Volume Ii Part 11 (2/2)

”Between the Count and Countess de St. Alyre, and about a doc.u.ment they subscribed on the 25th July, 1811.”

The Marquis afterwards told me that this was the date of their marriage settlement.

The Count stood stock-still for a minute or so; and one could fancy that they saw his face flus.h.i.+ng through his mask.

n.o.body, but we two, knew that the inquirer was the Count de St.

Alyre.

I thought he was puzzled to find a subject for his next question; and, perhaps, repented having entangled himself in such a colloquy. If so, he was relieved; for the Marquis, touching his arm, whispered--

”Look to your right, and see who is coming.”

I looked in the direction indicated by the Marquis, and I saw a gaunt figure stalking toward us. It was not a masque. The face was broad, scarred, and white. In a word, it was the ugly face of Colonel Gaillarde, who, in the costume of a corporal of the Imperial Guard, with his left arm so adjusted as to look like a stump, leaving the lower part of the coat-sleeve empty, and pinned up to the breast. There were strips of very real sticking-plaster across his eyebrow and temple, where my stick had left its mark, to score, hereafter, among the more honourable scars of war.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ORACLE TELLS ME WONDERS.

I forgot for a moment how impervious my mask and domino were to the hard stare of the old campaigner, and was preparing for an animated scuffle. It was only for a moment, of course; but the Count cautiously drew a little back as the gasconading corporal, in blue uniform, white vest, and white gaiters--for my friend Gaillarde was as loud and swaggering in his a.s.sumed character as in his real one of a colonel of dragoons--drew near. He had already twice all but got himself turned out of doors for vaunting the exploits of Napoleon le Grand, in terrific mock-heroics, and had very nearly come to hand-grips with a Prussian hussar. In fact, he would have been involved in several sanguinary rows already, had not his discretion reminded him that the object of his coming there at all, namely, to arrange a meeting with an affluent widow, on whom he believed he had made a tender impression, would not have been promoted by his premature removal from the festive scene, of which he was an ornament, in charge of a couple of gendarmes.

”Money! Gold! Bah! What money can a wounded soldier like your humble servant have ama.s.sed, with but his sword-hand left, which, being necessarily occupied, places not a finger at his command with which to sc.r.a.pe together the spoils of a routed enemy?”

”No gold from him,” said the magician. ”His scars frank him.”

”Bravo, Monsieur le prophete! Bravissimo! Here I am. Shall I begin, mon _sorcier_, without further loss of time, to question your--”

Without waiting for an answer, he commenced, in Stentorian tones.

After half-a-dozen questions and answers, he asked--

”Whom do I pursue at present?”

”Two persons.”

”Ha! Two? Well, who are they?”

”An Englishman, whom, if you catch, he will kill you; and a French widow, whom if you find, she will spit in your face.”

”Monsieur le magicien calls a spade a spade, and knows that his cloth protects him. No matter! Why do I pursue them?”

”The widow has inflicted a wound on your heart, and the Englishman a wound on your head. They are each separately too strong for you; take care your pursuit does not unite them.”

”Bah! How could that be?”

”The Englishman protects ladies. He has got that fact into your head. The widow, if she sees, will marry him. It takes some time, she will reflect, to become a colonel, and the Englishman is unquestionably young.”

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