Bardelys the Magnificent

On the occasion of my first visit to Lavedan I had disregarded--or, rather, Fate had contrived that I should disregard--Chatellerault's suggestion that I should go with all the panoply of power--with my followers, my liveries, and my equipages to compose the magnificence all France had come to associate with my name, and thus dazzle by my brilliant lustre the lady I was come to win. As you may remember, I had crept into the chateau like a thief in the night,--wounded, bedraggled, and of miserable aspect, seeking to provoke compassion rather than admiration.

Not so now that I made my second visit. I availed myself of all the splendour to which I owed my title of "Magnificent," and rode into the courtyard of the Chateau de Lavedan preceded by twenty well-mounted knaves wearing the gorgeous Saint-Pol liveries of scarlet and gold, with the Bardelys escutcheon broidered on the breasts of their doublets--on a field or a bar azure surcharged by three lilies of the field. They were armed with swords and musketoons, and had more the air of a royal bodyguard than of a company of attendant servants.

Our coming was in a way well timed. I doubt if we could have stayed the execution of Saint-Eustache's warrant even had we arrived earlier. But for effect--to produce a striking coup de theatre--we could not have come more opportunely.

A coach stood in the quadrangle, at the foot of the chateau steps: down these the Vicomte was descending, with the Vicomtesse--grim and blasphemant as ever, on one side, and his daughter, white of face and with tightly compressed lips, on the other. Between these two women--his wife and his child--as different in body as they were different in soul, came Lavedan with a firm step, a good colour, and a look of well-bred, lofty indifference to his fate.

He disposed himself to enter the carriage which was to bear him to prison with much the same air he would have assumed had his destination been a royal levee.

Around the coach were grouped a score of men of Saint-Eustache's company--half soldiers, half ploughboys--ill-garbed and indifferently accoutred in dull breastplates and steel caps, many of which were rusted. By the carriage door stood the long, lank figure of the Chevalier himself, dressed with his wonted care, and perfumed, curled, and beribboned beyond belief. His weak, boyish face sought by scowls and by the adoption of a grim smile to assume an air of martial ferocity.

Such was the grouping in the quadrangle when my men, with Gilles at their head, thundered across the drawbridge, giving pause to those within, and drawing upon themselves the eyes of all, as they rode, two by two, under the old-world arch of the keep into the courtyard. And Gilles, who knew our errand, and who was as ready-witted a rogue as ever rode with me, took in the situation at a glance. Knowing how much I desired to make a goodly show, he whispered an order. This resulted in the couples dividing at the gateway, one going to the left and one to the right, so that as they came they spread themselves in a crescent, and drawing rein, they faced forward, confronting and half surrounding the Chevalier's company.