By-and-by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame's
women were peering at him through the open doorway. He looked that way
and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back
again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the door.
It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their
favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why
she did not come and serve him herself.
But for a while longer the savour of the roasted game took up the major
part of his thoughts; and when prudence warned him to desist, and he sat
back, satisfied after his long fast, he was in no mood to be critical.
Perhaps--for somewhere in the house he heard a lute--Madame was
entertaining those whom she could not leave? Or deluding some who might
betray him if they discovered him?
From that his mind turned back to the streets and the horrors through
which he had passed; but for a moment and no more. A shudder, an emotion
of prayerful pity, and he recalled his thoughts. In the quiet of the
cool room, looking on the sunny, vine-clad court, with the tinkle of the
lute and the murmurous sound of women's voices in his ears, it was hard
to believe that the things from which he had emerged were real. It was
still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on them. A day of
reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the cause would rally,
bristling with pikes and snorting with war-horses, and the blood spilled
in this wicked city would cry aloud for vengeance. But the hour was not
yet. He had lost his mistress, and for that atonement must be exacted.
But in the present another mistress awaited him, and as a man could only
die once, and might die at any minute, so he could only live once, and in
the present. Then vogue la galere!
As he roused himself from this brief reverie and fell to wondering how
long he was to be left to himself, a rosebud tossed by an unseen hand
struck him on the breast and dropped to his knees. To seize it and kiss
it gallantly, to spring to his feet and look about him were instinctive
movements. But he could see no one; and, in the hope of surprising the
giver, he stole to the window. The sound of the lute and the distant
tinkle of laughter persisted. The court, save for a page, who lay asleep
on a bench in the gallery, was empty. Tignonville scanned the boy
suspiciously; a male disguise was often adopted by the court ladies, and
if Madame would play a prank on him, this was a thing to be reckoned
with. But a boy it seemed to be, and after a while the young man went
back to his seat.