Part 36 (1/2)
Then he read the paper handed to him. It also was brief:
”The man bearing this is to be held free of arrest on any charge and to be allowed to pa.s.s in freedom through all and any of our dominions. His name is Georges St. Georges, and he is branded with the _fleur-de-lis_ and the letter G.
_Signe_, LOUIS R.”
”What does it mean?” reiterated St. Georges. ”Who can have done this?”
”It means,” said L'Herault, ”that you have some powerful interest with his Majesty. Whomsoever you may be, even though you were one of the king's own sons, you must be deemed fortunate. However great your friends may be, your escape is remarkable.”
”Friends! I have none. I----” but the sentence was never finished. The excitement of the last hour had overmastered him at last and he sank in a swoon before them.
When he came to himself the others were gone with the exception of one turnkey, who was kneeling by his side, supporting his head and moistening his lips with brandy. But in the place of those who had departed there was another now, a man at whom St. Georges stared with uncertain eyes as though doubting whether his senses were not still playing him false; a man also on one knee by his side, clad in the handsome uniform of the Mousquetaires Noirs.
”Boussac!” he exclaimed. ”Boussac! Is it in truth you?”
”It is I, my friend.”
Then, as St. Georges's senses came fully back to him, he seized the other's hand and murmured: ”You! It is you have done this! Through you that I am saved.”
”You are saved, my friend. That is enough. What matter by whom?”
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
”I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER.”
Once more St. Georges was on the road, heading straight for Troyes, and by his side once more rode a friend, as he had ridden over four years ago--Boussac!
When he had thoroughly recovered from the swoon into which he had fallen on hearing that he was free, he had again and again overwhelmed the mousquetaire with his grat.i.tude--all of which the latter had refused to accept, and had, indeed, gently repudiated. Also it seemed to St. Georges that he avoided the subject, or at least said as little as possible.
”If,” he said, when at last they were seated in an inn off the new Rue Richelieu to which he had led St. Georges, ”there is anything to which you owe your freedom more than another, it is to the fact that the king must recognise that you are in truth le Duc de Vannes, the son of his earliest friend. Yet--yet”--he continued in an embarra.s.sed manner--”he would not even allow that that should influence him--when--I pleaded for you.”
”But it did--it did, Boussac, it did. He must have pondered on it afterward--perhaps reflected on how unjustly I had been treated by his vile minister, Louvois--you say he died in disgrace?--and that may have--nay, must have, turned his heart. O Boussac! how am I ever to repay you? Without your thought and exertions what should I have been now?” and he shuddered as he spoke.
”Oh! la! la!” said Boussac, ”never mind about me. The question is now what do you intend to do in the future?”
”Do!” exclaimed St. Georges. ”Do! Why, that which I returned to France to do, fought against France for--obtain my child. Boussac, where is that woman now?”
”Woman!--what woman?”
”Ah! Boussac, do not joke. You know very well to what woman I refer.
That young tigress--in her way almost as vile as the woman Louvigny!--the woman who stole my child.”
”Mademoiselle de Roquemaure?”
”Ay, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure! That is the name. Oh Boussac! you have given me more than my life, far more. The power to wrench my child away from her keeping, to stand before her a freed man, the king's pardon in my hand, and tax her with her treachery.”
”You will do that?”