In Kings Byways | Page 6

thought again that he would fall upon me: but he only choked and swore, and then stood scowling, the picture of despair. Until, some new thought pricking him, he threw up his arms and cried out afresh. "Oh, mon dieu, what a fool I was!" he moaned. "What a craven I was! I had a fortune in my hands, and, fool that I was, I threw it away!"
I thought bitterly of my own case--I was not much afraid of him now, for I began to think that I understood him. "So had I, yesterday morning," I said, "a fortune. You are in no worse case than others."
"Yesterday morning!" he exclaimed. "No, last night. Then, if you like, you had. But yesterday morning? Fortune and you, scarecrow? Go hang yourself."
He looked gloomily at me for a moment with his arms crossed on his chest, and his face darkly set. Then "Who are you?" he asked.
I told him. When he learned that the rabble that had alarmed him, had in fact been pursuing me--so that his fright had been groundless--he broke into fresh execrations: and these so violent that I began to feel a sort of contempt for him, and even plucked up spirit to tell him that look as disdainfully as he might at me, he seemed to be in no better case.
He looked at me askance at that. "Ay, as it turns out," he said grimly. "In worse case, if you please. But see the difference, idiot. You are a poor fool beaten from pillar to post; at all men's mercy, and naught to get by it; while I played for a great stake. I have lost, it is true! I have lost!" he continued, his voice rising almost to a yell, "and we are both in the gutter. But if I had won--if I had won, man----"
He did not finish the sentence but flung himself down on his face in the hay, and bit and tore it in his passion. A moment I viewed him with contempt, and thought him a poor creature for a villain. Then the skirt of his coat, curling over as he grovelled and writhed, disclosed something that turned my thoughts into another channel. Crushed under his leather girdle was a little cape, or a garment of that kind, of velvet so lustrous that it shone in the dark place where I saw it, as the eyes shine in a toad. Nor it only: before he rolled over and hid it again, I espied embroidered on one corner of the velvet a stiff gold crown!
It was with difficulty that I repressed a cry. Cold, damp, aching, I felt the heat run through me like wine. A crown! A little purple cape! And taken beyond doubt from the infant he had stolen last night! Then last night--last night I had carried the King! I had carried the King of France in my arms.
I no longer found it hard to understand the man's terror of yesterday; or his grief and despair of this morning. He had indeed played for a great stake; he had risked torture and the wheel; death in its most horrible form. And that for which he had risked so much he had lost!--lost!
I looked at him with new eyes, and a sort of wonder: and had scarcely time to compose my face, when, the paroxysm of his fury spent, he rose, and looking at me askance, to see how I took his actions, he asked me sullenly whither I was going.
"To Monseigneur's," I said cunningly: had I answered, "To the Palais Royal," he would have suspected me.
"To the Bishop's?"
"Where else?"
"To be beaten again?" he sneered.
I said nothing to that, but asked him whither he was going.
"God knows," he said. "God knows!"
But when I went out, he accompanied me; and we slunk silently, like the pair of night-birds we were, through lanes and alleys until we were fairly in town again. By that time the sun was up and the market people were beginning to enter the city. Here and there eyes took curious note of my disorder: and thinking of the company I was in, I trembled, and wondered that the alarm was not abroad and the bells proclaiming us from every tower. I was more than content, therefore, when my companion at the back of the Temple halted before a small door in a blind wall. Over against it stood another small door in the opposite wall.
"Do you stay here?" I said.
He swore churlishly. "What is that to you?" he said, looking up and down. "Go your way, idiot."
I was glad to affect a like ill-humour, shrugged my shoulders, and lounged on without looking back. But my brain was on fire. The King! The four-year-old King! What was I to do? To