The Duke's Motto: A Melodrama Read online

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  A VILLAGE FAIR

  It was a custom of old standing in the little village of Neuilly to holda fair every year in the full flush of the spring. The custom of thisfair went back for ages; antiquarians declared that they could findtraces of it so far off as the reign of the good King Dagobert of theyellow hair, who had, as immortal song has consecrated, a triflingdifficulty with his smallclothes; at least, it was certain that it datedfrom a very long time, and that year by year it had grown in importancewith the people who go to fairs for the purposes of business, and inpopularity with the people who go to fairs for the purposes of pleasure.Hither came half the tumblers, rope-walkers, contortionists, balancers,bear-leaders, puppet-players, wrestlers, strong men, fat women, beardedladies, living skeletons, horrible deformities, lion-tamers, quackdoctors, mountebanks, and jugglers who patrolled Europe in those days,and earned a precarious living and enjoyed the sweets of a vagabondfreedom in the plying of their varied trades.

  At one time the fair of Neuilly had attracted only the humbler folk fromParis to taste of its wares, but as it had gradually grown in importance,so, accordingly, it had increased the number of its clients. First, thehumbler burgesses came with their wives to gape and stare at the marvelsit displayed; then their example was followed by the wealthier of theirkind, and fur and velvet moved freely among the rabble of the fair. Now,in the year with which we deal, it had been for some little time thefashion for gentlefolk to drift in merry parties to Neuilly and enjoy thefun of the fair as frankly as any sober burgess or loose-tongued clerk.This year, however, a greater honor still was in store for the fair andits fellowships of vagrant playmakers. It was known to a few, who wereprivileged to share the secret, and also privileged to share theenjoyment with which that secret was concerned, that his SovereignMajesty Louis of Bourbon, thirteenth of his name of the kings of France,intended to visit incognito the fair at Neuilly. He was to go thitheraccompanied by a few of the choicest spirits of his court, the mostexcellent of the rakes and libertines who had been received into theintimacy of the king's newly found liberty, and those same rakes andlibertines felt highly flattered at being chosen by his highness for hiscompanions in an enterprise which at least was something out of thebeaten track of the rather humdrum amusements of the Louvre. Why the kingparticularly wanted to visit the fair of Neuilly on that particular dayof that particular spring-time, none of those that were in the secret ofthe adventure professed to know or even were curious to inquire. It wasenough for them that the king, in spite of his ill-health, looked nowwith a favorable eye upon frivolity, and that a sport was toward withwhich their palates for pleasure were not already jaded, and they were asgleeful as children at the prospect of the coming fun.

  Neuilly knew nothing of the honor that was awaiting it. Neuilly was busywith its booths and its trestles and its platforms and its roped-in,canvas-walled circuses, and its gathering of wanderers from every cornerof Europe, speaking every European tongue. Neuilly was as busy as it wellmight be about its yearly business, and could scarcely have made morefuss and noise and pother if it had known that not only the King ofFrance, but every crowned head in Christendom, proposed to pay it avisit.

  A little way from Neuilly, to the Paris side of the fair, there stood asmall wayside inn, which was perched comfortably enough on a bank of theriver. It was called, no one knew why, the Inn of the Three Graces, andhad, like many another wayside inn in France, its pleasant benches beforethe doors for open-air drinkers, and its not unpleasant darkened roomsinside for wassail in stormy weather; also it had quite a large orchardand garden behind it running down to the river's edge, where the peopleof the Inn raised good fruit and good vegetables, which added materiallyto the excellence of their homely table. The high-road that skirted theInn encountered, a little way above it, a bridge that spanned the riverand continued its way to Neuilly and the fair and the world beyond. Atone side of the Inn was a little space of common land, on which, at thistime of fair-making, a company of gypsies were encamped, with theircaravans and their ragged tents and their camp-fires. On the other sideof the Inn were some agreeably arranged arbors, in whose shadow tablesand chairs were disposed for the benefit of those who desired to tastethe air with their wine and viands. Taking it in an amiable spirit, theInn of the Three Graces seemed a very commendable place.

  All day long on the day of which we speak, and all day long for many dayspreceding it, there had been a steady flow of folk from the direction ofParis making in the direction of Neuilly, and not a few of these, takenby the appearance of the little wayside Inn, found it agreeable torefresh themselves by slaking their thirst and staying their stomachsinside or outside of its hospitable walls. The most of those that sopassed were sight-seers, and these the Inn saw again as they passedhomeward in the dusk or sometimes even in the darkness with the aid offlambeaux and lanterns. But a certain number were, as might be said,professional pedestrians, peddlers with their packs upon their shoulders,anxious to dispose of ribbons and trinkets to gaping rustics, easilybubbled burgesses, and to the more wary histrions and mountebanks, forwhom a different scale of charges ranged.

  A little after noon on the day in question the wayside Inn of the ThreeGraces was quiet enough. The last chance visitor had emptied his can andcrossed the bridge to Neuilly and its delights; the last peddler hadslung his pack and tramped in the same direction; the gypsies, who sinceearly morning had sprawled upon the common land, had shaken themselvesfree from their idleness into an assumption of activity, and had marchedoff almost in a body to take their share in the profits of the occasionby a little judicious horse-coping and fortune-telling. One of theirnumber, indeed, they left behind in the great, gaudy, green-and-redcaravan that stood in front of all the other caravans in the middle ofthe grassy space--one of their number who would much have preferred themerriment and the sunlight of the fair to the confinement of the caravan,but who remained in the caravan, nevertheless, because she had to do whatshe was told.

  The neighborhood of the Inn, therefore, seemed strangely deserted when aman appeared upon the bridge in the direction contrary to that of thegeneral stream of passers-by, for this man was coming from the directionof Neuilly and was going in the direction of Paris. He was a twisted manwith a hunched back, who was clad in black and carried a long sword, andhe came slowly down the slope of the bridge and along the road to theInn, looking about him quickly and cautiously the while as he did so. Hehad the air of one resolved to be alert against possible surprises evenwhere surprises were improbable if not impossible; but his sinister facewore a malign smile of self-confidence which proclaimed that its wearerfelt himself to be proof against all dangers.