The Man in Black | Page 8

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. In a moment the girl came back her face white. "The grey is in a fit," she cried, keeping the whole width of the room between her and the stranger. "It is sweating and staggering."
The landlord, with an oath, ran off to see, and in a minute the appearance of an excited group in the square under the window showed that the thing was known. The traveler took no notice of this, however, nor of the curious and reverential glances which the womenfolk, huddled about the door of the room, cast at him. He walked up and down the room with his eyes lowered.
The landlord came back presently, his face black as thunder. "It has got the staggers," he said resentfully.
"It has