‘Oh! Oh! Are you worried?’ Pompée asked, the colour draining from his face.
‘Not when I’m with you, my brave Pompée,’ the young man said. ‘I know you, and I know you would sacrifice your life before anyone could harm me.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Pompée replied. ‘But if you’re too scared, we should wait until tomorrow.’
‘Impossible, my dear Pompée. Put this gold on the pillion of your saddle, and I’ll be with you in a moment.’
‘This is a lot of money to risk going out with at night,’ said Pompée, weighing the satchel.
‘There’s no danger – or so Richon assures me. Come now, are the pistols in their holsters, the sword in its sheath and the musket on its rest?’
‘You are forgetting,’ said the old servant, drawing himself up to his full height, ‘that when you have been a soldier all your life, you don’t let yourself be caught out. Yes, Viscount, everything is at the ready.’
‘There you are!’ said Richon. ‘How could you be afraid with such a companion? So, bon voyage, Viscount.’
‘Thank you for your good wishes, but it’s a long road ahead,’ the viscount replied, still with a hint of anxiety that Pompée’s martial bearing could not dispel.
‘Pooh!’ said Richon. ‘Every road has a beginning and an end. My respects to the princess. Tell her that I am with her and Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld until death. And don’t forget the two words I told you: Bordeaux – yes. Now I’m going back to Monsieur de Canolles.’
‘Tell me, Richon,’ said the viscount, taking him by the arm, as he was putting his foot on the first stair. ‘If this Canolles is as worthy a captain and as fine a gentleman as you say, why not make some attempt to lure him over to our side? He could join us either at Chantilly or during the journey. As I already know him a little, I could introduce him.’
Richon looked at the viscount with such a peculiar smile that the other, no doubt reading on the soldier’s face what was going on in his mind, hastened to say: ‘On second thoughts, Richon, forget that I said anything and do whatever you see fit. Farewell.’
He shook his hand and hastily retreated into the room, either because he was afraid that Richon would see the flush of red that covered his face, or for fear of being overheard by Canolles, whose louds outbursts of laughter could be heard on the first floor.
The soldier left to go downstairs, followed by Pompée, carrying the case in a deliberately casual manner, so that no one would suspect what it contained. Then, after a few minutes, the viscount looked around to make sure that he had not forgotten anything, snuffed out the candles and went downstairs in his turn, risking a cautious glance through the brightly lit gap in a door on the ground floor. Then, wrapping himself in the thick cloak that Pompée offered him, he put a foot in the servant’s hand, sprung lightly on to his horse, upbraided the old soldier with a smile over his slowness and vanished into the night.
Just as Richon entered Canolles’s room – with the idea of keeping him amused while the little viscount was preparing to depart – a shout of joy from the baron, rocking back in his chair, showed that he held no grudges.
On the table, between the two transparent objects that had once been full bottles, stood a flask, plump and proud of its rotundity, bound with reeds, between which the light of four candles threw sparks of topaz and ruby: it was a flagon of one of those old wines of Collioure,35 the honeyed spice of which delights an already warmed palate. Fine dried figs, almonds, biscuits, sharp-tasting cheeses and candied grapes revealed the innkeeper’s self-interested scheme, the scientific precision of which was demonstrated by two empty bottles and one half-full: undoubtedly, whoever touched this persuasive dessert would be sure, however sober he might be, to consume a great deal of liquid.
Canolles did not pride himself on his abstemiousness: he was no anchorite. Perhaps too, as a Huguenot (he was of a Protestant family and more or less professed the religion of his ancestors), Canolles did not believe in the canonization of those pious hermits who got to heaven by drinking water and eating roots.36 So, however sad, or even however much in love he was, he was never unmoved by the scent of a good dinner or the sight of those bottles, with their peculiar shape, their red, yellow or green stoppers, which, beneath the faithful cork, preserve the finest lifeblood of Gascony, Champagne or Burgundy. In this particular instance, Canolles had therefore given in to what charmed the eye, and from the eye to the sense of smell, and from the scent to the taste – and since out of the five senses, with which he was endowed by the good mother of us all whom we name Nature, three were completely satisfied, the other two decided to be patient and to await their turn in a state of the most beatific resignation.
This was the moment at which Richon entered and found Canolles leaning back in his chair.
‘I say!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve come just at the right time, my dear Richon. I needed someone to whom I could extol the virtues of Master Biscarros, and I was about to be reduced to singing his praises to that good-for-nothing Castorin, who doesn’t know the first thing about drinking, and whom I have never managed to teach how to eat. Now, then, look at that dresser, dear boy, and cast your eyes on this table, at which I invite you to sit down. Is he not a true artist, the innkeeper at the Golden Calf, a man whom I should like to recommend to my friend the Duke d’Epernon? Listen to the menu and judge for yourself, Richon, as a connoisseur: a bisque, an horsd’oeuvre of marinated oysters, anchovies, some pigs’ trotters, a capon with olives in a bottle of Medoc (the remains of which we have here), a partridge with truffles, some caramelized peas, a jelly of wild cherries, and all washed down with a bottle of Chambertin here present. In addition to those, there is this dessert and bottle of Collioure which are doing their best to keep their end up, and which will go down like the others, especially if we attack on two fronts. Devil take it, I’m in a damned good mood and Biscarros is a great master of his art. Sit down there, Richon. You’ve had supper? So what? So have I, but that doesn’t matter: we’ll start again.’
‘Thank you, Baron,’ said Richon with a laugh. ‘But I’m not hungry any more.’
‘I accept the possibility: one may not be hungry, but one is always thirsty, so try some of this Collioure.’
Richon held out a glass.
‘So you’ve had supper, have you?’ said Canolles. ‘With that silly little viscount of yours! Oh, I beg your pardon, Richon… No, not at all, I’m wrong… a charming fellow, on the contrary, thanks to whom I can enjoy the best things in life, instead of giving up the ghost through the three or four holes that the Duke d’Epernon was expecting to make in my skin. So, I’m very grateful to the pretty viscount, that delightful Ganymede.37 Ah, Richon! You do indeed seem to me to be what is said of you: that is, the true servant of Monsieur de Condé.’
‘Come, come, Baron!’ Richon said, roaring with laughter. ‘Don’t suggest such things, or I’ll die laughing.’
‘Die laughing! You? Come, come, my good man. Igne tantum perituri, Quia estis, Landerini. You know the song, I suppose? It’s one of your patron’s carols, composed on the German river Rhenus one day, when he was reassuring one of his companions, who was afraid of drowning.38 What a devil you are, Richon! No matter, but I can’t stand your little gentleman: that way he has of taking an interest in the first handsome fellow who rides by!’
And Canolles threw himself back on his chair, with a roar of laughter, his moustache curling in a paroxysm of hilarity that Richon could not avoid sharing.
‘So, then,’ said Canolles. ‘Seriously, my dear Richon: you’re a conspirator, aren’t you?’
Richon went on laughing, but his laughter was more constrained.
‘Do you know, I had a good mind to have you arrested, you and your little gentleman? By heaven, it would have been amusing and quite easy. I had the strong men of my good friend d’Epernon right here. Huh! Richon in the guardhouse and the little gentleman as well! Landerini!’
At that moment, they heard the sound of two horses galloping away.
‘Ah, ha!’ Canolles said, listening to the sound. ‘What’s that, Richon? Do you know?’
‘I think I can guess.’
‘So tell me.’
‘It’s the little gentleman leaving us…’
‘Without saying goodbye to me!’ Canolles exclaimed. ‘He is quite definitely a bumpkin.’
‘No, my dear Baron, just a man in a hurry.’
Canolles raised an eyebrow.
‘What peculiar manners!’ he said. ‘Where was the boy brought up? Richon, my friend, I must warn you that he does you no credit. That’s not the way that gentlemen behave. Corbleu! I do believe that if I had him here, I’d box his ears. Devil take his old father, who was too stingy no doubt to provide him with a tutor!’
‘Don’t upset yourself, Baron,’ said Richon with a laugh. ‘The viscount is not as ill-bred as you think, because as he left he instructed me to convey his apologies to you and told me to say lots and lots of flattering things to you.’
‘Good, good!’ said Canolles. ‘An empty gesture, though, but one that makes a great impertinence into a small slight, that’s all. Darn it! I’m in a savage mood. Pick a fight with me, Richon! Don’t you want to? Wait… Sarpejeu! Richon, my friend, you’re an ugly devil.’
Richon started to laugh.
‘In that mood, Baron, you could well win a hundred pistoles from me if we play at cards this evening. You know: unlucky in love, lucky at cards.’
Richon was well acquainted with Canolles and knew what he was doing when he suggested this outlet for the baron’s bad temper.
‘Why, yes, by Jove! Cards! Yes, cards! You’re right, my friend, you’ve said just the right thing. Richon, I think you’re a fine fellow. Richon, you’re as handsome as Adonis, and I forgive Monsieur de Cambes. Castorin, bring us the cards!’
Castorin hurried back, accompanied by Biscarros, and the two of them set up a table, at which the friends started to play. Castorin, who had been dreaming for ten years about a martingale for trente-et-quarante,39 and Biscarros, who was looking hungrily at the money, stayed standing at either end of the table watching them. In less than an hour, despite what he had predicted, Richon was winning eighty pistoles from his friend, so Canolles, who had no money on him, told Castorin to go and fetch some from his suitcase.
‘No need,’ said Richon, hearing this. ‘I don’t have time to give you your revenge.’
‘What! You don’t have time?’ said Canolles.
‘No, it is eleven o’clock, and at midnight I must be at my post.’
‘Come on, you can’t be serious?’
‘Baron,’ said Richon, ‘you are a military man so you surely know that orders are orders.’
‘So why didn’t you go before you had won my money?’ Canolles asked, half amused and half cross.
‘Could you by any chance be reproaching me for coming to see you?’ asked Richon.
‘Heaven forbid! But, listen: I haven’t the slightest desire to sleep, and I’m terribly bored here. Suppose I offered to come with you, Richon?’
‘I should refuse the honour, Baron. Business of the sort that I am charged with must be conducted without witnesses.’
‘Very well, then. Which direction are you going?’
‘I was about to ask you to refrain from asking me that.’
‘And which way did the viscount go?’
‘I must answer that I know nothing about that.’
Canolles looked at Richon to make sure that there was not a trace of irony in these rude responses, but the Governor of Vayres,40 with his kind eyes and his open smile, while they may not have lessened Canolles’s impatience, at least disarmed his curiosity.
‘Come, now,’ said Canolles, ‘you’re stuffed with mystery this evening, my dear Richon. But that’s your business! I should have been very annoyed, myself, if someone had been following me three hours ago – although, when it comes down to it, the person following me would have been as disappointed as I was. So let’s have a last glass of this Collioure and farewell.’
At this, Canolles refilled the glasses, and Richon, after clinking his glass against the baron’s and having drunk his health, went, without the other trying to find out which way he was going. But left alone among the half-burned candles, the empty bottles and the scattered cards, the baron felt one of those melancholies that can only be understood when one experiences them, because his merriment earlier in the evening had been the outcome of a disappointment that he had been trying, not altogether successfully, to forget.
So he went wearily towards his bedroom, casting a glance full of anger and regret through the windows in the corridor at the little isolated house, one window of which was lit up by a reddish glow and crossed from time to time by shadows, showing that Mademoiselle de Lartigues was spending a less lonely evening than he was.
On the first step of the staircase, the toe of Canolles’s boot touched something: he leant down and picked up one of the viscount’s little pearl-grey gloves, which he had let fall in his hurry to get away from Master Biscarros’s inn, presumably considering it not valuable enough to waste time in looking for it.
Whatever Canolles might have imagined, in a moment of misanthropy that was quite excusable in a frustrated lover, there was no more satisfaction to be found in the little isolated house than in the inn of the Golden Calf.
Nanon spent the night in a state of disquiet and agitation, imagining a thousand ways to warn Canolles; she had employed all the wit and guile that exist in the head of a well-managed woman to get herself out of her present perilous situation. All that was needed was to evade the duke’s vigilance for a minute to speak to Francinette or two minutes to write a line to Canolles on a scrap of paper.
But it was as though the duke, guessing what was going on in her mind and reading her anxiety through the happy mask that she put on, had sworn to himself not to allow her the moment of freedom that she needed so much.
Nanon had a migraine, but Monsieur d’Epernon would not allow her to get up and find her smelling salts, going instead to get them himself.
Nanon pricked herself with a pin, suddenly causing a ruby to appear on the end of her pearly white finger, and so wanted to go to her work-basket and fetch a piece of that famous rose taffeta that was starting to become so popular at the time. Monsieur d’Epernon, tireless in his attentions, cut off the piece of red taffeta with infuriating skill and double-locked the workbasket.
So Nanon pretended to fall fast asleep, and almost at once the duke began to snore. Consequently, Nanon opened her eyes and by the night light in its alabaster on the bedside table, tried to take the duke’s own notebook out of his jerkin, which was within reach, close beside the bed; but, just as she was holding the pencil and had torn off a sheet of paper, the duke opened one eye.
‘What are you doing, my dearest?’ he said.
‘I was looking to see if there was a calendar with your notebook,’ she answered.
‘Why did you want one?’ he asked.
‘To see the date of your birthday.’
‘My name is Louis, so my birthday is on 25 August, as you know, so you have lots of time to get ready for it, my lovely.’ And he took the notebook from her hand and put it back in the pocket.
At least this last manoeuvre had gained Nanon a pencil and some paper. She put both of them under her pillow and cleverly tipped over her night light, hoping that she would manage to write in the dark. But the duke immediately rang for Francinette and called loudly for lights, pretending that he could not sleep if he couldn’t see. Francinette ran up before Nanon had written half her sentence, and the duke, fearing a repeat of the recent accident, ordered Francinette to put two candles on the mantelpiece. This time it was Nanon who declared that she could not sleep in the light and, feverish with impatience, turned her face to the wall, waiting for daylight with an anxiety that can easily be understood.
This dread day eventually shone on the tips of the poplars, and the light of the two candles paled. The Duke d’Epernon, who
made a point of sticking to the habits of military life, was up with the first ray of sunlight shining through the shutters, dressed by himself, so as not to leave his little Nanon for a single moment, put on a dressing gown and rang to find out if there was any news.
Francinette replied to the question by bringing the duke a packet of dispatches that Courtauvaux, his favourite groom, had brought overnight. The duke began to unseal them and read them with one eye, while the other eye, to which he tried to give the most loving expression he could, did not leave Nanon.
If she could, Nanon would have chopped the duke in pieces.
‘Do you know what you should do, my dearest?’ the duke asked after reading some of his dispatches.
‘No, my lord,’ Nanon replied. ‘But if your lordship would be good enough to give his orders, I shall comply with them.’
‘You ought to send for your brother,’ said the duke. ‘I have just received a letter from Bordeaux with the information that I was expecting, and he could start at once, so that on his return I should have an excuse for giving him the promotion that you want.’
The duke’s face expressed the most unalloyed benevolence.
‘Come, now,’ Nanon said to herself. ‘Take heart! There is a chance that Canolles will read something in my eyes or understand a hint.’
Then, aloud, she said: ‘You send for him, my dear Duke’ – guessing that if she undertook to do it herself, the duke would not let her.
D’Epernon called Francinette and sent her off to the inn of the Golden Calf with no message except this: ‘Tell Baron de Canolles that Mademoiselle de Lartigues is expecting him for lunch.’
Nanon glanced at Francinette but, eloquent though the glance was, Francinette could not read in it: ‘Tell the Baron de Canolles that I am his sister.’
Francinette set off, realizing that there was something fishy going on and that the fish could well turn out to be a snake.
Meanwhile, Nanon got up and stood behind the duke, so that she could immediately warn Canolles to be on his guard, and she got to work preparing a cunning speech which would, from the first words, inform the baron of all that he needed to know to avoid playing any false notes in the family trio that was about to be performed.