While the bravos tried not to appear annoyed by Lagardere’s banter, which, indeed, in its simplicity vexed their simple natures greatly, the page rose to his feet and whispered softly to his rescuer, "I have a letter for you from the Duke de Nevers."
Lagardere extended his hand. "Give it," he said.
The page produced the letter, of which Æsop had been so anxious to gain possession, and handed it to Lagardere, whispering as he did so, "Save me from these ogres. I carry another letter to a lady."
Lagardere smiled. "To Gabrielle de Caylus, I’ll swear," he murmured in a low voice which was calculated only to reach the page’s ears. Then he turned again to the swordsmen. "Sirs, this lad, more fastidious than I, dislikes your society. Pray respect his prejudices." He pushed the page gently towards the main door. "Hop, skip, jump!"
In a moment the page had glided out of the room. Æsop made a movement as if he were inclined to follow, but any such intention was frustrated by Lagardere, who shut the door after the boy and stood with his back towards it. "Stay where you are, gentlemen," he said, and there was something so persuasive in the way in which he said it that the gentlemen stayed where they were. Then Lagardere, as if he had almost forgotten their presence, slowly walking down the room till he paused in the middle, opened the letter and began to read it. As he seemed absorbed by its contents, Staupitz on the one side and Æsop on the other came cautiously towards him with the intention of reading the letter over his shoulder, but Lagardere’s seeming forgetfulness of their presence instantly changed. He looked up sharply, glancing right and left, and Æsop and Staupitz fell back in confusion, while Lagardere spoke to them, mocking them: "You will dub me eccentric; you will nickname me whimsical; you will damn me for a finicking stickler, and all because I am such an old-fashioned rascal as to wish to keep my correspondence to myself. There, there, don’t be crestfallen. This letter makes me so merry that you shall share its treasure. But, first, fill and drink with me, a noble toast."
To suggest drinking was to forge a link between the bravos and the man who down-faced them so masterfully. The big jug seemed to jump from hand to hand, every mug was full in a twinkling, and every face was fixed steadfastly on Lagardere, waiting for his words. Lagardere lifted his brimming beaker with a voice of joyous mockery that carried at once defiance and respect to a distant man. "The health of Louis of Nevers!" he said, and drained his green wine as cheerfully as if it had been the elixir of the gods.
At his words blank astonishment spread over the faces of the Gascon and the Norman. "He said ’Nevers,’" Cocardasse whispered to Passepoil, and Passepoil whispered back, "He did." As for the other bravos, they had been as much surprised as Cocardasse and Passepoil by Lagardere’s request, but they managed to conceal their surprise by lifting their mugs, and now as they nodded and winked to one another, they tilted their vessels and drank, shouting, "The health of Louis de Nevers!"
Cocardasse came nearer to Lagardere, and said in a voice that was almost a whisper, "Why do you drink the health of Louis de Nevers?"
Lagardere looked for a moment annoyed at the presumption of Cocardasse in questioning him, then the annoyance gave place to his familiar air of tolerant amusement. "I don’t love questions, but you have a kind of right to query." He turned to the others. "You must know, sirs, that this pair of rapiers were my fairy godfathers in the noble art of fence."
The Norman looked at Lagardere with a very loving expression. "You were a sad little rag of humanity when first you came to our fencing-academy."
"You are right there," said Lagardere. "I was the poorest, hungriest scrap of mankind in all Paris. I had neither kin nor friends nor pence, nothing but a stout heart and a sense of humor. That is why I came to your academy, old rogues."
Cocardasse was reminiscent. "Faith, you looked droll enough, with your pale face and your shabby clothes. ’I want to be a soldier,’ says you; ’I want to use the sword.’"
Lagardere nodded. "That was my stubborn law. The world laughed at me, but I laughed at the world, and I won my wish."
"Just think of it!" said Cocardasse. "Henri de Lagardere, a gentleman born, without a decent relative, without a decent friend, without a penny, making his livelihood as a strolling player in the booth of a mountebank."
While Cocardasse was speaking, Lagardere seemed to listen like a man in a dream. He forgot for the moment the reeking Inn room where he stood, the beastly visages that surrounded him, the whimsy that had drifted him thither. All these things were forgotten, and the man that was little more than a boy in years was in fancy altogether a boy again, a shivering, quivering slip of a boy that stood on the gusty high-road and knuckled his eyelids to keep his eyes from crying. How long ago it seemed, that time twelve years ago when a mutinous urchin fled from a truculent uncle to seek his fortune as Heaven might please to guide! Heaven guided an itinerant mime and mountebank that tramped France with his doxy to a wet hedge-side where a famished, foot-sore scrap of a lad lay like a tired dog, trying not to sob. The mountebank was curious, the mountebank’s doxy was kind; both applauded lustily the boy’s resolve to march to Paris, cost what it might cost, and make his fortune there. The end of the curiosity and the kindness and the applause was that the little Lagardere found himself at once the apprentice and the adopted son of the mountebank, with his fortune as far off as the stars. But he learned many things, the little Lagardere, under the care of that same mountebank; all that the mountebank could teach him he learned, and he invented for himself tricks that were beyond the mountebank’s skill. How long ago it seemed! Would ever space of time seem so long again? So the young man mused swiftly, while Cocardasse told his tale; but ere Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere was back in the tavern again, and, when Cocardasse had finished, Lagardere caught him up: "Why not? Some actors are as honest as bandits. I was no bad mummer, sirs. I could counterfeit any one of you now so that your mother wouldn’t know the cheat. And my master made me an athlete, too; taught me every trick of wrestling and tumbling and juggling with the muscles. That is why I was able to tumble you about so pleasantly just now. I should have been a mountebank to this day but for an accident."
Passepoil was curious. "What accident?" he asked.
Lagardere answered him: "A brawl over a wench with a bully. I challenged him, though I was more at home with a toasting-fork than a sword. I caught up an unfamiliar weapon, but he nicked the steel from my hand at a pass and banged me with the flat of his blade. The girl laughed. The bully grinned. I swore to learn swordcraft."
"And you did," said Passepoil. "In six months you were our best pupil."
Cocardasse continued: "In twelve you were our master."
Passepoil questioned again: "What became of your bully?"
Lagardere was laconic: "We had a chat afterwards. I attended his funeral."
Cocardasse clapped his hands. "Well begun, little Parisian."
Passepoil pointed admiringly at Lagardere. "Look at you now, a captain in the king’s guard."
Lagardere laughed cheerfully. "Look if you like, but I am no such thing. I am cashiered, exiled from Paris."
"Why?" asked Cocardasse, and Lagardere replied with a question: "Do you remember the Baron de Brissac?"
Cocardasse nodded. "One of the best swords in Paris."
Lagardere resumed: "Well, the late baron – "
Passepoil interrupted: "The late baron?"
Lagardere explained: "Brissac had a lewd tongue and smirched a woman. So I pulled his ears."
Cocardasse grinned. "The devil you did!"
"Yes," said Lagardere, "they were very long and tempting. We resumed the argument elsewhere. It was brief. Good-bye, Brissac! But as the good king, thanks to the good cardinal, now frowns upon duelling, I am exiled when I ought to be rewarded."
Cocardasse sighed. "There is no encouragement for virtue nowadays."
Lagardere’s voice was as cheerful as if there were no such thing in the world as exile. "Well, there I was at my wit’s end,