He sneered heavily. “If to have begun your career of dalliance at the age of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be your title to experience, I agree,” said he. “But for the rest, Bardelys, for all your fine talk of conquering women, believe me when I tell you that in all your life you have never met a woman, for I deny the claim of these Court creatures to that title. If you would know a woman, go to Lavedan, Monsieur le Marquis. If you would have your army of amorous wiles suffer a defeat at last, go employ it against the citadel of Roxalanne de Lavedan's heart. If you would be humbled in your pride, betake yourself to Lavedan.”
“A challenge!” roared a dozen voices. “A challenge, Bardelys!”
“Mais voyons,” I deprecated, with a laugh, “would you have me journey into Languedoc and play at wooing this embodiment of all the marvels of womanhood for the sake of making good my argument? Of your charity, gentlemen, insist no further.”
“The never-failing excuse of the boaster,” sneered Chatellerault, “when desired to make good his boast.”
“Monsieur conceives that I have made a boast?” quoth I, keeping my temper.
“Your words suggested one—else I do not know the meaning of words. They suggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you had a mind to try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge you again. Go about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and your magnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and all the splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a year of your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit. Are you sufficiently challenged?”
“But this is rank frenzy!” I protested. “Why should I undertake this thing?”
“To prove me wrong,” he taunted me. “To prove me clumsy. Come, Bardelys, what of your spirit?”
“I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to take a wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!”
“Bah!” he sneered. “You do well to draw back You are wise to avoid discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be by some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames, no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of dalliance never so vast.”
“Po' Cap de Dieu!” growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in the Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. “Up, Bardelys! Afoot! Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever shamed; a squire of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! I have given a man a bellyful of steel for the half of those titles!”
I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now on their feet—those that could stand—were spurring me excitedly to accept the challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that of a sudden the tables were turned and I was become the baited. I sat in thought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it but little. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.
My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words to the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be—I know now that it was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's description, and were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had with them in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given me a false impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night. I was satisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived as he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I was accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and youth and the King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of faith and of zest, the very magnificence—so envied—of my existence affording me more disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged its shallows.
Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with such insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckon me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?
“Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?” Chatellerault was gibing, when my silence had endured some moments. “Is the cock that lately crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you are accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce you to this undertaking?”
I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less to bolster up my former boasting—or what into boasting they had translated.
“You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?” I cried, giving him back defiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. “Then have it so. Listen, gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here pledge my castle of Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every stick and stone and blade of grass that stands upon them, that I shall woo and win Roxalanne de Lavedan to be the Marquise of Bardelys. Does the stake satisfy you, Monsieur le Comte? You may set all you have against it,” I added coarsely, “and yet, I swear, the odds will be heavily in your favour.”
I remember it was Mironsac who first found his tongue, and sought even at that late hour to set restraint upon us and to bring judgment to our aid.
“Messieurs, messieurs!” he besought us. “In Heaven's name, bethink you what you do. Bardelys, your wager is a madness. Monsieur de Chatellerault, you'll not accept it. You'll—”
“Be silent,” I rebuked him, with some asperity. “What has Monsieur de Chatellerault to say?”
He was staring at the tablecloth and the stain of the wine that he had spilled when first Mademoiselle de Lavedan's name was mentioned. His head had been bent so that his long black hair had tumbled forward and partly veiled his face. At my question he suddenly looked up. The ghost of a smile hung on his sensuous lips, for all that excitement had paled his countenance beyond its habit.
“Monsieur le Marquis.” said he rising, “I take your wager, and I pledge my lands in Normandy against yours of Bardelys. Should you lose, they will no longer call you the Magnificent; should I lose—I shall be a beggar. It is a momentous wager, Bardelys, and spells ruin for one of us.”
“A madness!” groaned Mironsac.
“Mordieux!” swore Cazalet. Whilst La Fosse, who had been the original cause of all this trouble, vented his excitement in a gibber of imbecile laughter.
“How long do you give me, Chatellerault?” I asked, as quietly as I might.
“What time shall you require?”
“I should prefer that you name the limit,” I answered.
He pondered a moment. Then “Will three months suffice you?” he asked.
“If it is not done in three months, I will pay,” said I.
And then Chatellerault did what after all was, I suppose, the only thing that a gentleman might do under the circumstances. He rose to his feet, and, bidding the company charge their glasses, he gave them a parting toast.
“Messieurs, drink with me to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys's safe journey into Languedoc, and to the prospering of his undertaking.”
In answer, a great shout went up from throats that suspense had lately held in leash. Men leapt on to their chairs, and, holding their glasses on high, they acclaimed me as thunderously as though I had been the hero of some noble exploit, instead of the main figure in a somewhat questionable wager.
“Bardelys!” was the shout with which the house reechoed. “Bardelys! Bardelys the Magnificent! Vive Bardelys!”
CHAPTER II. THE KING'S WISHES