The Grey Cloak - Page 184/256

"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be

disturbed!"

All through the long night the marquis's thin, piercing voice rang in

the Chevalier's ears, and rang with sinister tone. He could find no

ease upon his pillow, and he stole quietly forth into the night. He

wandered about the upper town, round the cathedral, past the Ursulines,

under the frowning walls of the citadel, followed his shadow in the

moonlight and went before it. Those grim words had severed the last

delicate thread which bound father and son. To have humiliated

himself! To have left open in his armor a place for such a thrust! He

had gone with charity and forgiveness, to be repulsed! He had held

forth his hand, to find the other's withdrawn!

"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be

disturbed!"

Mockery! And yet this same father had taken up the sword to drive it

through a man who had laughed. Only God knew; for neither the son

understood the father nor the father the son. Well, so be it. He was

now without weight upon his shoulders; he was conscience free; he had

paid his obligations, obligations far beyond his allotted part. It was

inevitable that their paths should separate. There had been too many

words; there was still too much pride.

"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be

disturbed!"

He had stood there in the corridor and writhed as this blade entered

his soul and turned and turned. Rage and chagrin had choked him,

leaving him utterly speechless. So be it. Forevermore it was to be

the house divided. . . . It was after two o'clock when the Chevalier

went back to his bed. The poet was in slumber, and his face looked

careworn in repose.

"Poor lad! He is not happy, either. Only the clod knows content as a

recompense for his poverty. Good night, Madame; to-morrow, to-morrow,

and we shall see!"

And the morrow came, the rarest gem in all the diadem of days. There

was a ripple on the water; a cloudless sky; fields of corn waving their

tasseled heads and the broad leaf of the tobacco plant trembling,

trembling.

"What!" cried Victor in surprise; "you have a new feather in your hat?"

"Faith, lad," said the Chevalier, "the old plume was a shabby one. But

I have not destroyed it; too many fond remembrances cling to it. How

often have I doffed that plume at court, in the gardens, on the

balconies and on the king's highways! And who would suspect, to look

at it now, that it had ever dusted the mosaics at the Vatican? And

there have been times when I flung it on the green behind the

Luxembourg, my doublet beside it."