THE VALOIS SAGA: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen (Historical Novels). Alexandre Dumas

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      The second to the dwelling of the defunct Maître La Hurière, where each of them had left his portmanteau and horse.

      The third to the Florentine Réné, who, uniting to his title of perfumer that of magician, not only sold cosmetics and poisons, but also concocted philters and delivered oracles.

      At length, after two months passed in convalescence and confinement, the long-looked-for day arrived.

      We used the word “confinement;” the use of it is accurate because several times in their impatience they had tried to hasten that day; but each time a sentinel posted at the door had stopped their passage and they had learned that they could not step out unless Maître Ambroise Paré gave them their exeat.

      Now, one day that clever surgeon, having come to the conclusion that the two invalids were, if not completely cured, at least on the road to complete recovery, gave them this exeat, and about two o’clock in the afternoon on a fine day in autumn, such as Paris sometimes offers to her astonished population, who have already laid up a store of resignation for the winter, the two friends, arm in arm, set foot outside the Louvre.

      La Mole, finding to his great satisfaction, on an armchair, the famous cherry-colored mantle which he had folded so carefully before the duel, undertook to be Coconnas’s guide, and Coconnas allowed himself to be guided without resistance or reflection. He knew that his friend was taking him to the unknown doctor’s whose potion (not patented) had cured him in a single night, when all of Master Ambroise Paré‘s drugs were slowly killing him. He had divided the money in his purse into two parts, and intended a hundred rose-nobles for the anonymous Esculapius to whom his recovery was due. Coconnas was not afraid of death, but Coconnas was not the less satisfied to be alive and well, and so, as we see, he was intending to recompense his deliverer generously.

      La Mole proceeded along the Rue de l’Astruce, the wide Rue Saint Honoré, the Rue des Prouvelles, and soon found himself on the Place des Halles. Near the ancient fountain, at the place which is at the present time called the Carreau des Halles, was an octagon stone building, surmounted by a vast wooden lantern, which was again surmounted by a pointed roof, on the top of which was a weathercock. This wooden lantern had eight openings, traversed, as that heraldic piece which they call the fascis traverses the field of blazonry, by a kind of wooden wheel, which was divided in the middle, in order to admit in the holes cut in it for that purpose the head and hands of such sentenced person or persons as were exposed at one or more of these eight openings.

      This singular arrangement, which had nothing like it in the surrounding buildings, was called the pillory.

      An ill-constructed, irregular, crooked, one-eyed, limping house, the roof spotted with moss like a leper’s skin, had, like a toadstool, sprung up at the foot of this species of tower.

      This house was the executioner’s.

      A man was exposed, and was thrusting out his tongue at the passers-by; he was one of the robbers who had been following his profession near the gibbet of Montfaucon, and had by ill luck been arrested in the exercise of his functions.

      Coconnas believed that his friend had brought him to see this singular spectacle, and he joined the crowd of sightseers who were replying to the patient’s grimaces by vociferations and gibes.

      Coconnas was naturally cruel, and the sight very much amused him, only he would have preferred that instead of gibes and vociferations they had thrown stones at a convict so insolent as to thrust out his tongue at the noble lords that condescended to visit him.

      So when the moving lantern was turned on its base, in order to show the culprit to another portion of the square, and the crowd followed, Coconnas would have accompanied them, had not La Mole checked him, saying, in a low tone:

      “We did not come here for this.”

      “Well, what did we come for, then?” asked Coconnas.

      “You will see,” replied La Mole.

      The two friends had got into the habit of addressing each other with the familiar “thee” and “thou” ever since the morning of that famous night when Coconnas had tried to thrust his poniard into La Mole’s vitals. And he led Coconnas directly to a small window in the house which abutted on the tower; a man was leaning on the window-sill.

      “Aha! here you are, gentlemen,” said the man, raising his blood-red cap, and showing his thick black hair, which came down to his eyebrows. “You are welcome.”

      “Who is this man?” inquired Coconnas, endeavoring to recollect, for it seemed to him he had seen that face during one of the crises of his fever.

      “Your preserver, my dear friend,” replied La Mole; “he who brought to you at the Louvre that refreshing drink which did you so much good.”

      “Oho!” said Coconnas; “in that case, my friend”—

      And he held out his hand to him.

      But the man, instead of returning the gesture, drew himself up and withdrew from the two friends just the distance occupied by the curve of his body.

      “Sir!” he said to Coconnas, “thanks for the honor you wish to confer on me, but it is probable that if you knew me you would not do so.”

      “Faith!” said Coconnas, “I declare that, even if you were the devil himself, I am very greatly obliged to you, for if it had not been for you I should be dead at this time.”

      “I am not exactly the devil,” replied the man in the red cap; “but yet persons are frequently found who would rather see the devil than me.”

      “Who are you, pray?” asked Coconnas.

      “Sir,” replied the man, “I am Maître Caboche, the executioner of the provostry of Paris”—

      “Ah”— said Coconnas, withdrawing his hand.

      “You see!” said Maître Caboche.

      “No, no; I will touch your hand, or may the devil fetch me! Hold it out”—

      “Really?”

      “Wide as you can.”

      “Here it is.”

      “Open it — wider — wider!”

      And Coconnas took from his pocket the handful of gold he had prepared for his anonymous physician and placed it in the executioner’s hand.

      “I would rather have had your hand entirely and solely,” said Maître Caboche, shaking his head, “for I do not lack money, but I am in need of hands to touch mine. Never mind. God bless you, my dear gentleman.”

      “So then, my friend,” said Coconnas, looking at the executioner with curiosity, “it is you who put men to the rack, who break them on the wheel, quarter them, cut off heads, and break bones. Aha! I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.”

      “Sir,” said Maître Caboche, “I do not do all myself; just as you noble gentlemen have your lackeys to do what you do not choose to do yourself, so have I my assistants, who do the coarser work and despatch clownish fellows. Only when, by chance, I have to do with folks of quality, like you СКАЧАТЬ