"When Ma'm'selle drinks from her satin shoe
With a Bacchante's love for a Bacchic brew!"
"Reparation, Madame?" went on the marquis. "Such things are beyond
reparation. And yet it is possible to save him. But how? Behold! you
inspire me. I will save him. I will pardon his insolence, his contempt,
his indifference, which, having my bone, was bred in him. Still, the
question rises: for what shall I save him? Shall he love a good woman
some day? Mayhap. So I will save him, not for the Church, but for the
possible but unknown quantity."
There was a chorus, noisy and out of all harmony. At the end there came
a crash, followed by laughter. Some convivial spirit had lost his
balance and had fallen to the floor, dragging with him several bottles.
Without heeding these sounds, the marquis continued his monologue. "Yes,
I will save him. But not with kindly words, with promises, with appeals;
he would laugh at me. No, Madame; human nature such as his does not stir
to these when they come from the lips of one he does not hold in respect.
The shock must be rude, penetrating. I must break his pride. And on
what is pride based if not upon the pomp of riches? I will take away his
purse. What was his antipathy to Mademoiselle de Montbazon? . . . That
would be droll, upon honor! I never thought of that before;" and he
indulged in noiseless laughter.
The roisterers could be heard discussing wagers, some of which concerned
horses, scandals, and women. Ordinarily the marquis would have listened
with secret pleasure to this equivocal pastime; but somehow it was at
this moment distasteful to his ears.
"My faith! but these Jesuits have cast a peculiar melancholy over me;
this frog's blood of mine would warm to generous impulses! . . . I
wonder where I have seen that younger fanatic?" The marquis mused a
while, but the riddle remained elusive and unexplained. He struck the
bell to summon Jehan. "Announce to Monsieur le Comte my desire to hold
speech with him, immediately."
"With Monsieur le Comte?" cried Jehan.
"Ass! must I repeat a command?"
Jehan hurried away, nearly overcome by surprise.
"A toast!" said the Vicomte d'Halluys: "the Chevalier's return to Paris
and to favor!"
The roisterers filled their glasses. "To Paris, Chevalier, to court!"
"To the beautiful unknown," whispered the poet into his friend's ear.
"Thanks, Messieurs," said the Chevalier. "Paris!" and a thousand flashes
of candle-light darted from the brimming glasses.
The scene was not without its picturesqueness. The low crockery shelves
of polished mahogany running the length of the room and filled with rare
porcelain, costly Italian glass, medieval silver, antique flagons,
loving-cups of gold inlaid with amber and garnets; a dazzling array of
candlesticks; a fireplace of shining mosaics; the mahogany table littered
with broken glass, full and empty bottles, broken pipes, pools of
overturned wine, shredded playing cards, cracked dice, and dead candles;
somber-toned pictures and rusted armor lining the walls; the brilliant
uniforms of the officers from Fort Louis, the laces and satins of the
civilians; the flushed faces, some handsome, some sodden, some made
hideous by the chisel and mallet of vice: all these produced a scene at
once attractive and repelling.