Bardelys the Magnificent

by Rafael Sabatini

  Produced by Polly Stratton

  BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT

  Being an Account of the Strange Wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel deSaint-Pol; Marquis of Bardelys, and of the things that in the course ofit befell him in Languedoc, in the year of the Rebellion

  By Rafael Sabatini

  CONTENTS

  I. THE WAGER II. THE KING'S WISHES III. RENT: DE LESPERON IV. A MAID IN THE MOONLIGHT V. THE VICOMTE DE LAVEDAN VI. IN CONVALESCENCE VII. THE HOSTILITY OF SAINT-EUSTACHE VIII. THE PORTRAIT IX. A NIGHT ALARM X. THE RISEN DEAD XI. THE KING'S COMMISSIONER XII. THE TRIBUNAL OF TOULOUSE XIII. THE ELEVENTH HOUR XIV. EAVESDROPPING XV. MONSIEUR DE CHATELLERAULT IS ANGRY XVI. SWORDS XVII. THE BABBLING OF GANYMEDE XVIII. SAINT-EUSTACHE IS OBSTINATE XIX. THE FLINT AND THE STEEL XX. THE "BRAVI" AT BLAGNAC XXI. LOUIS THE JUST XXII. WE UNSADDLE

  BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT

  CHAPTER I. THE WAGER

  "Speak of the Devil," whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by thewords and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair.

  The door had opened, and under the lintel stood the thick-set figureof the Comte de Chatellerault. Before him a lacquey in my escutcheonedlivery of red-and-gold was receiving, with back obsequiously bent, hishat and cloak.

  A sudden hush fell upon the assembly where a moment ago this very manhad been the subject of our talk, and silenced were the wits that butan instant since had been making free with his name and turning theLanguedoc courtship--from which he was newly returned with the shame ofdefeat--into a subject for heartless mockery and jest. Surprise wasin the air for we had heard that Chatellerault was crushed by hisill-fortune in the lists of Cupid, and we had not looked to see himjoining so soon a board at which--or so at least I boasted--mirthpresided.

  And so for a little space the Count stood pausing on my threshold,whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had beenan object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from thebrainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It was a climaxof discourtesy whose impression I must at all costs efface.

  I leapt to my feet, with a suddenness that sent my chair gliding a fullhalf-yard along the glimmering parquet of the floor, and in two stridesI had reached the Count and put forth my hand to bid him welcome. Hetook it with a leisureliness that argued sorrow. He advanced into thefull blaze of the candlelight, and fetched a dismal sigh from the depthsof his portly bulk.

  "You are surprised to see me, Monsieur le Marquis," said he, and histone seemed to convey an apology for his coming--for his very existencealmost.

  Now Nature had made my Lord of Chatellerault as proud and arrogant asLucifer--some resemblance to which illustrious personage his downtroddenretainers were said to detect in the lineaments of his swarthy face.Environment had added to that store of insolence wherewith Nature hadequipped him, and the King's favour--in which he was my rival--had goneyet further to mould the peacock attributes of his vain soul. So thatthis wondrous humble tone of his gave me pause; for to me it seemed thatnot even a courtship gone awry could account for it in such a man.

  "I had not thought to find so many here," said he. And his nextwords contained the cause of his dejected air. "The King, Monsieur deBardelys, has refused to see me; and when the sun is gone, we lesserbodies of the courtly firmament must needs turn for light and comfort tothe moon." And he made me a sweeping bow.

  "Meaning that I rule the night?" quoth I, and laughed. "The figure ismore playful than exact, for whilst the moon is cold and cheerless, meyou shall find ever warm and cordial. I could have wished, Monsieur deChatellerault, that your gracing my board were due to a circumstanceless untoward than His Majesty's displeasure."

  "It is not for nothing that they call you the Magnificent," he answered,with a fresh bow, insensible to the sting in the tail of my honeyedwords.

  I laughed, and, setting compliments to rest with that, I led him to thetable.

  "Ganymede, a place here for Monsieur le Comte. Gilles, Antoine, see toMonsieur de Chatellerault. Basile, wine for Monsieur le Comte. Bestirthere!"

  In a moment he was become the centre of a very turmoil of attention. Mylacqueys flitted about him buzzing and insistent as bees about a rose.Would Monsieur taste of this capon a la casserole, or of this truffledpeacock? Would a slice of this juicy ham a l'anglaise tempt Monsieurle Comte, or would he give himself the pain of trying this turkey auxolives? Here was a salad whose secret Monsieur le Marquis's cook hadlearnt in Italy, and here a vol-au-vent that was invented by Quelonhimself.

  Basile urged his wines upon him, accompanied by a page who bore a silvertray laden with beakers and Wagons. Would Monsieur le Comte take whiteArmagnac or red Anjou? This was a Burgundy of which Monsieur le Marquisthought highly, and this a delicate Lombardy wine that His Majesty hadoft commended. Or perhaps Monsieur de Chatellerault would prefer totaste the last vintage of Bardelys?

  And so they plagued him and bewildered him until his choice was made;and even then a couple of them held themselves in readiness behind hischair to forestall his slightest want. Indeed, had he been the veryKing himself, no greater honour could we have shown him at the Hotel deBardelys.

  But the restraint that his coming had brought with it hung still uponthe company, for Chatellerault was little loved, and his presence therewas much as that of the skull at an Egyptian banquet.

  For of all these fair-weather friends that sat about my table--amongstwhom there were few that had not felt his power--I feared there mightbe scarcely one would have the grace to dissemble his contempt of thefallen favourite. That he was fallen, as much his words as what alreadywe had known, had told us.

  Yet in my house I would strive that he should have no foretaste of thatcoldness that to-morrow all Paris would be showing him, and to thisend I played the host with all the graciousness that role may bear, andoverwhelmed him with my cordiality, whilst to thaw all iciness from thebearing of my other guests, I set the wines to flow more freely still.My dignity would permit no less of me, else would it have seemed thatI rejoiced in a rival's downfall and took satisfaction from thecircumstance that his disfavour with the King was like to result in myown further exaltation.

  My efforts were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the grapepronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such wit as Heavenhas graced me with, and by a word here and another there I set myself tolash their mood back into the joviality out of which his coming had forthe moment driven it.

  And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her mantle over us anew, andquip and jest and laughter decked our speech, until the noise of ourmerry-making drifting out through the open windows must have been borneupon the breeze of that August night down the rue Saint-Dominique,across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps of those within theLuxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his friends kept another ofthose revels which were become a byword in Paris, and had contributednot a little to the sobriquet of "Magnificent" which men gave me.

  But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the sakeof the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew more barbedand less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a moment, like a birdof prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down in the words of that foolLa Fosse.

  "Messieurs," he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with hiseye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, "I have a toast for you." He rosecarefully to his feet--he had arrived at that condition in which to movewith care is of the first importance. He shifted his eye from the Countto his glass, which stood half empty. He signed to a lacquey to fillit. "To the brim, gentlemen," he commanded. Then, in the silence thatensued, he attempted to stand with one foot o
n the ground and one onhis chair; but encountering difficulties of balance, he remainedupright--safer if less picturesque.

  "Messieurs, I give you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the mostdifficult and cold lady in all France. I drink to those her thousandgraces, of which Fame has told us, and to that greatest and most vexingcharm of all--her cold indifference to man. I pledge you, too, the swainwhose good fortune it maybe to play Endymion to this Diana.

  "It will need," pursued La Fosse, who dealt much in mythology andclassic lore--"it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour, anApollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accomplish it. And I fearme," he hiccoughed, "that it will go unaccomplished, since the one manin all France on whom we have based our hopes has failed. Gentlemen, toyour feet! I give you the matchless Roxalanne de Lavedan!"

  Such amusement as I felt was tempered by apprehension. I shot a swiftglance at Chatellerault to mark how he took this pleasantry and thispledging of the lady whom the King had sent him to woo, but whom hehad failed to win. He had risen with the others at La Fosse's bidding,either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too flimsy a thing bywhich to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl darkenedhis ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such sudden forcethat its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine streaked thewhite tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl. The sight ofthat stain recalled him to himself and to the manners he had allowedhimself for a moment to forget.

  "Bardelys, a thousand apologies for my clumsiness," he muttered.

  "Spilt wine," I laughed, "is a good omen."

  And for once I accepted that belief, since but for the shedding of thatwine and its sudden effect upon him, it is likely we had witnesseda shedding of blood. Thus, was the ill-timed pleasantry of myfeather-brained La Fosse tided over in comparative safety. But the topicbeing raised was not so easily abandoned. Mademoiselle de Lavedan grewto be openly discussed, and even the Count's courtship of her came to behinted at, at first vaguely, then pointedly, with a lack of delicacyfor which I can but blame the wine with which these gentlemen had madea salad of their senses. In growing alarm I watched the Count. But heshowed no further sign of irritation. He sat and listened as though nojot concerned. There were moments when he even smiled at some livelysally, and at last he went so far as to join in that merry combat ofwits, and defend himself from their attacks, which were made with agood-humour that but thinly veiled the dislike he was held in and thesatisfaction that was culled from his late discomfiture.

  For a while I hung back and took no share in the banter that was toward.But in the end--lured perhaps by the spirit in which I have shown thatChatellerault accepted it, and lulled by the wine which in common withmy guests I may have abused--I came to utter words but for which thisstory never had been written.

  "Chatellerault," I laughed, "abandon these defensive subterfuges;confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you haveconducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one equippedwith your advantages of courtly rearing."

  A flush overspread his face, the first sign of anger since he hadspilled his wine.

  "Your successes, Bardelys, render you vain, and of vanity is presumptionborn," he replied contemptuously.

  "See!" I cried, appealing to the company. "Observe how he seeks to evadereplying! Nay, but you shall confess your clumsiness."

  "A clumsiness," murmured La Fosse drowsily, "as signal as that whichattended Pan's wooing of the Queen of Lydia."

  "I have no clumsiness to confess," he answered hotly, raising his voice."It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, andnerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won becausethey look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eagerfor such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them.But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. Sheis a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, andvermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanityand licence."

  La Fosse burst into a laugh.

  "Hark! O, hark!" he cried, "to the apostle of the chaste!"

  "Saint Gris!" exclaimed another. "This good Chatellerault has lost bothheart and head to her."

  Chatellerault glanced at the speaker with an eye in which angersmouldered.

  "You have said it," I agreed. "He has fallen her victim, and so hisvanity translates her into a compound of perfections. Does such a womanas you have described exist, Comte? Bah! In a lover's mind, perhaps, orin the pages of some crack-brained poet's fancies; but nowhere else inthis dull world of ours."

  He made a gesture of impatience.

  "You have been clumsy, Chatellerault," I insisted.

  "You have lacked address. The woman does not live that is not to be wonby any man who sets his mind to do it, if only he be of her station andhave the means to maintain her in it or raise her to a better. A woman'slove, sir, is a tree whose root is vanity. Your attentions flatter her,and predispose her to capitulate. Then, if you but wisely choose yourtime to deliver the attack, and do so with the necessary adroitness--noris overmuch demanded--the battle is won with ease, and she surrenders.Believe me, Chatellerault, I am a younger man than you by full fiveyears, yet in experience I am a generation older, and I talk of what Iknow."

  He sneered heavily. "If to have begun your career of dalliance at theage of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be your titleto experience, I agree," said he. "But for the rest, Bardelys, for allyour fine talk of conquering women, believe me when I tell you that inall your life you have never met a woman, for I deny the claim of theseCourt creatures to that title. If you would know a woman, go to Lavedan,Monsieur le Marquis. If you would have your army of amorous wiles suffera defeat at last, go employ it against the citadel of Roxalanne deLavedan's heart. If you would be humbled in your pride, betake yourselfto Lavedan."

  "A challenge!" roared a dozen voices. "A challenge, Bardelys!"

  "Mais voyons," I deprecated, with a laugh, "would you have me journeyinto Languedoc and play at wooing this embodiment of all the marvelsof womanhood for the sake of making good my argument? Of your charity,gentlemen, insist no further."

  "The never-failing excuse of the boaster," sneered Chatellerault, "whendesired to make good his boast."

  "Monsieur conceives that I have made a boast?" quoth I, keeping mytemper.

  "Your words suggested one--else I do not know the meaning of words. Theysuggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you had a mindto try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge you again. Goabout this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and yourmagnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and allthe splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a yearof your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit.Are you sufficiently challenged?"

  "But this is rank frenzy!" I protested. "Why should I undertake thisthing?"

  "To prove me wrong," he taunted me. "To prove me clumsy. Come, Bardelys,what of your spirit?"

  "I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to takea wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!"

  "Bah!" he sneered. "You do well to draw back You are wise to avoiddiscomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be bysome bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames,no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences ofdalliance never so vast."

  "Po' Cap de Dieu!" growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in theGuards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. "Up, Bardelys! Afoot!Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever shamed; a squireof dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! Ihave given a man a bellyful of steel for the half of those titles!"

  I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now ontheir feet--those that could stand--were spurring me excitedly to acceptthe challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that ofa sudden the tables were turn
ed and I was become the baited. I sat inthought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it butlittle. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.

  My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words tothe Count had been calculated to convey. It may be--I know now that itwas that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's description, andwere not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had withthem in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given me afalse impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night. I wassatisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman livedas he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I wasaccounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and youth andthe King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of faith andof zest, the very magnificence--so envied--of my existence affording memore disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged its shallows.

  Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with suchinsistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckonme with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?

  "Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?" Chatellerault was gibing,when my silence had endured some moments. "Is the cock that latelycrowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you areaccounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce you to thisundertaking?"

  I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what Idid was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no lessto bolster up my former boasting--or what into boasting they hadtranslated.

  "You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?" I cried, giving him backdefiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. "Then have it so.Listen, gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here pledge my castleof Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every stick and stone andblade of grass that stands upon them, that I shall woo and win Roxalannede Lavedan to be the Marquise of Bardelys. Does the stake satisfyyou, Monsieur le Comte? You may set all you have against it," I addedcoarsely, "and yet, I swear, the odds will be heavily in your favour."

  I remember it was Mironsac who first found his tongue, and sought evenat that late hour to set restraint upon us and to bring judgment to ouraid.

  "Messieurs, messieurs!" he besought us. "In Heaven's name, bethinkyou what you do. Bardelys, your wager is a madness. Monsieur deChatellerault, you'll not accept it. You'll--"

  "Be silent," I rebuked him, with some asperity. "What has Monsieur deChatellerault to say?"

  He was staring at the tablecloth and the stain of the wine that he hadspilled when first Mademoiselle de Lavedan's name was mentioned. Hishead had been bent so that his long black hair had tumbled forward andpartly veiled his face. At my question he suddenly looked up. The ghostof a smile hung on his sensuous lips, for all that excitement had paledhis countenance beyond its habit.

  "Monsieur le Marquis." said he rising, "I take your wager, and I pledgemy lands in Normandy against yours of Bardelys. Should you lose, theywill no longer call you the Magnificent; should I lose--I shall be abeggar. It is a momentous wager, Bardelys, and spells ruin for one ofus."

  "A madness!" groaned Mironsac.

  "Mordieux!" swore Cazalet. Whilst La Fosse, who had been the originalcause of all this trouble, vented his excitement in a gibber of imbecilelaughter.

  "How long do you give me, Chatellerault?" I asked, as quietly as Imight.

  "What time shall you require?"

  "I should prefer that you name the limit," I answered.

  He pondered a moment. Then "Will three months suffice you?" he asked.

  "If it is not done in three months, I will pay," said I.

  And then Chatellerault did what after all was, I suppose, the only thingthat a gentleman might do under the circumstances. He rose to his feet,and, bidding the company charge their glasses, he gave them a partingtoast.

  "Messieurs, drink with me to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys's safejourney into Languedoc, and to the prospering of his undertaking."

  In answer, a great shout went up from throats that suspense had latelyheld in leash. Men leapt on to their chairs, and, holding their glasseson high, they acclaimed me as thunderously as though I had been thehero of some noble exploit, instead of the main figure in a somewhatquestionable wager.

  "Bardelys!" was the shout with which the house reechoed. "Bardelys!Bardelys the Magnificent! Vive Bardelys!"