The Suitors of Yvonne

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This etext was produced by John Stuart Middleton

The Suitors of Yvonne
Being a Portion of the Memoirs of the Sieur Gaston de Luynes

by Rafael Sabatini

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

II. THE FRUIT OF INDISCRETION

III. THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET

IV. FAIR RESCUERS

V. MAZARIN, THE MATCH-MAKER

VI. OF HOW ANDREA BECAME LOVESICK

VII. THE CHÂTEAU DR CANAPLES

VIII. THE FORESHADOW OF DISASTER

IX. OF HOW A WHIP PROVED A BETTER ARGUMENT THAN A TONGUE

X. THE CONSCIENCE OF MALPERTUIS

XI. OF A WOMAN'S OBSTINACY

XII. THE RESCUE

XIII. THE HAND OF YVONNE

XIV. OF WHAT BEFELL AT REAUX

XV. OF MY RESURRECTION

XVI. THE WAY OF WOMAN

XVII. FATHER AND SON

XVIII. OF HOW I LEFT CANAPLES

XIX. OF MY RETURN TO PARIS

XX. OF HOW THE CHEVALIER DE CANAPLES BECAME A FRONDEUR

XXI. OF THE BARGAIN THAT ST. AUBAN DROVE WITH MY LORD CARDINAL

XXII. OF MY SECOND JOURNEY TO CANAPLES

XXIII. OF HOW ST. AUBAN CAME TO BLOIS

XXIV. OF THE PASSING OF ST. AUBAN

XXV. PLAY-ACTING

XXVI. REPARATION

CHAPTER I

OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

Andrea de Mancini sprawled, ingloriously drunk, upon the floor. His legs
were thrust under the table, and his head rested against the chair from
which he had slipped; his long black hair was tossed and dishevelled; his
handsome, boyish face flushed and garbed in the vacant expression of
idiocy.

"I beg a thousand pardons, M. de Luynes," quoth he in the thick, monotonous
voice of a man whose brain but ill controls his tongue,--"I beg a thousand
pardons for the unseemly poverty of our repast. 'T is no fault of mine.
My Lord Cardinal keeps a most unworthy table for me. Faugh! Uncle Giulio
is a Hebrew--if not by birth, by instinct. He carries his purse-strings in
a knot which it would break his heart to unfasten. But there! some day my
Lord Cardinal will go to heaven--to the lap of Abraham. I shall be rich
then, vastly rich, and I shall bid you to a banquet worthy of your most
noble blood. The Cardinal's health--perdition have him for the
niggardliest rogue unhung!"

I pushed back my chair and rose. The conversation was taking a turn that
was too unhealthy to be pursued within the walls of the Palais Mazarin,
where there existed, albeit the law books made no reference to it, the
heinous crime of lèse-Eminence--a crime for which more men had been broken
than it pleases me to dwell on.

"Your table, Master Andrea, needs no apology," I answered carelessly.
"Your wine, for instance, is beyond praise."

"Ah, yes! The wine! But, ciel! Monsieur," he ejaculated, for a moment
opening wide his heavy eyelids, "do you believe 't was Mazarin provided it?
Pooh! 'T was a present made me by M. de la Motte, who seeks my interest
with my Lord Cardinal to obtain for him an appointment in his Eminence's
household, and thus thinks to earn my good will. He's a pestilent
creature, this la Motte," he added, with a hiccough,--"a pestilent
creature; but, Sangdieu! his wine is good, and I'll speak to my uncle.
Help me up, De Luynes. Help me up, I say; I would drink the health of this
provider of wines."

I hurried forward, but he had struggled up unaided, and stood swaying with
one hand on the table and the other on the back of his chair. In vain did
I remonstrate with him that already he had drunk overmuch.

"'T is a lie!" he shouted. "May not a gentleman sit upon the floor from
choice?"

To emphasise his protestation he imprudently withdrew his hand from the
chair and struck at the air with his open palm. That gesture cost him his
balance. He staggered, toppled backward, and clutched madly at the
tablecloth as he fell, dragging glasses, bottles, dishes, tapers, and a
score of other things besides, with a deafening crash on to the floor.

Then, as I stood aghast and alarmed, wondering who might have overheard the
thunder of his fall, the fool sat up amidst the ruins, and filled the room
with his shrieks of drunken laughter.

"Silence, boy!" I thundered, springing towards him. "Silence! or we shall
have the whole house about our ears."

And truly were my fears well grounded, for, before I could assist him to
rise, I heard the door behind me open. Apprehensively I turned, and
sickened to see that that which I had dreaded most was come to pass. A
tall, imposing figure in scarlet robes stood erect and scowling on the
threshold, and behind him his valet, Bernouin, bearing a lighted taper.

Mancini's laugh faded into a tremulous cackle, then died out, and with
gaping mouth and glassy eyes he sat there staring at his uncle.

Thus we stayed in silence while a man might count mayhap a dozen; then the
Cardinal's voice rang harsh and full of anger.

"'T is thus that you fulfil your trust, M. de Luynes!" he said.

"Your Eminence--" I began, scarce knowing what I should say, when he cut me
short.

"I will deal with you presently and elsewhere." He stepped up to Andrea,
and surveyed him for a moment in disgust. "Get up, sir!" he commanded.
"Get up!"

The lad sought to obey him with an alacrity that merited a kinder fate.
Had he been in less haste perchance he had been more successful. As it
was, he had got no farther than his knees when his right leg slid from
under him, and he fell prone among the shattered tableware, mumbling curses
and apologies in a breath.

Mazarin stood gazing at him with an eye that was eloquent in scorn, then
bending down he spoke quickly to him in Italian. What he said I know not,
being ignorant of their mother tongue; but from the fierceness of his
utterance I'll wager my soul 't was nothing sweet to listen to. When he
had done with him, he turned to his valet.

"Bernouin," said he, "summon M. de Mancini's servant and assist him to get
my nephew to bed. M. de Luynes, be good enough to take Bernouin's taper
and light me back to my apartments."

Unsavoury as was the task, I had no choice but to obey, and to stalk on in
front of him, candle in hand, like an acolyte at Notre Dame, and in my
heart the profound conviction that I was about to have a bad quarter of an
hour with his Eminence. Nor was I wrong; for no sooner had we reached his
cabinet and the door had been closed than he turned upon me the full
measure of his wrath.

"You miserable fool!" he snarled. "Did you think to trifle with the trust
which in a misguided moment I placed in you? Think you that, when a week
ago I saved you from starvation to clothe and feed you and give you a
lieutenancy in my guards, I should endure so foul an abuse as this? Think
you that I entrusted M. de Mancini's training in arms to you so that you
might lead him into the dissolute habits which have dragged you down to
what you are--to what you were before I rescued you--to what you will be
to-morrow when I shall have again abandoned you?"

"Hear me, your Eminence!" I cried indignantly. "'T is no fault of mine.
Some fool hath sent M. de Mancini a basket of wine and--"

"And you showed him how to abuse it," he broke in harshly. "You have
taught the boy to become a sot; in time, were he to remain under your
guidance, I make no doubt but that he would become a gamester and a
duellist as well. I was mad, perchance, to give him into your care; but I
have the good fortune to be still in time, before the mischief has sunk
farther, to withdraw him from it, and to cast you back into the kennel from
which I picked you."

"Your Eminence does not mean--"

"As God lives I do!" he cried. "You shall quit the Palais Royal this very
night, M. de Luynes, and if ever I find you unbidden within half a mile of
it, I will do that which out of a misguided sense of compassion I do not do
now--I will have you flung into an oubliette of the Bastille, where better
men than you have rotted before to-day. Per Dio! do you think that I am to
be fooled by such a thing as you?"

"Does your Eminence dismiss me?" I cried aghast, and scarce crediting that
such was indeed the extreme measure upon which he had determined.

"Have I not been plain enough?" he answered with a snarl.

I realised to the full my unenviable position, and with the realisation of
it there overcame me the recklessness of him who has played his last stake
at the tables and lost. That recklessness it was that caused me to shrug
my shoulders with a laugh. I was a soldier of fortune--or should I say a
soldier of misfortune?--as rich in vice as I was poor in virtue; a man who
lived by the steel and parried the blows that came as best he might, or
parried them not at all--but never quailed.

"As your Eminence pleases," I answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for
one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little
clemency were not unfitting."

He raised his eyebrows, and his lips curled in a malicious sneer.

"You come of a family, M. de Luynes," he said slowly, "that is famed for
having shed the blood of others for France more freely than its own. You
are, I believe, the nephew of Albert de Luynes. Do you forget the Marshal
d'Ancre?"

I felt the blood of anger hot in my face as I made haste to answer him:

"There are many of us, Monseigneur, who have cause to blush for the
families they spring from--more cause, mayhap, than hath Gaston de Luynes."

In my words perchance there was no offensive meaning, but in my tone and in
the look which I bent upon the Cardinal there was that which told him that
I alluded to his own obscure and dubious origin. He grew livid, and for a
moment methought he would have struck me: had he done so, then, indeed, the
history of Europe would have been other than it is to-day! He restrained
himself, however, and drawing himself to the full height of his majestic
figure he extended his arm towards the door.

"Go," he said, in a voice that passion rendered hoarse. "Go, Monsieur. Go
quickly, while my clemency endures. Go before I summon the guard and deal
with you as your temerity deserves."

I bowed--not without a taint of mockery, for I cared little what might
follow; then, with head erect and the firm tread of defiance, I stalked out
of his apartment, along the corridor, down the great staircase, across the
courtyard, past the guard,--which, ignorant of my disgrace, saluted me,--
and out into the street.

Then at last my head sank forward on my breast, and deep in thought I
wended my way home, oblivious of all around me, even the chill bite of the
February wind.

In my mind I reviewed my wasted life, with the fleeting pleasures and the
enduring sorrows that it had brought me--or that I had drawn from it. The
Cardinal said no more than truth when he spoke of having saved me from
starvation. A week ago that was indeed what he had done. He had taken
pity on Gaston de Luynes, the nephew of that famous Albert de Luynes who
had been Constable of France in the early days of the late king's reign; he
had made me lieutenant of his guards and maître d'armes to his nephews
Andrea and Paolo de Mancini because he knew that a better blade than mine
could not be found in France, and because he thought it well to have such
swords as mine about him.

A little week ago life had been replete with fresh promises, the gates of
the road to fame (and perchance fortune) had been opened to me anew, and
now--before I had fairly passed that gate I had been thrust rudely back,
and it had been slammed in my face because it pleased a fool to become a
sot whilst in my company.

There is a subtle poetry in the contemplation of ruin. With ruin itself,
howbeit, there comes a prosaic dispelling of all idle dreams--a hard, a
grim, a vile reality.

Ruin! 'T is an ugly word. A fitting one to carve upon the tombstone of a
reckless, godless, dissolute life such as mine had been.

Back, Gaston de Luynes! back, to the kennel whence the Cardinal's hand did
for a moment pluck you; back, from the morning of hope to the night of
despair; back, to choose between starvation and the earning of a pauper's
fee as a master of fence!

CHAPTER II

THE FRUIT OF INDISCRETION

Despite the dejection to which I had become a prey, I slept no less soundly
that night than was my wont, and indeed it was not until late next morning
when someone knocked at my door that I awakened.

I sat up in bed, and my first thought as I looked round the handsome room--
which I had rented a week ago upon receiving the lieutenancy in the
Cardinal's guards--was for the position that I had lost and of the need
that there would be ere long to seek a lodging more humble and better
suited to my straitened circumstances. It was not without regret that such
a thought came to me, for my tastes had never been modest, and the house
was a fine one, situated in the Rue St. Antoine at a hundred paces or so
from the Jesuit convent.

I had no time, however, to indulge the sorry mood that threatened to beset
me, for the knocking at my chamber door continued, until at length I
answered it with a command to enter.

It was my servant Michelot, a grizzled veteran of huge frame and strength,
who had fought beside me at Rocroi, and who had thereafter become so
enamoured of my person--for some trivial service he swore I had rendered
him--that he had attached himself to me and my luckless fortunes.

He came to inform me that M. de Mancini was below and craved immediate
speech with me. He had scarce done speaking, however, when Andrea himself,
having doubtless grown tired of waiting, appeared in the doorway. He wore
a sickly look, the result of his last night's debauch; but, more than that,
there was stamped upon his face a look of latent passion which made me
think at first that he was come to upbraid me.

"Ah, still abed, Luynes?" was his greeting as he came forward.

His cloak was wet and his boots splashed, which told me both that he had
come afoot and that it rained.

"There are no duties that bid me rise," I answered sourly.

He frowned at that, then, divesting himself of his cloak, he gave it to
Michelot, who, at a sign from me, withdrew. No sooner was the door closed
than the boy's whole manner changed. The simmering passion of which I had
detected signs welled up and seemed to choke him as he poured forth the
story that he had come to tell.

"I have been insulted," he gasped. "Grossly insulted by a vile creature of
Monsieur d'Orleans's household. An hour ago in the ante-chamber at the
Palais Royal I was spoken of in my hearing as the besotted nephew of the
Italian adventurer."

I sat up in bed tingling with excitement at the developments which already
I saw arising from his last night's imprudence.

"Calmly, Andrea," I begged of him, "tell me calmly."

"Mortdieu! How can I be calm? Ough! The thought of it chokes me. I was
a fool last night--a sot. For that, perchance, men have some right to
censure me. But, Sangdieu! that a ruffler of the stamp of Eugène de
Canaples should speak of it--should call me the nephew of an Italian
adventurer, should draw down upon me the cynical smile of a crowd of
courtly apes--pah! I am sick at the memory of it!"

"Did you answer him?"

"Pardieu! I should be worthy of the title he bestowed upon me had I not
done so. Oh, I answered him--not in words. I threw my hat in his face."

"That was a passing eloquent reply!"

"So eloquent that it left him speechless with amazement. He thought to
bully with impunity, and see me slink into hiding like a whipped dog,
terrified by his blustering tongue and dangerous reputation. But there!"
he broke off, "a meeting has been arranged for four o'clock at St.
Germain."

"A meeting!" I exclaimed.

"What else? Do you think the affront left any alternative?"

"But--"

"Yes, yes, I know," he interrupted, tossing his head. "I am going to be
killed. Verville has sworn that there shall be one less of the Italian
brood. That is why I have come to you, Luynes--to ask you to be my second.
I don't deserve it, perhaps. In my folly last night I did you an ill turn.
I unwittingly caused you to be stripped of your commission. But if I were
on my death-bed now, and begged a favour of you, you would not refuse it.
And what difference is there 'twixt me and one who is on his death-bed? Am
I not about to die?"

"Peste! I hope not," I made answer with more lightness than I felt. "But
I'll stand by you with all my heart, Andrea."

"And you'll avenge me?" he cried savagely, his Southern blood a-boiling.
"You'll not let him leave the ground alive?"

"Not unless my opponent commits the indiscretion of killing me first. Who
seconds M. de Canaples?"

"The Marquis de St. Auban and M. de Montmédy."

"And who is the third in our party?"

"I have none. I thought that perhaps you had a friend."

"I! A friend?" I laughed bitterly. "Pshaw, Andrea! beggars have no
friends. But stay; find Stanislas de Gouville. There is no better blade
in Paris. If he will join us in this frolic, and you can hold off Canaples
until either St. Auban or Montmédy is disposed of, we may yet leave the
three of them on the field of battle. Courage, Andrea! Dum spiramus,
speramus."

My words seemed to cheer him, and when presently he left me to seek out the
redoubtable Gouville, the poor lad's face was brighter by far than when he
had entered my room.

Down in my heart, however, I was less hopeful than I had led him to
believe, and as I dressed after he had gone, 't was not without some
uneasiness that I turned the matter over in my mind. I had, during the
short period of our association, grown fond of Andrea de Mancini. Indeed
the wonted sweetness of the lad's temper, and the gentleness of his
disposition, were such as to breed affection in all who came in contact
with him. In a way, too, methought he had grown fond of me, and I had
known so few friends in life,--truth to tell I fear me that I had few of
the qualities that engender friendship,--that I was naturally prone to
appreciate a gift that from its rareness became doubly valuable.

Hence was it that I trembled for the boy. He had shown aptitude with the
foils, and derived great profit from my tuition, yet he was too raw by far
to be pitted against so cunning a swordsman as Canaples.

I had but finished dressing when a coach rumbled down the street and halted
by my door. Naturally I supposed that someone came to visit Coupri, the
apothecary,--to whom belonged this house in which I had my lodging,--and
did not give the matter a second thought until Michelot rushed in, with
eyes wide open, to announce that his Eminence, Cardinal Mazarin, commanded
my presence in the adjoining room.

Amazed and deeply marvelling what so extraordinary a visit might portend, I
hastened to wait upon his Eminence.

I found him standing by the window, and received from him a greeting that
was passing curt and cavalier.

"Has M. de Mancini been here?" he inquired peremptorily, disregarding the
chair I offered him.

"He has but left me, Monseigneur."

"Then you know, sir, of the harvest which he has already reaped from the
indiscretion into which you led him last night?"

"If Monseigneur alludes to the affront put upon M. de Mancini touching his
last night's indiscretion, by a bully of the Court, I am informed of it."

"Pish, Monsieur! I do not follow your fine distinctions--possibly this is
due to my imperfect knowledge of the language of France, possibly to your
own imperfect acquaintance with the language of truth."

"Monseigneur!"

"Faugh!" he cried, half scornfully, half peevishly. "I came not here to
talk of you, but of my nephew. Why did he visit you?"

"To do me the honour of asking me to second him at St. Germain this
evening."

"And so you think that this duel is to be fought?--that my nephew is to be
murdered?"

"We will endeavour to prevent his being--as your Eminence daintily puts
it--murdered. But for the rest, the duel, methinks, cannot be avoided."

"Cannot!" he blazed. "Do you say cannot, M. de Luynes? Mark me well, sir:
I will use no dissimulation with you. My position in France is already a
sufficiently difficult one. Already we are threatened with a second
Fronde. It needs but such events as these to bring my family into
prominence and make it the butt for the ridicule that malcontents but wait
an opportunity to slur it with. This affair of Andrea's will lend itself
to a score or so of lampoons and pasquinades, all of which will cast an
injurious reflection upon my person and position. That, Monsieur, is,
methinks, sufficient evil to suffer at your hands. The late Cardinal would
have had you broken on the wheel for less. I have gone no farther than to
dismiss you from my service--a clemency for which you should be grateful.
But I shall not suffer that, in addition to the harm already done, Andrea
shall be murdered by Canaples."

"I shall do my best to render him assistance."

"You still misapprehend me. This duel, sir, must not take place."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"How does your Eminence propose to frustrate it? Will you arrest
Canaples?"

"Upon what plea, Monsieur? Think you I am anxious to have the whole of
Paris howling in my ears?"

"Then possibly it is your good purpose to enforce the late king's edict
against duelling, and send your guards to St. Germain to arrest the men
before they engage?"

"Benone!" he sneered. "And what will Paris say if I now enforce a law that
for ten years has been disregarded? That I feared for my nephew's skin and
took this means of saving him. A pretty story to have on Paris's lips,
would it not be?"

"Indeed, Monseigneur, you are right, but I doubt me the duel will needs be
fought."

"Have I not already said that it shall not be fought?"

Again I shrugged my shoulders. Mazarin grew tiresome with his repetitions.

"How can it be avoided, your Eminence?"

"Ah, Monsieur, that is your affair."

"My affair?"

"Assuredly. 'T was through your evil agency he was dragged into this
business, and through your agency he must be extricated from it."

"Your Eminence jests!"

"Undoubtedly,--'t is a jesting matter," he answered with terrible irony.
"Oh, I jest! Per Dio! yes. But I'll carry my jest so far as to have you
hanged if this duel be fought--aye, whether my nephew suffers hurt or not.
Now, sir, you know what fate awaits you; fight it--turn it aside--I have
shown you the way. The door, M. de Luynes."

CHAPTER III

THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET

I let him go without a word. There was that in his voice, in his eye, and
in the gesture wherewith he bade me hold the door for him, that cleared my
mind of any doubts touching the irrevocable character of his determination.
To plead was never an accomplishment of mine; to argue, I saw, would be to
waste the Cardinal's time to no purpose.

And so I let him go,--and my curse with him,--and from my window I watched
his coach drive away in the drizzling rain, scattering the crowd of awe-
stricken loiterers who had collected at the rumour of his presence.

With a fervent prayer that his patron saint, the devil, might see fit to
overset his coach and break his neck before he reached the Palace, I turned
from the window, and called Michelot.

He was quick to answer my summons, bringing me the frugal measure of bread
and wine wherewith it was my custom to break my fast. Then, whilst I
munched my crust, I strode to and fro in the little chamber and exercised
my wits to their utmost for a solution to the puzzle his Eminence had set
me.

One solution there was, and an easy one--flight. But I had promised Andrea
de Mancini that I would stand beside him at St. Germain; there was a
slender chance of saving him if I went, whilst, if I stayed away, there
would be nothing left for his Eminence to do but to offer up prayers for
the rest of his nephew's soul.

Another idea I had, but it was desperate--and yet, so persistently did my
thoughts revert to it that in the end I determined to accept it.

I drank a cup of Armagnac, cheered myself with an oath or two, and again I
called Michelot. When he came, I asked him if he were acquainted with M.
de Canaples, to which he replied that he was, having seen the gentleman in
my company.

"Then," I said, "you will repair to M. de Canaples's lodging in the Rue des
Gesvres, and ascertain discreetly whether he be at home. If he is, you
will watch the house until he comes forth, then follow him, and bring me
word thereafter where he is to be found. Should he be already abroad
before you reach the Rue des Gesvres, endeavour to ascertain whither he has
gone, and return forthwith. But be discreet, Michelot. You understand?"

He assured me that he did, and left me to nurse my unpleasant thoughts for
half an hour, returning at the end of that time with the information that
M. de Canaples was seated at dinner in the "Auberge du Soleil."

Naught could have been more attuned to my purpose, and straightway I drew
on my boots, girt on my sword, and taking my hat and cloak, I sallied out
into the rain, and wended my way at a sharp pace towards the Rue St.
Honoré.

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