The Duke's Motto: A Melodrama Page 10
IX
THE SCYTHE OF TIME
The years came and the years went, as had been their way since the fallof Troy and earlier. To the philosophic eye, surveying existence with thesupreme wisdom of the initiate into mysteries, things changed but littlethrough eons on the surface of the world, where men loved and hated, bredand slew, triumphed and failed, lorded and cringed as had been the waysince the beginning, when the cave man that handled the heavierknuckle-bone ruled the roost. But to the unphilosophic eye of themajority of mankind things seemed to change greatly in a very littlewhile; and it seemed, therefore, to the superficial, that many things hadhappened in France and in Paris during the seventeen years that hadelapsed since the fight in the moat of Caylus.
To begin with, the great cardinal, the Red Man, the master of France, haddipped from his dusk to his setting, and was inurned, with much pomp andsolemnity, as a great prince of the church should be, and the planetwheeled on its indifferent way, though Armand du Plessis, Cardinal deRichelieu, was no more. His Gracious Majesty Louis the Thirteenth,self-named Louis the Just, found himself, for the first time in hisfutile career, his own master, and did not know quite what to make of theprivilege. He mourned the deceased statesman with one eye, as it were,while he ogled his belated goddess of freedom with the other. It mightwell be that she had paid too tardy a visit, but at least he would essayto trifle with her charms.
Many things had happened to the kingdom over which, for the first time,his Majesty the King held undivided authority since the night of Caylusfight. For one thing, by the cardinal's order, all the fortified castlesin France had been dismantled, and many of them reduced to ruins,owl-haunted, lizard-haunted, ivy-curtained. This decree did notespecially affect Caylus, which had long ceased to be a possible menaceto the state, and, after the death of the grim old marquis, was rapidlyfalling into decay on its own account without aid from the ministers ofRichelieu's will. For another thing, two very well-esteemed gentlemen ofhis Majesty's Musketeers, having been provoked by two other verywell-esteemed gentlemen of his Eminence's Musketeers, had responded tothe challenge with the habitual alacrity of that distinguished body, andhad vindicated its superiority in swordcraft by despatching theirantagonists. After this victory the gentlemen of the Musketeers,remembering the rigor of the cardinal's antipathy to duelling, made avain effort to put some distance between them and the king's justice.They were arrested in their flight, brought back to Paris, and perishedmiserably on the scaffold by the pointless sword of the executioner. Eachof these events proved in its degree that Monsieur de Richelieu had verylittle respect for tradition, and that if he disliked an institution, nomatter how time-hallowed and admired by gentlemen, he did away with it inthe most uncompromising and arbitrary manner. There were many otherdoings during the days of the cardinal's glory that are of no account inthis chronicle, though they were vastly of importance to the people ofFrance. But many things had happened that are of moment to thischronicle, and these, therefore, shall be set down as briefly as may be.
News did not travel, when the seventeenth century was still young, fromone end of the kingdom to the other with any desperate rapidity. Evenwhen the posts rode at a hand gallop, the long leagues took their longtime to cover, and, after all, of most of the news that came to thecapital from abroad and afar it was generally safe to disbelieve a fullhalf, to discredit the third quarter, and to be justifiably sceptical asto the remaining portion. But, credible or incredible, all news is blownto Paris, as all roads lead to Rome, and in the fulness of time it got tobe known in Paris that the Duke Louis de Nevers, the young, thebeautiful, the brilliant, had come to his death in an extraordinary andhorrible manner hard by the Spanish frontier, having been, as it seemed,deliberately butchered by a party of assassins employed, so it was said,by his father-in-law, the old Count of Caylus.
It was not difficult for the well-informed in Paris to credit the ignoblerumor. The old feud between the house of Caylus, on the one hand, and thehouse of Nevers on the other, was familiar to those who made it theirbusiness to be familiar with the movements of high persons in highplaces; and when on the top of this inherited feud you had the secretmarriage between the son of the house of Nevers and the daughter of thehouse of Caylus, there was every reason, at least, to believe in a bloodyend to the business. There was, however, no jot of definite proof againstthe marquis. Nevers's dead body was found, indeed, in the neighborhood ofthe castle, with three sword wounds on it, one inflicted from the backand two from the front, but who inflicted or caused to be inflicted thosewounds it was impossible to assert with knowledge, though it was easyenough to hazard a conjecture.
Anyway, Louis de Nevers was dead. It was amazing news enough for Paris,but there was more amazing news to follow. To begin with, Louis deNevers's young wife was now formally recognized even by the old marquisas Louis de Nevers's young widow. It was true that there was nodocumentary evidence of the marriage, but Prince Louis de Gonzague, whohappened to be a guest of the Marquis de Caylus at the time of themurder, and who seemed little less than inconsolable for the death of hisfriend, came forward in the handsomest, gallantest fashion to give hisevidence. He told how he and his faithful henchman Peyrolles had been thewitnesses of the secret wedding. He succeeded in placating the wrath ofthe Marquis of Caylus. He succeeded in obtaining the sanction of theking, and, which was more important, the sanction of the cardinal, to therecognition of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Caylus with the late DukeLouis de Nevers. All this was thrilling news enough, but news morethrilling was to follow. The newly recognized Duchess of Nevers soon, tothe astonishment and, at first, the blank incredulity of all hearers,took to herself a third name, and became Madame la Princesse de Gonzague.There was soon no doubt about it. She had consented to marry, and hadmarried, Prince Louis de Gonzague, who, as all the world knew, had beenthe closest friend of the dead Louis of Nevers with one exception, andthat was Louis of Bourbon, that was King of France. People who talked ofsuch things said, and in this they were generally inspired in some way,directly or indirectly, by friends of Prince Louis de Gonzague, that theDuke de Nevers had been murdered by an exiled captain of Light-Horse, whowas little else than a professional bully, and who for some purpose orpurposes of his own had, at the same time, succeeded in stealing theduke's infant daughter. What the reasons might be for this mysteriousact of kidnapping they either were not able or did not choose always toexplain. It was an undoubted fact that the late duke's daughter haddisappeared, for the grief of the whilom Duchess de Nevers and presentPrincess de Gonzague was excessive for the loss of her child, and theefforts she made and the money she spent in the hope of finding sometrace of her daughter were as useless as they were unavailing. It wasalso certain that on or about the time of the late duke's death a certaincaptain of Light-Horse, whose name some believed to be Henri deLagardere, had fled in hot haste from Paris to save his audacious headfrom the outraged justice of the king for fighting a duel with a certaintruculent Baron de Brissac and incontinently killing his man.
What connection there might be between these two events those that busiedthemselves in the matter left to the imagination and intelligence oftheir hearers, but after awhile few continued to busy themselves in thematter at all. Nevers was dead and forgotten. The fact that Nevers'sdaughter had been stolen was soon forgotten likewise by all save the manand the woman whom it most immediately concerned. Few troubled themselvesto remember that the Princess de Gonzague had been for a brief season theDuchess de Nevers, and if Louis de Gonzague, whenever the tragic episodewas spoken of, expressed the deepest regret for his lost heart's brotherand the fiercest desire for vengeance upon his murderer or murderers,the occasions on which the tragic episode was referred to grew less yearby year. Louis de Gonzague flourished; Louis de Gonzague lived in Parisin great state; Louis de Gonzague was the intimate, almost the bosomfriend, of the king; for Louis of Bourbon, having lost one of the twoLouis whom he loved, seemed to have a double portion of affection tobestow upon the survivor. If Louis de Gonzague did n
ot himself forget anyof the events connected with a certain night in the moat of Caylus; if hekept emissaries employed in researches in Spain, emissaries whose numbersdwindled dismally and mysteriously enough in the course of thoseresearches, he spoke of his recollections to no one, save perhapsoccasionally to that distinguished individual, Monsieur Peyrolles, whoshared his master's confidences as he shared his master's rise infortunes. For Monsieur Peyrolles knew as well as his master all aboutthat night at Caylus seventeen years before, and could, if he chose--buthe never did choose--have told exactly how the Duke de Nevers came to hisdeath, and how the child of Nevers disappeared, and how it was that thebattered survivors of a little army of bravos had been overawed by themuskets of a company of Free Companions. He could have told how sevengentlemen that were named Staupitz, Faenza, Saldagno, Pepe, Pinto, Joel,and AEsop had been sent to dwell and travel in Spain at the free chargesof Prince Louis de Gonzague, with the sole purpose of finding a man and achild who so far had not been found, though it was now seventeen yearssince the hounds had been sent a-hunting.
But though a year may seem long in running, it runs to its end, andseventeen years, as any school-boy will prove to you, take only seventeentimes the length of one year to wheel into chaos. So these seventeenyears had been and had ceased to be, and it was again summer-time, whenmany people travelled from many parts of the world for the pleasure ofvisiting Paris, and some of those travellers happened to come from Spain.