They arise from a desire to bed with a luscious woman, or from indigestion. Were you a less dedicated man, I would advise either a new mistress, or a new chef. But,” he continued with enjoyment, intoxicated by the strange stark expression on Louis’ face, “as you are a chaste priest, I cannot advise the first, and as I know your lack of palate, it would be useless to advise the last. You are in a bad way, Louis!”
He continued, with mounting delight: “The liver or the genitals, Louis! I advise you to commune with yourself, in silence, or with your noble master, as to which, in your situation, is the cause of this languishing. No doubt his Eminence, who is well qualified to assist you, will render you good service.”
Louis was silent. His figure seemed to melt into the gloom of the chamber, so that only his eyes remained, fixed and still and luminous in the semi-darkness. And those eyes did not move from Armand; they were like the last despairing gaze of a dying man.
Armand paused. He saw that look. A cold chill seized him, and a sensation of inexplicable fright. He shrank in his bed. He darted a swift look about the chamber, for it seemed to him that something terrible was transpiring here.
He cried out, virulently: “Why do you annoy me with your drivelings, you disgusting creature? Is this why you invaded my apartments in the early day? To listen to the rumblings of your belly, to the complaints of your bad digestion?”
He pulled the coverlets to his chin and glared over them at his son. His victory had vanished. He was filled only with fear, which arose from his vague comprehension that he had done a murder.
Then he heard a deep and trembling sigh. Louis’ head fell on his breast. He moved back to his chair. He sank upon it, and covered his face with his hands. The fear passed from Armand, but a vast and icy uneasiness replaced it.
There was a soft knock on the door of the cabinet. It opened silently, and Arsène’s dark smiling face appeared. Armand experienced sudden sharp relief, followed by hysterical anger and resentment against Arsène for so long delaying his appearance. He pulled himself up in his bed.
“Ah, there you are, my frivolous gentleman, my cavorter with the falcons and the horses, my pursuer of wanton petticoats! What is it to you that your father lies prostrated in his bed, attended by filthy lackeys who lurk behind kitchen doors with chambermaids? I could die alone and neglected, for all of my fine son!”
Arsène arched his brows with good humor, and advanced into the room. He did not see Louis immediately, though the priest had started to his feet with a violent movement at his brother’s entry.
“What extravagance!” exclaimed Arsène, sauvely. “You know very well that you sleep almost to sunset. Moreover, I was not cavorting. I was reading in my own apartments.”
“Reading!” screamed Armand, beside himself with nervous rage. “What sons have I! A priest and a reader behind locked doors! What degeneracy has come to you, Arsène? You who never touched a book except to admire its bindings?” He was incredulous, fiery with suspicion. “Have you lost your manhood? Are you contemplating entering a monastery?”
“I was reading,” repeated Arsène, with a wider smile. “Erasmus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Luther. Calm yourself, my father. Your eyes are starting from your head, and they are badly blood-shot as it is.”
Armand’s mouth felt open on his astonishment. But Arsène had become aware of Louis, and though he hardly saw his brother’s face in the duskiness of the chamber, he sensed the hideous hatred that flared whitely upon it. He had never been alarmed nor disturbed by any previous manifestations of aversion on Louis’ part, but today it was either more malignant than usual, or his sensibilities were more acute. He was silent, frowning, experiencing a new sadness.
Then he said, in the gentlest of voices: “Louis.”
Louis did not move, but Arsène had the sensation that the priest had advanced upon him with deadly menace, wild with savagery. He was immeasurably startled. From that looming presence, fraught with danger, came a low and heavy voice:
“I have come to warn you, for our father’s sake. His Eminence has requested that you attend him in the morning, at eleven. He is about to extend to you a magnanimous offer. I warn you not to refuse it. Guard your tongue! For I tell you that the direst consequences will result from any levity or impudence. Monseigneur is well aware of your activities, your treason. Nevertheless, he has looked benignly upon you, out of his generosity and mercy. Beware that you do not exceed his patience!”
“What is this offer, you black Jesuit?” cried Armand, terrified.
But Arsène was both astounded and angered at his brother’s manner more than his words.
“I am no lackey, Louis. I take orders from no priest, whether that priest is Monsieur le Duc, or yourself. I take exception to your address, which is neither courteous nor fraternal.”
“This offer?” shrieked Armand, making a motion as if to leap from the bed. He grasped Arsène’s arm in a tight and trembling grip, as if to defend him.
But Arsène and Louis stood in silence, regarding each other. Frightful things passed between them. Then Louis flung his cloak upon his shoulders, and without a glance at his father or his brother, left the room like a foreboding doom, walking, not rapidly, but with his usual hard and stately tread.
Arsène, with an impatient yet abstracted gesture, approached the window, flung back the draperies. The sun entered like a gold shout, filling the chamber with a blinding light. Armand covered his eyes for a moment with his arm, cursing.
“Why am I afflicted with such sons?” he whimpered. “A monster and a studious fool? Mon Dieu, there is a fate upon me!”
Arsène returned to the bed, and looked down upon his father dispassionately, and with some sternness.
“What have you done to Louis?” he asked.
Armand dropped his arm, and stared, affronted and outraged. “I? What is this language, these words? How dare you, you buffoon?”
But Arsène was not intimidated. He could not restrain a smile.
“You defend him? You reproach your father?” exclaimed Armand, with excitement. “You assault him with your impudence, you rascal, you scoundrel?”
Arsène, still smiling slightly, arranged his father’s cushions. He poured a small glass of amber wine from the decanter upon the table. He placed it in Armand’s hand. Armand, still simmering with rage, drank mechanically, his glittering eyes fixed upon his son. Armand found his father’s lace kerchief, and touched the scabrous lips gently. At this gesture of tenderness and affection, tears rushed into Armand’s eyes. He seized Arsène’s hand, and whimpered again.
“Arsène, what is this white fiend contemplating? There is danger in him.” He rubbed his mouth with the back of his other hand, and the terror quickened on his raddled face. “What is this offer? Be sure he has had his hand in some deviltry.”
“There is no deviltry in Louis,” said Arsène, gravely. “But there is in you, my father. What have you done to Louis?”
Armand uttered a foul expletive, then he began to smile maliciously.
“Ah, that Louis!” he cried. He laughed with thin delight. Finally, it was uncontrollable. He rocked on his cushions. He related the conversation he had had with Louis, omitting nothing. He had the faculty of vivid narrative. Arsène seated himself slowly, listening intently. His face slowly grew dark and somber. His eye began to glow with pity and indignation, and a mournful wonder.
“Ah, that countenance!” cried Armand, overcome with his delight. “It was a revelation! It was a sheep’s face. It was delicious to contemplate. Who would have thought that he could mewl so pathetically? I must relate this tonight! Madame Doumerque, who is the wittiest woman in Paris, will be entertained beyond imagining. Tomorrow, it will be all over Paris. Louis has long been the game of the Court.”
Arsène rose. He stood over his father with so strange and fierce an expression that Armand uttered a single muffled exclamation of astonishment: “Awk!”
“You will say nothing,” said Arsène, in a penetrating v
oice. “Nothing. What you have done is a cruel and shameless thing. But how could you understand this? But I warn you now: if the story becomes the gaiety of Paris, I shall leave this house and never return to it, or to you.”
His face kindled, changed. “A cruel and shameless thing! Nom de Dieu! There is no heart in you, no compassion.” He paused. He realized the impotence of speech, of the inability to inspire in another man the sentiments foreign to his nature. He gave a futile and despairing gesture.
Armand was speechless. He lay on his cushions, panting, incredulous, blinking. He watched Arsène pass over the floor to the door. He watched him open that door, saw it close behind him.
Then he began to shriek madly. He seized objects on the table beside his bed and hurled them across the chamber. First was the decanter of wine, then the glass, various crystal boxes and bottles, a decadent novel of thin fluttering sheets. Finally he grasped Arsène’s little snuff-box, raised it in his wild hand to hurl it also. But that hand stopped in mid-air. It fell, sweating, upon the bed, clutching the box.
He burst into painful and whimpering tears.
CHAPTER XXII
Arsène was amazed at his own sadness and indignation. He had never disliked his brother. He had felt only indifference for him, and amusement, and, at the worst, annoyance. Never had he considered that Louis possessed uncertainties. Fear had been a thing apart from that cold and somber spirit. Now that he perceived that Louis was vulnerable, bewildered and mournfully lonely, he was overcome with compassion. Impulsive and ardent, his first impulse was to seek out his brother and offer consolation, plea for a rapprochement. This further amazed him. He could not understand his own emotions, or the reason for the new acuteness of his sensibilities with regard to others.
His pristine awareness of a world that had seemed only a brightly colored dream of gaiety and adventure were now so sharp that at moments it was painful. Men were no longer either friends or enemies, the one to be loved, the other to be hated and exterminated. They were creatures whose sensibilities and spiritual personalities impinged upon his own, invading him with their individual despairs and anguishes. There were new perceptions in him, new subtleties, like small and aching wounds, threatening to open in impersonal agony for others. He was filled with an immense excitement, a troubling restlessness, which a more sophisticated or intelligent man would have recognized, or with which he would have been familiar, as some men are familiar with old pain.
The circumstances of his private life had become dusty with ennui for him. Though he was to marry Clarisse de Tremblant within the week, his betrothed seemed only a beautiful inconsequence in his thoughts. He delighted in her bewitching face and exquisite figure, but she did not touch his thoughts. There were days when he forgot her entirely.
Forgetfulness assailed him frequently in these days, and offended friends eyed him coldly or pointedly ignored him upon meeting. He would say to himself: What dinner or fête did I forget? At first, this distressed him, and he tried to struggle through the overpowering dreaminess of his new thoughts, which had invaded him like a strange and soundless army. But later, he was indifferent. The only thing of importance was to understand.
On the eve of the day he had encountered Louis in his father’s chamber, he went again to the house of Paul de Vitry. Paul received him with affectionate delight, grasped his hand warmly, and looked at him with his radiant gray eyes in which there was only love and tenderness. But Arsène was annoyed. Paul was entertaining a stranger, a middle-aged man of tall and portly appearance, somberly clad, gray of imperial and mustaches and cropped hair. The man’s broad face was thick and ruddy, and he had small brilliant blue eyes like the points of swords, and red fleshy lips. When he courteously acknowledged the introduction to Arsène, he spoke in a gutteral voice, though his French was perfect. The sword-points which were his eyes penetrated Arsène with simplicity and no deviousness.
He was the Comte Derek Van Tets, Arsène learned, a Dutch Protestant living in Paris temporarily. Within a day or two he was to flee to England, with a message for the British Parliament. A Dutch gentleman of large estates, his lands had been in the path of the invading Spaniards under Philip. He told this simply, but, as he spoke so sparsely, he paled, and his eyes filled with a baleful light.
“I loved my people,” he said, very quietly. “I have seen what the Catholics have done to them. But Dutchmen are Dutchmen. There will come a day.”
And as he said this, he clenched his heavy hands and looked at Arsène with a bottomless and frightful meaning.
Paul laid his hand on the Comte’s shoulder, and said to Arsène:
“We were about to depart for the Hôtel de Rohan. Monsieur le Comte Van Tets has a message for de Rohan. We understood that the Duc de Bouillon and the Duc de Tremblant await us also. Perhaps you would like to accompany us?”
Arsène consented with eagerness, for he perceived that something of importance was transpiring. Too, there was something in the profound simplicity and ominous strength of the Dutchman which had inspired his respect and sympathy. Formerly, he had disliked all foreigners, regarding them either with detestation or amused contempt. Now he understood that men are of one substance.
They proceeded on foot to the Paris residence of de Rohan at Number 8 on the Place Royale. The Hôtel de Rohan was well guarded, for de Rohan trusted no one. It was evident that Paul was recognized by the captain, who, however, pretended ignorance and suspicion to show his authority. Arsène impatiently grasped his sword, but Paul was smilingly patient, addressing the captain repeatedly by his first name. This captain had once served the Marquis de Vaubon also, and had known Arsène since that young man had been hardly more than a lad. Yet he pretended to regard Arsène with suspiciously beetling brows and much lip-biting. Arsène could not restrain his laughter at this.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “you need not pretend not to recognize me, Grimaud! That will not absolve you from owing me fifty livres!”
The captain colored mightily, and bowed to the ground. “Pardon me if I seem to err too much in my duty, Monsieur de Richepin!” he cried.
“That is an improvement,” replied Arsène, good-humoredly. “I remember that you and your men became so drunk on a certain Christmas Eve that thieves entered the Hôtel de Vaubon and made away with everything portable.”
They found the Duc de Rohan and his friends awaiting them in the great library, which was filled with books which the Duc’s father had assiduously collected for many years. The Duc, however, was robustly indifferent to books, and seated there, surrounded by them, his red grossness was the more exaggerated. The subdued light of great bronze-footed candelabra was shed into every far corner, and mingled with the mighty red logs which smoldered, in this damp twilight, in the huge black marble fireplace. The portraits of the Duc’s ancestors lined the panelled walls, their severe faces pale and spectral in the shifting light. The crimson draperies had been drawn across the windows, and there was a tenseness in the atmosphere which the three newcomers discerned immediately. However, the Duc de Bouillon sat with graceful negligence in his tall gilt chair near the fireplace, distinguished as always in this distinguished hall, slowly sipping a golden goblet of wine. The Duc de Tremblant had been pacing through the length of the room, and as Paul and his friends entered, he turned and smiled at them with a kind and troubled look. He laid his goblet on a long vast table of carved oak, and advanced towards them. He shook hands with Arsène, his smile a little lighter, as if he was surprised at the young man’s presence. His glance at Paul was deep and affectionate, and that at Van Tets was thoughtfully courteous.
De Rohan, as always, greeted the three with boisterous norchalance. “And how is our dear Marquis?” he asked of Arsène, one red eyebrow cocked whimsically. “He took five hundred crowns from me last night at the gaming tables.”
“And a thousand from me,” remarked de Bouillon, with his chilly smile. He turned his head slightly in Paul’s direction, and bowed formally. “I knew your father well, Monsi
eur. If his son is half as dexterous a swordsman, and half as noble a gentleman, he will still be extraordinary.”
Paul’s presence had immediately lightened the atmosphere in that room. His address was so gentle, his manner so frank and simple, his smile so open and without duplicity, that he could not fail to sweeten any air into which he ventured. De Tremblant, who loved him as dearly as a son, could hardly glance away from him, and the trouble on his countenance continued to lighten until it had almost disappeared.
“Messieurs,” said Paul, looking from one gentleman to another, “when I requested that I bring the Comte Van Tets with me this evening, it was with the desire that you hear from his own lips what has transpired in Holland, and what we may expect in the event of another Huguenot persecution in France, from the same source.”
“It was reported to me,” interrupted de Rohan, with a sour and ribald grin, “that his scarlet Eminence had recently visited a certain lady on numerous occasions, in the greatest privacy. He is alleged to have left her presence at dawn two days ago, and that he cherishes in his bosom a peculiar pearl-sewn token which once nestled in a beautifully intimate spot on that lady’s person.”
Paul’s lips tightened with distaste, and though he was alarmed, he averted his eyes. “I have never believed evil gossip,” he said.
De Rohan nodded his head grimly. “Rest assured, Monsieur, I am no gossiper. I have this on unimpeachable authority.”
“Hired with your own money,” added de Bouillon.
But de Rohan was not embarrassed. “It is so,” he answered. “You perceive, gentlemen, that the delicious seduction of his Eminence now places us in the gravest jeopardy. He has stood between us and the Habsburgs and the Spaniard. Immured, now, in a certain lady’s bed, he is deaf to all danger threatening France. And ourselves.”
De Bouillon turned the stem of his goblet in his elegant fingers, thinking of the Sedan, and his ambitions. His cold hard lips set in a secret and implacable curve. Not given to conversation except when he had something to conceal, he listened to the others intently.