John Bloundelle-Burton

“ And again he muttered, "The murder will out, and Boisfleury will pay for it," while, as he did so, he once more snarled like a hunted wolf.
"I cannot feel it beat," he said now, as he placed his hand beneath Humphrey's satin undervest, much as La Truaumont had done some hour or two before, "therefore he is dead. Still, the murder must not out. Boisfleury," he muttered again, as he harped on Fleur de Mai's words, "must not be made to pay for it. No. No. Instead, this murder must be hidden away from all men's knowledge. It must never be known. Never. ”

“ De Brissac said solemnly.
"Now, what next?" De Beaurepaire asked.
"The next is--the Bastille."
"And after?"
"I know not."
"Ere I set out, tell me one thing. And before you answer listen, De Brissac; listen as a soldier to a soldier, a friend to a friend. There is a woman whom I have learnt to love----"
"Ah!" exclaimed the other, recalling how often this handsome patrician's name had been mixed up with the names of women and knowing, as all in Paris knew, how the hearts of those women had gone out to him. ”

“ La Reynie said, "loving her thus, you tell us you know not of what she was vowed to, namely the destruction of the King, of his throne, of France. You did not know the secret of this woman whom you love, the woman who, you think, loves you!"
"Think!" again whispered Emérance, her eyes on La Reynie now. "Think!"
While De Beaurepaire, speaking at the same time, used the same word.
"Think!" he said. "Think that she loves me! La Reynie, do you think there is any man who does not know when a woman truly loves him? If so, then it is you who have never loved or been loved." ”

“ Humphrey. Humphrey, my love, my husband that is to be, do not palter with yourself. Did you not risk your life against those men at Basle rather than consent to keep silence upon their hateful plot? Would you not have slain that bravo had he not played the coward; would you not sooner have slain yourself than become one of them? That--that--was hero's work; as a hero will you ever stand in my eyes. ”

“ Yet this clatter on the cobble-stones of the place heralded no such arrival as that which the woman had witnessed, no handsome travelling carriage escorted by soldiers and adventurers as represented by La Truaumont, Boisfleury, Fleur de Mai and even Humphrey himself; no descent at the inn of a beautiful woman whose wealth and position made her one of the foremost aristocrats in France, nor any pretty young girl such as Jacquette. ”

“ A man with a great moustache and fierce eyes and a huge sword, who is impertinent. Oh! of the most impertinent."
"'Tis Fleur de Mai," said Humphrey. "Of a surety it is. Well! is he insolent enough to presume to admire mademoiselle?"
"He is. Ah! Un luron. And--Fleur de Mai! Dieu des dieux! What a name for such as that. Monsieur, I seek not his admiration. Nor any man's."
"Yet," said Humphrey, gazing into the girl's eyes, which gaze she told herself afterwards gave her a frisson, "who could help but admire. I blame not Fleur de Mai. ”

“ Is he not risking his life upon one cast; does he not therefore want women as well as men of action to help him, women who will keep steady before their eyes, even as he keeps, as all of us keep before our eyes, the diadem of France, the throne of France--France itself, on one side? As also he keeps, and we keep before our eyes, the scaffold outside the Bastille, the Wheel at the Cross Roads, the Gibbet--on the other side? And for such a woman will there be no reward, no acknowledgment? ”

“ To-morrow brings us together for all eternity."
"You will not be my wife!" De Beaurepaire said again, his voice hoarse, lost in his throat. "You can be so--great--as to reject the one poor repayment I can make for your sweet, your precious, love?"
"Repayment! Does love need repayment? Can there be debtor and creditor in that? And--if so--why, then Louis, Louis, mon adore, have you not repaid? You--such as you--to me!"
"My children," the Père Bourdaloue said, turning round and advancing to them, "the night is passing. If you will be wed, now is the time. ”

“ La Truaumont said, the roughness of the old soldier of fortune--part bravo, part hero, part swashbuckler--the usual ingredients of most soldiers of fortune!--smoothed out of his features so that, for the moment, he presented the appearance of a tender father talking to an unhappy child: "Be cheered. If that which we hope for and, hoping, greatly dare to attempt, should succeed, you will, you shall, rise as we rise. Whatever you can wish for, aspire to, he 'Monsieur Louis'--le Dédaigneux as he is sometimes called, will see that you attain." ”

“ Could I love you more in the few hours that I should be your wife than I have loved you, not being your wife? Shall we sleep less calmly and peacefully in our graves to-morrow and for ever--yes, for ever!--because that ceremony has not been performed? Louis, there is no wedded wife in all this world to-night who loves her lawful husband more madly than I love you to whom no tie binds me. ”

“ In doing all this he had also made sure that there was no door in the wall by which ingress might be obtained from another room--other than that in which the Duchesse de Castellucchio was now sleeping. Consequently, he was at once able to decide that it was not from her room that the voices proceeded, while, at the same time, his ears told him also that they were not the voices of either the Duchess or Jacquette.
Yet still he heard them. He heard the deep tones of a man subdued almost to a whisper; the softer, gentler tones of a woman, itself also subdued. ”

“ We shall die, we shall go to our death together as man and wife."
"Nay," Emérance whispered, though as she did so her arms had sought his neck and enlaced it, "Nay, not as that. But----"
"Not as that! You--you who love me so--will not be my wife?"
"I am your wife. In heart, in soul, in every thought, in every fibre of my being. There is nought of me that is not you, that is not De Beaurepaire now. What would an idle ceremony, performed over us by him," with a glance towards the priest, "and witnessed by those soldiers outside, do for us? ”

“ There was no living thing about; not so much as a houseless dog shivering in any porch or stoop; neither was there any light in any window, nor any sound except the swish of the rain and the noisy swirl of the Rhine as, rushing by, it sped away upon its course towards and past France.
"The murder, for murder it was," he whispered to himself, "will never out. Never. Boisfleury has no reckoning to make, no scot to pay. But others have." ”

“ I would have had him spared, or, at least, slain in open honest fight, not done to death by so foul a thing as that Boisfleury--as La Truaumont says he was after he confessed that he knew all. Boisfleury! A piece of vermin fit only to crawl in the gutters of Paris, to herd with the lowest, but not fit to take the life of young, handsome Humphrey West. Humphrey, poor Humphrey! ”

“ What better am I than she? An intriguer, a traitor, even as she is an intrigante, a traitress; yet without her reasons, without her love of her own province as excuse, as extenuation. Had we wedded, our marriage would have but made us more akin and equal."
"If this is in your heart, the chance is still yours. Your vows may still be fulfilled. Louis de Beaurepaire, remembering who and what you are, remembering also who and what she is--as all learnt who were in the Arsenal at your confrontations--are you willing to make this woman your wife to-night?" ”

“ Returning to the bottom of that old street which leads down to the Rhine from the city above, it seemed to Humphrey that he heard, either ahead of, or behind, him, the ring of spurs upon the stones as well as the tramp of heavily booted feet: and he heard, or thought he heard, the well-known click-clack of the point of a rapier sheath against those stones.
"Humph!" he said to himself. "One of the watch perhaps, or some traveller." ”

“ And is he still in Paris?"
Imitating the woman's own low tones, which it was natural enough she should assume when receiving a man in her salon in an inn at nearly midnight, La Truaumont said, "He is well. I left him so. And he is still in Paris. Lou--Emérance," he continued, with a laugh, though a low one, "are you happy now?"
"Yes. Almost happy."
"You should be. But you may yet pay a dear price for your happiness."
"Bah!"
"You do not fear what failure, treachery, betrayal, may bring to him and you and me and all of us? You do not fear what may be ahead of us?" ”

“ Obedient to Hortense's order Jacquette crossed to the other side of the room and, feeling under the tapestry for the spot where she knew the closed and heavily bolted door to be, rapped on it with her knuckles, while saying, "Humphrey, arise! The clocks have struck seven. Awake, sluggard!"
But there came no answer to her summons. All was as still as though she had knocked at, and spoken to, an empty room.
"Knock again," the Duchess said. "Basta! how the young man sleeps." ”

“ You have often said his heart is kindly, that he is never cruel. That he has forgiven much to both women and men who have deceived him."
"Ay, to both women and men. But the women were false to his heart alone, and there are thousands of other women in France as fair as they: a king woos and wins where he will. And the men he has forgiven have but forgotten for a moment the difference between him and them; but when it is his throne, his crown, that is in danger, he never forgives."
"Seize then upon these four days; fly to Holland or Switzerland, or Italy, and escape. ”

“ What has this love of yours and hers been, Louis de Beaurepaire? The love that honours a woman in its choice, or the mad frenzy, the wild passion, the evil desires that sweep all boundaries and obstacles and laws aside even as the torrent sweeps aside all that stands in its way? ”

“ One woman, too, who, in all that brilliant if garish Court, played the strongest, most dominating part of any, while pretending to play the most retiring and self-effacing, had a smile always for Humphrey, a quiet, modest word and, now and again, a glance which, though it told the young man nothing, must, at least, have assured him that if her friendship was worth anything he possessed it. ”

“ Near the King, yet still at some distance from him, were many members of his family and Court, including the Queen, who sat before a second fire farther down the room in the riding-dress in which she had that day accompanied her husband to a wild stag hunt in the forest. A little distance off, chattering, laughing--in discreetly subdued tones--were women who bore, or were yet to bear, names that the world will never forget. ”

“ Fleur de Mai said, while as he spoke he assumed a greater tone of equality with La Truaumont than he had done before, if not a tone of command. For he it was who had vanquished the man who would have undone them, and he was not disposed to regard the accomplishment lightly. "No riding on these horses," glancing his eyes down the line of stalls. "Yet, still, away. To make for, not ride to Paris."
"I understand you not."
"Listen. I will propound to you. Let heaven give you the brains to comprehend."
"Beware. No insolence. I bear a sword more cunning than his," looking down at Humphrey. ”

“ Also the great swashbuckler, le fanfaron, with the red-brown hair."
"The captain gone," Emérance muttered to herself, "and Fleur de Mai gone too. 'Tis strange. Wondrous strange."
"And, above all," the girl persisted, determined that the one who had been so gentle and courteous to her, so much of an admirer, should not be overlooked, "the young seigneur, madame! The handsome, courtly one."
"Bah!" Emérance exclaimed, "his looks count not." Nor, in truth, would the looks of any man in all the world have counted with this woman who had no thoughts or eyes for the beauty of any, or only one, man. ”

“ Hortense had never truly loved De Beaurepaire more than he had loved her, but to her as well as to him there had come the knowledge that each might be of great service to the other. The Prince wanted money; she wanted some one who would help her to evade her husband and to escape out of France. And, later, if the Pope would grant that which she so earnestly desired, namely, freedom from the maniac to whom she was wedded, why then, perhaps, De Beaurepaire would do well enough for a husband if she ever cared to take another; as well if not better than any other man. ”

“ You will hear enough when De Beaurepaire lets loose his tongue on you."
"Bah! I am not his servant nor in his pay as you are. I ride as his friend and help, not as his varlet. Yet, since he is here, I would see him. There is no man in all the world on whom I would more willingly set eyes" ("for his own good," Humphrey added to himself) . Then he said aloud, "Now tell me where he is. Lead me to him."
"'Tis that which I am here to do," Fleur de Mai said, "though, in doing it, I bid you observe I obey him, not you. Come, therefore." ”