to do; but by-and-bye it all come to me, and you shall one day what
+I wait for. Yes, you shall see. I look down on that people dancing
+there, quiet and still, and I hear some laugh at me, and now and
+then some one say a good word to me that make me shut my hands
+tight, so the tears not come to my eyes. But I felt alone--so much
+alone. The world does not want a sad man. In my shop I try to laugh
+as of old, and I am not sour or heavy, but I can see men do not say
+droll things to me as once back time. No, I am not as I was. What am
+I to do? There is but one way. What is great to one man is not to
+another. What kills the one does not kill the other. Take away from
+some people one thing, and they will not care; from others that
+same, and there is nothing to live for, except just to live, and
+because a man does not like death."
+
+He paused. "You are right, Voban," said I. "Go on."
+
+He was silent again for a time, and then he moved his hand in a
+helpless sort of way across his forehead. It had become deeply
+lined and wrinkled all in a couple of years. His temples were
+sunken, his cheeks hollow, and his face was full of those shadows
+which lend a sort of tragedy to even the humblest and least
+distinguished countenance. His eyes had a restlessness, anon an
+intense steadiness almost uncanny, and his thin, long fingers had a
+stealthiness of motion, a soft swiftness, which struck me strangly.
+I never saw a man so changed. He was like a vessel wrested from its
+moorings; like some craft, filled with explosives, set loose along
+a shore lined with fishing-smacks, which might come foul of one,
+and blow the company of men and boats into the air. As he stood
+there, his face half turned to me for a moment, this came to my
+mind, and I said to him, "Voban, you look like some wicked gun
+which would blow us all to pieces."
+
+He wheeled, and came to me so swiftly that I shrank back in my
+chair with alarm, his action was so sudden, and, peering into my
+face, he said, glancing, as I thought, anxiously at the jailer,
+"Blow--blow--how blow us all to pieces, m'sieu'?" He eyed me with
+suspicion, and I could see that he felt like some hurt animal among
+its captors, ready to fight, yet not knowing from what point danger
+would come. Something pregnant in what I said had struck home, yet
+I could not guess then what it was, though afterwards it came to me
+with great force and vividness.
+
+"I meant nothing, Voban," answered I, "save that you look dangerous."
+
+I half put out my hand to touch his arm in a friendly way, but I
+saw that the jailer was watching, and I did not. Voban felt what I
+was about to do, and his face instantly softened, and his blood-shot
+eyes gave me a look of gratitude. Then he said:
+
+"I will tell you what happen next I know the palace very well,
+and when I see the Intendant and M'sieu' Doltaire and others leave
+the ballroom I knew that they go to the chamber which they call 'la
+Chambre de la Joie,' to play at cards. So I steal away out of the
+crowd into a passage which, as it seem, go nowhere, and come quick,
+all at once, to a bare wall. But I know the way. In one corner of
+the passage I press a spring, and a little panel open. I crawl
+through and close it behin'. Then I feel my way along the dark
+corner till I come to another panel. This I open, and I see light.
+You ask how I can do this? Well, I tell you. There is the valet of
+Bigot, he is my friend. You not guess who it is? No? It is a man
+whose crime in France I know. He was afraid when he saw me here,
+but I say to him, 'No, I will not speak--never'; and he is all
+my friend just when I most need. Eh, voila, I see light, as I said,
+and I push aside heavy curtains ver' little, and there is the
+Chamber of the Joy below. There they all are, the Intendant and the
+rest, sitting down to the tables. There was Capitaine Lancy, M'sieu'
+Cadet, M'sieu' Cournal, M'sieu' le Chevalier de Levis, and M'sieu'
+le Generale, le Marquis de Montcalm. I am astonish to see him there,
+the great General, in his grand coat of blue and gold and red, and
+laces tres beau at his throat, with a fine jewel. Ah, he is not ver'
+high on his feet, but he has an eye all fire, and a laugh come quick
+to his lips, and he speak ver' galant, but he never let them,
+Messieurs Cadet, Marin, Lancy, and the rest, be thick friends with
+him. They do not clap their hands on his shoulder comme le bon
+camarade--non!
+
+"Well, they sit down to play, and soon there is much noise and
+laughing, and then sometimes a silence, and then again the noise,
+and you can see one snuff a candle with the points of two rapiers,
+or hear a sword jangle at a chair, or listen to some one sing ver'
+soft a song as he hold a good hand of cards, or the ring of louis
+on the table, or the sound of glass as it break on the floor. And
+once a young gentleman--alas! he is so young--he get up from his
+chair, and cry out, 'All is lost! I go to die!' He raise a pistol
+to his head; but M'sieu' Doltaire catch his hand, and say quite
+soft and gentle, 'No, no, mon enfant, enough of making fun
+of us. Here is the hunder' louis I borrow of you yesterday. Take
+your revenge.' The lad sit down slow, looking ver' strange at
+M'sieu' Doltaire. And it is true: he took his revenge out of
+M'sieu' Cadet, for he win--I saw it--three hunder' louis. Then
+M'sieu' Doltaire lean over to him and say, 'M'sieu', you will
+carry for me a message to the citadel for M'sieu' Ramesay, the
+commandant.' Ah, it was a sight to see M'sieu' Cadet's face, going
+this way and that. But it was no use: the young gentleman pocket
+his louis, and go away with a letter from M'sieu' Doltaire. But
+M'sieu' Doltaire, he laugh in the face of M'sieu' Cadet, and say
+ver' pleasant, 'That is a servant of the King, m'sieu', who live by
+his sword alone. Why should civilians be so greedy? Come, play,
+M'sieu' Cadet. If M'sieu' the General will play with me, we two
+will what we can do with you and his Excellency the Intendant.'
+
+"They sit just beneath me, and I hear all what is said, I see all
+the looks of them, every card that is played. M'sieu' the General
+have not play yet, but watch M'sieu' Doltaire and the Intendant at
+the cards. With a smile he now sit down. Then M'sieu' Doltaire, he
+say, 'M'sieu' Cadet, let us have no mistake--let us be commercial.'
+He take out his watch. 'I have two hours to spare; are you dispose
+to play for that time only? To the moment we will rise, and there
+shall be no question of satisfaction, no discontent anywhere--eh,
+shall it be so, if m'sieu' the General can spare the time also?' It
+is agree that the General play for one hour and go, and that M'sieu'
+Doltaire and the Intendant play for the rest of the time.
+
+"They begin, and I hide there and watch. The time go ver' fast,
+and my breath catch in my throat to see how great the stakes they
+play for. I hear M'sieu' Doltaire say at last, with a smile, taking
+out his watch, 'M'sieu' the General, your time is up, and you take
+with you twenty thousan' francs.'
+
+"The General, he smile and wave his hand, as if sorry to take so
+much from M'sieu' Cadet and the Intendant. M'sieu' Cadet sit dark,
+and speak nothing at first, but at last he get up and turn on his
+heel and walk away, leaving what he lose on the table. M'sieu' the
+General bow also, and go from the room. Then M'sieu' Doltaire and
+the Intendant play. One by one the other players stop, and come and
+watch these. Something get into the two gentlemen, for both are
+pale, and the face of the Intendant all of spots, and his little
+round eyes like specks of red fire; but M'sieu' Doltaire's face,
+it is still, and his brows bend over, and now and then he make a
+little laughing out of his lips. All at once I hear him say, 'Double
+the stakes, your Excellency!' The Intendant look up sharp and say,
+'What! Two hunder' thousan' francs!'--as if M'sieu' Doltaire could
+not pay such a like that. M'sieu' Doltaire smile ver' wicked, and
+answer, 'Make it three hunder' thousan' francs, your Excellency.' It
+is so still in the Chamber of the Joy that all you hear for a minute
+was the fat Monsieur Varin breathe like a hog, and the rattle of a
+spur as some one slide a foot on the floor.
+
+"The Intendant look blank; then he nod his head for answer, and
+each write on a piece of paper. As they begin, M'sieu' Doltaire
+take out his watch and lay it on the table, and the Intendant
+do the same, and they both look at the time. The watch of the
+Intendant is all jewels. 'Will you not add the watches to the
+stake?' say M'sieu' Doltaire. The Intendant look, and shrug a
+shoulder, and shake his head for no, and M'sieu' Doltaire smile in
+a sly way, so that the Intendant's teeth show at his lips and his
+eyes almost close, he is so angry.
+
+"Just this minute I hear a low noise behind me, and then some
+one give a little cry. I turn quick and Madame Cournal. She stretch
+her hand, and touch my lips, and motion me not to stir. I look down
+again, and I see that M'sieu' Doltaire look up to the where I am,
+for he hear that sound, I think--I not know sure. But he say once
+more, 'The watch, the watch, your Excellency! I have a fancy for
+yours!' I feel madame breathe hard beside me, but I not like to
+look at her. I am not afraid of men, but a woman that way--ah, it
+make me shiver! She will betray me, I think. All at once I feel her
+hand at my belt, then at my pocket, to see if I have a weapon; for
+the thought come to her that I am there to kill Bigot. But I raise
+my hands and say, 'No,' ver' quiet, and she nod her head all right.
+
+"The Intendant wave his hand at M'sieu' Doltaire to say he would
+not stake the watch, for I know it is one madame give him; and then
+they begin to play. No one stir. The cards go out flip, flip, on the
+table, and with a little soft scrape in the hands, and I hear
+Bigot's hound much a bone. All at once M'sieu' Doltaire throw down
+his cards, and say, 'Mine, Bigot! Three hunder' thousan' francs,
+and the time is up!' The other get from his chair, and say, 'How
+would you have pay if you had lost, Doltaire?' And m'sieu' answer,
+'From the coffers of the King, like you, Bigot' His tone is odd.
+I feel madame's breath go hard. Bigot turn round and say to the
+others, 'Will you take your way to the great hall, messieurs,
+and M'sieu' Doltaire and I will follow. We have some private
+conf'rence.' They all turn away, all but M'sieu' Cournal, and leave
+the room, whispering. 'I will join you soon, Cournal,' say his
+Excellency. M'sieu' Cournal not go, for he have been drinking, and
+something stubborn got into him. But the Intendant order him rough,
+and he go. I can hear madame gnash her teeth sof' beside me.
+
+"When the door close, the Intendant turn to M'sieu' Doltaire and
+say, 'What is the end for which you play?' M'sieu' Doltaire make a
+light motion of his hand, and answer, 'For three hunder' thousan'
+francs.' 'And to pay, m'sieu', how to pay if you have lost?'
+M'sieu' Doltaire lay his hand on his sword sof'. 'From the King's
+coffers, as I say; he owes me more than he has paid. But not like
+you, Bigot. I have earned, this way and that, all that I might ever
+get from the King's coffers--even this three hunder' thousan'
+francs, ten times told. But you, Bigot--tush! why should we make
+bubbles of words?' The Intendant get white in the face, but there
+are spots on it like on a late apple of an old tree. 'You go too
+far, Doltaire,' he say. 'You have hint before my officers and my
+friends that I make free with the King's coffers.' M'sieu' answer,
+'You should see no such hints, if your palms were not musty.' 'How
+know you,' ask the Intendant, 'that my hands are musty from the
+King's coffers?' M'sieu' arrange his laces, and say light, 'As
+easy from the must as I tell how time passes in your nights by the
+ticking of this trinket here.' He raise his sword and touch the
+Intendant's watch on the table.
+
+"I never hear such silence as there is for a minute, and then the
+Intendant say, 'You have gone one step too far. The must on my
+hands, seen through your eyes, is no matter, but when you must the
+name of a lady there is but one end. You understan', m'sieu', there
+is but one end.' M'sieu' laugh. 'The sword, you mean? Eh? No, no,
+I will not fight with you. I am not here to rid the King of so
+excellent an officer, however large fee he force for his services.'
+'And I tell you,' say the Intendant, 'that I will not have you cast
+a slight upon a lady.' Madame beside me start up, and whisper to
+me, 'If you betray me, you shall die. If you be still, I too will
+say nothing.' But then a thing happen. Another voice sound from
+below, and there, coming from behind a great screen of oak wood, is
+M'sieu' Cournal, his face all red with wine, his hand on his sword.
+'Bah!' he say, coming forward--'bah! I will speak for madame. I
+will speak. I have been silent long enough.' He come between the
+two, and, raising his sword, he strike the time-piece and smash it.
+'Ha! ha!' he say, wild with drink, 'I have you both here alone.' He
+snap his fingers under the Intendant's nose. 'It is time I protect
+my wife's name from you, and by God, I will do it!' At that M'sieu'
+Doltaire laugh, and Cournal turn to him, and say, 'Batard!' The
+Intendant have out his sword, and he roar in a hoarse voice, 'Dog,
+you shall die!' But M'sieu' Doltaire strike up his sword, and face
+the drunken man. 'No, leave that to me. The King's cause goes
+shipwreck; we can't change helmsman now. Think--scandal and your
+disgrace!' Then he make a pass at m'sieu' Cournal, who parry quick.
+Another, and he prick his shoulder. Another, and then madame beside
+me, as I spring back, throw aside the curtains, and cry out, 'No,
+m'sieu'! no! For shame!'
+
+"I kneel in a corner behind the curtains, and wait and listen.
+There is not a sound for a moment; then I hear a laugh from M'sieu'
+Cournal, such a laugh make me sick--loud, and full of what you call
+not care and the devil. Madame speak down at them. 'Ah,' she say,
+'it is so fine a sport to drag a woman's name in the mire!' Her
+voice is full of spirit. and she look beautiful--beautiful. I never
+guess how a woman like that look; so full of pride, and to speak
+like you could think knives sing as they strike steel--sharp and
+cold. 'I came to see how gentlemen look at play, and they end in
+brawling over a lady!'
+
+"M'sieu' Doltaire speak to her, and they all put up their swords,
+and M'sieu' Cournal sit down at a table, and he stare and stare
+up at the balcony, and make a motion now and then with his
+hand. M'sieu' Doltaire say to her, 'Madame, you must excuse
+our entertainment; we did not know we had an audience so
+distinguished.' She reply, 'As scene-shifter and prompter, M'sieu'
+Doltaire, you have a gift. Your Excellency,' she say to the
+Intendant, 'I will wait for you at the top of the great staircase,
+if you will be so good as to take me to the ballroom.' The
+Intendant and M'sieu' Doltaire bow, and turn to the door, and
+M'sieu' Cournal scowl, and make as if to follow; but madame speak
+down at him, 'M'sieu'--Argand'--like that! and he turn back, and sit
+down. I think she forget me, I keep so still. The others bow and
+scrape, and leave the room, and the two are alone--alone, for what
+am I? What if a dog hear great people speak? No, it is no matter!
+
+"There is all still for a little while, and I watch her face as
+she lean over the rail and look down at him; it is like stone, like
+stone that aches, and her eyes stare and stare at him. He look up
+at her and scowl; then he laugh, with a toss of the finger, and sit
+down. All at once he put his hand on his sword, and gnash his teeth.
+
+"Then she speak down to him, her voice ver' quiet. 'Argand,' she
+say, 'you are more a man drunk than sober. Argand,' she go on,
+'years ago, they said you were a brave man; you fight well, you
+do good work for the King, your name goes with a sweet sound to
+Versailles. You had only your sword and my poor fortune and me
+then--that is all; but you were a man. You had ambition, so had I.
+What can a woman do? You had your sword, your country, the King's
+service. I had beauty; I wanted power--ah yes, power, that was the
+thing! But I was young and a fool; you were older. You talked fine
+things then, but you had a base heart, so much baser than mine....
+I might have been a good woman. I was a fool, and weak, and vain,
+but you were base--so base--coward and betrayer, you!'
+
+"At that m'sieu' start up and snatch at his sword, and speak out
+between his teeth, 'By God, I will kill you to-night!' She smile
+cold and hard, and say, 'No, no, you will not; it is too late for
+killing; that should have been done before. You sold your right to
+kill long ago, Argand Cournal. You have been close friends with the
+man who gave me power, and you gold.' Then she get fierce. 'Who
+gave you gold before he gave me power, traitor?' Like that she
+speak. 'Do you never think of what you have lost?' Then she break
+out in a laugh. 'Pah! Listen: if there must be killing, why not be
+the great Roman--drunk!'
+
+"Then she laugh so hard a laugh, and turn away, and go quick by
+me and not see me. She step into the dark, and he sit down in the
+chair, and look straight in front of him. I do not stir, and after
+a minute she come back sof', and peep down, her face all differen'.
+'Argand! Argand!' she say ver' tender and low, 'if--if--if'--like
+that. But just then he see the broken watch on the floor, and he
+stoop, with a laugh, and pick up the pieces; then he get a candle
+and look on the floor everywhere for the jewels, and he pick them
+up, and put them away one by one in his purse like a miser. He keep
+on looking, and once the fire of the candle burn his beard, and he
+swear, and she stare and stare at him. He sit down at the table,
+and look at the jewels and laugh to himself. Then she draw herself
+up, and shake, and put her hands to her eyes, and 'C'est fini!
+c'est fini!' she whisper, and that is all.
+
+"When she is gone, after a little time he change--ah, he change
+much, he go to a table and pour out a great bowl of wine, and then
+another, and he drink them both, and he begin to walk up and down
+the floor. He sway now and then, but he keep on for a long time.
+Once a servant come, but he wave him away, and he scowl and talk to
+himself, and shut the doors and lock them. Then he walk on and on.
+At last he sit down, and he face me. In front of him are candles,
+and he stare between them, and stare and stare. I sit and watch,
+and I feel a pity. I hear him say, 'Antoinette! Antoinette! My dear
+Antoinette! We are lost forever, my Antoinette!' Then he take the
+purse from his pocket, and throw it up to the balcony where I am.
+'Pretty sins,' he say, 'follow the sinner!' It lie there, and it
+have sprung open, and I can see the jewels shine, but I not touch
+it--no. Well, he sit there long--long, and his face get gray and
+his cheeks all hollow.
+
+"I hear the clock strike one! two! three! four! Once some
+one come and try the door, but go away again, and he never stir;
+he is like a dead man. At last I fall asleep. When I wake up, he
+still sit there, but his head lie in his arms. I look round. Ah,
+it is not a fine sight--no. The candles burn so low, and there is
+a smell of wick, and the grease runs here and there down the great
+candlesticks. Upon the floor, this place and that, is a card, and
+pieces of paper, and a scarf, and a broken glass, and something
+that shine by a small table. This is a picture in a little gold
+frame. On all the tables stand glasses, some full, and some empty of
+wine. And just as the dawn come in through the tall windows, a cat
+crawl out from somewhere, all ver' thin and shy, and walk across the
+floor; it make the room look so much alone. At last it come and move
+against m'sieu's legs, and he lift his head and look down at it, and
+nod, and say something which I not hear. After that he get up, and
+pull himself together with a shake, and walk down the room. Then
+he see the little gold picture on the floor which some drunk young
+officer drop, and he pick it up and look at it, and walk again.
+'Poor fool!' he say, and look at the picture again. 'Poor fool! Will
+he curse her some day--a child with a face like that? Ah!' And he
+throw the picture down. Then he walk away to the doors, unlock them,
+and go out. Soon I steal away through the panels, and out of the
+palace ver' quiet, and go home. But I can see that room in my mind."
+
+Again the jailer hurried Voban; There was no excuse for him to
+remain longer; so I gave him a message to Alixe, and slipped into
+his hand a transcript from my journal. Then he left me, and I sat
+and thought upon the strange events of the evening which he had
+described to me. That he was bent on mischief I felt sure, but
+how it would come, what were his plans, I could not guess. Then
+suddenly there flashed into my mind my words to him, "blow us all
+to pieces," and his consternation and strange eagerness. It came
+to me suddenly: he meant to blow up the Intendance. When? And how?
+It seemed absurd to think of it. Yet--yet-- The grim humour of the
+thing possessed me, and I sat back and laughed heartily.
+
+In the midst of my mirth the cell door opened and let in Doltaire.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE
+
+
+I started from my seat; we bowed, and, stretching out a hand to
+the fire, Doltaire said, "Ah, my Captain, we meet too seldom. Let
+me see: five months--ah yes, nearly five months. Believe me, I have
+not breakfasted so heartily since. You are looking older--older.
+Solitude to the active mind is not to be endured alone--no."
+
+"Monsieur Doltaire is the surgeon to my solitude," said I.
+
+"H'm!" he answered, "a jail surgeon merely. And that brings me
+to a point, monsieur. I have had letters from France. The Grande
+Marquise--I may as well be frank with you--womanlike, yearns
+violently for those silly letters which you hold. She would sell
+our France for them. There is a chance for you who would serve your
+country so. Serve it, and yourself--and me. We have no news yet as
+to your doom, but be sure it is certain. La Pompadour knows all,
+and if you are stubborn, twenty deaths were too few. I can save you
+little longer, even were it my will so to do. For myself, the great
+lady girds at me for being so poor an agent. You, monsieur"--he
+smiled whimsically--"will agree that I have been persistent--and
+intelligent."
+
+"So much so," rejoined I, "as to be intrusive."
+
+He smiled again. "If La Pompadour could hear you, she would
+understand why I prefer the live amusing lion to the dead dog. When
+you are gone, I shall be inconsolable. I am a born inquisitor."
+
+"You were born for better things than this," I answered.
+
+He took a seat and mused for a moment. "For larger things, you
+mean," was his reply. "Perhaps--perhaps. I have one gift of the
+strong man--I am inexorable when I make for my end. As a general,
+I would pour men into the maw of death as corn into the hopper,
+if that would build a bridge to my end. You call to mind how those
+Spaniards conquered the Mexique city which was all canals like
+Venice? They filled the waterways with shattered houses and the
+bodies of their enemies, as they fought their way to Montezuma's
+palace. So I would know not pity if I had a great cause. In anything
+vital I would have success at all cost, and to get, destroy as I
+went--if I were a great man."
+
+I thought for a moment with horror of his pursuit of my dear
+Alixe. "I am your hunter," had been his words to her, and I knew
+not what had happened in all these months.
+
+"If you were a great man, you should have the best prerogative
+of greatness," I remarked quietly.
+
+"And what is that? Some excellent moral, I doubt not," was the
+rejoinder.
+
+"Mercy," I replied.
+
+"Tush!" he retorted, "mercy is for the fireside, not for the
+throne. In great causes, what is a screw of tyranny here, a bolt of
+oppression there, or a few thousand lives!" He suddenly got to his
+feet, and, looking into the distance, made a swift motion of his
+hand, his eyes half closed, his brows brooding and firm. "I should
+look beyond the moment, the year, or the generation. Why fret
+because the hour of death comes sooner than we looked for? In the
+movement of the ponderous car, some honest folk must be crushed
+by the wicked wheels. No, no, in large affairs there must be no
+thought of the detail of misery, else what should be done in the
+world! He who is the strongest shall survive, and he alone. It is
+all conflict--all. For when conflict ceases, and those who could
+and should be great spend their time chasing butterflies among the
+fountains, there comes miasma and their doom. Mercy? Mercy? No, no:
+for none but the poor and sick and overridden, in time of peace; in
+time of war, mercy for none, pity nowhere, till the joybells ring
+the great man home."
+
+"But mercy to women always," said I, "in war or peace."
+
+He withdrew his eyes as if from a distant prospect, and they
+dropped to the stove, where I had corn parching. He nodded, as if
+amused, but did not answer at once, and taking from my hand the
+feather with which I stirred the corn, softly whisked some off for
+himself, and smiled at the remaining kernels as they danced upon
+the hot iron. After a little while he said, "Women? Women should
+have all that men can give them. Beautiful things should adorn
+them; no man should set his hand in cruelty on a woman--after she
+is his. Before--before? Woman is wilful, and sometimes we wring
+her heart that we may afterwards comfort it."
+
+"Your views have somewhat changed," I answered. "I mind when you
+talked less sweetly."
+
+He shrugged a shoulder. "That man is lost who keeps one mind
+concerning woman. I will trust the chastity of no woman, yet I will
+trust her virtue--if I have her heart. They a foolish tribe, and
+all are vulnerable in their vanity. They of consequence to man, of
+no consequence in state matters. When they meddle there, we have La
+Pompadour and war with England, and Captain Moray in the Bastile of
+New France."
+
+"You come from a court, monsieur, which believes in nothing, not
+even in itself."
+
+"I come from a court," he rejoined, "which has made a gospel of
+artifice, of frivolity a creed; buying the toys for folly with the
+savings of the poor. His most Christian Majesty has set the fashion
+of continual silliness and universal love. He begets children in
+the peasant's oven and in the chamber of Charlemagne alike. And we
+are all good subjects of the King. We are brilliant, exquisite,
+brave, and naughty; and for us there is no to-morrow."
+
+"Nor for France," I suggested.
+
+He laughed, as he rolled a kernel of parched corn on his tongue.
+"Tut, tut! that is another thing. We the fashion of an hour, but
+France is a fact as stubborn as the natures of you English; for
+beyond stubbornness and your Shakespeare you have little. Down
+among the moles, in the peasants' huts, the spirit of France never
+changes--it is always the same; it is for all time. You English,
+nor all others, you can not blow out that candle which is the spirit
+of France. I remember of the Abbe Bobon preaching once upon the
+words, 'The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord'; well, the
+spirit of France is the candle of Europe, and you English will be
+its screen against the blowing out, though in spasms of stupidity
+you flaunt the extinguisher. You--you have no imagination, no
+passion, no temperament, no poetry. Yet I am wrong. The one thing
+you have--"
+
+He broke off, nodding his head in amusement. "Yes, you have, but
+it is a secret. You English are the true lovers, we French the true
+poets; and I will tell you why. You are a race of comrades, the
+French of gentlemen; you cleave to a thing, we to an idea; you love
+a woman best when she is near, we when she is away; you make a
+romance of marriage, we of intrigue; you feed upon yourselves, we
+upon the world; you have fever in your blood, we in our brains; you
+believe the world was made in seven days, we have no God; you would
+fight for the seven days, we would fight for the danseuse on a
+bonbon box. The world will say 'fie!' at us and love us; it will
+respect you and hate you. That is the law and the gospel," he
+added, smiling.
+
+"Perfect respect casteth out love" said I ironically.
+
+He waved his fingers in approval. "By the Lord, but you are pungent
+now and then!" he answered; "cabined here you are less material. By
+the time you are chastened unto heaven you will be too companionable
+to lose."
+
+"When is that hour of completed chastening?" I asked.
+
+"Never," he said, "if you will oblige me with those
+letters."
+
+"For a man of genius you discern but slowly," retorted I.
+
+"Discern your amazing stubbornness?" he asked. "Why should you
+play at martyr, when your talent is commercial? You have no gifts
+for martyrdom but wooden tenacity. Pshaw! the leech has that.
+You mistake your calling."
+
+"And you yours," I answered. "This is a poor game you play, and
+losing it you lose all. La Pompadour will pay according to the
+goods you bring."
+
+He answered with an amusing candour: "Why, yes, you are partly in
+the right. But when La Pompadour and I come to our final reckoning,
+when it is a question who can topple ruins round the King quickest,
+his mistress or his 'cousin,' there will be tales to tell."
+
+He got up, and walked to and fro in the cell, musing, and his
+face grew dark and darker. "Your Monmouth was a fool," he said.
+"He struck from the boundaries; the blow should fall in the very
+chambers of the King." He put a finger musingly upon his lip. "I
+see--I see how it could be done. Full of danger, but brilliant,
+brilliant and bold! Yes, yes...yes!" Then all at once he seemed to
+come out of a dream, and laughed ironically. "There it is," he
+said; "there is my case. I have the idea, but I will not strike; it
+is not worth the doing unless I am driven to it. We are brave
+enough, we idlers," he went on; "we die with an air--all artifice,
+artifice! ... Yet of late I have had dreams. Now that is not well.
+It is foolish to dream, and I had long since ceased to do so. But
+somehow all the mad fancies of my youth come back. This dream will
+go, it will not last; it is--my fate, my doom," he added lightly,
+"or what you will!"
+
+I knew, alas, too well where his thoughts were hanging, and I
+loathed him anew; for, as he hinted, his was a passion, not a deep
+abiding love. His will was not stronger than the general turpitude
+of his nature. As if he had divined my thought, he said, "My
+will is stronger than any passion that I have; I can never plead
+weakness in the day of my judgment. I am deliberate. When I choose
+evil it is because I love it. I could be an anchorite; I am, as I
+said--what you will."
+
+"You are a conscienceless villain, monsieur."
+
+"Who salves not his soul," he added, with a dry smile, "who will
+play his game out as he began; who repents nor ever will repent of
+anything; who for him and you some interesting moments yet. Let me
+make one now," and he drew from his pocket a packet. He smiled
+hatefully as he handed it to me, and said, "Some books which
+monsieur once lent Mademoiselle Duvarney--poems, I believe.
+Mademoiselle found them yesterday, and desired me to fetch them
+to you; and I obliged her. I had the pleasure of glancing through
+the books before she rolled them up. She bade me say that monsieur
+might find them useful in his captivity. She has a tender
+heart--even to the worst of criminals."
+
+I felt a strange churning in my throat, but with composure I
+took the books, and said, "Mademoiselle Duvarney chooses
+distinguished messengers."
+
+"It is a distinction to aid her in her charities," he replied.
+
+I could not at all conceive what was meant. The packet hung in
+my hands like lead. There was a mystery I could not solve. I would
+not for an instant think what he meant to convey by a look--that
+her choice of him to carry back my gift to her was a final repulse
+of past advances I had made to her, a corrective to my romantic
+memories. I would not believe that, not for one fleeting second.
+Perhaps, I said to myself, it was a ruse of this scoundrel. But
+again, I put that from me, for I did not think he would stoop to
+little meannesses, no matter how vile he was in great things. I
+assumed indifference to the matter, laying the packet down upon my
+couch, and saying to him, "You will convey my thanks to Mademoiselle
+Duvarney for these books, whose chief value lies in the honourable
+housing they have had."
+
+He smiled provokingly; no doubt he was thinking that my studied
+compliment smelt of the oil of solitude. "And add--shall I--your
+compliments that they should have their airing at the hands of
+Monsieur Doltaire?"
+
+"I shall pay those compliments to Monsieur Doltaire himself one
+day," I replied.
+
+He waved his fingers. "The sentiments of one of the poems were
+commendable, fanciful. I remember it"--he put a finger to his
+lip--"let me see." He stepped towards the packet, but I made a sign
+of interference--how grateful was I of this afterwards!--and he drew
+back courteously. "Ah well," he said, "I have a fair memory; I can,
+I think, recall the morsel. It impressed me. I could not think the
+author an Englishman. It runs thus," and with admirable grace he
+recited the words:
+
+  "O flower of all the world, O flower of all!
+    The garden where thou dwellest is so fair,
+  Thou art so goodly and so queenly tall,
+    Thy sweetness scatters sweetness everywhere,
+        O flower of all!
+
+  "O flower of all the years, O flower of all!
+    A day beside thee is a day of days;
+  Thy voice is softer than the throstle's call,
+    There is not song enough to sing thy praise,
+        O flower of all!
+
+  "O flower of all the years, O flower of all!
+    I seek thee in thy garden, and I dare
+  To love thee; and though my deserts be small,
+    Thou art the only flower I would wear,
+        O flower of all!"
+
+"Now that," he said, "is the romantic, almost the Arcadian
+spirit. We have lost it, but it lingers like some rare scent in the
+folds of lace. It is also but artifice, yet so is the lingering
+perfume. When it hung in the flower it was lost after a day's life,
+but when gathered and distilled into an essence it becomes, through
+artifice, an abiding sweetness. So with your song there. It is the
+spirit of devotion, gathered, it may be, from a thousand flowers,
+and made into an essence, which is offered to one only. It is not
+the worship of this one, but the worship of a thousand distilled at
+last to one delicate liturgy. So much for sentiment," he continued.
+"Upon my soul, Captain Moray, you are a boon. I love to have you
+caged. I shall watch your distressed career to its close with deep
+scrutiny. You and I are wholly different, but you are interesting.
+You never could be great. Pardon the egotism, but it is truth. Your
+brain works heavily, you are too tenacious of your conscience, you
+are a blunderer. You will always sow, and others will reap."
+
+I waved my hand in deprecation, for I was in no mood for further
+talk, and I made no answer. He smiled at me, and said, "Well, since
+you doubt my theories, let us come, as your Shakespeare says, to
+Hecuba.... If you will come with me," he added, as he opened my
+cell door, and motioned me courteously to go outside. I drew back,
+and he said, "There is no need to hesitate; I go to show you merely
+what will interest you."
+
+We passed in silence through the corridors, two sentinels
+attending, and at last came into a large square room, wherein stood
+three men with hands tied over their heads against the wall, their
+faces twitching with pain. I drew back in astonishment, for there,
+standing before them, were Gabord and another soldier. Doltaire
+ordered from the room the soldier with Gabord, and my two sentinels,
+and motioned me to one of two chairs set in the middle of the floor.
+
+Presently his face became hard and cruel, and he said to the
+tortured prisoners, "You will need to speak the truth, and
+promptly. I have an order to do with you what I will, and I will
+do it without pause. Hear me. Three nights ago, as Mademoiselle
+Duvarney was returning from the house of a friend living near the
+Intendance, she was set upon by you. A cloak was thrown over her
+head, she was carried to a carriage, where two of you got inside
+with her. Some gentlemen and myself were coming that way. We heard
+the lady's cries, and two gave chase to the carriage, while one
+followed the others. By the help of soldier Gabord here you all
+were captured. You have hung where you are for two days, and now
+I shall have you whipped. When that is done, you shall tell your
+story. If you do not speak truth, you shall be whipped again, and
+then hung. Ladies shall have safety from rogues like you."
+
+Alixe's danger told in these concise words made me, I am sure,
+turn pale; but Doltaire did not see it, he was engaged with the
+prisoners. As I thought and wondered, four soldiers were brought
+in, and the men were made ready for the lash. In vain they pleaded
+they would tell their story at once. Doltaire would not listen; the
+whipping first, and their story after. Soon their backs were bared,
+their faces were turned to the wall, and, as Gabord with harsh
+voice counted, the lashes were mercilessly laid on. There was a
+horrible fascination in watching the skin corrugate under the
+lashes, rippling away in red and purple blotches, the grooves in
+the flesh crossing and recrossing, the raw misery spreading from
+the hips to the shoulders. Now and again Doltaire drew out a box
+and took a pinch of snuff, and once, coolly and curiously, he
+walked up to the most stalwart prisoner and felt his pulse, then
+to the weakest, whose limbs and body had stiffened as though dead.
+"Ninety-seven! Ninety-eight! Ninety-nine!" growled Gabord, and
+then came Doltaire's voice:
+
+"Stop! Now fetch some brandy."
+
+The prisoners were loosened, and Doltaire spoke sharply to a
+soldier who was roughly pulling one man's shirt over the excoriated
+back. Brandy was given by Gabord, and the prisoners stood, a most
+pitiful sight, the weakest livid.
+
+"Now tell your story," said Doltaire to this last.
+
+The man, with broken voice and breath catching, said that they
+had erred. They had been hired to kidnap Madame Cournal, not
+Mademoiselle Duvarney.
+
+Doltaire's eyes flashed. "I see, I see," he said aside to me.
+"The wretch speaks truth."
+
+"Who was your master?" he asked of the sturdiest of the
+villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them.
+To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another
+answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the
+Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery to be imprisoned
+for life.
+
+Doltaire sat for a moment, looking at the men in silence. "You
+are not to hang," he said at last; "but ten days hence, when you
+have had one hundred lashes more, you shall go free. Fifty for
+you," he continued to the weakest who had first told the story.
+
+"Not fifty nor one!" was the shrill reply, and, being unbound,
+the prisoner snatched something from a bench near; there was a
+flash of steel, and he came huddling in a heap on the floor,
+muttering a malediction on the world.
+
+"There was some bravery in that," said Doltaire, looking at the
+dead man. "If he has friends, hand over the body to them. This
+matter must not be spoken of--at your peril," he added sternly.
+"Give them food and brandy."
+
+Then he accompanied me to my cell, and opened the door. I passed
+in, and he was about going without a word, when on a sudden his old
+nonchalance came back, and he said:
+
+"I promised you a matter of interest. You have had it. Gather
+philosophy from this: you may with impunity buy anything from a
+knave and fool except his nuptial bed. He throws the money in your
+face some day."
+
+So saying he plunged in thought again, and left me.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+BE SAINT OR IMP
+
+
+Immediately I opened the packet. As Doltaire had said, the two books
+of poems I had lent Alixe were there, and between the pages of one
+lay a letter addressed to me. It was, indeed, a daring thing to make
+Doltaire her messenger. But she trusted to his habits of courtesy;
+he had no small meannesses--he was no spy or thief.
+
+DEAR ROBERT (the letter ran): I know not if this will ever reach
+you, for I am about to try a perilous thing, even to make Monsieur
+Doltaire my letter-carrier. Bold as it is, I hope to bring it
+through safely.
+
+You must know that my mother now makes Monsieur Doltaire welcome to
+our home, for his great talents and persuasion have so worked upon
+her that she believes him not so black as he is painted. My father,
+too, is not unmoved by his amazing address and complaisance. I do
+not think he often cares to use his arts--he is too indolent; but
+with my father, my mother, and my sister he has set in motion all
+his resources.
+
+Robert, all Versailles is here. This Monsieur Doltaire speaks for
+it. I know not if all courts in the world are the same, but if so,
+I am at heart no courtier; though I love the sparkle, the sharp
+play of wit and word, the very touch-and-go of weapons. I am in
+love with life, and I wish to live to be old, very old, that I will
+have known it all, from helplessness to helplessness again, missing
+nothing, even though much be sad to feel and bear. Robert, I should
+have gone on many years, seeing little, knowing little, I think, if
+it had not been for you and for your troubles, which are mine, and
+for this love of ours, builded in the midst of sorrows. Georgette
+is now as old as when I first came to love you, and you were thrown
+into the citadel, and yet in feeling and experience, I am ten years
+older than she; and necessity has made me wiser. Ah, if necessity
+would but make me happy too, by giving you your liberty, that on
+these many miseries endured we might set up a sure home. I wonder
+if you think--if you think of that: a little home away from all
+these wars, aloof from vexing things.
+
+But there! all too plainly I am showing you my heart. Yet it is
+so great a comfort to speak on paper to you, in this silence here.
+Can you guess where is that HERE, Robert? It is not the Chateau
+St. Louis--no. It is not the Manor. It is the chateau, dear Chateau
+Alixe--my father has called it that--on the Island of Orleans.
+Three days ago I was sick at heart, tired of all the junketings
+and feastings, and I begged my mother to fetch me here, though it
+is yet but early spring, and snow is on the ground.
+
+First, you must know that this new chateau is built upon, and is
+joined to, the ruins of an old one, owned long years ago by the
+Baron of Beaugard, whose strange history you must learn some day,
+out of the papers we have found here. I begged my father not to
+tear the old portions of the manor down, but, using the first
+foundations, put up a house half castle and half manor. Pictures
+of the old manor were found, and so we have a place that is no
+patchwork, but a renewal. I made my father give me the old
+surviving part of the building for my own, and so it is.
+
+It is all set on high ground abutting on the water almost at the
+point where I am, and I have the river in my sight all day. Now,
+think yourself in the new building. You come out of a dining-hall,
+hung all about with horns and weapons and shields and such bravery,
+go through a dark, narrow passage, and then down a step or two.
+You open a door, bright light breaks on your eyes, then two steps
+lower, and you are here with me. You might have gone outside the
+dining-hall upon a stone terrace, and so have come along to the
+deep window where I sit so often. You may think of me hiding in the
+curtains, watching you, though you knew it not till you touched the
+window and I came out quietly, startling you, so that your heart
+would beat beyond counting.
+
+As I look up towards the window, the thing first in sight is the
+cage, with the little bird which came to me in the cathedral the
+morning my brother got lease of life again: you DO remember--is it
+not so? It never goes from my room, and though I have come here
+but for a week I muffled the cage well and brought it over; and
+there the bird swings and sings the long day through. I have heaped
+the window-seats with soft furs, and one of these I prize most
+rarely. It was a gift--and whose, think you? Even a poor soldier's.
+You see I have not all friends among the great folk. I often lie
+upon that soft robe of sable--ay, sable, Master Robert--and think
+of him who gave it to me. Now I know you are jealous, and I can see
+your eyes flash up. But you shall at once be soothed. It is no other
+than Gabord's gift. He is now of the Governor's body-guard, and
+I think is by no means happy, and would prefer service with the
+Marquis de Montcalm, who goes not comfortably with the Intendant
+and the Governor.
+
+One day Gabord came to our house on the ramparts, and, asking
+for me, blundered out, "Aho, what shall a soldier do with sables?
+They are for gentles and for wrens to snuggle in. Here comes a
+Russian count oversea, and goes mad in tavern. Here comes Gabord,
+and saves count from ruddy crest for kissing the wrong wench. Then
+count falls on Gabord's neck, and kisses both his ears, and gives
+him sables, and crosses oversea again; and so good-bye to count and
+his foolery. And sables shall be ma'm'selle's, if she will have
+them." He might have sold the thing for many louis, and yet he
+brought it to me; and he would not go till he had seen me sitting
+on it, muffling my hands and face in the soft fur.
+
+Just now, as I am writing, I glance at the table where I sit--a
+small brown table of oak, carved with the name of Felise,
+Baroness of Beaugard. She sat here; and some day, when you hear
+her story, you will know why I begged Madame Lotbiniere to give
+it to me in exchange for another, once the King's. Carved, too,
+beneath her name, are the words, "Oh, tarry thou the Lord's
+leisure."
+
+And now you shall laugh with me at a droll thing Georgette has
+given me to wipe my pen upon. There are three little circles of
+deerskin and one of ruby velvet, stitched together in the centre.
+Then, standing on the velvet is a yellow wooden chick, with little
+eyes of beads, and a little wooden bill stuck in most quaintly,
+and a head that twists like a weathercock. It has such a piquant
+silliness of look that I laugh at it most heartily, and I have an
+almost elfish fun in smearing its downy feathers. I am sure you
+did not think I could be amused so easily. You shall see this silly
+chick one day, humorously ugly and all daubed with ink.
+
+There is a low couch in one corner of the room, and just above
+hangs a picture of my mother. In another corner is a little shelf
+of books, among them two which I have studied constantly since you
+were put in prison--your great Shakespeare, and the writings of one
+Mr. Addison. I had few means of studying at first, so difficult
+it seemed, and all the words sounded hard; but there is your
+countryman, one Lieutenant Stevens of Rogers' Rangers, a prisoner,
+and he has helped me, and is ready to help you when the time comes
+for stirring. I teach him French; and though I do not talk of you,
+he tells me in what esteem you are held in Virginia and in England,
+and is not slow to praise you on his own account, which makes me
+more forgiving when he would come to sentiment!
+
+In another corner is my spinning-wheel, and there stands a
+harpsichord, just where the soft sun sends in a ribbon of light;
+and I will presently play for you a pretty song. I wonder if you
+can hear it? Where I shall sit at the harpsichord the belt of
+sunlight will fall across my shoulder, and, looking through the
+window, I shall see your prison there on the Heights; the silver
+flag with its gold lilies on the Chateau St. Louis; the great
+guns of the citadel; and far off at Beauport the Manor House and
+garden which you and I know so well, and the Falls of Montmorenci,
+falling like white flowing hair from the tall cliff.
+
+You will care to know of how these months have been spent, and
+what news of note there is of the fighting between our countries.
+No matters of great consequence have come to our ears, save that
+it is thought your navy may descend on Louisburg; that Ticonderoga
+is also to be set upon, and Quebec to be besieged in the coming
+summer. From France the news is various. Now, Frederick of Prussia
+and England defeat the allies, France, Russia, and Austria; now,
+they, as Monsieur Doltaire says, "send the great Prussian to
+verses and the megrims." For my own part, I am ever glad to hear
+that our cause is victorious, and letters that my brother writes
+me rouse all my ardour for my country. Juste has grown in place
+and favour, and in his latest letter he says that Monsieur
+Doltaire's voice has got him much advancement. He also remarks
+that Monsieur Doltaire has reputation for being one of the most
+reckless, clever, and cynical men in France. Things that he has
+said are quoted at ball and rout. Yet the King is angry with him,
+and La Pompadour's caprice may send him again to the Bastile.
+These things Juste heard from D'Argenson, Minister of War, through
+his secretary, with whom he is friendly.
+
+I will now do what I never thought to do: I will send you here
+some extracts from my journal, which will disclose to you the
+secrets of a girl's troubled heart. Some folk might say that I am
+unmaidenly in this. But I care not, I fear not.
+
+
+December 24. I was with Robert to-day. I let him see what trials I
+had had with Monsieur Doltaire, and what were like to come. It hurt
+me to tell him, yet it would have hurt me more to withhold them. I
+am hurt whichever way it goes. Monsieur Doltaire rouses the worst
+parts of me. On the one hand I detest him for his hatred of Robert
+and for his evil life, yet on the other I must needs admire him for
+his many graces--why are not the graces of the wicked horrible?--for
+his singular abilities, and because, gamester though he may be, he
+is no public robber. Then, too, the melancholy of his birth and
+history claims some sympathy. Sometimes when I listen to him speak,
+hear the almost piquant sadness of his words, watch the spirit of
+isolation which, by design or otherwise, shows in him, for the
+moment I am conscious of a pity or an interest which I flout in
+wiser hours. This is his art, the potent danger of his personality.
+
+To-night he came, and with many fine phrases wished us a happy
+day to-morrow, and most deftly worked upon my mother and Georgette
+by looking round and speaking with a quaint sort of raillery--half
+pensive, it was--of the peace of this home-life of ours; and indeed,
+he did it so inimitably that I was not sure how much was false
+and how much true. I tried to avoid him to-day, but my mother as
+constantly made private speech between us easy. At last he had
+his way, and then I was not sorry; for Georgette was listening to
+him with more colour than she is wont to wear. I would rather see
+her in her grave than with her hand in his, her sweet life in his
+power. She is unschooled in the ways of the world, and she never
+will know it as I now do. How am I sounding all the depths! Can a
+woman walk the dance with evil, and be no worse for it by-and-bye?
+Yet for a cause, for a cause! What can I do? I can not say,
+"Monsieur Doltaire, you must not speak with me, or talk with me;
+you are a plague-spot." No, I must even follow this path, so it
+but lead at last to Robert and his safety.
+
+Monsieur, having me alone at last, said to me, "I have kept my
+word as to the little boast: this Captain Moray still lives."
+
+"You are not greater than I thought," said I.
+
+He professed to see but one meaning in my words, and answered,
+"It was then mere whim to see me do this thing, a lady's curious
+mind, eh? My faith, I think your sex are the true scientists:
+you try experiment for no other reason than to see effect."
+
+"You forget my deep interest in Captain Moray," said I, with airy
+boldness.
+
+He laughed. He was disarmed. How could he think I meant it! "My
+imagination halts," he rejoined. "Millennium comes when you are
+interested. And yet," he continued, "it is my one ambition to
+interest you, and I will do it, or I will say my prayers no more."
+
+  "But how can that be done no more,
+  Which ne'er was done before?"
+
+I retorted, railing at him, for I feared to take him seriously.
+
+"There you wrong me," he said. "I am devout; I am a lover of the
+Scriptures--their beauty haunts me; I go to mass--its dignity
+affects me; and I have prayed, as in my youth I wrote verses. It
+is not a matter of morality, but of temperament. A man may be
+religious and yet be evil. Satan fell, but he believed and he
+admired, as the English Milton wisely shows it."
+
+I was most glad that my father came between us at that moment;
+but before Monsieur left, he said to me, "You have challenged
+me. Beware: I have begun this chase. Yet I would rather be your
+follower, rather have your arrow in me, than be your hunter." He
+said it with a sort of warmth, which I knew was a glow in his
+senses merely; he was heated with his own eloquence.
+
+"Wait," returned I. "You have heard the story of King Artus?"
+
+He thought a moment. "No, no. I never was a child as other
+children. I was always comrade to the imps."
+
+"King Artus," said I, "was most fond of hunting." (It is but a
+legend with its moral, as you know.) "It was forbidden by the
+priests to hunt while mass was being said. One day, at the lifting
+of the host, the King, hearing a hound bay, rushed out, and
+gathered his pack together; but as they went, a whirlwind caught
+them up into the air, where they continue to this day, following
+a lonely trail, never resting, and all the game they get is one
+fly every seventh year. And now, when all on a sudden at night you
+hear the trees and leaves and the sleepy birds and crickets stir,
+it is the old King hunting--for the fox he never gets."
+
+Monsieur looked at me with curious intentness. "You have a great
+gift," he said; "you make your point by allusion. I follow you.
+But see: when I am blown into the air I shall not ride alone.
+Happiness is the fox we ride to cover, you and I, though we find
+but a firefly in the end."
+
+"A poor reply," I remarked easily; "not worthy of you."
+
+"As worthy as I am of you," he rejoined; then he kissed my hand.
+"I will see you at mass to-morrow."
+
+Unconsciously, I rubbed the hand he kissed with my handkerchief.
+
+"I am not to be provoked," he said. "It is much to have you treat
+my kiss with consequence."
+
+
+March 25. No news of Robert all this month. Gabord has been away
+in Montreal. I see Voban only now and then, and he is strange in
+manner, and can do nothing. Mathilde is better--so still and
+desolate, yet not wild; but her memory is all gone, all save for
+that "Francois Bigot is a devil." My father has taken anew a
+strong dislike to Monsieur Doltaire, because of talk that is
+abroad concerning him and Madame Cournal. I once thought she was
+much sinned against, but now I am sure she is not to be defended.
+She is most defiant, though people dare not shut their doors
+against her. A change seemed to come over her all at once,
+and over her husband also. He is now gloomy and taciturn, now
+foolishly gay, yet he is little seen with the Intendant, as
+before. However it be, Monsieur Doltaire and Bigot are no longer
+intimate. What should I care for that, if Monsieur Doltaire had no
+power, if he were not the door between Robert and me? What care I,
+indeed, how vile he is, so he but serve my purpose? Let him try my
+heart and soul and senses as he will; I will one day purify myself
+of his presence and all this soiling, and find my peace in Robert's
+arms--or in the quiet of a nunnery.
+
+This morning I got up at sunrise, it being the Annunciation of
+the Virgin, and prepared to go to mass in the chapel of the
+Ursulines. How peaceful was the world! So still, so still. The
+smoke came curling up here and there through the sweet air of
+spring, a snowbird tripped along the white coverlet of the earth,
+and before a Calvary, I saw a peasant kneel and say an Ave as he
+went to market. There was springtime in the sun, in the smell of
+the air; springtime everywhere but in my heart, which was all
+winter. I seemed alone--alone--alone. I felt the tears start. But
+that was for a moment only, I am glad to say, for I got my courage
+again, as I did the night before when Monsieur Doltaire placed his
+arm at my waist, and poured into my ears a torrent of protestations.
+
+I did not move at first. But I could feel my cheeks go to stone,
+and something clamp my heart. Yet had ever man such hateful
+eloquence! There is that in him--oh, shame! oh, shame!--which goes
+far with a woman. He has the music of passion, and though it is
+lower than love, it is the poetry of the senses. I spoke to him
+calmly, I think, begging him place his merits where they would have
+better entertainment; but I said hard, cold things at last, when
+other means availed not; which presently made him turn upon me in
+another fashion.
+
+His words dropped slowly, with a consummate carefulness, his
+manner was pointedly courteous, yet there was an underpressure of
+force, of will, which made me see the danger of my position. He
+said that I was quite right; that he would wish no privilege of a
+woman which was not given with a frank eagerness; that to him no
+woman was worth the having who did not throw her whole nature into
+the giving. Constancy--that was another matter. But a perfect gift
+while there was giving at all--that was the way.
+
+"There is something behind all this," he said. "I am not so
+vain as to think any merits of mine would influence you. But my
+devotion, my admiration of you, the very force of my passion,
+should move you. Be you ever so set against me--and I do not
+think you are--you should not be so strong to resist the shock of
+feeling. I do not know the cause, but I will find it out; and when
+I do, I shall remove it or be myself removed." He touched my arm
+with his fingers. "When I touch you like that," he said, "summer
+riots in my veins. I will not think that this which rouses me so
+is but power upon one side, and effect upon the other. Something
+in you called me to you, something in me will wake you yet. Mon
+Dieu, I could wait a score of years for my touch to thrill you
+as yours does me! And I will--I will."
+
+"You think it suits your honour to force my affections?" I asked;
+for I dared not say all I wished.
+
+"What is there in this reflecting on my honour?" he answered.
+"At Versailles, believe me, they would say I strive here for a
+canonizing. No, no; think me so gallant that I follow you to serve
+you, to convince you that the way I go is the way your hopes will
+lie. Honour? To fetch you to the point where you and I should
+start together on the Appian Way, I would traffic with that, even,
+and say I did so, and would do so a thousand times, if in the end
+it put your hand in mine. Who, who can give you what I offer, can
+offer? See: I have given myself to a hundred women in my time--but
+what of me? That which was a candle in a wind, and the light went
+out. There was no depth, no life, in that; only the shadow of a
+man was there those hundred times. But here, now, the whole man
+plunges into this sea, and he will reach the lighthouse on the
+shore, or be broken on the reefs. Look in my eyes, and see the
+furnace there, and tell me if you think that fire is for cool
+corners in the gardens at Neuilly or for the Hills of--" He suddenly
+broke off, and a singular smile followed. "There, there," he said,
+"I have said enough. It came to me all at once how droll my speech
+would sound to our people at Versailles. It is an elaborate irony
+that the occasional virtues of certain men turn and mock them. That
+is the penalty of being inconsistent. Be saint or imp; it is the
+only way. But this imp that mocks me relieves you of reply. Yet I
+have spoken truth, and again and again I will tell it you, till
+you believe according to my gospel."
+
+How glad I was that he himself lightened the situation! I had been
+driven to despair, but this strange twist in his mood made all
+smooth for me. "That 'again and again' sounds dreary," said I. "It
+might almost appear I must sometime accept your gospel, to cure you
+of preaching it, and save me from eternal drowsiness."
+
+We were then most fortunately interrupted. He made his adieus,
+and I went to my room, brooded till my head ached, then fell
+a-weeping, and wished myself out of the world, I was so sick and
+weary. Now and again a hot shudder of shame and misery ran through
+me, as I thought of monsieur's words to me. Put them how he would,
+they sound an insult now, though as he spoke I felt the power of
+his passion. "If you had lived a thousand years ago, you would
+have loved a thousand times," he said to me one day. Sometimes I
+think he spoke truly; I have a nature that responds to all
+eloquence in life.
+
+
+Robert, I have bared my heart to thee. I have hidden nothing. In
+a few days I shall go back to the city with my mother, and when I
+can I will send news; and do thou send me news also, if thou canst
+devise a safe way. Meanwhile, I have written my brother Juste to
+be magnanimous, and to try for thy freedom. He will not betray me,
+and he may help us. I have begged him to write to thee a letter
+of reconcilement.
+
+And now, comrade of my heart, do thou have courage. I also shall
+be strong as I am ardent. Having written thee, I am cheerful once
+more; and when again I may, I will open the doors of my heart that
+thou mayst come in. That heart is thine, Robert. Thy
+
+ALIXE,
+
+who loves thee all her days.
+
+P.S.--I have found the names and places of the men who keep the
+guard beneath thy window. If there is chance for freedom that way,
+fix the day some time ahead, and I will see what may be done.
+Voban fears nothing; he will act secretly for me.
+
+The next day I arranged for my escape, which had been long in
+planning.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THROUGH THE BARS OF THE CAGE
+
+
+I should have tried escape earlier but that it was little use to
+venture forth in the harsh winter in a hostile country. But now
+April had come, and I was keen to make a trial of my fortune. I
+had been saving food for a long time, little by little, and hiding
+it in the old knapsack which had held my second suit of clothes. I
+had used the little stove for parching my food--Indian corn, for
+which I had professed a fondness to my jailer, and liberally paid
+for out of funds which had been sent me by Mr. George Washington
+in answer to my letter, and other moneys to a goodly amount in a
+letter from Governor Dinwiddie. These letters had been carefully
+written, and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, into whose hands they had
+first come, was gallant enough not to withhold them--though he
+read them first.
+
+Besides Indian corn, the parching of which amused me, I had dried
+ham and tongue, and bread and cheese, enough, by frugal use, to
+last me a month at least. I knew it would be a journey of six weeks
+or more to the nearest English settlement, but if I could get that
+month's start I should forage for the rest, or take my fate as I
+found it: I was used to all the turns of fortune now. My knapsack
+gradually filled, and meanwhile I slowly worked my passage into the
+open world. There was the chance that my jailer would explore the
+knapsack; but after a time I lost that fear, for it lay untouched
+with a blanket in a corner, and I cared for my cell with my own
+hands.
+
+The true point of danger was the window. There lay my way. It
+was stoutly barred with iron up and down, and the bars were set in
+the solid limestone. Soon after I entered this prison, I saw that
+I must cut a groove in the stone from stanchion to stanchion, and
+then, by drawing one to the other, make an opening large enough to
+let my body through. For tools I had only a miserable knife with
+which I cut my victuals, and the smaller but stouter one which
+Gabord had not taken from me. There could be no pounding, no
+chiselling, but only rubbing of the hard stone. So hour after
+hour I rubbed away, in constant danger of discovery however. My
+jailer had a trick of sudden entrance, which would have been
+grotesque if it had not been so serious to me. To provide against
+the flurried inquisition of his eye, I kept near me bread well
+chewed, with which I filled the hole, covering it with the sand
+I had rubbed or the ashes of my pipe. I lived in dread of these
+entrances, but at last I found that they chanced only within
+certain hours, and I arranged my times of work accordingly. Once
+or twice, however, being impatient, I scratched the stone with
+some asperity and noise, and was rewarded by hearing my fellow
+stumbling in the hall; for he had as uncertain limbs as ever I
+saw. He stumbled upon nothing, as you have seen a child trip
+itself up by tangling of its feet.
+
+The first time that he came, roused by the grating noise as he
+sat below, he stumbled in the very centre of the cell, and fell
+upon his knees. I would have laughed if I had dared, but I yawned
+over the book I had hastily snatched up, and puffed great whiffs
+from my pipe. I dreaded lest he should go to the window. He started
+for it, but suddenly made for my couch, and dragged it away, as if
+looking to find a hole dug beneath it. Still I did not laugh at him,
+but gravely watched him; and presently he went away. At another
+time I was foolishly harsh with my tools; but I knew now the time
+required by him to come upstairs, and I swiftly filled the groove
+with bread, strewed ashes and sand over it, rubbed all smooth, and
+was plunged in my copy of Montaigne when he entered. This time he
+went straight to the window, looked at it, tried the stanchions,
+and then, with an amused attempt at being cunning and hiding his
+own vigilance, he asked me, with laborious hypocrisy, if I had seen
+Captain Lancy pass the window. And so for weeks and weeks we played
+hide-and-seek with each other.
+
+At last I had nothing to do but sit and wait, for the groove was
+cut, the bar had room to play. I could not bend it, for it was fast
+at the top; but when my hour of adventure was come, I would tie a
+handkerchief round the two bars and twist it with the piece of
+hickory used for stirring the fire. Here was my engine of escape,
+and I waited till April should wind to its close, when I should,
+in the softer weather, try my fortune outside these walls.
+
+So time went on until one eventful day, even the 30th of April
+of that year 1758. It was raining and blowing when I waked, and
+it ceased not all the day, coming to a hailstorm towards night. I
+felt sure that my guards without would, on such a day, relax their
+vigilance. In the evening I listened, and heard no voices nor any
+sound of feet, only the pelting rain and the whistling wind. Yet I
+did not stir till midnight. Then I slung the knapsack in front of
+me, so that I could force it through the window first, and tying
+my handkerchief round the iron bars, I screwed it up with my stick.
+Presently the bars came together, and my way was open. I got my
+body through by dint of squeezing, and let myself go plump into
+the mire below. Then I stood still a minute, and listened again.
+
+A light was shining not far away. Drawing near, I saw that it
+came from a small hut or lean-to. Looking through the cracks, I
+observed my two gentlemen drowsing in the corner. I was eager for
+their weapons, but I dared not make the attempt to get them, for
+they were laid between their legs, the barrels resting against
+their shoulders. I drew back, and for a moment paused to get my
+bearings. Then I made for a corner of the yard where the wall was
+lowest, and, taking a run at it, caught the top, with difficulty
+scrambled up, and speedily was over and floundering in the mud. I
+knew well where I was, and at once started off in a northwesterly
+direction, toward the St. Charles River, making for a certain
+farmhouse above the town. Yet I took care, though it was dangerous,
+to travel a street in which was Voban's house. There was no light
+in the street nor in his house, nor had I seen any one abroad as
+I came, not even a sentinel.
+
+I knew where was the window of the barber's bedroom, and I tapped
+upon it softly. Instantly I heard a stir; then there came the
+sound of flint and steel, then a light, and presently a hand at
+the window, and a voice asking who was there.
+
+I gave a quick reply; the light was put out, the window opened,
+and there was Voban staring at me.
+
+"This letter," said I, "to Mademoiselle Duvarney," and I slipped
+ten louis into his hand, also.
+
+This he quickly handed back. "M'sieu'," said he, "if I take it I
+would seem to myself a traitor--no, no. But I will give the letter
+to ma'm'selle."
+
+Then he asked me in; but I would not, yet begged him, if he could,
+to have a canoe at my disposal at a point below the Falls of
+Montmorenci two nights hence.
+
+"M'sieu'," said he, "I will do so if I can, but I am watched.
+I would not pay a sou for my life--no. Yet I will serve you, if
+there is a way."
+
+Then I told him what I meant to do, and bade him repeat it
+exactly to Alixe. This he swore to do, and I cordially grasped the
+good wretch's shoulder, and thanked him with all my heart. I got
+from him a weapon, also, and again I put gold louis into his hand,
+and bade him keep it, for I might need his kind offices to spend it
+for me. To this he consented, and I plunged into the dark again. I
+had not gone far when I heard footsteps coming, and I drew aside
+into the corner of a porch. A moment, then the light flashed full
+upon me. I had my hand upon the hanger I had got from Voban, and I
+was ready to strike if there were need, when Gabord's voice broke
+on my ear, and his hand caught at the short sword by his side.
+
+"'Tis dickey-bird, aho!" cried he. There was exultation in his eye
+and voice. Here was a chance for him to prove himself against me;
+he had proved himself for me more than once.
+
+"Here was I," added he, "making for M'sieu' Voban, that he might
+come and bleed a sick soldier, when who should come running but our
+English captain! Come forth, aho!"
+
+"No, Gabord," said I, "I'm bound for freedom." I stepped forth. His
+sword was poised against me. I was intent to make a desperate fight.
+
+"March on," returned he gruffly, and I could feel the iron in
+his voice.
+
+"But not with you, Gabord. My way lies towards Virginia."
+
+I did not care to strike the first blow, and I made to go past
+him. His lantern came down, and he made a catch at my shoulder.
+I swung back, threw off my cloak and up my weapon.
+
+Then we fought. My knapsack troubled me, for it was loose, and
+kept shifting. Gabord made stroke after stroke, watchful, heavy,
+offensive, muttering to himself as he struck and parried. There was
+no hatred in his eyes, but he had the lust of fighting on him, and
+he was breathing easily, and could have kept this up for hours. As
+we fought I could hear a clock strike one in a house near. Then
+a cock crowed. I had received two slight wounds, and I had not
+touched my enemy. But I was swifter, and I came at him suddenly
+with a rush, and struck for his left shoulder when I saw my chance.
+I felt the steel strike the bone. As I did so, he caught my wrist
+and lunged most fiercely at me, dragging me to him. The blow struck
+straight at my side, but it went through the knapsack, which had
+swung loose, and so saved my life; for another instant and I had
+tripped him down, and he lay bleeding badly.
+
+"Aho! 'twas a fair fight," said he. "Now get you gone. I call
+for help."
+
+"I can not leave you so, Gabord," said I. I stooped and lifted up
+his head.
+
+"Then you shall go to citadel," said he, feeling for his small
+trumpet.
+
+"No, no," I answered; "I'll go fetch Voban."
+
+"To bleed me more!" quoth he whimsically; and I knew well he was
+pleased that I did not leave him. "Nay, kick against yon door. It
+is Captain Lancy's."
+
+At that moment a window opened, and Lancy's voice was heard.
+Without a word I seized the soldier's lantern and my cloak, and
+made away as hard as I could go.
+
+"I'll have a wing of you for lantern there!" roared Gabord,
+swearing roundly as I ran off with it.
+
+With all my might I hurried, and was soon outside the town, and
+coming fast to the farmhouse about two miles beyond. Nearing it, I
+hid the lantern beneath my cloak and made for an outhouse. The door
+was not locked, and I passed in. There was a loft nearly full of
+hay, and I crawled up, and dug a hole far down against the side of
+the building, and climbed in, bringing with me for drink a nest of
+hen's eggs which I found in a corner. The warmth of the dry hay was
+comforting, and after caring for my wounds, which I found were but
+scratches, I had somewhat to eat from my knapsack, drank up two
+eggs, and then coiled myself for sleep. It was my purpose, if not
+discovered, to stay where I was two days, and then to make for the
+point below the Falls of Montmorenci where I hoped to find a canoe
+of Voban's placing.
+
+When I waked it must have been near noon, so I lay still for a
+time, listening to the cheerful noise of fowls and cattle in the
+yard without, and to the clacking of a hen above me. The air smelt
+very sweet. I also heard my unknowing host, at whose table I had
+once sat, two years before, talking with his son, who had just
+come over from Quebec, bringing news of my escape, together with a
+wonderful story of the fight between Gabord and myself. It had, by
+his calendar, lasted some three hours, and both of us, in the end,
+fought as we lay upon the ground. "But presently along comes a
+cloaked figure, with horses, and he lifts m'sieu' the Englishman
+upon one, and away they ride like the devil towards St. Charles
+River and Beauport. Gabord was taken to the hospital, and he swore
+that Englishman would not have got away if stranger had not fetched
+him a crack with a pistol-butt which sent him dumb and dizzy. And
+there M'sieu' Lancy sleep snug through all until the horses ride
+away!"
+
+The farmer and his son laughed heartily, with many a "By Gar!"
+their sole English oath. Then came the news that six thousand
+livres were offered for me, dead or living, the drums beating
+far and near to tell the people so.
+
+The farmer gave a long whistle, and in a great bustle set to
+calling all his family to arm themselves and join with him in this
+treasure-hunting. I am sure at least a dozen were at the task,
+searching all about; nor did they neglect the loft where I lay.
+But I had dug far down, drawing the hay over me as I went, so that
+they must needs have been keen to smell me out. After about three
+hours' poking about over all the farm, they met again outside this
+building, and I could hear their gabble plainly. The smallest among
+them, the piping chore-boy, he was for spitting me without mercy;
+and the milking-lass would toast me with a hay-fork, that she would,
+and six thousand livres should set her up forever.
+
+In the midst of their rattling came two soldiers, who ordered them
+about, and with much blustering began searching here and there,
+and chucking the maids under the chins, as I could tell by their
+little bursts of laughter, and the "La M'sieu's!" which trickled
+through the hay.
+
+I am sure that one such little episode saved me. For I heard a
+soldier just above me poking and tossing hay with uncomfortable
+vigour. But presently the amorous hunter turned his thoughts
+elsewhere, and I was left to myself, and to a late breakfast of
+parched beans and bread and raw eggs, after which I lay and
+thought; and the sum of the thinking was that I would stay where
+I was till the first wave of the hunt had passed.
+
+Near midnight of the second day I came out secretly from my
+lurking-place, and faced straight for the St. Charles River.
+Finding it at high water, I plunged in, with my knapsack and cloak
+on my head, and made my way across, reaching the opposite shore
+safely. After going two miles or so, I discovered friendly covert
+in the woods, where, in spite of my cloak and dry cedar boughs
+wrapped round, I shivered as I lay until the morning. When the sun
+came up, I drew out, that it might dry me; after which I crawled
+back into my nest and fell into a broken sleep. Many times during
+the day I heard the horns of my hunters, and more than once voices
+near me. But I had crawled into the hollow of a half-uprooted stump,
+and the cedar branches, which had been cut off a day or two before,
+were a screen. I could see soldiers here and there, armed and
+swaggering, and faces of peasants and shopkeepers whom I knew.
+
+A function was being made of my escape; it was a hunting-feast,
+in which women were as eager as their husbands and their brothers.
+There was something devilish in it, when I came to think of it: a
+whole town roused and abroad to hunt down one poor fugitive, whose
+only sin was, in themselves, a virtue--loyalty to his country. I
+saw women armed with sickles and iron forks, and lads bearing axes
+and hickory poles cut to a point like a spear, while blunderbusses
+were in plenty. Now and again a weapon was fired, and, to watch
+their motions and peepings, it might have been thought I was a
+dragon, or that they all were hunting La Jongleuse, their fabled
+witch, whose villainies, are they not told at every fireside?
+
+Often I shivered violently, and anon I was burning hot; my
+adventure had given me a chill and fever. Late in the evening of
+this day, my hunters having drawn off with as little sense as they
+had hunted me, I edged cautiously down past Beauport and on to
+the Montmorenci Falls. I came along in safety, and reached a spot
+near the point where Voban was to hide the boat. The highway ran
+between. I looked out cautiously. I could hear and see nothing,
+and so ran out and crossed the road, and pushed for the woods on
+the banks of the river. I had scarcely got across when I heard
+a shout, and looking round I saw three horsemen, who instantly
+spurred towards me. I sprang through the underbrush and came
+down roughly into a sort of quarry, spraining my ankle on a pile
+of stones. I got up quickly; but my ankle hurt me sorely, and I
+turned sick and dizzy. Limping a little way, I set my back against
+a tree, and drew my hanger. As I did so, the three gentlemen
+burst in upon me. They were General Montcalm, a gentleman of the
+Governor's household, and Doltaire!
+
+"It is no use, dear Captain," said Doltaire. "Yield up your weapon."
+
+General Montcalm eyed me curiously, as the other gentleman
+talked in low, excited tones; and presently he made a gesture
+of courtesy, for he saw that I was hurt. Doltaire's face wore a
+malicious smile; but when he noted how sick I was, he came and
+offered me his arm, and was constant in courtesy till I was set
+upon a horse; and with him and the General riding beside me I
+came to my new imprisonment. They both forbore to torture me with
+words, for I was suffering greatly; but they fetched me to the
+Chateau St. Louis, followed by a crowd, who hooted at me. Doltaire
+turned on them at last, and stopped them.
+
+The Governor, whose petty vanity was roused, showed a foolish
+fury at seeing me, and straightway ordered me to the citadel
+again.
+
+"It's useless kicking 'gainst the pricks," said Doltaire to me
+cynically, as I passed out limping between two soldiers; but I did
+not reply. In another half hour of most bitter journeying I found
+myself in my dungeon. I sank upon the old couch of straw, untouched
+since I had left it; and when the door shut upon me, desponding,
+aching in all my body, now feverish and now shivering, my ankle in
+great pain, I could bear up no longer, and I bowed my head and fell
+a-weeping like a woman.
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE STEEP PATH OF CONQUEST
+
+
+Now I am come to a period on which I shall not dwell, nor repeat
+a tale of suffering greater than that I had yet endured. All the
+first night of this new imprisonment I tossed on my wretched bed
+in pain and misery. A strange and surly soldier came and went,
+bringing bread and water; but when I asked that a physician be sent
+me, he replied, with a vile oath, that the devil should be my only
+surgeon. Soon he came again, accompanied by another soldier, and
+put irons on me. With what quietness I could I asked him by whose
+orders this was done; but he vouchsafed no reply save that I was
+to "go bound to fires of hell."
+
+"There is no journeying there," I answered; "here is the place
+itself."
+
+Then a chain was roughly put round my injured ankle, and it gave me
+such agony that I turned sick, but I kept back groaning, for I would
+not have these varlets catch me quaking.
+
+"I'll have you grilled for this one day," said I. "You are no men,
+but butchers. Can you not see my ankle has been sorely hurt?"
+
+"You are for killing," was the gruff reply, "and here's a taste
+of it."
+
+With that he drew the chain with a jerk round the hurt member,
+so that it drove me to madness. I caught him by the throat and
+hurled him back against the wall, and snatching a pistol from his
+comrade's belt aimed it at his head. I was beside myself with pain,
+and if he had been further violent I should have shot him. His
+fellow dared not stir in his defence, for the pistol was trained
+on him too surely; and so at last the wretch, promising better
+treatment, crawled to his feet, and made motion for the pistol to
+be given him. But I would not yield it, telling him it should be
+a guarantee of truce. Presently the door closed behind them, and I
+sank back upon the half-fettered chains.
+
+I must have sat for more than an hour, when there was a noise
+without, and there entered the Commandant, the Marquis de Montcalm,
+and the Seigneur Duvarney. The pistol was in my hand, and I did not
+put it down, but struggled to my feet, and waited for them to speak.
+
+For a moment there was silence, and then the Commandant said,
+"Your guards have brought me word, Monsieur le Capitaine, that you
+are violent. You have resisted them, and have threatened them with
+their own pistols."
+
+"With one pistol, monsieur le commandant," answered I. Then, in
+bitter words, I told them of my treatment by those rascals, and
+I showed them how my ankle had been tortured. "I have no fear of
+death," said I, "but I will not lie and let dogs bite me with
+'I thank you.' Death can come but once, it is a damned brutality
+to make one die a hundred and yet live--the work of Turks, not
+Christians. If you want my life, why, take it and have done."
+
+The Marquis de Montcalm whispered to the Commandant. The Seigneur
+Duvarney, to whom I had not yet spoken, nor he to me, stood
+leaning against the wall, gazing at me seriously and kindly.
+
+Presently Ramesay, the Commandant, spoke, not unkindly: "It was
+ordered you should wear chains, but not that you should be
+maltreated. A surgeon shall be sent to you, and this chain shall
+be taken from your ankle. Meanwhile, your guards shall be changed."
+
+I held out the pistol, and he took it. "I can not hope for justice
+here," said I, "but men are men, and not dogs, and I ask for human
+usage till my hour comes and my country is your jailer."
+
+The Marquis smiled, and his gay eyes sparkled. "Some find comfort
+in daily bread, and some in prophecy," he rejoined. "One should
+envy your spirit, Captain Moray."
+
+"Permit me, your Excellency," replied I; "all Englishmen must envy
+the spirit of the Marquis de Montcalm, though none is envious of
+his cause."
+
+He bowed gravely. "Causes are good or bad as they are ours or
+our neighbours'. The lion has a good cause when it goes hunting for
+its young; the deer has a good cause when it resists the lion's
+leap upon its fawn."
+
+I did not reply, for I felt a faintness coming; and at that
+moment the Seigneur Duvarney came to me, and put his arm through
+mine. A dizziness seized me, my head sank upon his shoulder, and
+I felt myself floating away into darkness, while from a great
+distance came a voice:
+
+"It had been kinder to have ended it last year."
+
+"He nearly killed your son, Duvarney." This was the voice of the
+Marquis in a tone of surprise.
+
+"He saved my life, Marquis," was the sorrowful reply. "I have not
+paid back those forty pistoles, nor ever can, in spite of all."
+
+"Ah, pardon me, seigneur," was the courteous rejoinder of the
+General.
+
+That was all I heard, for I had entered the land of complete
+darkness. When I came to, I found that my foot had been bandaged,
+there was a torch in the wall, and by my side something in a jug,
+of which I drank, according to directions in a surgeon's hand on
+a paper beside it.
+
+I was easier in all my body, yet miserably sick still, and I
+remained so, now shivering and now burning, a racking pain in my
+chest. My couch was filled with fresh straw, but in no other wise
+was my condition altered from the first time I had entered this
+place. My new jailer was a man of no feeling that I could see,
+yet of no violence or cruelty; one whose life was like a wheel,
+doing the eternal round. He did no more nor less than his orders,
+and I made no complaint nor asked any favour. No one came to me,
+no message found its way.
+
+Full three months went by in this fashion, and then, one day,
+who should step into my dungeon, torch in hand, but Gabord! He
+raised the light above his head, and looked down at me most
+quizzically.
+
+"Upon my soul--Gabord!" said I. "I did not kill you, then?"
+
+"Upon your soul and upon your body, you killed not Gabord."
+
+"And what now, quarrelsome Gabord?" I questioned cheerfully.
+
+He shook some keys. "Back again to dickey-bird's cage. 'Look you,'
+quoth Governor, 'who will guard and bait this prisoner like the man
+he mauled?' 'No one,' quoth a lady who stands by Governor's chair.
+And she it was who had Governor send me here--even Ma'm'selle
+Duvarney. And she it was who made the Governor loose off these
+chains."
+
+He began to free me from the chains. I was in a vile condition.
+The irons had made sores upon my wrists and legs, my limbs now
+trembled so beneath me that I could scarcely walk, and my head was
+very light and dizzy at times. Presently Gabord ordered a new bed
+of straw brought in; and from that hour we returned to our old
+relations, as if there had not been between us a fight to the
+death. Of what was going on abroad he would not tell me, and soon
+I found myself in as ill a state as before. No Voban came to me,
+no Doltaire, no one at all. I sank into a deep silence, dropped
+out of a busy world, a morsel of earth slowly coming to Mother
+Earth again.
+
+A strange apathy began to settle on me. All those resources of
+my first year's imprisonment had gone, and I was alone: my mouse
+was dead; there was no history of my life to write, no incident to
+break the pitiful monotony. There seemed only one hope: that our
+army under Amherst would invest Quebec and take it. I had no news
+of any movement, winter again was here, and it must be five or
+six months before any action could successfully be taken; for the
+St. Lawrence was frozen over in winter, and if the city was to be
+seized it must be from the water, with simultaneous action by land.
+
+I knew the way, the only way, to take the city. At Sillery, west
+of the town, there was a hollow in the cliffs, up which men,
+secretly conveyed above the town by water, could climb. At the top
+was a plateau, smooth and fine as a parade-ground, where battle
+could be given, or move be made upon the city and citadel, which
+lay on ground no higher. Then, with the guns playing on the town
+from the fleet, and from the Levis shore with forces on the
+Beauport side, attacking the lower town where was the Intendant's
+palace, the great fortress might be taken, and Canada be ours.
+
+This passage up the cliff side at Sillery I had discovered three
+years before.
+
+When winter set well in Gabord brought me a blanket, and though
+last year I had not needed it, now it was most grateful. I had been
+fed for months on bread and water, as in my first imprisonment, but
+at last--whether by orders or not, I never knew--he brought me a
+little meat every day, and some wine also. Yet I did not care for
+them, and often left them untasted. A hacking cough had never left
+me since my attempt at escape, and I was miserably thin, and so
+weak that I could hardly drag myself about my dungeon. So, many
+weeks of the winter went on, and at last I was not able to rise
+from my bed of straw, and could do little more than lift a cup of
+water to my lips and nibble at some bread. I felt that my hours
+were numbered.
+
+At last, one day, I heard commotion at my dungeon door; it
+opened, and Gabord entered and closed it after him. He came and
+stood over me, as with difficulty I lifted myself upon my elbow.
+
+"Come, try your wings," said he.
+
+"It is the end, Gabord?" asked I.
+
+"Not paradise yet!" said he.
+
+"Then I am free?" I asked.
+
+"Free from this dungeon," he answered cheerily.
+
+I raised myself and tried to stand upon my feet, but fell back.
+He helped me to rise, and I rested an arm on his shoulder.
+
+I tried to walk, but faintness came over me, and I sank back.
+Then Gabord laid me down, went to the door, and called in two
+soldiers with a mattress. I was wrapped in my cloak and blankets,
+laid thereon, and so was borne forth, all covered even to my weak
+eyes. I was placed in a sleigh, and as the horses sprang away,
+the clear sleigh-bells rang out, and a gun from the ramparts was
+fired to give the noon hour, I sank into unconsciousness.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A DANSEUSE AND THE BASTILE
+
+
+Recovering, I found myself lying on a couch, in a large,
+well-lighted room hung about with pictures and adorned with
+trophies of the hunt. A wide window faced the foot of the bed
+where I lay, and through it I could see--though the light hurt my
+eyes greatly--the Levis shore, on the opposite side of the St.
+Lawrence. I lay and thought, trying to discover where I was. It
+came to me at last that I was in a room of the Chateau St. Louis.
+Presently I heard breathing near me, and, looking over, I saw a
+soldier sitting just inside the door.
+
+Then from another corner of the room came a surgeon with some
+cordial in a tumbler, and, handing it to me, he bade me drink.
+He felt my pulse; then stopped and put his ear to my chest, and
+listened long.
+
+"Is there great danger?" asked I.
+
+"The trouble would pass," said he, "if you were stronger. Your
+life is worth fighting for, but it will be a struggle. That dungeon
+was slow poison. You must have a barber," added he; "you are a
+ghost like this."
+
+I put my hand up, and I found my hair and beard were very long
+and almost white. Held against the light, my hands seemed
+transparent. "What means my coming here?" asked I.
+
+He shook his head. "I am but a surgeon," he answered shortly,
+meanwhile writing with a flourish on a piece of paper. When he had
+finished, he handed the paper to the soldier, with an order. Then
+he turned to go, politely bowing to me, but turned again and said,
+"I would not, were I you, trouble to plan escape these months yet.
+This is a comfortable prison, but it is easier coming in than going
+out. Your mind and body need quiet. You have, we know, a taste for
+adventure"--he smiled--"but is it wise to fight a burning powder
+magazine?"
+
+"Thank you, monsieur," said I, "I am myself laying the fuse to
+that magazine. It fights for me by-and-bye."
+
+He shrugged a shoulder. "Drink," said he, with a professional air
+which almost set me laughing, "good milk and brandy, and think of
+nothing but that you are a lucky man to have this sort of prison."
+
+He bustled out in an important way, shaking his head and talking
+to himself. Tapping the chest of a bulky soldier who stood outside,
+he said brusquely, "Too fat, too fat; you'll come to apoplexy. Go
+fight the English, lazy ruffian!"
+
+The soldier gave a grunt, made a mocking gesture, and the door
+closed on me and my attendant. This fellow would not speak at all,
+and I did not urge him, but lay and watched the day decline and
+night come down. I was taken to a small alcove which adjoined the
+room, where I slept soundly.
+
+Early the next morning I waked, and there was Voban sitting just
+outside the alcove, looking at me. I sat up in bed and spoke to
+him, and he greeted me in an absent sort of way. He was changed as
+much as I; he moved as one in a dream; yet there was the ceaseless
+activity of the eye, the swift, stealthy motion of the hand. He
+began to attend me, and I questioned him; but he said he had orders
+from mademoiselle that he was to tell nothing--that she, as soon as
+she could, would visit me.
+
+I felt at once a new spring of life. I gave him the letter I had
+written, and bade him deliver it, which he promised to do; for
+though there was much in it not vital now, it was a record of my
+thoughts and feelings, and she would be glad of it, I knew. I
+pressed Voban's hand in leaving, and he looked at me as if he
+would say something; but immediately he was abstracted, and left
+me like one forgetful of the world.
+
+About three hours after this, as I lay upon the couch in the large
+room, clean and well shaven, the door opened, and some one entered,
+saying to my guard, "You will remain outside. I have the Governor's
+order."
+
+I knew the voice; an instant, and I saw the face shining with
+expectancy, the eyes eager, yet timid, a small white hand pressed
+to a pulsing breast--my one true friend, the jailer of my heart.
+
+For a moment she was all trembling and excited, her hand softly
+clutching at my shoulder, tears dripping from her eyes and falling
+on my cheek, as hers lay pressed to mine; but presently she grew
+calm, and her face was lifted with a smile, and, brushing back some
+flying locks of hair, she said in a tone most quaint and touching
+too, "Poor gentleman! poor English prisoner! poor hidden lover!
+I ought not, I ought not," she added, "show my feelings thus, nor
+excite you so." My hand was trembling on hers, for in truth I
+was very weak. "It was my purpose," she continued, "to come most
+quietly to you; but there are times when one must cry out, or the
+heart will burst."
+
+I spoke then as a man may who has been delivered from bondage
+into the arms of love. She became very quiet, looking at me in her
+grave, sweet way, her deep eyes shining with a sincerity.
+
+"Honest, honest eyes," said I--"eyes that never deceive, and
+never were deceived."
+
+"All this in spite of what you do not know," she answered. For
+an instant a look elfish and childlike came into her eyes, and she
+drew back from me, stood in the middle of the floor, and caught
+her skirts in her fingers.
+
+"See," she said, "is there no deceit here?"
+
+Then she began to dance softly, her feet seeming hardly to touch the
+ground, her body swaying like a tall flower in the wind, her face
+all light and fire. I was charmed, fascinated. I felt my sleepy
+blood stirring to the delicate rise and fall of her bosom, the light
+of her eyes flashing a dozen colours. There was scarce a sound her
+steps could not be heard across the room.
+
+All at once she broke off from this, and stood still.
+
+"Did my eyes seem all honest then?" she asked, with a strange,
+wistful expression. Then she came to the couch where I was.
+
+"Robert," said she, "can you, do you trust me, even when you see
+me at such witchery?"
+
+"I trust you always," answered I. "Such witcheries are no evils
+that I can see."
+
+She put her finger upon my lips, with a kind of bashfulness.
+"Hush, till I tell you where and when I danced like that, and then,
+and then--"
+
+She settled down in a low chair. "I have at least an hour," she
+continued. "The Governor is busy with my father and General
+Montcalm, and they will not be free for a long time. For your
+soldiers, I have been bribing them to my service these weeks past,
+and they are safe enough for to-day. Now I will tell you of that
+dancing.
+
+"One night last autumn there was a grand dinner at the Intendance.
+Such gentlemen as my father were not asked; only the roisterers and
+hard drinkers, and gambling friends of the Intendant. You would know
+the sort of upspring it would be. Well, I was sitting in my window,
+looking down into the garden; for the moon was shining. Presently
+I saw a man appear below, glance up towards me, and beckon. It was
+Voban. I hurried down to him, and he told me that there had been a
+wild carousing at the palace, and that ten gentlemen had determined,
+for a wicked sport, to mask themselves, go to the citadel at
+midnight, fetch you forth, and make you run the gauntlet in the yard
+of the Intendance, and afterwards set you fighting for your life
+with another prisoner, a common criminal. To this, Bigot, heated
+with wine, made no objection. Monsieur Doltaire was not present; he
+had, it was said, taken a secret journey into the English country.
+The Governor was in Montreal, where he had gone to discuss matters
+of war with the Council.
+
+"There was but one thing to do--get word to General Montcalm. He
+was staying at the moment with the Seigneur Pipon at his manor by
+the Montmorenci Falls. He must needs be sought there: he would
+never allow this shameless thing. So I bade Voban go thither at
+once, getting a horse from any quarter, and to ride as if for his
+life. He promised, and left me, and I returned to my room to think.
+Voban had told me that his news came from Bigot's valet, who is his
+close friend. This I knew, and I knew the valet too, for I had seen
+something of him when my brother lay wounded at the palace. Under
+the best circumstances General Montcalm could not arrive within two
+hours. Meanwhile, these miserable men might go on their dreadful
+expedition. Something must be done to gain time. I racked my brain
+for minutes, till the blood pounded at my temples. Presently a plan
+came to me.
+
+"There is in Quebec one Madame Jamond, a great Parisian dancer,
+who, for reasons which none knows save perhaps Monsieur Doltaire,
+has been banished from France. Since she came to Canada, some nine
+months ago, she has lived most quietly and religiously, though many
+trials have been made to bring her talents into service; and the
+Intendant has made many efforts have her dance in the palace for
+his guests. But she would not.
+
+"Madame Lotbiniere had come to know Jamond, and she arranged, after
+much persuasion, for lessons in dancing to be given to Lucy, myself,
+and Georgette. To me the dancing was a keen delight, a passion. As I
+danced I saw and felt a thousand things, I can not tell you how. Now
+my feet appeared light as air, like thistledown, my body to float.
+I was as a lost soul flying home, flocks of birds singing me to come
+with them into a pleasant land.
+
+"Then all that changed, and I was passing through a bitter land,
+with harsh shadows and tall cold mountains. From clefts and hollows
+figures flew out and caught at me with filmy hands. These melancholy
+things pursued me as I flew, till my wings drooped, and I felt that
+I must drop into the dull marsh far beneath, round which travelled
+a lonely mist.
+
+"But this too passed, and I came through a land all fire, so that,
+as I flew swiftly, my wings were scorched, and I was blinded often,
+and often missed my way, and must change my course of flight. It was
+all scarlet, all that land--scarlet sky and scarlet sun, and scarlet
+flowers, and the rivers running red, and men and women in long red
+robes, with eyes of flame, and voices that kept crying, 'The world
+is mad, and all life is a fever!'"
+
+She paused for a moment, seeming to come out of a dream, and then
+she laughed a little. "Will you not go on?" I asked gently.
+
+"Sometimes, too," she continued, "I fancied I was before a king
+and his court, dancing for my life or for another's. Oh, how I
+scanned the faces of my judges, as they sat there watching me; some
+meanwhile throwing crumbs to fluttering birds that whirled round
+me, some stroking the ears of hounds that gaped at me, while the
+king's fool at first made mock at me, and the face of a man behind
+the king's chair smiled like Satan--or Monsieur Doltaire! Ah,
+Robert, I know you think me fanciful and foolish, as indeed I am;
+but you must bear with me.
+
+"I danced constantly, practising hour upon hour with Jamond,
+who came to be my good friend; and you shall hear from me some day
+her history--a sad one indeed; a woman sinned against, not sinning.
+But these special lessons went on secretly, for I was sure, if
+people knew how warmly I followed this recreation, they would set
+it down to wilful desire to be singular--or worse. It gave me new
+interest in lonely days. So the weeks went on.
+
+"Well, that wicked night I sent Voban to General Montcalm, and,
+as I said, a thought came to me: I would find Jamond, beg her to
+mask herself, go to the Intendance, and dance before the gentlemen
+there, keeping them amused till the General came, as I was sure he
+would at my suggestion, for he is a just man and a generous. All
+my people, even Georgette, were abroad at a soiree, and would not
+be home till late. So I sought Mathilde, and she hurried with me,
+my poor daft protector, to Jamond's, whose house is very near the
+bishop's palace.
+
+"We were at once admitted to Jamond, who was lying upon a couch.
+I hurriedly told her what I wished her to do, what was at stake,
+everything but that I loved you; laying my interest upon humanity
+and to your having saved my father's life. She looked troubled at
+once, then took my face in her hands. 'Dear child,' she said, 'I
+understand. You have sorrow too young--too young.' 'But you will do
+this for me?' I cried. She shook her head sadly. 'I can not. I am
+lame these two days,' she answered. 'I have had a sprain.' I sank
+on the floor beside her, sick and dazed. She put her hand pitifully
+on my head, then lifted up my chin. Looking into her eyes, I read a
+thought there, and I got to my feet with a spring. 'I myself will
+go,' said I; 'I will dance there till the General comes.' She put
+out her hand in protest. 'You must not,' she urged. 'Think: you may
+be discovered, and then the ruin that must come!'
+
+"'I shall put my trust in God,' said I. 'I have no fear. I will do
+this thing.' She caught me to her breast. 'Then God be with you,
+child,' was her answer; 'you shall do it.' In ten minutes I was
+dressed in a gown of hers, which last had been worn when she danced
+before King Louis. It fitted me well, and with a wig the colour of
+her hair, brought quickly from her boxes, and use of paints which
+actors use, I was transformed. Indeed, I could scarce recognize
+myself without the mask, and with it on my mother would not have
+known me. 'I will go with you,' she said to me, and she hurriedly
+put on an old woman's wig and a long cloak, quickly lined her face,
+and we were ready. She walked lame, and must use a stick, and we
+issued forth towards the Intendance, Mathilde remaining behind.
+
+"When we got to the palace, and were admitted, I asked for the
+Intendant's valet, and we stood waiting in the cold hall until he
+was brought. 'We come from Voban, the barber,' I whispered to him,
+for there were servants near; and he led us at once to his private
+room. He did not recognize me, but looked at us with sidelong
+curiosity. 'I am,' said I, throwing back my cloak, 'a dancer, and
+I have come to dance before the Intendant and his guests.' 'His
+Excellency does not expect you?' be asked. 'His Excellency has
+many times asked Madame Jamond to dance before him,' I replied. He
+was at once all complaisance, but his face was troubled. 'You come
+from Monsieur Voban?' he inquired. 'From Monsieur Voban,' answered
+I. 'He has gone to General Montcalm.' His face fell, and a kind of
+fear passed over it. 'There is no peril to any one save the English
+gentleman,' I urged. A light dawned on him. 'You dance until the
+General comes?' he asked, pleased at his own penetration. 'You will
+take me at once to the dining-hall,' said I, nodding. 'They are
+in the Chambre de la Joie,' he rejoined. 'Then the Chambre de la
+Joie,' said I; and he led the way. When we came near the chamber,
+I said to him, 'You will tell the Intendant that a lady of some
+gifts in dancing would entertain his guests; but she must come
+and go without exchange of individual courtesies, at her will.
+
+"He opened the door of the chamber, and we followed him; for
+there was just inside a large oak screen, and from its shadow we
+could see the room and all therein. At the first glance I shrank
+back, for, apart from the noise and the clattering of tongues,
+such a riot of carousal I have never seen. I was shocked to note
+gentlemen whom I had met in society, with the show of decorum
+about them, loosed now from all restraint, and swaggering like
+woodsmen at a fair. I felt a sudden fear, and drew back sick;
+but that was for an instant, for even as the valet came to the
+Intendant's chair a dozen or more men, who were sitting near
+together in noisy yet half-secret conference, rose to their feet,
+each with a mask in his hand, and started towards the door. I felt
+my blood fly back and forth in my heart with great violence, and
+I leaned against the oak screen for support. 'Courage,' said the
+voice of Jamond in my ear, and I ruled myself to quietness.
+
+"Just then the Intendant's voice stopped the men in their
+movement towards the great entrance door, and drew the attention
+of the whole company. 'Messieurs,' said he, 'a lady has come to
+dance for us. She makes conditions which must be respected. She
+must be let come and go without individual courtesies. Messieurs,'
+he added, 'I grant her request in your name and my own.'
+
+"There was a murmur of 'Jamond! Jamond!' and every man stood looking
+towards the great entrance door. The Intendant, however, was gazing
+towards the door where I was, and I saw he was about to come, as
+if to welcome me. Welcome from Francois Bigot to a dancing-woman!
+I slipped off the cloak, looked at Jamond, who murmured once again,
+'Courage,' and then I stepped out swiftly, and made for a low,
+large dais at one side of the room. I was so nervous that I knew not
+how I went. The faces and forms of the company were blurred before
+me, and the lights shook and multiplied distractedly. The room
+shone brilliantly, yet just under the great canopy, over the dais;
+there were shadows, and they seemed to me, as I stepped under the
+red velvet, a relief, a sort of hiding-place from innumerable
+candles and hot unnatural eyes.
+
+"Once there I was changed. I did not think of the applause that
+greeted me, the murmurs of surprise, approbation, questioning,
+rising round me. Suddenly, as I paused and faced them all,
+nervousness passed out of me, and I saw nothing--nothing but a sort
+of far-off picture. My mind was caught away into that world which I
+had created for myself when I danced, and these rude gentlemen were
+but visions. All sense of indignity passed from me. I was only a
+woman fighting for a life and for her own and her another's
+happiness.
+
+"As I danced I did not know how time passed--only that I must
+keep those men where they were till General Montcalm came. After a
+while, when the first dazed feeling had passed, I could see their
+faces plainly through my mask, and I knew that I could hold them;
+for they ceased to lift their glasses, and stood watching me,
+sometimes so silent that I could hear their breathing only,
+sometimes making a great applause, which passed into silence again
+quickly. Once, as I wheeled, I caught the eyes of Jamond watching
+me closely. The Intendant never stirred from his seat, and scarcely
+moved, but kept his eyes fixed on me. Nor did he applaud. There was
+something painful in his immovability.
+
+"I saw it all as in a dream, yet I did see it, and I was resolute to
+triumph over the wicked designs of base and abandoned men. I feared
+that my knowledge and power to hold them might stop before help
+came. Once, in a slight pause, when a great noise of their hands
+and a rattling of scabbards on the table gave me a short respite,
+some one--Captain Lancy, I think--snatched up a glass, and called
+on all to drink my health.
+
+"'Jamond! Jamond!' was the cry, and they drank; the Intendant
+himself standing up, and touching the glass to his lips, then
+sitting down again, silent and immovable as before. One gentleman,
+a nephew of the Chevalier de la Darante, came swaying towards
+me with a glass of wine, begging me in a flippant courtesy to
+drink; but I waved him back, and the Intendant said most curtly,
+'Monsieur de la Darante will remember my injunction.'
+
+"Again I danced, and I can not tell you with what anxiety and
+desperation--for there must be an end to it before long, and your
+peril, Robert, come again, unless these rough fellows changed their
+minds. Moment after moment went, and though I had danced beyond
+reasonable limits, I still seemed to get new strength, as I have
+heard men say, in fighting, they 'come to their second wind.' At
+last, at the end of the most famous step that Jamond had taught me,
+I stood still for a moment to renewed applause; and I must have
+wound these men up to excitement beyond all sense, for they would
+not be dissuaded, but swarmed towards the dais where I was, and
+some called for me to remove my mask.
+
+"Then the Intendant came down among them, bidding them stand
+back, and himself stepped towards me. I felt affrighted, for I
+liked not the look in his eyes, and so, without a word, I stepped
+down from the dais--I did not dare to speak, lest they should
+recognize my voice--and made for the door with as much dignity as
+I might. But the Intendant came to me with a mannered courtesy,
+and said in my ear, 'Madame, you have won all our hearts; I would
+you might accept some hospitality--a glass of wine, a wing of
+partridge, in a room where none shall disturb you?' I shuddered,
+and passed on. 'Nay, nay, madame, not even myself with you, unless
+you would have it otherwise,' he added.
+
+"Still I did not speak, but put out my hand in protest, and
+moved on towards the screen, we two alone, for the others had
+fallen back with whisperings and side-speeches. Oh, how I longed to
+take the mask from my face and spurn them! The hand that I put out
+in protest the Intendant caught within his own, and would have held
+it, but that I drew it back with indignation, and kept on towards
+the screen. Then I realized that a new-corner had seen the matter,
+and I stopped short, dumfounded--for it was Monsieur Doltaire! He
+was standing beside the screen, just within the room, and he sent
+at the Intendant and myself a keen, piercing glance.
+
+"Now he came forward quickly, for the Intendant also half
+stopped at sight of him, and a malignant look shot from his eyes;
+hatred showed in the profane word that was chopped off at his
+teeth. When Monsieur Doltaire reached us, he said, his eyes resting
+on me with intense scrutiny, 'His Excellency will present me to his
+distinguished entertainer?' He seemed to read behind my mask. I knew
+he had discovered me, and my heart stood still. But I raised my eyes
+and met his gaze steadily. The worst had come. Well, I would face
+it now. I could endure defeat with courage. He paused an instant,
+a strange look passed over his face, his eyes got hard and very
+brilliant, and he continued (oh, what suspense that was!): 'Ah yes,
+I see--Jamond, the perfect and wonderful Jamond, who set us all
+a-kneeling at Versailles. If Madame will permit me?' He made to take
+my hand. Here the Intendant interposed, putting out his hand also.
+'I have promised to protect Madame from individual courtesy while
+here,' he said. Monsieur Doltaire looked at him keenly. 'Then your
+Excellency must build stone walls about yourself,' he rejoined,
+with cold emphasis. 'Sometimes great men are foolish. To-night your
+Excellency would have let'--here he raised his voice so that all
+could hear--'your Excellency would have let a dozen cowardly
+gentlemen drag a dying prisoner from his prison, forcing back his
+Majesty's officers at the dungeon doors, and, after baiting, have
+matched him against a common criminal. That was unseemly in a great
+man and a King's chief officer, the trick of a low law-breaker. Your
+Excellency promised a lady to protect her from individual courtesy,
+if she gave pleasure--a pleasure beyond price--to you and your
+guests, and you would have broken your word without remorse. General
+Montcalm has sent a company of men to set your Excellency right in
+one direction, and I am come to set you right in the other.'
+
+"The Intendant was white with rage. He muttered something between
+his teeth, then said aloud, 'Presently we will talk more of this,
+monsieur. You measure strength with Francois Bigot: we will see
+which proves the stronger in the end.' 'In the end the unjust
+steward kneels for mercy to his master,' was Monsieur Doltaire's
+quiet answer; and then he made a courteous gesture towards the door,
+and I went to it with him slowly, wondering what the end would be.
+Once at the other side of the screen, he peered into Jamond's face
+for an instant, then he gave a low whistle. 'You have an apt pupil,
+Jamond, one who might be your rival one day,' said he. Still there
+was a puzzled look on his face, which did not leave it till he saw
+Jamond walking. 'Ah yes,' he added, 'I see now. You are lame. This
+was a desperate yet successful expedient.'
+
+"He did not speak to me, but led the way to where, at the great
+door, was the Intendant's valet standing with my cloak. Taking it
+from him, he put it round my shoulders. 'The sleigh by which I came
+is at the door,' he said, 'and I will take you home.' I knew not
+what to do, for I feared some desperate act on his part to possess
+me. I determined that I would not leave Jamond, in any case, and
+I felt for a weapon which I had hidden in my dress. We had not,
+however, gone a half dozen paces in the entrance hall when there
+were quick steps behind, and four soldiers came towards us, with an
+officer at their head--an officer whom I had seen in the chamber,
+but did not recognize.
+
+"'Monsieur Doltaire,' the officer said; and monsieur stopped.
+Then he cried in surprise, 'Legrand, you here!' To this the officer
+replied by handing monsieur a paper. Monsieur's hand dropped to his
+sword, but in a moment he gave a short, sharp laugh, and opened up
+the packet. 'H'm,' he said, 'the Bastile! The Grande Marquise is
+fretful--eh, Legrand? You will permit me some moments with these
+ladies?' he added. 'A moment only,' answered the officer. 'In
+another room?' monsieur again asked. 'A moment where you are,
+monsieur,' was the reply. Making a polite gesture for me to step
+aside, Monsieur Doltaire said, in a voice which was perfectly
+controlled and courteous, though I could hear behind all a deadly
+emphasis, 'I know everything now. You have foiled me, blindfolded
+me and all others, these three years past. You have intrigued
+against the captains of intrigue, you have matched yourself against
+practised astuteness. On one side, I resent being made a fool and
+tool of; on the other, I am lost in admiration of your talent. But
+henceforth there is no such thing as quarter between us. Your lover
+shall die, and I will come again. This whim of the Grande Marquise
+will last but till I see her; then I will return to you--forever.
+Your lover shall die, your love's labour for him shall be lost. I
+shall reap where I did not sow--his harvest and my own. I am as ice
+to you, mademoiselle, at this moment; I have murder in my heart. Yet
+warmth will come again. I admire you so much that I will have you
+for my own, or die. You are the high priestess of diplomacy; your
+brain is a statesman's, your heart is a vagrant; it goes covertly
+from the sweet meadows of France to the marshes of England, a taste
+unworthy of you. You shall be redeemed from that by Tinoir Doltaire.
+Now thank me for all I have done for you, and let me say adieu.'
+He stooped and kissed my hand. 'I can not thank you for what I
+myself achieved,' I said. 'We are, as in the past, to be at war,
+you threaten, and I have no gratitude.' 'Well, well, adieu and au
+revoir, sweetheart,' he answered. 'If I should go to the Bastile,
+I shall have food for thought; and I am your hunter to the end. In
+this good orchard I pick sweet fruit one day.' His look fell on me
+in such a way that shame and anger were at equal height in me. Then
+he bowed again to me and to Jamond, and, with a sedate gesture,
+walked away with the soldiers and the officer.
+
+"You can guess what were my feelings. You were safe for the
+moment--that was the great thing. The terror I had felt when I saw
+Monsieur Doltaire in the Chambre de la Joie had passed, for I felt
+he would not betray me. He is your foe, and he would kill you; but
+I was sure he would not put me in danger while he was absent in
+France--if he expected to return--by making public my love for you
+and my adventure at the palace. There is something of the noble
+fighter in him, after all, though he is so evil a man. A prisoner
+himself now, he would have no immediate means to hasten your death.
+But I can never forget his searching, cruel look when he recognized
+me! Of Jamond I was sure. Her own past had been full of sorrow, and
+her life was now so secluded and religious that I could not doubt
+her. Indeed, we have been blessed with good, true friends, Robert,
+though they are not of those who are powerful, save in their
+loyalty."
+
+Alixe then told me that the officer Legrand had arrived from
+France but two days before the eventful night of which I have just
+written, armed with an order from the Grande Marquise for Doltaire's
+arrest and transportation. He had landed at Gaspe, and had come on
+to Quebec overland. Arriving at the Intendance, he had awaited
+Doltaire's coming. Doltaire had stopped to visit General Montcalm at
+Montmorenci Falls, on his way back from an expedition to the English
+country, and had thus himself brought my protection and hurried to
+his own undoing. I was thankful for his downfall, though I believed
+it was but for a moment.
+
+I was curious to know how it chanced I was set free of my
+dungeon, and I had the story from Alixe's lips; but not till after
+I had urged her, for she was sure her tale had wearied me, and she
+was eager to do little offices of comfort about me; telling me
+gaily, while she shaded the light, freshened my pillow, and gave
+me a cordial to drink, that she would secretly convey me wines and
+preserves and jellies and such kickshaws, that I should better get
+my strength.
+
+"For you must know," she said, "that though this gray hair and
+transparency of flesh become you, making your eyes look like two
+jets of flame and your face to have shadows most theatrical, a
+ruddy cheek and a stout hand are more suited to a soldier. When
+you are young again in body, these gray hairs shall render you
+distinguished."
+
+Then she sat down beside me, and clasped my hand, now looking
+out into the clear light of afternoon to the farther shores of
+Levis, showing green here and there from a sudden March rain, the
+boundless forests beyond, and near us the ample St. Lawrence still
+covered with its vast bridge of ice; anon into my face, while I
+gazed into those deeps of her blue eyes that I had drowned my heart
+in. I loved to watch her, for with me she was ever her own absolute
+self, free from all artifice, lost in her perfect naturalness: a
+healthy, perfect soundness, a primitive simplicity beneath the
+artifice of usual life. She had a beautiful hand, long, warm, and
+firm, and the fingers, when they clasped, seemed to possess and
+inclose your own--the tenderness of the maidenly, the protectiveness
+of the maternal. She carried with her a wholesome fragrance and
+beauty as of an orchard, and while she sat there I thought of the
+engaging words:
+
+"Thou art to me like a basket of summer fruit, and I seek
+thee in thy cottage by the vineyard, fenced about with good
+commendable trees."
+
+Of my release she spoke thus: "Monsieur Doltaire is to be
+conveyed overland to the coast en route for France, and he sent
+me by his valet a small arrow studded with emeralds and pearls,
+and a skull all polished, with a message that the arrow was for
+myself, and the skull for another--remembrances of the past, and
+earnests of the future--truly an insolent and wicked man. When he
+was gone I went to the Governor, and, with great show of interest
+in many things pertaining to the government (for he has ever been
+flattered by my attentions--me, poor little bee in the buzzing
+hive!), came to the question of the English prisoner. I told him
+it was I that prevented the disgrace to his good government by
+sending to General Montcalm to ask for your protection.
+
+"He was deeply impressed, and he opened out his vain heart in
+divers ways. But I may not tell you of these--only what concerns
+yourself; the rest belongs to his honour. When he was in his most
+pliable mood, I grew deeply serious, and told him there was a danger
+which perhaps he did not see. Here was this English prisoner, who,
+they said abroad in the town, was dying. There was no doubt that
+the King would approve the sentence of death, and if it were duly
+and with some display enforced, it would but add to the Governor's
+reputation in France. But should the prisoner die in captivity, or
+should he go an invalid to the scaffold, there would only be pity
+excited in the world for him. For his own honour, it were better the
+Governor should hang a robust prisoner, who in full blood should
+expiate his sins upon the scaffold. The advice went down like wine;
+and when he knew not what to do, I urged your being brought here,
+put under guard, and fed and nourished for your end. And so it was.
+
+"The Governor's counsellor in the matter will remain a secret,
+for by now he will be sure that he himself had the sparkling
+inspiration. There, dear Robert, is the present climax to many
+months of suspense and persecution, the like of which I hope I may
+never see again. Some time I will tell you all: those meetings with
+Monsieur Doltaire, his designs and approaches, his pleadings and
+veiled threats, his numberless small seductions of words, manners,
+and deeds, his singular changes of mood, when I was uncertain
+what would happen next; the part I had to play to know all that
+was going on in the Chateau St. Louis, in the Intendance, and
+with General Montcalm; the difficulties with my own people; the
+despair of my poor father, who does not know that it is I who have
+kept him from trouble by my influence with the Governor. For since
+the Governor and the Intendant are reconciled, he takes sides with
+General Montcalm, the one sound gentleman in office in this poor
+country--alas!"
+
+Soon afterwards we parted. As she passed out she told me I might
+at any hour expect a visit from the Governor.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEATS OF THE MIGHTY, PARKER, V3 ***
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