The Man in Black | Page 8

without a
word. He took them--he no longer wondered at anything--and carried
them back to his master in the road.
"Now listen to me," said the latter, in his slow, cold tone. "Go into the
town you see before you, and in the market-place you will find an inn

with the sign of the Three Pigeons. Enter the yard and offer these fowls
for sale, but ask a livre apiece for them, that they may not be bought.
While offering them, make an excuse to go into the stable, where you
will see a grey horse. Drop this white lump into the horse's manger
when no one is looking, and afterward remain at the door of the yard. If
you see me, do not speak to me. Do you understand?"
Jehan said he did; but his new master made him repeat his orders from
beginning to end before he let him go with the fowls and the white
lump, which was about the size of a walnut, and looked like rock-salt.
About an hour later the landlord of the Three Pigeons at Yvetot heard a
horseman stop at his door. He went out to meet him. Now, Yvetot is on
the road to Havre and Harfleur; and though the former of these places
was then in the making and the latter was dying fast, the landlord had
had experience of many guests. But so strange a guest as the one he
found awaiting him he thought he had never seen. In the first place, the
gentleman was clad from top to toe in black; and though he had no
servants behind him, the wore an air of as grave consequence as though
he boasted six. In the next place, his face was so long, thin, and
cadaverous that, but for a great black line of eyebrows that cut it in two
and gave it a very curious and sinister expression, people meeting him
for the first time might have been tempted to laugh. Altogether, the
landlord could not make him out; but he thought it safer to go out and
hold his stirrup, and ask his pleasure.
"I shall dine here," the stranger answered gravely. As he dismounted
his cloak fell open. The landlord observed with growing wonder that its
black lining was sprinkled with cabalistic figures embroidered in white.
Introduced to the public room, which was over the great stone porch
and happened to be empty, the traveler lost none of his singularity. He
paused a little way within the door, and stood as if suddenly fallen into
deep thought. The landlord, beginning to think him mad, ventured to
recall him by asking what his honor would take.
"There is something amiss in this house," the stranger replied abruptly,
turning his eyes on him.

"Amiss?" the host answered faltering under his gaze, and wishing
himself well out of the room. "Not that I am aware of, your honor."
"There is no one ill?"
"No, your honor, certainly not."
"Nor deformed?"
"No."
"You are mistaken," the stranger answered firmly. "Know that I am
Solomon, son to Caesar, son to Michel Notredame of Paris, commonly
called by the learned Nostradamus ant the Transcendental, who read the
future and rode the Great White Horse of Death. All things hidden are
open to me."
The landlord only gaped, but his wife and a serving wench, who had
come to the door out of curiosity, and were listening and staring with
all their might, crossed themselves industriously. "I am here," the
stranger continued, after a brief pause, "to construct the horoscope of
His Eminence the Cardinal, of who it has been predicted that he will
die at Yvetot. But I find the conditions unpropitious. There is an
adverse influence in this house."
The landlord scratched his head, and looked helplessly at his wife, But
she was quite taken up with awe of the stranger, whose head nearly
touched the ceiling of the low room; while his long, pale face seemed
in the obscurity--for the day was dark--to be of an unearthly pallor.
"An adverse influence," the astrologer continued gravely. "What is
more, I now see where it is. It is in the stable. You have a grey horse."
The landlord, somewhat astonished, said he had.
"You had. You have not now. The devil has it!" was the astounding
answer.
"My grey horse?"

The stranger inclined his head.
"Nay, there you are wrong!" the host retorted briskly. "I'm hanged if he
has! For I rode the horse this morning, and it went as well and quietly
as ever in its life."
"Send and see," the tall man answered.
The serving girl, obeying a nod, went off reluctantly to the stable, while
her master, casting a look of misliking at his guest, walked uneasily to
the window.