alas!” murmured the duchess, “gallant Annibal. Did you ever see two such intrepid lions, madame?”
And she sobbed aloud.
“Heavens! what ugly thrusts,” said the captain, endeavoring to stanch the streams of blood. “Holá! you, there, come here as quickly as you can — here, I say”—
He addressed a man who, seated on a kind of tumbril or cart painted red, appeared in the evening mist singing this old song, which had doubtless been suggested to him by the miracle of the Cemetery of the Innocents:
“Bel aubespin fleurissant Verdissant, Le long de ce beau rivage, Tu es vétu, jusqu’au bas Des longs bras D’une lambrusche sauvage.
“Le chantre rossignolet, Nouvelet, Courtisant sa bien-aimée Pour ses amours alléger Vient logerv Tous les ans sous ta ramée.
“Or, vis, gentil aubespin Vis sans fin; Vis, sans que jamais tonnerre, Ou la cognée, ou les vents Ou le temps Te puissent ruer par.” . . . 5
“Holá! hé!” shouted the captain a second time, “come when you are called. Don’t you see that these gentlemen need help?”
The carter, whose repulsive exterior and coarse face formed a singular contrast with the sweet and sylvan song we have just quoted, stopped his horse, got out, and bending over the two bodies said:
“These be terrible wounds, sure enough, but I have made worse in my time.”
“Who are you, pray?” inquired Marguerite, experiencing, in spite of herself, a certain vague terror which she could not overcome.
“Madame,” replied the man, bowing down to the ground, “I am Maître Caboche, headsman to the provostry of Paris, and I have come to hang up at the gibbet some companions for Monsieur the Admiral.”
“Well! and I am the Queen of Navarre,” replied Marguerite; “cast your corpses down there, spread in your cart the housings of our horses, and bring these two gentlemen softly behind us to the Louvre.”
4. Here lies — the term the question begs, For him you need a word that’s stronger: Here hangs the admiral by the legs — Because he has a head no longer!
5. Hawthorn brightly blossoming, Thou dost fling Verdant shadows down the river; Thou art clad from top to roots With long shoots On which graceful leaflets quiver. Here the poetic nightingale Ne’er doth fail — Having sung his love to capture — To repair to consecrate, ‘Neath thy verdure, hours of rapture. Therefore live, O Hawthorn fair, Live fore’er! May no thunder bolt dare smite thee! May no axe or cruel blast Overcast! May the tooth of time. . . .
Chapter 17.
Maître Ambroise Paré’s Confrère.
The tumbril in which Coconnas and La Mole were laid started back toward Paris, following in the shadow the guiding group. It stopped at the Louvre, and the driver was amply rewarded. The wounded men were carried to the Duc d’Alençon’s quarters, and Maître Ambroise Paré was sent for.
When he arrived, neither of the two men had recovered consciousness.
La Mole was the least hurt of the two. The sword had struck him below the right armpit, but without touching any vital parts. Coconnas was run through the lungs, and the air that escaped from his wound made the flame of a candle waver.
Ambroise Paré would not answer for Coconnas.
Madame de Nevers was in despair. Relying on Coconnas’s strength, courage, and skill, she had prevented Marguerite from interfering with the duel. She would have had Coconnas taken to the Hôtel de Guise and gladly bestowed on him a second time the care which she had already lavished on his comfort, but her husband was likely to arrive from Rome at any moment and find fault with the introduction of a strange man in the domestic establishment.
To hide the cause of the wounds, Marguerite had had the two young men brought to her brother’s rooms, where one of them, to be sure, had already been installed, by saying that they were two gentlemen who had been thrown from their horses during the excursion, but the truth was divulged by the captain, who, having witnessed the duel, could not help expressing his admiration, and it was soon known at court that two new raffinés6 had burst into sudden fame. Attended by the same surgeon, who divided his attentions between them, the two wounded men passed through the different phases of convalescence arising from the greater or less severity of their wounds. La Mole, who was less severely wounded of the two, was the first to recover consciousness. A terrible fever had taken possession of Coconnas and his return to life was attended by all the symptoms of the most horrible delirium.
Though La Mole was confined in the same room with Coconnas, he had not, when he came to himself, seen his companion, or if he saw him, he betrayed no sign that he saw him. Coconnas, on the contrary, as soon as he opened his eyes, fastened them on La Mole with an expression which proved that the blood he had lost had not modified the passions of his fiery temperament.
Coconnas thought he was dreaming, and that in this dream he saw the enemy he imagined he had twice slain, only the dream was unduly prolonged. After having observed La Mole laid, like himself, on a couch, and his wounds dressed by the surgeon, he saw him rise up in bed, while he himself was still confined to his by his fever, his weakness, and his pain; he saw him get out of bed, then walk, first leaning on the surgeon’s arm, and then on a cane, and finally without assistance.
Coconnas, still delirious, viewed these different stages of his companion’s recovery with eyes sometimes dull, at others wandering, but always threatening.
All this presented to the Piedmontese’s fiery spirit a fearful mixture of the fantastic and the real. For him La Mole was dead, wholly dead, having been actually killed twice and not merely once, and yet he recognized this same La Mole’s ghost lying in a bed like his own; then, as we have said, he saw this ghost get up, walk round, and, horrible to relate, come toward his bed. This ghost, whom Coconnas would have wished to avoid, even had it been in the depths of hell, came straight to him and stopped beside his pillow, standing there and looking at him; there was in his features a look of gentleness and compassion which Coconnas took for the expression of hellish derision.
There arose in his mind, possibly more wounded than his body, an insatiable thirst of vengeance. He was wholly occupied with one idea, that of procuring some weapon, and with that weapon piercing the body or the ghost of La Mole which so cruelly persecuted him. His clothes, stained with blood, had been placed on a chair by his bed, but afterwards removed, it being thought imprudent to leave them in his sight; but his poniard still remained on the chair, for it was imagined it would be some time before he would want to use it.
Coconnas saw the poniard; three nights while La Mole was slumbering he strove to reach it; three nights his strength failed him, and he fainted. At length, on the fourth night, he clutched it convulsively, and groaning with the pain of the effort, hid the weapon beneath his pillow.
