The Suitors of Yvonne
Being a Portion of the Memoirs of the Sieur Gaston de Luynes

by Rafael Sabatini




CONTENTS



CHAPTER

    I.  OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

   II.  THE FRUIT OF INDISCRETION

  III.  THE FIGHT IN THE HORSE-MARKET

   IV.  FAIR RESCUERS

    V.  MAZARIN, THE MATCH-MAKER

   VI.  OF HOW ANDREA BECAME LOVE­SICK

  VII.  THE CHÂTEAU DR CANAPLES

 VIII.  THE FORESHADOW OF DISASTER

   IX.  OF HOW A WHIP PROVED A BETTER ARGUMENT THAN A TONGUE

    X.  THE CONSCIENCE OF MALPERTUIS

   XI.  OF A WOMAN'S OBSTINACY

  XII.  THE RESCUE

 XIII.  THE HAND OF YVONNE

  XIV.  OF WHAT BEFELL AT REAUX

   XV.  OF MY RESURRECTION

  XVI.  THE WAY OF WOMAN

 XVII.  FATHER AND SON

XVIII.  OF HOW I LEFT CANAPLES

  XIX.  OF MY RETURN TO PARIS

   XX.  OF HOW THE CHEVALIER DE CANAPLES BECAME A FRONDEUR

  XXI.  OF THE BARGAIN THAT ST. AUBAN DROVE WITH MY LORD CARDINAL

 XXII.  OF MY SECOND JOURNEY TO CANAPLES

XXIII.  OF HOW ST. AUBAN CAME TO BLOIS

 XXIV.  OF THE PASSING OF ST. AUBAN

  XXV.  PLAY-ACTING

 XXVI.  REPARATION




CHAPTER I

OF HOW A BOY DRANK TOO MUCH WINE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT


Andrea de Mancini sprawled, ingloriously drunk, upon the floor.  His legs
were thrust under the table, and his head rested against the chair from
which he had slipped; his long black hair was tossed and dishevelled; his
handsome, boyish face flushed and garbed in the vacant expression of
idiocy.

"I beg a thousand pardons, M. de Luynes," quoth he in the thick, monotonous
voice of a man whose brain but ill controls his tongue,--"I beg a thousand
pardons for the unseemly poverty of our repast.  'T is no fault of mine. 
My Lord Cardinal keeps a most unworthy table for me.  Faugh!  Uncle Giulio
is a Hebrew--if not by birth, by instinct.  He carries his purse-strings in
a knot which it would break his heart to unfasten.  But there! some day my
Lord Cardinal will go to heaven--to the lap of Abraham.  I shall be rich
then, vastly rich, and I shall bid you to a banquet worthy of your most
noble blood.  The Cardinal's health--perdition have him for the
niggardliest rogue unhung!"

I pushed back my chair and rose.  The conversation was taking a turn that
was too unhealthy to be pursued within the walls of the Palais Mazarin,
where there existed, albeit the law books made no reference to it, the
heinous crime of lèse-Eminence--a crime for which more men had been broken
than it pleases me to dwell on.

"Your table, Master Andrea, needs no apology," I answered carelessly. 
"Your wine, for instance, is beyond praise."

"Ah, yes!  The wine!  But, ciel! Monsieur," he ejaculated, for a moment
opening wide his heavy eyelids, "do you believe 't was Mazarin provided it? 
Pooh!  'T was a present made me by M. de la Motte, who seeks my interest
with my Lord Cardinal to obtain for him an appointment in his Eminence's
household, and thus thinks to earn my good will.  He's a pestilent
creature, this la Motte," he added, with a hiccough,--"a pestilent
creature; but, Sangdieu! his wine is good, and I'll speak to my uncle. 
Help me up, De Luynes.  Help me up, I say; I would drink the health of this
provider of wines."

I hurried forward, but he had struggled up unaided, and stood swaying with
one hand on the table and the other on the back of his chair.  In vain did
I remonstrate with him that already he had drunk overmuch.

"'T is a lie!" he shouted.  "May not a gentleman sit upon the floor from
choice?"

To emphasise his protestation he imprudently withdrew his hand from the
chair and struck at the air with his open palm.  That gesture cost him his
balance.  He staggered, toppled backward, and clutched madly at the
tablecloth as he fell, dragging glasses, bottles, dishes, tapers, and a
score of other things besides, with a deafening crash on to the floor.

Then, as I stood aghast and alarmed, wondering who might have overheard the
thunder of his fall, the fool sat up amidst the ruins, and filled the room
with his shrieks of drunken laughter.

"Silence, boy!" I thundered, springing towards him.  "Silence! or we shall
have the whole house about our ears."

And truly were my fears well grounded, for, before I could assist him to
rise, I heard the door behind me open.  Apprehensively I turned, and
sickened to see that that which I had dreaded most was come to pass.  A
tall, imposing figure in scarlet robes stood erect and scowling on the
threshold, and behind him his valet, Bernouin, bearing a lighted taper.

Mancini's laugh faded into a tremulous cackle, then died out, and with
gaping mouth and glassy eyes he sat there staring at his uncle.

Thus we stayed in silence while a man might count mayhap a dozen; then the
Cardinal's voice rang harsh and full of anger.

"'T is thus that you fulfil your trust, M. de Luynes!" he said.

"Your Eminence--" I began, scarce knowing what I should say, when he cut me
short.

"I will deal with you presently and elsewhere."  He stepped up to Andrea,
and surveyed him for a moment in disgust.  "Get up, sir!" he commanded. 
"Get up!"

The lad sought to obey him with an alacrity that merited a kinder fate. 
Had he been in less haste perchance he had been more successful.  As it
was, he had got no farther than his knees when his right leg slid from
under him, and he fell prone among the shattered tableware, mumbling curses
and apologies in a breath.

Mazarin stood gazing at him with an eye that was eloquent in scorn, then
bending down he spoke quickly to him in Italian.  What he said I know not,
being ignorant of their mother tongue; but from the fierceness of his
utterance I'll wager my soul 't was nothing sweet to listen to.  When he
had done with him, he turned to his valet.

"Bernouin," said he, "summon M. de Mancini's servant and assist him to get
my nephew to bed.  M. de Luynes, be good enough to take Bernouin's taper
and light me back to my apartments."

Unsavoury as was the task, I had no choice but to obey, and to stalk on in
front of him, candle in hand, like an acolyte at Notre Dame, and in my
heart the profound conviction that I was about to have a bad quarter of an
hour with his Eminence.  Nor was I wrong; for no sooner had we reached his
cabinet and the door had been closed than he turned upon me the full
measure of his wrath.

"You miserable fool!" he snarled.  "Did you think to trifle with the trust
which in a misguided moment I placed in you?  Think you that, when a week
ago I saved you from starvation to clothe and feed you and give you a
lieutenancy in my guards, I should endure so foul an abuse as this?  Think
you that I entrusted M. de Mancini's training in arms to you so that you
might lead him into the dissolute habits which have dragged you down to
what you are--to what you were before I rescued you--to what you will be
to-morrow when I shall have again abandoned you?"

"Hear me, your Eminence!" I cried indignantly.  "'T is no fault of mine. 
Some fool hath sent M. de Mancini a basket of wine and--"

"And you showed him how to abuse it," he broke in harshly.  "You have
taught the boy to become a sot; in time, were he to remain under your
guidance, I make no doubt but that he would become a gamester and a
duellist as well.  I was mad, perchance, to give him into your care; but I
have the good fortune to be still in time, before the mischief has sunk
farther, to withdraw him from it, and to cast you back into the kennel from
which I picked you."

"Your Eminence does not mean--"

"As God lives I do!" he cried.  "You shall quit the Palais Royal this very
night, M. de Luynes, and if ever I find you unbidden within half a mile of
it, I will do that which out of a misguided sense of compassion I do not do
now--I will have you flung into an oubliette of the Bastille, where better
men than you have rotted before to-day.  Per Dio! do you think that I am to
be fooled by such a thing as you?"

"Does your Eminence dismiss me?" I cried aghast, and scarce crediting that
such was indeed the extreme measure upon which he had determined.

"Have I not been plain enough?" he answered with a snarl.

I realised to the full my unenviable position, and with the realisation of
it there overcame me the recklessness of him who has played his last stake
at the tables and lost.  That recklessness it was that caused me to shrug
my shoulders with a laugh.  I was a soldier of fortune--or should I say a
soldier of misfortune?--as rich in vice as I was poor in virtue; a man who
lived by the steel and parried the blows that came as best he might, or
parried them not at all--but never quailed.

"As your Eminence pleases," I answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for
one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little
clemency were not unfitting."

He raised his eyebrows, and his lips curled in a malicious sneer.

"You come of a family, M. de Luynes," he said slowly, "that is famed for
having shed the blood of others for France more freely than its own.  You
are, I believe, the nephew of Albert de Luynes.  Do you forget the Marshal
d'Ancre?"

I felt the blood of anger hot in my face as I made haste to answer him:

"There are many of us, Monseigneur, who have cause to blush for the
families they spring from--more cause, mayhap, than hath Gaston de Luynes."

In my words perchance there was no offensive meaning, but in my tone and in
the look which I bent upon the Cardinal there was that which told him that
I alluded to his own obscure and dubious origin.  He grew livid, and for a
moment methought he would have struck me: had he done so, then, indeed, the
history of Europe would have been other than it is to-day!  He restrained
himself, however, and drawing himself to the full height of his majestic
figure he extended his arm towards the door.

"Go," he said, in a voice that passion rendered hoarse.  "Go, Monsieur.  Go
quickly, while my clemency endures.  Go before I summon the guard and deal
with you as your temerity deserves."

I bowed--not without a taint of mockery, for I cared little what might
follow; then, with head erect and the firm tread of defiance, I stalked out
of his apartment, along the corridor, down the great staircase, across the
courtyard, past the guard,--which, ignorant of my disgrace, saluted me,--
and out into the street.

Then at last my head sank forward on my breast, and deep in thought I
wended my way home, oblivious of all around me, even the chill bite of the
February wind.

In my mind I reviewed my wasted life, with the fleeting pleasures and the
enduring sorrows that it had brought me--or that I had drawn from it.  The
Cardinal said no more than truth when he spoke of having saved me from
starvation.  A week ago that was indeed what he had done.  He had taken
pity on Gaston de Luynes, the nephew of that famous Albert de Luynes who
had been Constable of France in the early days of the late king's reign; he
had made me lieutenant of his guards and maître d'armes to his nephews
Andrea and Paolo de Mancini because he knew that a better blade than mine
could not be found in France, and because he thought it well to have such
swords as mine about him.

A little week ago life had been replete with fresh promises, the gates of
the road to fame (and perchance fortune) had been opened to me anew, and
now--before I had fairly passed that gate I had been thrust rudely back,
and it had been slammed in my face because it pleased a fool to become a
sot whilst in my company.

There is a subtle poetry in the contemplation of ruin.  With ruin itself,
howbeit, there comes a prosaic dispelling of all idle dreams--a hard, a
grim, a vile reality.

Ruin!  'T is an ugly word.  A fitting one to carve upon the tombstone of a
reckless, godless, dissolute life such as mine had been.

Back, Gaston de Luynes! back, to the kennel whence the Cardinal's hand did
for a moment pluck you; back, from the morning of hope to the night of
despair; back, to choose between starvation and the earning of a pauper's
fee as a master of fence!




CHAPTER II

THE FRUIT OF INDISCRETION


Despite the dejection to which I had become a prey, I slept no less soundly
that night than was my wont, and indeed it was not until late next morning
when someone knocked at my door that I awakened.

I sat up in bed, and my first thought as I looked round the handsome room--
which I had rented a week ago upon receiving the lieutenancy in the
Cardinal's guards--was for the position that I had lost and of the need
that there would be ere long to seek a lodging more humble and better
suited to my straitened circumstances.  It was not without regret that such
a thought came to me, for my tastes had never been modest, and the house
was a fine one, situated in the Rue St. Antoine at a hundred paces or so
from the Jesuit convent.

I had no time, however, to indulge the sorry mood that threatened to beset
me, for the knocking at my chamber door continued, until at length I
answered it with a command to enter.

It was my servant Michelot, a grizzled veteran of huge frame and strength,
who had fought beside me at Rocroi, and who had thereafter become so
enamoured of my person--for some trivial service he swore I had rendered
him--that he had attached himself to me and my luckless fortunes.

He came to inform me that M. de Mancini was below and craved immediate
speech with me.  He had scarce done speaking, however, when Andrea himself,
having doubtless grown tired of waiting, appeared in the doorway.  He wore
a sickly look, the result of his last night's debauch; but, more than that,
there was stamped upon his face a look of latent passion which made me
think at first that he was come to upbraid me.

"Ah, still abed, Luynes?" was his greeting as he came forward.

His cloak was wet and his boots splashed, which told me both that he had
come afoot and that it rained.

"There are no duties that bid me rise," I answered sourly.

He frowned at that, then, divesting himself of his cloak, he gave it to
Michelot, who, at a sign from me, withdrew.  No sooner was the door closed
than the boy's whole manner changed.  The simmering passion of which I had
detected signs welled up and seemed to choke him as he poured forth the
story that he had come to tell.

"I have been insulted," he gasped.  "Grossly insulted by a vile creature of
Monsieur d'Orleans's household.  An hour ago in the ante-chamber at the
Palais Royal I was spoken of in my hearing as the besotted nephew of the
Italian adventurer."

I sat up in bed tingling with excitement at the developments which already
I saw arising from his last night's imprudence.

"Calmly, Andrea," I begged of him, "tell me calmly."

"Mortdieu!  How can I be calm?  Ough!  The thought of it chokes me.  I was
a fool last night--a sot.  For that, perchance, men have some right to
censure me.  But, Sangdieu! that a ruffler of the stamp of Eugène de
Canaples should speak of it--should call me the nephew of an Italian
adventurer, should draw down upon me the cynical smile of a crowd of
courtly apes--pah!  I am sick at the memory of it!"

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