Bardelys the Magnificent | Page 5

ears perhaps of
those within the Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his
friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in
Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of "Magnificent"
which men gave me.

But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the sake of
the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew more barbed and
less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a moment, like a bird of
prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down in the words of that fool
La Fosse.
"Messieurs," he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with his
eye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, "I have a toast for you." He rose
carefully to his feet - he had arrived at that condition in which to move
with care is of the first importance. He shifted his eye from the Count
to his glass, which stood half empty. He signed to a lacquey to fill it.
"To the brim, gentlemen," he commanded. Then, in the silence that
ensued, he attempted to stand with one foot on the ground and one on
his chair; but encountering difficulties of balance, he remained upright -
safer if less picturesque.
"Messieurs, I give you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the most
difficult and cold lady in all France. I drink to those her thousand
graces, of which Fame has told us, and to that greatest and most vexing
charm of all - her cold indifference to man. I pledge you, too, the swain
whose good fortune it maybe to play Endymion to this Diana.
"It will need," pursued La Fosse, who dealt much in mythology and
classic lore - "it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour, an
Apollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accomplish it. And I fear
me," he hiccoughed, "that it will go unaccomplished, since the one man
in all France on whom we have based our hopes has failed. Gentlemen,
to your feet! I give you the matchless Roxalanne de Lavedan!"
Such amusement as I felt was tempered by apprehension. I shot a swift
glance at Chatellerault to mark how he took this pleasantry and this
pledging of the lady whom the King had sent him to woo, but whom he
had failed to win. He had risen with the others at La Fosse's bidding,
either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too flimsy a thing by
which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl
darkened his ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such
sudden force that its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine
streaked the white tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl.

The sight of that stain recalled him to himself and to the manners he
had allowed himself for a moment to forget.
"Bardelys, a thousand apologies for my clumsiness," he muttered.
"Spilt wine," I laughed, "is a good omen."
And for once I accepted that belief, since but for the shedding of that
wine and its sudden effect upon him, it is likely we had witnessed a
shedding of blood. Thus, was the ill-timed pleasantry of my
feather-brained La Fosse tided over in comparative safety. But the topic
being raised was not so easily abandoned. Mademoiselle de Lavedan
grew to be openly discussed, and even the Count's courtship of her
came to be hinted at, at first vaguely, then pointedly, with a lack of
delicacy for which I can but blame the wine with which these
gentlemen had made a salad of their senses. In growing alarm I
watched the Count. But he showed no further sign of irritation. He sat
and listened as though no jot concerned. There were moments when he
even smiled at some lively sally, and at last he went so far as to join in
that merry combat of wits, and defend himself from their attacks, which
were made with a good-humour that but thinly veiled the dislike he was
held in and the satisfaction that was culled from his late discomfiture.
For a while I hung back and took no share in the banter that was toward.
But in the end - lured perhaps by the spirit in which I have shown that
Chatellerault accepted it, and lulled by the wine which in common with
my guests I may have abused - I came to utter words but for which this
story never had been written.
"Chatellerault," I laughed, "abandon these defensive subterfuges;
confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you
have conducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one
equipped with your advantages of courtly rearing."
A flush overspread his face, the first sign of anger since he had spilled