The Man in Black | Page 2

lips of the boy touched the hearts of their mistresses, and drew from them many a cake and fairing. Still, with a crowd change is everything; and in the contest of attractions, where there was her a flying dragon and there a dancing bear, and in a place apart the mystery of Joseph of Arimathaea and the Sacred Fig tree was being performed by a company that had played before the King in Paris--and when, besides all these raree-shows, a score of quacks and wizards and collar-grinners with lungs of brass, were advertising themselves amid indescribable clanging of drums and squeaking of trumpets, it was not to be expected that a boy and a monkey could always hold the first place. An hour before sunset the ladle began to come home empty. The crowd grew thin. Gargantuan roars of laughter from the players' booth drew off some who lingered. It seemed as if the trio's run of success was at an end; and that, for all the profit they were still likely to make, they might pack up and be off to bed.
But Master Crafty Eyes knew better. Before his popularity quite flickered out he produced a folding stool. Setting it at the foot of the tree with a grand air, which of itself was enough to arrest the waverers, he solemnly covered it with a red cloth. This done, he folded his arms, looked very sternly two ways at once, and raising his hand without glancing upward, cried, "Tenez! His Excellency the Seigneur de Bault will have the kindness to descend."
The little handful of gapers laughed, and the laugh added to their number. But the boy to whom the words were addressed, did not move. He sat idly on the rope, swaying to and fro, and looked out straight before him, with a set face, and a mutinous glare in his eyes. He appeared to be about twelve years old. He was lithe-limbed, and burned brown by the sun, with a mass of black hair and, strange to say, blue eyes. The ape sat cheek by jowl with him; and even at the sound of the master's voice turned to him humanly, as if to say, "You had better go."
Still he did not move. "Tenez!" Master Crafty Eyes cried again, and more sharply. "His Excellency the Seigneur de Bault will have the kindness to descend, and narrate his history. Ecoutez! Ecoutez! mesdames et messieurs! It will repay you."
This time the boy, frowning and stubborn, looked down from his perch. He seemed to be measuring the distance, and calculating whether his height from the ground would save him from the whip. Apparently he came to the conclusion it would not, for on the man crying "Vitement! Vitement!" and flinging a grim look upward, he began to descend slowly, a sullen reluctance manifest in all his movements.
On reaching the ground, he made his way through the audience--which had increased to above a score--and climbed heavily on the stool, where he stood looking round him with a dark shamefacedness, surprising in one who was part of a show, and had been posturing all day long for the public amusement. The women, quick to espy the hollows in his cheeks, and the great wheal that seamed his neck, and quick also to admire the straightness of his limbs and the light pose of his head, regarded him pitifully. The men only stared; smoking had not yet come in at Fecamp, so they munched cakes and gazed by turns.
"Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" cried the man with the drum. "Listen to the remarkable, lamentable, and veritable history of the Seigneur de Bault, now before you! Oyez!"
The boy cast a look round, but there was no escape. So sullenly, and in a sing-song tone--through which, nevertheless, some note of dignity, some strange echo of power and authority, that gave the recital its bizarre charm and made it what it was, would continually force itself--he began with the words at the head of this chapter:--
"I am Jehan de Bault, Seigneur of--I know not where, and Lord of seventeen lordships in the County of--I forget the name, of a most noble and puissant family, possessing the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low. In my veins runs the blood of Roland, and of my forefathers were three marshals of France. I stand here, the last of my race; in token whereof may God preserve my mother, the King, France, and this Province! I was stolen by gypsies at the age of five, and carried off and sold by my father's steward, as Joseph was by his brethren, and I appeal to--I appeal to--all good subjects of France to--help me to--"
"My rights!" interjected Crafty Eyes, with a savage glance.
"My rights," the boy whispered, lowering his head.
The drum man came forward