In Kings' Byways Part 6

"I have played for my life, and lost," Bazan answered proudly. "I promised, and I am a gentleman."

"Pheugh!" Crillon whistled. He swore again, and stood. He was a great man, and full of expedients, but the position was novel. Yet, after a minute's thought, he had an idea. He started off again, taking Bazan's arm, and impelling him onwards, with the same haste and violence. "To Simon's! to Simon's!" he cried as before. "Courage, my friend, I will play him for you and win you: I will redeem you. After all, it is simple, absolutely simple."

"He will not play for me," the young man answered despondently.

Nevertheless he suffered himself to be borne onwards. "What will you set against me?"

"Anything, everything!" his new friend cried recklessly. "Myself, if necessary. Courage, M. de Bazan, courage! What Crillon wills, Crillon does. You do not know me yet, but I have taken a fancy to you, I have!"--He swore a grisly oath. "And I will make you mine."

He gave the young man no time for further objection, but, holding him firmly by the arm, he hurried him through the streets to the door below the two gables. On this he knocked with the air of one who had been there before, and to whom all doors opened. In the momentary pause before it yielded Bazan spoke. "Will you not be in danger here?" he asked, wondering much.

"It is a Guise house? True, it is. But there is danger everywhere. No man dies more than once or before G.o.d wills it! And I am Crillon!"

The superb air with which he said this last prepared Bazan for what followed. The moment the door was opened, Crillon pushed through the doorway, and with an a.s.sured step strode down the pa.s.sage. He turned the corner of the screen and stood in the room; and, calmly smiling at the group of startled, astonished faces which were turned on him, he drew off his cloak and flung it over his left arm. His height at all times made him a conspicuous figure; this night he was fresh from court. He wore black and silver, the hilt of his long sword was jewelled, the Order of the Holy Ghost glittered on his breast; and this fine array seemed to render more shabby the pretentious finery of the third-rate adventurers before him. He saluted them coolly. "It is a wet night, gentlemen," he said.

Some of those who sat farthest off had risen, and all had drawn together as sheep club at sight of the wolf. One of them answered sullenly that it was.

"You think I intrude, gentlemen?" he returned, smiling pleasantly, drinking in as homage the stir his entrance had caused. For he was vain.

"I want only an old friend, M. Michel Berthaud, who is here, I think?"

"And for what do you want him?" the tall dark player answered defiantly; he alone of those present seemed in a degree a match for the new-comer, though even his gloomy eyes fell before Crillon's easy stare.

"For what do you want me?"

"To propose a little game to you," Crillon answered: and he moved down the room, apparently at his ease. "My friend here has told me of his ill-luck. He is resolved to perform his bargain. But first, M. Berthaud, I have a proposal to make to you. His life is yours. You have won it.

Well, I will set you five hundred crowns against it."

The scowl on Berthaud's face did not relax. "No," he said contemptuously. "I will not play with you, M. de Crillon. Let the fool die. What is he to you?"

"Nothing, and yet I have a fancy to win him," Crillon replied lightly.

"Come, I will stake a thousand crowns against him! A thousand crowns for a life! _Mon Dieu_," he added, with a whimsical glance at Bazan, "but you are dear, my friend!"

Indeed, half a score of faces shone with cupidity, and twice as many bearded lips watered. A thousand crowns! A whole thousand crowns! But to the surprise of most--a few knew their man--Berthaud shook his head.

"No," he said, "I will not play! I won his life, and I will have it."

"Fifteen hundred crowns. I will set that! Fifteen----"

"No!"

"Two thousand, then! Two thousand, man! And I will throw in my chain. It is worth five hundred more."

"No! No! No!"

"Then, say what you will play for!" the great man roared, his face swelling with rage. "Thousand devils and all tonsured! I have a mind to win his life. What will you have against it?"

"Against it?"

"Ay!"

"Yours!" said M. Berthaud, very softly.

Bazan drew in his breath--sharply: otherwise the silence was so intense that the fall of the wood-ashes from the dying fire could be heard. The immense, the boundless audacity of the proposal made some smile and some start. But none smiled so grimly as M. Michel Berthaud the challenger and none started so little as M. de Crillon, the challenged.

"A high bid!" he said, lifting his chin with something almost of humour; and then glancing round him, as a wolf might glance, if the sheep turned on him. "You ask much, M. Berthaud."

"I will ask less then," replied Berthaud, with irony. "If I win, I will give you his life. He shall go free whether you win or lose, M. de Crillon."

"That is much!" with answering irony.

"Much or little----"

"It is understood?"

"It is," Berthaud rejoined with a sarcastic bow.

"Then I accept!" Crillon cried: and with a movement so brisk that some recoiled, he sat down at the table. "I accept. Silence!" he continued, turning sharply upon Bazan, whose cry of remonstrance rang above the astonished murmur of the bystanders. "Silence, fool!" He struck the table. "It is my will. Fear nothing! I am Crillon, and I do not lose."

There was a superb self-confidence in the man, an arrogance, a courage, which more than anything else persuaded his hearers that he was in earnest, that he was not jesting with them.

"The terms are quite understood," he proceeded, grimly. "If I win, we go free, M. Berthaud. If I lose, M. de Bazan goes free, and I undertake on the honor of a n.o.bleman to kill myself before daylight. Shall I say within six hours? I have affairs to settle!"

Probably no one in the room felt astonishment equal to that of Berthaud.

A faint colour tinged his sallow cheeks; a fierce gleam of joy flashed in his eyes. But all he said was, "Yes, I am satisfied."

"Then throw!" said Crillon, and leaning forward he took a candle from a neighbouring table, and placed it beside him. "My friend," he added, speaking to Bazan with earnest gravity, "I advise you to be quiet. If you do not we shall quarrel."

His smile was as easy, his manner as unembarra.s.sed, his voice as steady, as when he had entered the room. The old gamesters who stood round the table, and had seen, with interest indeed and some pity, but with no great emotion, a man play his last stake, saw this, saw a man stake his life for a whim, with very different feelings; with astonishment, with admiration, with a sense of inferiority that did not so much gall their pride as awaken their interest. For the moment, the man who was above death, who risked it for a fancy, a trifle, a momentary gratification, was a demiG.o.d. "Throw!" repeated Crillon, heedless and apparently unconscious of the stir round him: "Throw! but beware of that candle!

Your sleeve is in it."

It was; it was singeing. Berthaud moved the candle, and as if his enemy's _sang froid_ wounded him, he threw savagely, dashing down the dice on the table, and lifting the box with a gesture of defiance. He swore a frightful oath: his face was livid. He had thrown aces only.

"So!" murmured his opponent quietly. "Is that all? A thousand crowns to a hundred that I better that! Five hundred to a hundred that I double it! Will no one take me? Then I throw. Courage, my friend. I am Crillon!"

He threw; an ace and a deuce.

"I waste nothing," he said.

But few heard the words--his opponent perhaps and one or two others; for from end to end the room rang and the oaken rafters shook with a great cry of "Long live Crillon! the brave Crillon!"--a cry which rose from a score of throats. Then and onwards till the day of his death, many years later, he was known throughout France by no other name. The great king's letter to him, "Hang yourself, brave Crillon. We have fought to-day, and you were not there!" is not yet forgotten--nay, never will be forgotten--in a land where, more than in other, the memories of the past have been swept away.

He rose from the table, bowing grandly, superbly, arrogantly. "Adieu, M.

Berthaud--for the present," he said; and had he not seemed too proud to threaten, a threat might have underlain his words. "Adieu, gentlemen,"

he continued, throwing on his cloak. "A good night to you, and equal fortune. M. de Bazan, I will trouble you to accompany me? You have exchanged, let me tell you, one taskmaster for another."

The young man's heart was too full for words, and making no attempt to speak, or to thank his benefactor, before those who had seen the deed, he followed him from the room. Crillon did not speak or halt until they stood in the Rue des Fosses; nor even there, for after a momentary hesitation he pa.s.sed through it, and led the way to the middle of the open s.p.a.ce before the Louvre. Here he stopped, and touched his companion on the breast. "Now," he said, "we can speak with freedom, my friend.

You wish to thank me? Do not. Listen to me instead. I have saved your life, ay, that have I; but I hold it at my will? Say, is it not so?

Well, I, too, in my turn wish you to do something for me."

"Anything!" said the young man, pa.s.sionately. The sight of the other's strange daring had stirred his untried nature to its depths. "You have but to ask and have."