GNAN

XIX. AFTERWARDS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"'I GIVE YOU ONE CHANCE FOR YOUR LIFE,' SAID I QUICKLY"

"'AND NOW SHE WILL WAIT FOR HIM IN VAIN!'"

"WE WERE INTERRUPTED BY A LOW CRY"

"'THE WRETCHES!' SAID THE TORTURED COUNT, STAGGERING TO HIS FEET"

"I LEAPED OVER THE BED, AND UPON THE MAN WHO WAS TRYING TO STRANGLE THE
COUNTESS"

"MY FATHER'S THRUSTS BECAME NOW SO QUICK AND CONTINUOUS"

THE BRIGHT FACE OF DANGER

CHAPTER I.

MONSIEUR HENRI DE LAUNAY SETS OUT ON A JOURNEY

If, on the first Tuesday in June, in the year 1608, anybody had asked me
on what business I was riding towards Paris, and if I had answered, "To
cut off the moustaches of a gentleman I have never seen, that I may toss
them at the feet of a lady who has taunted me with that gentleman's
superiorities,"--if I had made this reply, I should have been taken for
the most foolish person on horseback in France that day. Yet the answer
would have been true, though I accounted myself one of the wisest young
gentlemen you might find in Anjou or any other province.

I was, of a certainty, studious, and a lover of books. My father, the
Sieur de la Tournoire, being a daring soldier, had so often put himself
to perils inimical to my mother's peace of mind, that she had guided my
inclinations in the peaceful direction of the library, hoping not to
suffer for the son such alarms as she had undergone for the husband. I
had grown up, therefore, a musing, bookish youth, rather shy and
solitary in my habits: and this despite the care taken of my education
in swordsmanship, riding, hunting, and other manly accomplishments, both
by my father and by his old follower, Blaise Tripault. I acquired skill
enough to satisfy these well-qualified instructors, but yet a volume of
Plutarch or a book of poems was more to me than sword or dagger, horse,
hound, or falcon. I was used to lonely walks and brookside meditations
in the woods and meads of our estate of La Tournoire, in Anjou; and it
came about that with my head full of verses I must needs think upon some
lady with whom to fancy myself in love.

Contiguity determined my choice. The next estate to ours, separated from
it by a stream flowing into the Loir, had come into the possession of a
rich family of bourgeois origin whom heaven had blessed (or burdened, as
some would think) with a pretty daughter. Mlle. Celeste was a small,
graceful, active creature, with a clear and well-coloured s