Next day I visited the Château de Canaples early in the afternoon. The weather was milder, and the glow of the sun heralded at last the near approach of spring and brightened wondrously a landscape that had yesterday worn so forbidding a look.
This change it must have been that drew the ladies, and Andrea with them, to walk in the park, where I came upon them as I rode up. Their laughter rippled merrily and they appeared upon the best of terms until they espied me. My advent was like a cloud that foretells a storm, and drove Mesdemoiselles away, when they had accorded me a greeting that contained scant graciousness.
All unruffled by this act, from which I gathered that Yvonne the strong had tutored Geneviève the frail concerning me, I consigned my horse to a groom of the château, and linked arms with Andrea.
"Well, boy," quoth I, "what progress?"
He smiled radiantly.
"My hopes are all surpassed. It exceeds belief that so poor a thing as I should find favour in her eyes--what eyes, Gaston!" He broke off with a sigh of rapture.
"Peste, you have lost no time. And so, already you know that you find favour, eh! How know you that?"
"How? Need a man be told such things? There is an inexpressible--"
"My good Andrea, seek not to express it, therefore," I interrupted hastily. "Let it suffice that the inexpressible exists, and makes you happy. His Eminence will doubtless share your joy! Have you written to him?"
The mirth faded from the lad's face at the words, as the blossom fades 'neath the blighting touch of frost. What he said was so undutiful from a nephew touching his uncle--particularly when that uncle is a prelate--that I refrain from penning it.
We were joined just then by the Chevalier, and together we strolled round to the rose-garden--now, alas! naught but black and naked bushes--and down to the edge of the Loire, yellow and swollen by the recent rains.
"How lovely must be this place in summer," I mused, looking across the water towards Chambord. "And, Dame," I cried, suddenly changing my meditations, "what an ideal fencing ground is this even turf!"
"The swordsman's instinct," laughed Canaples.
And with that our talk shifted to swords, swordsmen, and sword-play, until I suggested to Andrea that he should resume his practice, whereupon the Chevalier offered to set a room at our disposal.
"Nay, if you will pardon me, Monsieur, 't is not a room we want," I answered. "A room is well enough at the outset, but it is the common error of fencing-masters to continue their tutoring on a wooden floor. It results from this that when the neophyte handles a real sword, and defends his life upon the turf, the ground has a new feeling; its elasticity or even its slipperiness discomposes him, and sets him at a disadvantage."