第145章 'LE ROI EST MORT!'(4)

Sleep and habit enabled me,nevertheless,to pass the night in comfort.Very early in the morning a great firing of guns,which made itself heard even in my quarters,led me to suppose that Paris had surrendered;but the servant who brought me my breakfast;declined in a surly fashion to give me any information.In the end,I spent the whole day alone,my thoughts divided between my mistress and my own prospects,which seemed to grow more and more gloomy as the hours succeeded one another.No one came near me,no step broke the silence of the house;and for a while I thought my guardians had forgotten even that I needed food.This omission,it is true,was made good about sunset,but still M.la Varenne did not appear,the servant seemed to be dumb,and I heard no sounds in the house.

I had finished my meal an hour or more,and the room was growing dark,when the silence was at last broken by quick steps passing along the entrance.They paused,and seemed to hesitate at the foot of the stairs,but the next moment they came on again,and stopped at my door.I rose from my seat on hearing the key turned in the lock,and my astonishment may be conceived when Isaw no other than M.de Turenne enter,and close the door behind him.

He saluted me in a haughty manner as he advanced to the table,raising his cap for an instant and then replacing it.This done he stood looking at me,and I at him,in a silence which on my side was the result of pure astonishment;on his,of contempt and a kind of wonder.The evening light,which was fast failing,lent a sombre whiteness to his face,causing it to stand out from the shadows behind him in a way which was not without its influence on me.

'Well!'he said at,last,speaking slowly and with unimaginable insolence,'I am here to look at you!'

I felt my anger rise,and gave him back look for look.'At your will,'I said,shrugging my shoulders.

'And to solve a question,'he continued in the same tone.'To learn whether the man who was mad enough to insult and defy me was the old penniless dullard some called him,or the dare-devil others painted him.'

'You are satisfied now?'I said.

He eyed me for a moment closely;then with sudden heat he cried,'Curse me if I am!Nor whether I have to do with a man very deep or very shallow,a fool or a knave!'

'You may say what you please to a prisoner,'I retorted coldly.

'Turenne commonly does--to whom he pleases!'he answered.The next moment he made me start by saying,as he drew out a comfit-box and opened it,'I am just from the little fool you have bewitched.If she were in my power I would have her whipped and put on bread and water till she came to her senses.As she is not,I must take another way.Have you any idea,may I ask,'he continued in his cynical tone,'what is going to become of you,M.de Marsac?'

I replied,my heart inexpressibly lightened by what he had said of mademoiselle,that I placed the fullest confidence in the justice of the King of Navarre.

He repeated the name in a tone,I did not understand.

'Yes,sir,the King of Navarre,'I answered firmly.

'Well,I daresay you have good reason to do so,'he rejoined with a sneer.'Unless I am mistaken he knew a little more of this affair than he acknowledges.'

'Indeed?The King of Navarre?'I said,staring stolidly at him.

'Yes,indeed,indeed,the King of Navarre!'he retorted,mimicking me,with a nearer approach to anger than I had yet witnessed in him.'But let him be a moment,sirrah!'he continued,'and do you listen to me.Or first look at that.

Seeing is believing.'

He drew out as he spoke a paper,or,to speak more correctly,a parchment,which he thrust with a kind of savage scorn into my hand.Repressing for the moment the surprise I felt,I took it to the window,and reading it with difficulty,found it to be a royal patent drawn,as far as I could judge,in due form,and appointing some person unknown--for the name was left blank--to the post of Lieutenant-Governor of the Armagnac,with a salary of twelve thousand livres a year!

'Well,sir?'he said impatiently.