Bardelys the Magnificent (16 page)

There was a pause, during which the other judges nodded their heads in sage approval of their President's words. For myself, I kept silent, perceiving how little it could avail me to continue to protest, and awaited his next question.

"You were arrested, monsieur, at the Château de Lavédan two nights ago by a company of dragoons under the command of Captain de Castelroux. Is that so?"

"It is so, monsieur."

"And at the time of your arrest, upon being apprehended as René de Lesperon, you offered no repudiation of the identity; on the contrary, when Monsieur
de Castelroux called for Monsieur de Lesperon, you stepped forward and acknowledged that you were he."

"Pardon, monsieur. What I acknowledged was that I was known by that name."

The President chuckled evilly, and his satellites smiled in polite reflection of his mood.

"This acute differentiating is peculiar, Monsieur de Lesperon, to persons of unsound mental condition," said he. "I am afraid that it will serve little purpose. A man is generally known by his name, is he not?" I did not answer him. "Shall we call Monsieur de Castelroux to confirm what I have said?"

"It is not necessary. Since you allow that I may have said I was known by the name, but refuse to recognize the distinction between that and a statement that 'Lesperon'
is
my name, it would serve no purpose to summon the Captain."

The President nodded, and with that the point was dismissed, and he proceeded as calmly as though there never had been any question of my identity.

"You are charged, Monsieur de Lesperon, with high treason in its most virulent and malignant form. You are accused of having borne arms against His Majesty. Have you anything to say?"

"I have to say that it is false, monsieur; that His Majesty has no more faithful or loving subject than am I."

The President shrugged his shoulders, and a shade of annoyance crossed his face.

"If you are come here for no other purpose than to deny the statements that I make, I am afraid that we are but wasting time," he cried testily. "If you desire it, I can summon Monsieur de Castelroux to swear
that at the time of your arrest and upon being charged with the crime you made no repudiation of that charge."

"Naturally not, monsieur," I cried, somewhat heated by this seemingly studied ignoring of important facts, "because I realized that it was Monsieur de Castelroux's mission to arrest and not to judge me. Monsieur de Castelroux was an officer, not a Tribunal, and to have denied this or that to him would have been so much waste of breath."

"Ah! Very nimble; very nimble, in truth, Monsieur de Lesperon, but scarcely convincing. We will proceed. You are charged with having taken part in several of the skirmishes against the armies of Marshals de Schomberg and La Force, and finally, with having been in close attendance upon Monsieur de Montmorency at the battle of Castelnaudary. What have you to say?"

"That it is utterly untrue."

"Yet your name, monsieur, is on a list found among the papers in the captured baggage of Monsieur le Duc de Montmorency."

"No, monsieur," I denied stoutly, "it is not."

The President smote the table a blow that scattered a flight of papers.

"Par la mort Dieu!" he roared, with a most indecent exhibition of temper in one so placed. "I have had enough of your contradictions. You forget, monsieur, your position—"

"At least," I broke in harshly, "no less than you forget yours."

The Keeper of the Seals gasped for breath at that, and his fellow-judges murmured angrily amongst
themselves. Chatellerault maintained his sardonic smile, but permitted himself to utter no word.

"I would, gentlemen," I cried, addressing them all, "that His Majesty were here to see how you conduct your trials and defile his Courts. As for you, Monsieur le Président, you violate the sanctity of your office in giving way to anger; it is a thing unpardonable in a judge. I have told you in plain terms, gentlemen, that I am not this René de Lesperon with whose crimes you charge me. Yet, in spite of my denials, ignoring them, or setting them down either to a futile attempt at defence or to an hallucination of which you suppose me the victim, you proceed to lay those crimes to my charge, and when I deny your charges you speak of proofs that can only apply to another.

"How shall the name of Lesperon having been found among the Duke of Montmorency's papers convict
me
of treason, since I tell you that I am not Lesperon? Had you the slightest, the remotest sense of your high duty, messieurs, you would ask me rather to explain how, if what I state be true, I come to be confounded with Lesperon and arrested in his place. Then, messieurs, you might seek to test the accuracy of what statements I may make; but to proceed as you are proceeding is not to judge but to murder. Justice is represented as a virtuous woman with bandaged eyes, holding impartial scales; in your hands, gentlemen, by my soul, she is become a very harlot clutching a veil."

Chatellerault's cynical smile grew broader as my speech proceeded and stirred up the rancour in the hearts of those august gentlemen. The Keeper of the Seals went white and red by turns, and when I paused
there was an impressive silence that lasted for some moments. At last the President leant over to confer in a whisper with Chatellerault. Then, in a voice forcedly calm—like the calm of Nature when thunder is brewing—he asked me—

"Who do you insist that you are, monsieur?"

"Once already have I told you, and I venture to think that mine is a name not easily forgotten. I am the Sieur Marcel de Saint-Pol, Marquis of Bardelys, of Bardelys in Picardy."

A cunning grin parted his thin lips.

"Have you any witnesses to identify you?"

"Hundreds, monsieur!" I answered eagerly, seeing salvation already within my grasp.

"Name some of them."

"I will name one—one whose word you will not dare to doubt."

"That is?"

"His Majesty the King. I am told that he is on his way to Toulouse, and I but ask, messieurs, that you await his arrival before going further with my trial."

"Is there no other witness of whom you can think, monsieur? Some witness that might be produced more readily. For if you can, indeed, establish the identity you claim, why should you languish in prison for some weeks?"

His voice was soft and oily. The anger had all departed out of it, which I—like a fool—imagined to be due to my mention of the King.

"My friends, Monsieur le Garde des Sceaux, are all either in Paris or in His Majesty's train, and so not likely to be here before him. There is my intendant, Rodenard, and there are my servants—some twenty
of them—who may perhaps be still in Languedoc, and for whom I would entreat you to seek. Them you might succeed in finding within a few days if they have not yet determined to return to Paris in the belief that I am dead."

He stroked his chin meditatively, his eyes raised to the sunlit dome of glass overhead.

"Ah—h!" he gasped. It was a long-drawn sigh of regret, of conclusion, or of weary impatience. "There is no one in Toulouse who will swear to your identity, monsieur?" he asked.

"I am afraid there is not," I replied. "I know of no one."

As I uttered those words the President's countenance changed as abruptly as if he had flung off a mask. From soft and cat-like that he had been during the past few moments, he grew of a sudden savage as a tiger. He leapt to his feet, his face crimson, his eyes seeming to blaze, and the words he spoke came now in a hot, confused, and almost incoherent torrent.

"Misérable!" he roared, "out of your own mouth have you convicted yourself. And to think that you should have stood there and wasted the time of this Court—His Majesty's time—with your damnable falsehoods! What purpose did you think to serve by delaying your doom? Did you imagine that haply, whilst we sent to Paris for your witnesses, the King might grow weary of justice, and in some fit of clemency announce a general pardon? Such things have been known, and it may be that in your cunning you played for such a gain based upon such a hope. But justice, fool, is not to be cozened. Had you, indeed, been Bardelys, you had seen that here in this
court sits a gentleman who is very intimate with him. He is there, monsieur; that is Monsieur le Comte de Chatellerault, of whom perhaps you may have heard. Yet, when I ask you whether in Toulouse there is any one who can bear witness to your identity, you answer me that you know of no one. I will waste no more time with you, I promise you."

He flung himself back into his chair like a man exhausted, and mopped his brow with a great kerchief which he had drawn from his robes. His fellow judges laid their heads together, and with smiles and nods, winks and leers, they discussed and admired the miraculous subtlety and acumen of this Solomon. Chatellerault sat, calmly smiling, in solemn mockery.

For a spell I was too thunderstruck to speak, aghast at this catastrophe. Like a fool, indeed, I had tumbled into the pit that had been dug for me by Chatellerault—for I never doubted that it was of his contriving. At last—

"My masters," said I, "these conclusions may appear to you most plausible, but, believe me, they are fallacious. I am perfectly acquainted with Monsieur de Chatellerault, and he with me, and if he were to speak the truth and play the man and the gentleman for once, he would tell you that I am, indeed, Bardelys. But Monsieur le Comte has ends of his own to serve in sending me to my doom. It is in a sense through his agency that I am at present in this position, and that I have been confounded with Lesperon. What, then, could it have availed me to have made appeal to him? And yet, Monsieur le Président, he was born a gentleman, and he may still retain some
notion of honour. Ask him, sir—ask him point-blank, whether I am or not Marcel de Bardelys."

The firmness of my tones created some impression upon those feeble minds. Indeed, the President went so far as to turn an interrogative glance upon the Count. But Chatellerault, supremely master of the situation, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled a pitying, long-suffering smile.

"Must I really answer such a question, Monsieur le Président?" he inquired in a voice and with a manner that clearly implied how low would be his estimate of the President's intelligence if he were, indeed, constrained to do so.

"But no, Monsieur le Comte," replied the President with sudden haste, and in scornful rejection of the idea. "There is no necessity that you should answer."

"But the question, Monsieur le Président!" I thundered, my hand outstretched towards Chatellerault. "Ask him—if you have any sense of your duty—ask him am I not Marcel de Bardelys."

"Silence!" blazed the President back at me. "You shall not fool us any longer, you nimble-witted liar!"

My head drooped. This coward had, indeed, shattered my last hope.

"Some day, monsieur," I said very quietly, "I promise you that your behaviour and these gratuitous insults shall cost you your position. Pray God they do not cost you also your head!"

My words they treated as one might treat the threats of a child. That I should have had the temerity to utter them did but serve finally to decide my doom, if, indeed, anything had been wanting.

With many epithets of opprobrium, such as are
applied to malefactors of the lowest degree, they passed sentence of death upon me, and with drooping spirits, giving myself up for lost and assured that I should be led to the block before many hours were sped, I permitted them to reconduct me through the streets of Toulouse to my prison.

I could entertain you at length upon my sensations as I walked between my guards, a man on the threshold of eternity, with hundreds of men and women gaping at me—men and women who would live for years to gape upon many another wretch in my position. The sun shone with a brilliance that to such eyes as mine was a very mockery. Thus would it shine on through centuries, and light many another unfortunate to the scaffold. The very sky seemed pitiless in the intensity of its cobalt. Unfeeling I deemed the note that everywhere was struck by man and Nature, so discordant was it with my gloomy outlook. If you would have food for reflection upon the evanescent quality of life, upon the nothingness of man, upon the empty, heartless egoism implicit in human nature, get yourselves sentenced to death, and then look around you. With such a force was all this borne in upon me, and with such sufficiency, that after the first pang was spent I went near to rejoicing that things were as they were, and that I was to die, haply before sunset. It was become such a world as did not seem worth a man's while to live in: a world of vainness, of hollowness, of meanness, of nothing but illusions. The knowledge that I was about to die, that I was about to quit all this, seemed to have torn some veil from my eyes, and to have permitted me to recognize the worthless quality of what I left. Well
may it be that such are but the thoughts of a man's dying moments, whispered into his soul by a merciful God to predispose him for the wrench and agony of his passing.

I had been a half-hour in my cell when the door was opened to admit Castelroux, whom I had not seen since the night before. He came to condole with me in my extremity, and yet to bid me not utterly lose hope.

"It is too late today to carry out the sentence," said he, "and as tomorrow will be Sunday, you will have until the day after. By then much may betide, monsieur. My agents are everywhere scouring the province for your servants, and let us pray Heaven that they may succeed in their search."

"It is a forlorn hope, Monsieur de Castelroux," I sighed, "and I will pin no faith to it lest I suffer a disappointment that will embitter my last moments, and perhaps rob me of some of the fortitude I shall have need of."

He answered me, nevertheless, with words of encouragement. No effort was being spared, and if Rodenard and my men were still in Languedoc there was every likelihood that they would be brought to Toulouse in time. Then he added that that, however, was not the sole object of his visit. A lady had obtained permission of the Keeper of the Seals to visit me, and she was waiting to be admitted.

"A lady?" I exclaimed, and the thought of Roxalanne flitted through my mind. "Mademoiselle de Lavédan?" I inquired.