All gazed in amazement at the man stretched out on the floor, and at the blood, streaming in all directions, that flowed from the four wounds he’d taken.
Into this silence, a voice said, “Someone should call the Watch.”
But from among the three friends who had come to the rescue of the gentleman hunchback, the one who had attacked poor Latil from behind cried, “Stop! Nobody move! We can explain everything. You see how things are—you’re all witnesses that all we’ve done is help our friend, the Marquis de Pisany, defend himself against that infamous cutthroat, Latil, who’d lured him into a trap. Don’t worry, you see before you nobles of high name, and friends of the cardinal.”
Though the commoners then took their hats in their hands, it was with skepticism that they nonetheless eyed those who tried to reassure them. This was a serious incident, though perhaps less rare then than now.
The speaker realized he still needed to convince his audience. Indicating one of his companions, he said, “First of all, you see before you Monsieur Vincent Voiture, poet, wit-about-Court, and one of the first of those invited when Monsieur Conrart founded the French Academy. He is also the Receiver of Ambassadors for ‘Monsieur,’ the king’s brother.”
A small man, alert, elegant, with a ruddy face, dressed all in black and angling his sword straight out behind him, acknowledged these titles, to the respect and admiration of the audience.
“Then,” the speaker said, “we have here Monsieur Charles, Comte de Brancas, son of the Duc de Villars and Knight of Honor to Her Majesty the queen mother. Finally, there is me,” he continued, raising his voice and lifting his head like a horse shaking its mane. “I am Sieur Pierre de Bellegarde, Marquis de Montbrun, Seigneur de Souscarrières, son of the Duc de Bellegarde, Grand Equerry of France, Officer of the Crown, close friend of the late King Henri IV, and loyal servant of King Louis XIII, our glorious monarch. If these guarantees aren’t good enough for you, you’ll have to appeal to Our Eternal Father.
“Now,” he continued, “those who must wash the floor and bury the body deserve recompense. Here’s your pay.” And taking the purse from the table, the Sieur Pierre de Bellegarde, Marquis de Montbrun, Seigneur de Souscarrières, threw it at the feet of the host of the Inn of the Painted Beard. As it spilled forth a score of golden coins, Souscarrières slipped Pisany’s four rolls of pistoles into his purse. This prestidigitation escaped the notice of the Marquis de Pisany, who, eager to avoid compromise in the affair, had slipped out the door and taken to his heels—an easy matter for one with such long legs.
The innkeeper and his cooks were amazed at hearing such high names and pompous titles, and even more so by the sound of gold ringing on the floor. Heads bared, they bowed awkwardly, and two of their number hastened to take the candles from the wall to light the way of the fine gentlemen who had condescended to murder a man in their house. Madame Soleil, a thrifty housewife, was quick to gather the scattered coins into her purse—and did so, we hasten to add, with no thought of keeping a few from her husband, as they managed their affairs together.
Whereupon Souscarrières, with a dignity of bearing to match the pomp of his speech, donned his cloak, straightened his mustache, cocked his hat over his left ear, stepped forth, and departed with an air of majesty.
The others departed more modestly, though still with enough haughtiness to impress the masses.
While the three set out to catch up with the Marquis de Pisany, let’s give our readers some essential details about these characters who’ve stepped onto our stage.
As Souscarrières said, the main actor in our recent drama was the Marquis de Pisany, son of the Marquise de Rambouillet. To name the Marquise de Rambouillet is to name the woman who set the tone and customs of French high society in the seventeenth century for some fifty years.
The Marquis de Pisany came into the world as beautiful and straight as the other five children of the marquise, and doubtless like them would have been numbered among the “White Pillars of Rambouillet,” as this lovely family was called, had not his nurse dislocated his spine. This accident made him the man we have seen, a person so cruelly deformed that he’d never been able to find back-and-breast armor that fitted his double hump, though he’d engaged the finest armorers of France and Italy. This deformity had gradually twisted him, a gentleman of breeding, courage, and wit, into one of the most abominable beings in creation, a kind of demon who sought to destroy everything that was young and handsome. Disappointment, particularly in affairs of the heart, could send him into fits of rage in which he could commit the most heinous crimes. It was most unbecoming to a gentleman of his name and rank.
Our second actor was Vincent Voiture, son of a wine merchant, and a great piquet player, who had given his name to the “carre de Voiture,” that is, seventy points scored by four counters in a square.
As Souscarrières said, Vincent Voiture, a famous man of letters in the seventeenth century, was not only Receiver of Ambassadors for His Royal Highness, the king’s brother Gaston d’Orléans, but was also one of the premier wits of the era. He was small but well made, dressed elegantly, was always amiable but never naïve, and was so addicted to gaming that if he played for no more than five minutes, he got so excited that he was obliged to change his shirt. He was a favorite of the princesses and ladies of the Court, who all knew him: protégé of Queen Anne of Austria; confidant of Madame la Princesse, the wife of that Duc de Condé who belied his family of heroes by his cowardice and greed; friend of the Marquise de Rambouillet, the lovely Julie d’Angennes, and Madame de Saintot, who all regarded him as the Frenchman whose mind and spirit were most pleasing to women. Brave as well, if there was an affair at hand, his sword didn’t long stay hanging at his side. He’d been involved in three celebrated duels: one in daytime, another under the moon, the third by torchlight. The Marquis de Pisany often relied on him in his wicked adventures.
The third was, as Souscarrières proclaimed, the young Comte de Brancas, Knight of Honor to Queen Mother Marie de Médicis. Except for La Fontaine, there was possibly no man in the seventeenth century more absentminded than he. Once, while riding home at night, horse thieves stopped him by grabbing his horse’s bridle. “Hey, you stable hands,” he said, “let go of my horse!” But he realized the true situation when a pistol was put to his throat.
On his wedding day, he told the fellow with whom he sometimes shared a bed—as was usual at the time between roommates—to keep it ready for him, as he would spend that night at home.
“What are you thinking, Monsieur le Comte?” objected his roommate. “You’re getting married this morning.”
“Why, by my faith, that’s true! I’d forgotten.”
The fourth and final actor was Souscarrières, about whom we’ll add nothing to what we’ve already said, as the story will soon provide us an opportunity of making his full acquaintance. We’ve already provided a sample of his manner of speech, which hopefully will give you a glimpse of his unusual character.
These three, as we’ve said, exited in triumph from the Inn of the Painted Beard and crossed the barricade that closed both ends of the Rue de l’Homme-Armé: two by jumping over, and one by ducking under. They were pursuing the Marquis de Pisany, and had every hope of catching up to him on his way to the Hotel de Rambouillet in the Rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, where in our time the Vaudeville Theater stands.
In fact, they did catch up with him, but only at the corner of Rue Froidmanteau and Rue des Orties, about a hundred paces from the Hotel de Rambouillet.
Hearing the sound of their approach, the marquis turned and recognized them. He was glad to give his long legs a rest and catch his breath as he waited for his friends.
The three newcomers, like the Curiatti of myth, had been left behind, not due to their wounds, but because of their lengths of leg. Souscarrières, who was quite athletic despite being no more than five foot six, was in the lead, followed by the Comte de Brancas, who had already forgotten what had happened and was wondering why t
hey were running this race. Last came the petite Voiture, who though no more than thirty was already tending toward obesity; wiping his forehead, he kept up with Souscarrières and Brancas only by great effort.
Souscarrières stopped when he reached Pisany, who was seated on a borne, a corner barricade. With arms crossed, eyes dark, and expression grim, he looked like one of those fantastic sculptures that fifteenth-century architects had set staring down from roof-corners. “So, Pisany,” Souscarrières said, “are you so consumed by rage that you must continually drag us into your evil affairs? Now a man has been killed. True, it was no great loss—he was a known ruffian, and I can testify it was self-defense, so you should escape prosecution. But if I hadn’t shown up and thrust from one side just as you thrust from the other, you’d have been gigged like a frog.”
“Oh?” Pisany replied. “And would that be such a tragedy?”
“What do you mean, such a tragedy?”
“Who says I’m not trying to get myself killed? Indeed, what a fine life I have: mocked by men, misjudged by women—wouldn’t it be just as well if I were dead, or even better, had never been born?” He ground his teeth and shook his fist in the air.
“All right, my dear Marquis, so you want to get yourself killed. But then why call out for us just as Étienne Latil’s sword was about to grant your wish?”
“Because before I die, I want my revenge.”
“The devil! He wants revenge, and he has a friend in Souscarrières, but he takes his business to a petty cutthroat in the Rue de l’Homme-Armé.”
“I went to find a cutthroat because a cutthroat could do the work I needed done. If a Souscarrières could have done it, then I could have done it, and I wouldn’t have needed anyone else. I would have called out my man and killed him myself. To see a detested rival lying at one’s feet, writhing in the agonies of death, is too great a pleasure not to take it when one can.”
“So why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“Don’t ask me to tell you, because I can’t.”
“What? Mordieu! A friend’s secret is a sacred trust. So you want a man dead—strike him down and kill him.”
“Listen, wretch!” Pisany cried, carried away by passion. “Can one fight a duel with a prince of the blood? Can a prince of the blood stoop to fight a simple gentleman? No! When you want to be rid of such a one, he must be murdered.”
“And then what?” said Souscarrières.
“After he was dead, I’d be executed. So? What is my life but horror?”
“Oh, right!” Souscarrières struck his forehead. “And that would be my fate as well?”
“It’s possible,” Pisany said, shrugging dejectedly.
“My poor Pisany. This man you’re jealous of, could he be . . .?”
“Go on, finish it.”
“. . . But no, it can’t be. He hasn’t been back from Italy more than a week.”
“It doesn’t take a week to go from the Hotel de Montmorency to the Rue de la Cerisaie.”
“So, it must be . . .” Souscarrières hesitated a moment, then burst out, “It must be the Comte de Moret!”
The marquis’s only response was a terrible blasphemy.
“Ah! But who, then, are you in love with, my dear Pisany?” Souscarrières asked.
“You know who lives there.” Pisany scowled. “Is that so . . . so laughable?”
“Madame de Maugiron, the sister of Marion Delorme?”
“The sister of Marion Delorme. Yes.”
“Who lives in the same house as her other sister, Madame de la Montagne?”
“Yes, a hundred times yes!”
“Well, my dear Marquis, if your reason for wanting to kill the poor Comte de Moret is that he’s the lover of Madame de Maugiron, then thank God you didn’t get your way, because a noble gentleman like you would have suffered eternal remorse for having committed a pointless crime.”
“How so?” Pisany asked, standing bolt upright.
“Because the Comte de Moret is not Madame de Maugiron’s lover.”
“Then whose lover is he?”
“Her sister, Madame de la Montagne.”
“Impossible.”
“Marquis, I swear it.”
“The Comte de Moret is Madame de la Montagne’s lover? You swear this?”
“Faith of a gentleman.”
“But the other night, when I visited Madame de Maugiron . . .”
“The night before last?”
“Yes.”
“At eleven in the evening?”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know. As I know that Madame de Maugiron is not the Comte de Moret’s mistress.”
“You’re wrong, I tell you.”
“Here we go again.”
“I’d seen her that day, and she’d said that if I came by, I should find her alone. Once past her servant, I came to the door of her bedroom and, within the bedroom, I heard a man’s voice.”
“I don’t say you didn’t hear a man’s voice. I only say it wasn’t the voice of the Comte de Moret.”
“Oh! You’re torturing me!”
“You didn’t actually see the count, did you?”
“Yes, I saw him.”
“How so?”
“Later I was hiding in the doorway of the Hotel Lesdisguières, across the street from Madame de Maugiron’s house.”
“And?”
“And I saw him come out. As clearly as I see you.”
“Except you didn’t see him leave Madame de Maugiron. You saw him leave Madame de la Montagne.”
“But then, but then,” cried Pisany, “who was the man I heard in Madame de Maugiron’s bedroom?”
“Bah, Marquis—be a philosopher!”
“A philosopher?”
“Yes, why worry about it?”
“What do you mean, why worry about it? If the man isn’t a Son of France, I mean to kill him.”
“Kill him! Ah!” said Souscarrières with an accent that plunged the marquis into a world of strange doubts.
“That’s right,” the marquis said, “kill him.”
“Really? No matter who he was?” said Souscarrières, in a manner increasingly arrogant.
“Yes. Yes. A hundred times yes!”
“Well, then,” Souscarrières said, “kill me, my dear Marquis—because I was the man.”
“You villain!” Pisany said through his teeth. He drew his sword. “Defend yourself!”
“No need to ask me twice, my dear Marquis,” said Souscarrières, sword in hand and falling on guard. “At your service!”
They fell to, and despite Voiture’s cries and Brancas’s incomprehension, the Marquis de Pisany and the Seigneur de Souscarrières began a furious combat, all the more terrible as there was no more light than that of a cloud-veiled moon. Each combatant, as much from pride as the will to live, displayed all his fencing skill. Souscarrières, who excelled at athletics, was clearly the stronger and more skillful. But Pisany’s long legs, employed to their full, gave him an advantage in sudden attacks and quick retreats. Finally, after about twenty seconds, the Marquis de Pisany uttered a groan that barely escaped his teeth, raised his arms, and dropped his sword. He turned and leaned against the wall, sighed, and collapsed.
Souscarrières lowered his sword and said, “You are witnesses that he challenged me first?”
“Yes, alas!” Brancas and Voiture responded.
“And you can attest that everything followed the rules of honor?”
“We can attest to that.”
“Very well! Now, as I prefer this sinner’s health over his death, carry Monsieur de Pisany to the house of madame his mother and then send for Bouvard, the king’s surgeon.”
“The very thing! We’ll do it,” said Voiture. “Help me, Brancas. Fortunately, we’re barely fifty paces from the Hotel de Rambouillet.”
“Ah!” said Brancas. “What a shame! And the party had begun so well.”
While Brancas and Voiture carried the Marquis de Pisany as
carefully as they could to his mother’s house, Souscarrières disappeared around the corner of the Rue des Orties. “These damned hunchbacks,” he said. “I don’t know why they infuriate me so. This makes three I’ve had to dispose of by running them through.”
IV
The Hotel de Rambouillet
The Hotel de Rambouillet was located between the church of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, which was built in the late twelfth century to commemorate Saint Thomas the Martyr, and the Hospital of the Three Hundred, founded during the reign of Louis IX upon his return from Egypt, to house those three hundred gentlemen whose eyes had been gouged out by the Saracens.
The Marquise de Rambouillet, who had built the hotel—we’ll tell how later—was born in 1588, that is, the year the Duc de Guise and his brother were murdered at Blois by order of Henri III. She was the daughter of Jean de Vivonne (the elder Marquis de Pisany) and Julie Savelli, a Roman lady of a family so illustrious that it sired two popes, Honoré III and Honoré IV, and a saint of the church, Saint Lucina.
At the age of twelve, she married the Marquis de Rambouillet of the house of Angennes, another illustrious family, renowned for both the famous Cardinal de Rambouillet, and that Marquis de Rambouillet who was Viceroy of Poland before Henri III assumed that title.
The Rambouillet family was known for both wit and propriety. A parable of the grandfather of the Marquis de Rambouillet bears witness to the one, as an anecdote about his father illustrates the other.
The grandfather, Jacques de Rambouillet, had married a woman of questionable character. One day he was arguing with her in a dispute that was becoming an actual fight, when he stopped suddenly, lowered his voice, and, speaking as calmly as can be, said, “Madame, pull on my beard.”
“Why?” she asked in amazement.
“Just pull on it. I’ll tell you afterwards.”
The Marquis de Rambouillet’s grandmother grabbed her husband’s beard and pulled on it.