Chicot the Jester. Dumas Alexandre

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СКАЧАТЬ as Henri advanced, he found that Chicot’s voice grew fainter, and the other louder, and that it seemed to come from St. Luc’s room, in which he could see a light. He stooped down and peeped through the keyhole, and immediately grew pale with anger.

      “Par la mordieu!” murmured he, “is it possible that they have dared to play such a trick?”

      This is what he saw through the keyhole. St. Luc, in a dressing-gown, was roaring through a tube the words which he had found so dreadful, and beside him, leaning on his shoulder, was a lady in white, who every now and then took the tube from him, and called through something herself, while stifled bursts of laughter accompanied each sentence of Chicot’s, who continued to answer in a doleful tone.

      “Jeanne de Cossé in St. Luc’s room! A hole in the wall! such a trick on me! Oh! they shall pay dearly for it!”. And with a vigorous kick he burst open the door.

      Jeanne rushed behind the curtains to hide herself, while St. Luc, his face full of terror, fell on his knees before the king, who was pale with rage.

      “Ah!” cried Chicot, from the bed, “Ah! mercy! – Holy Virgin! I am dying!”

      Henri, seizing, in a transport of rage, the trumpet from the hands of St. Luc, raised it as if to strike. But St. Luc jumped up and cried —

      “Sire, I am a gentleman; you have no right to strike me!”

      Henri dashed the trumpet violently on the ground. Some one picked it up; it was Chicot, who, hearing the noise, judged that his presence was necessary as a mediator. He ran to the curtain, and, drawing out poor Jeanne, all trembling —

      “Oh!” said he, “Adam and Eve after the Fall. You send them away, Henri, do you not?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then I will be the exterminating angel.”

      And throwing himself between, the king and St. Luc, and waving the trumpet over the heads of the guilty couple, said —

      “This is my Paradise, which you have lost by your disobedience; I forbid you to return to it.”

      Then he whispered to St. Luc, who had his arm round his wife —

      “If you have a good horse, kill it, but be twenty leagues from here before to-morrow.”

      CHAPTER X.

      HOW BUSSY WENT TO SEEK FOR THE REALITY OF HIS DREAM

      When Bussy returned home again, he was still thinking of his dream.

      “Morbleu!” said he, “it is impossible that a dream should have left such a vivid impression on my mind. I see it all so clearly; – the bed, the lady, the doctor. I must seek for it – surely I can find it again.” Then Bussy, after having the bandage of his wound resettled by a valet, put on high boots, took his sword, wrapped himself in his cloak, and set off for the same place where he had been nearly murdered the night before, and nearly at the same hour.

      He went in a litter to the Rue Roi-de-Sicile, then got out, and told his servants to wait for him. It was about nine in the evening, the curfew had sounded, and Paris was deserted. Bussy arrived at the Bastile, then he sought for the place where his horse had fallen, and thought he had found it; he next endeavored to repeat his movements of the night before, retreated to the wall, and examined every door to find the corner against which he had leaned, but all the doors seemed alike.

      “Pardieu!” said he, “if I were to knock at each of these doors question all the lodgers, spend a thousand crowns to make valets and old women speak, I might learn what I want to know. There are fifty houses; it would take me at least five nights.”

      As he spoke, he perceived a small and trembling light approaching.

      This light advanced slowly, and irregularly, stopping occasionally, moving on again, and going first to the right, then to the left, then, for a minute, coming straight on, and again diverging. Bussy leaned against a door, and waited. The light continued to advance, and soon he could see a black figure, which, as it advanced, took the form of a man, holding a lantern in his left hand. He appeared to Bussy to belong to the honorable fraternity of drunkards, for nothing else seemed to explain the eccentric movements of the lantern. At last he slipped over a piece of ice, and fell. Bussy was about to come forward and offer his assistance, but the man and the lantern were quickly up again, and advanced directly towards him, when he saw, to his great surprise, that the man had a bandage over his eyes. “Well!” thought he, “it is a strange thing to play at blind man’s buff with a lantern in your hand. Am I beginning to dream again? And, good heavens! he is talking to himself. If he be not drunk or mad, he is a mathematician.”

      This last surmise was suggested by the words that Bussy heard.

      “488, 489, 490,” murmured the man, “it must be near here.” And then he raised his bandage, and finding himself in front of a house, examined it attentively.

      “No, it is not this,” he said. Then, putting back his bandage, he recommenced his walk and his calculations. “491, 492, 493, 494; I must be close.” And he raised his bandage again, and, approaching the door next to that against which Bussy was standing, began again to examine.

      “Hum!” said he, “it might, but all these doors are so alike.”

      “The same reflection I have just made,” thought Bussy.

      However, the mathematician now advanced to the next door, and going up to it, found himself face to face with Bussy.

      “Oh!” cried he, stepping back.

      “Oh!” cried Bussy.

      “It is not possible.”

      “Yes; but it is extraordinary. You are the doctor?”

      “And you the gentleman?”

      “Just so.”

      “Mon Dieu! how strange.”

      “The doctor,” continued Bussy, “who yesterday dressed a wound for a gentleman?”

      “Yes, in the right side.”

      “Exactly so. You had a gentle, light, and skilful hand.”

      “Ah, sir, I did not expect to find you here.”

      “But what were you looking for?”

      “The house.”

      “Then you do not know it?”

      “How should I? They brought me here with my eyes bandaged.”

      “Then you really came here?”

      “Either to this house or the next.”

      “Then I did not dream?”

      “Dream?”

      “I confess I feared it was all a dream.”

      “Ah! I fancied there was some mystery.”

      “A mystery which you must help me to unravel.”

      “Willingly.”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ