Bardelys the Magnificent | Page 7

of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of
dalliance never so vast."
"Po' Cap de Dieu!" growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in the
Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. "Up, Bardelys! Afoot!
Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever shamed; a squire
of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the Luxembourg!
Mordemondieu! I have given a man a bellyful of steel for the half of
those titles!"
"I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now on
their feet - those that could stand - were spurring me excitedly to accept
the challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that of a
sudden the tables were turned and I was become the baited. I sat in
thought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it but
little. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.
My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words to
the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be - I know now that it
was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's description, and
were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had with

them in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given
me a false impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night.
I was satisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman
lived as he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I
know I was accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and
youth and the King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of
faith and of zest, the very magnificence - so envied - of my existence
affording me more disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged
its shallows.
Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with such
insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckon
me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?
"Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?" Chatellerault was gibing,
when my silence had endured some moments. "Is the cock that lately
crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you are
accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce you to this
undertaking?"
I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I did
was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less to
bolster up my former boasting - or what into boasting they had
translated.
"You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?" I cried, giving him back
defiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. "Then have it so. Listen,
gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here pledge my castle of
Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every stick and stone and
blade of grass that stands upon them, that I shall woo and win
Roxalanne de Lavedan to be the Marquise of Bardelys. Does the stake
satisfy you, Monsieur le Comte? You may set all you have against it," I
added coarsely, "and yet, I swear, the odds will be heavily in your
favour."
I remember it was Mironsac who first found his tongue, and sought
even at that late hour to set restraint upon us and to bring judgment to
our aid.

"Messieurs, messieurs!" he besought us. "In Heaven's name, bethink
you what you do. Bardelys, your wager is a madness. Monsieur de
Chatellerault, you'll not accept it. You'll--"
"Be silent," I rebuked him, with some asperity. "What has Monsieur de
Chatellerault to say?"
He was staring at the tablecloth and the stain of the wine that he had
spilled when first Mademoiselle de Lavedan's name was mentioned.
His head had been bent so that his long black hair had tumbled forward
and partly veiled his face. At my question he suddenly looked up. The
ghost of a smile hung on his sensuous lips, for all that excitement had
paled his countenance beyond its habit.
"Monsieur le Marquis." said he rising, "I take your wager, and I pledge
my lands in Normandy against yours of Bardelys. Should you lose,
they will no longer call you the Magnificent; should I lose --I shall be a
beggar. It is a momentous wager, Bardelys, and spells ruin for one of
us."
"A madness!" groaned Mironsac.
"Mordieux!" swore Cazalet. Whilst La Fosse, who had been the
original cause of all this trouble, vented his excitement in a gibber of
imbecile laughter.
"How long do you give me, Chatellerault?" I asked, as quietly as I
might.
"What time shall you require?"
"I should prefer that you name the limit," I answered.
He pondered a moment.