Bardelys the Magnificent - Rafael Sabatini (affordable ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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dome of glass overhead.
“Ah-h!” he gasped. It was a long-drawn sigh of regret, of conclusion,
or of weary impatience. “There is no one in Toulouse who will swear
to your identity monsieur?” he asked.
“I am afraid there is not,” I replied. “I know of no one.”
As I uttered those words the President’s countenance changed as
abruptly as if he had flung off a mask. From soft and cat-like
that he had been during the past few moments, he grew of a sudden
savage as a tiger. He leapt to his feet, his face crimson, his
eyes seeming to blaze, and the words he spoke came now in a hot,
confused, and almost incoherent torrent.
“Miserable!” he roared, “out of your own mouth have you convicted
yourself. And to think that you should have stood there and wasted
the time of this Court - His Majesty’s time - with your damnable
falsehoods! What purpose did you think to serve by delaying your
doom? Did you imagine that haply, whilst we sent to Paris for your
witnesses, the King might grow weary of justice, and in some fit
of clemency announce a general pardon? Such things have been known,
and it may be that in your cunning you played for such a gain based
upon such a hope. But justice, fool, is not to be cozened. Had
you, indeed, been Bardelys, you had seen that here in this court
sits a gentleman who is very intimate with him. He is there,
monsieur; that is Monsieur le Comte de Chatellerault, of whom
perhaps you may have heard. Yet, when I ask you whether in Toulouse
there is any one who can bear witness to your identity, you answer
me that you know of no one. I will waste no more time with you, I
promise you.”
He flung himself back into his chair like a man exhausted, and
mopped his brow with a great kerchief which he had drawn from his
robes. His fellow judges laid their heads together, and with smiles
and nods, winks and leers, they discussed and admired the miraculous
subtlety and acumen of this Solomon. Chatellerault sat, calmly
smiling, in solemn mockery.
For a spell I was too thunderstruck to speak, aghast at this
catastrophe. Like a fool, indeed, I had tumbled into the pit that
had been dug for me by Chatellerault for I never doubted that it
was of his contriving. At last, “My masters,” said I, “these
conclusions may appear to you most plausible, but, believe me, they
are fallacious. I am perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de
Chatellerault, and he with me, and if he were to speak the truth
and play the man and the gentleman for once, he would tell you that
I am, indeed, Bardelys. But Monsieur le Comte has ends of his own
to serve in sending me to my doom. It is in a sense through his
agency that I am at present in this position, and that I have been
confounded with Lesperon. What, then, could it have availed me to
have made appeal to him? And yet, Monsieur le President, he was
born a gentleman, and he may still retain some notion of honour.
Ask him, sir - ask him point-blank, whether I am or not Marcel de
Bardelys.”
The firmness of my tones created some impression upon those feeble
minds. Indeed, the President went so far as to turn an interrogative
glance upon the Count. But Chatellerault, supremely master of the
situation, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled a pitying,
long-suffering smile.
“Must I really answer such a question, Monsieur le President?” he
inquired in a voice and with a manner that clearly implied how low
would be his estimate of the President’s intelligence if he were,
indeed, constrained to do so.
“But no, Monsieur le Comte,” replied the President with sudden haste,
and in scornful rejection of the idea. “There is no necessity that
you should answer.”
“But the question, Monsieur le President!” I thundered, my hand
outstretched towards Chatellerault. “Ask him - if you have any
sense of your duty - ask him am I not Marcel de Bardelys.”
“Silence!” blazed the President back at me. “You shall not fool us
any longer, you nimble-witted liar!”
My head drooped. This coward had, indeed, shattered my last hope.
“Some day, monsieur,” I said very quietly, “I promise you that your
behaviour and these gratuitous insults shall cost you your position.
Pray God they do not cost you also your head!”
My words they treated as one might treat the threats of a child.
That I should have had the temerity to utter them did but serve
finally to decide my doom, if, indeed, anything had been wanting.
With many epithets of opprobrium, such as are applied to malefactors
of the lowest degree, they passed sentence of death upon me, and
with drooping spirits, giving myself up for lost and assured that
I should be led to the block before many hours were sped, I
permitted them to reconduct me through the streets of Toulouse to
my prison.
I could entertain you at length upon my sensations as I walked
between my guards, a man on the threshold of eternity, with hundreds
of men and women gaping at me - men and women who would live for
years to gape upon many another wretch in my position. The sun
shone with a brilliance that to such eyes as mine was a very mockery.
Thus would it shine on through centuries, and light many another
unfortunate to the scaffold. The very sky seemed pitiless in the
intensity of its cobalt. Unfeeling I deemed the note that everywhere
was struck by man and Nature, so discordant was it with my gloomy
outlook. If you would have food for reflection upon the evanescent
quality of life, upon the nothingness of man, upon the empty,
heartless egoism implicit in human nature, get yourselves sentenced
to death, and then look around you. With such a force was all this
borne in upon me, and with such sufficiency, that after the first
pang was spent I went near to rejoicing that things were as they
were, and that I was to die, haply before sunset. It was become
such a world as did not seem worth a man’s while to live in: a world
of vainness, of hollowness, of meanness, of nothing but illusions.
The knowledge that I was about to die, that I was about to quit all
this, seemed to have torn some veil from my eyes, and to have
permitted me to recognize the worthless quality of what I left.
Well may it be that such are but the thoughts of a man’s dying
moments, whispered into his soul by a merciful God to predispose him
for the wrench and agony of his passing.
I had been a half-hour in my cell when the door was opened to admit
Castelroux, whom I had not seen since the night before. He came
to condole with me in my extremity, and yet to bid me not utterly
lose hope.
“It is too late to-day to carry out the sentence,” said he, “and as
tomorrow will be Sunday, you will have until the day after. By
then much may betide, monsieur. My agents are everywhere scouring
the province for your servants, and let us pray Heaven that they
may succeed in their search.”
“It is a forlorn hope, Monsieur de Castelroux,” I sighed, “and I
will pin no faith to it lest I suffer a disappointment that will
embitter my last moments, and perhaps rob me of some of the
fortitude I shall have need of.”
He answered me, nevertheless, with words of encouragement. No
effort was being spared, and if Rodenard and my men were still in
Languedoc then was every likelihood that they would be brought to
Toulouse in time. Then he added that that, however, was not the
sole object of his visit. A lady had obtained permission of the
Keeper of the Seals to visit me, and she was waiting to be admitted.
“A lady?” I exclaimed, and the thought of Roxalanne flitted through
my mind. “Mademoiselle de Lavedan?” I inquired.
He nodded. “Yes,” said he; then added, “She seems in sore
affliction, monsieur.”
I besought him to admit her forthwith, and presently she came.
Castelroux closed the door as he withdrew, and we were left alone
together. As she put aside her cloak, and disclosed to me the pallor
of her face and the disfiguring red about her gentle eyes, telling
of tears and sleeplessness, all my own trouble seemed to vanish in
the contemplation of her affliction.
We stood a moment confronting each other with no word spoken. Then,
dropping her glance, and advancing a step, in a faltering,
hesitating manner “Monsieur, monsieur,” she murmured in a suffocating
voice.
In a bound I was beside her, and I had gathered her in my arms, her
little brown head against my shoulder.
“Roxalanne!” I whispered as soothingly as I might - “Roxalanne!”
But she struggled to be free of my embrace.
“Let me go, monsieur,” she pleaded, a curious shrinking in her very
voice. “Do not touch me, monsieur. You do not know - you do not
know.”
For answer, I enfolded her more tightly still.
“But I do know, little one,” I whispered; “and I even understand.”
At that, her struggles ceased upon the instant, and she seemed to
lie limp and helpless in my arms.
“You know, monsieur,” she questioned me - “you know that I betrayed
you?”
“Yes,” I answered simply.
“And you can forgive me? I am sending you to your death and you
have no reproaches for me! Oh, monsieur, it will kill me!”
“Hush, child!” I whispered. “What reproaches can I have for you?
I know the motives that impelled you.”
“Not altogether, monsieur; you cannot know them. I loved you,
monsieur. I do love you, monsieur. Oh! this is not a time to
consider words. If I am bold and unmaidenly, I - I—”
“Neither bold nor unmaidenly, but - oh, the sweetest damsel in all
France, my Roxalanne!” I broke in, coming to her aid. “Mine was a
leprous, sinful soul, child, when I came into Languedoc. I had no
faith in any human good, and I looked as little for an honest man
or a virtuous woman as one looks for honey in a nettle. I was
soured, and my life had hardly been such a life as it was meet to
bring into contact with your own. Then, among the roses at Lavedan,
in your dear company, Roxalanne, it seemed that some of the good,
some of the sweetness, some of the purity about you were infused
anew into my heart. I became young again, and I seemed oddly
cleansed. In that hour of my rejuvenation I loved you, Roxalanne.”
Her face had been raised to mine as I spoke. There came now a
flutter of the eyelids, a curious smile about the lips. Then her
head drooped again and was laid against my breast; a sigh escaped
her, and she began to weep softly.
“Nay, Roxalanne, do not fret. Come, child, it is not your way to
be weak.”
“I have betrayed you!” she moaned. “I am sending you to your
death!”
“I understand, I understand,” I answered, smoothing her brown
hair.
“Not quite, monsieur. I loved you so, monsieur, that you can have
no thought of how I suffered that morning when Mademoiselle de
Marsac came to Lavedan.
“At first it was but the pain of thinking that - that I was about to
lose you; that you were to
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