Presently I lost sight of him in the glittering throng; then, as the musicians struck up a gay measure, the centre of the room was cleared for the dancers, and we were crushed rudely into a corner among the onlookers, he appeared suddenly before us once more.
His Eminence was just in front of me, and within arm's length of the jester; André stood motionless at my side, so motionless that I thought, for a moment, that Mazarin must be mistaken.
There was a sudden lurch in the crowd, and, simultaneously, I heard a voice ring out loud and clear above the music, the hum of voices and the shuffling of the dancers' feet:
"Thus perish all traitors to the welfare of France!"
At the sound of those words, which sent a chill through my blood, I glanced quickly towards the jester and beheld the glitter of steel in his uplifted hand. Then, before any one could seize the murderer's arm, it had descended with terrific force, and the knife was buried in the Cardinal's breast.
Heedless of the soft low laugh which escaped the Judas beside me, I stood horror-stricken, yet confident in my mind that the shirt of mail worn by Mazarin would have resisted the poignard.
As I saw him, however, fall backwards, without so much as a groan, into the arms of a bystander; as I saw the red blood spurt forth and spread in a great shiny stain upon the black domino, a wild inarticulate cry escaped my lips.
"Notre Dame!" I shrieked the next moment, "You have killed him!" And I would have sprung forward to seize the murderer, when suddenly a strong nervous hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a well-known voice, at the sound of which I stood as if bound by a spell, whispered in my ear:
"Silence, fool! Be still."
The music had ceased suddenly, the dancing had stopped and a funereal hush had fallen upon the throng as it pressed eagerly around the murdered man.
Contrary to my expectations, the assassin made no attempt to escape, but removing his vizor, he showed us the features of that notorious court bully, the Compte de St. Augére--a creature of the Prince de Condé. He folded his arms leisurely across his breast and stood regarding the silent crowd about him with a diabolical smile of scorn upon his thin lips.
Then, as a light gradually broke upon my mind, the masked figure beside me which I had hitherto regarded as André, moved swiftly forward and pulling back the hood from the head of the victim, removed the red mask.
I craned my neck and beheld, as I had expected, the pallid face of the valet set already in the unmistakable mould of the rigor mortis.
Presently a murmur went round the assembly breathing the words "The Cardinal!"
I looked up and saw Mazarin, erect, unmasked, and silent. From him I turned my eyes towards St. Augére; he had not yet met the Cardinal's gaze, and to him the whisper of the crowd had a different meaning; so he smiled on in his quiet scornful way until Mazarin awakened him to realities.
"Is this your handiwork, Monsieur de St. Augére?"
At the sound of that voice, so cold and terrible in its menace, the fellow started violently; he turned to the Cardinal, a look of pitiable terror coming into his eyes. As their glances met, the one so stern and steady, the other furtive and craven, St. Augére seemed as one suddenly smitten with ague; he darted a hurried glance at the victim, and as he beheld André, his face became as ashen as that of the corpse.
"You do not answer," Mazarin pursued; "there is no need, I saw the blow, and you still hold the dagger. You are I doubt not"--oh, the irony of his words! "you are, I doubt not, surprised to see me here. But I heard of this and it was my intention to foil your purpose and to punish you, false noble that you are. Methinks, Monsieur, that you have wrought sufficient evil in your life without culminating it by so dastardly a deed as this. That you should have stooped to stab a poor defenceless valet, whom you considered below the dignity of your sword, this--fallen as you are--I had scarcely expected from one whose veins are fed by the blood of the St. Augéres. And to think," he continued in accents of withering scorn, "that you should attempt to throw upon your deed the glamour of patriotism! What harm has this poor wretch done France? Speak up! Have you naught to say?"
But rage, despair, and shame had choked the Count's utterance, and were fighting a mighty battle in his soul. So violent, that as the Cardinal paused to wait for his reply, his lips twitched convulsively for a moment, then, staggering forward he fell prone upon the ground, in a swoon.
"Call the guard, Monsieur de Cavaignac," said Mazarin to me. "That man has committed his last crime. A week in a dungeon of the Bastille and the companionship of a holy father, may fit him for a better life beyond the scaffold."
"You see," said his Eminence, an hour later, as we stood alone in his study, "if I had allowed the world to know for whom St. Augére's blow was intended, the world would have sympathised, as it always does, with a luckless conspirator; would, mayhap, have loved me less. Again, there are always fanatics ready to copy such acts as these, and had they known that what has ended in the death of an obscure valet was an attempt against the life of Mazarin--I am afraid that some murderer's knife would have cut short my existence before the appointed time."
"As it is," he went on, with a wave of the hand, "St. Augére meets the doom of a cowardly traitor; he dies, regretted by none, for a deed of surpassing loathsomeness. As for André, his death has been too easy."
"How comes it, Monseigneur," I asked, "that he gave no warning to his confederate, made no attempt to defend himself."
"Can you not guess?" he said, smiling, "When I had forced the confession of his treason from him I bound his arms to his side and pressed a gag into his mouth, which I removed together with his mask."
"But the mask?" I cried.
Again he smiled.
"How dull you are; I changed it whilst you were seeing to the coach."
"Why did you conceal the fact from me, Monseigneur?" I cried. "Did you mistrust me?"
"No, no, not that," he said, "I thought it wiser; you might have betrayed my identity by a show of respect. But go, leave me, Cavaignac, it grows late."
I made my bow, and, as I retired, I heard him muttering to himself the words of St. Augére: "Thus perish all traitors to the welfare of France." And with a chuckle he added: "How little he guessed the truth of what he said."
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The Red Mask Page 2
