nikfyl isadora margerey

[Map Rousch]

It was very warm in the inn room, but it was somuch warmer outside, in the waning flames of thelate September evening, that the dark room seemedveritably cool to those who escaped into its shelterfrom the fading sunlight outside. A window was opento let in what little air was stirring, and from thatwindow a spectator with a good head might lookdown a sheer drop of more than thirty feet into themoat of the Castle of Caylus. The Inn of the SevenDevils was perched on the lip of one rock, and CaylusCastle on the lip of another. Between the two laythe gorge, which had been partially utilized to formthe moat of the castle, and which continued its waytowards the Spanish mountains. Beyond the castlea bridge spanned the ravine, carrying on the roadtowards the frontier. The moat itself was dry now,for war and Caylus had long been disassociated, andFrance was, for the moment, at peace with her neighbor,if at peace with few other powers. A youngthirteenth Louis, a son of the great fourth Henri, nowsat upon the throne of France, and seemingly believedhimself to be the ruler of his kingdom, though a newlymade Cardinal de Richelieu held a different opinion,and acted according to his conviction with great pertinacityand skill.

Each of the drinkers of the inn had his own individualityof swagger, his truculent independence ofmien, which suggested a man by no means habituallyused either to receive commands or to renderunquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembledhis fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity,but no one of them resembled the others by wearingthat air of harmonious training with other men whichlinks together a company of seasoned soldiers. Withtheir long cloaks and their large hats and their highboots, with their somewhat shabby garments stainedwith age and sweat and wine, in many places patchedand in many places tattered, with their tangled locksand ragged mustachios, the revellers had on closerstudy more the appearance of brigands, or at leastof guerillas, than of regular troops. As a matter offact, they were neither soldiers nor brigands, thoughtheir way of life endowed them with some of thevirtues of the soldier and most of the vices of thebrigand.

There was not a man in that room who lackedcourage of the fiercest kind; there was but one manin the room with intelligence enough to appreciatethe possibility of an existence uncoupled with thepossession of courage of the fiercest kind. Therewas not a man in the room who had the slightest fearof death, save in so far as death meant the cessationof those privileges of eating grossly, drinking grossly,and loving grossly, which every man of the jack-rascalsprized not a little. There was not a man inthe room that was not prepared to serve the person,whoever he might be, who had bought his sword tostrike and his body to be stricken, so long as thebuyer and the bought had agreed upon the price, andso long as the man who carried the sword felt confidentthat the man who dandled the purse meantto meet his bargain.

The seventh man in the room, although he was ofthe same fellowship, was curiously unlike his fellows.While the others were burly, well-set-up fellows, whoheld their heads high enough and thrust out theirchests valiantly and sprawled their strong limbs atease, the seventh man was a hunchback, short ofstature and slender of figure, with a countenancewhose quiet malignity contrasted decisively with thepatent brutality of his comrades. The difference betweenthe one and the others was accentuated evenin dress, for, while the swashbucklers at the table lovedto bedizen themselves with an amount of ferociousfinery, and showed in their sordid garments a quantityof color that likened them to a bunch of fadedwild flowers, the hunchback was clad soberly in blackthat was well-worn, indeed, and grizzled at the seams,but neatly attended. He sat in the window, readingintently in a little volume, and, again unlike hisassociates, while he read he nursed between his kneesa long and formidable rapier. Those at the tablepaid him no heed; most of them knew his ways, andhe, on his side, seemed to be quite undisturbed in hisstudies by the noise and clamor of the drinking-party,and to be entirely absorbed in the delights of literature.

Now it would have profited Biscayan Pinto verylittle if he had been given time to study the volume,at least so far as its text was concerned, for the littlebook was a manuscript copy of the Luxurious Sonnetsof that Pietro Aretino whom men, or rather somemen, once called "The Divine." The book was illustratedas well, not unskilfully, with sketches thatprofessed to be illuminative of the text in the mannerof Giulio Romano. These might have pleasedthe Biscayan, for if he had no Italian, and could,therefore, make nothing of the voluptuousness of theScourge of Princes, he could, at least, see as well asanother savage the meaning of a lewd image. Butthe privilege was denied him. Scarcely had he gotthe book in his fingers when it was plucked from themagain, and thereafter, while with his left hand thehunchback slipped the booklet into the breast of hisdoublet, with his right hand he dealt Pinto such abuffet on the side of his head as sent him reelingacross the floor, to bring up with a dull thud at thetable against the backs of his nearest companions.

Instantly all was tumult. Pinto, black with anger,screamed Biscayan maledictions and struggled to getat his sword where it hung against the wall, while hiscomrades, clinging to him and impeding him, weretrying in every variety of bad French to dissuade himfrom a purpose which they were well enough awaremust needs end disastrously for him. For they allknew, what the raw Biscayan did not know, howstrong was the arm and how terrible the sword of thehunchback whose studies Pinto had so rudely and sofoolishly interrupted. As for the hunchback himself,he stood quietly by his chair, with his hands restingon the pommel of his rapier, and a disagreeable smiletwisting new hints of malignity into features that weremalign enough in repose. Now it may be that thesight of that frightful smile had its effect in coolingthe hot blood of the Biscayan, for, indeed, the hunchback,as he stood there, so quietly alert, so demoniacallywatchful, seemed the most terrible antagonisthe had ever challenged. At least, in a little while theBiscayan, drinking in swiftly the warnings of his companions,consented to be pacified, consented even tobe apologetic on a whispered hint, that was also awhispered threat, from his leader, that there shouldbe no brawling among friends.

Therewith he seated himself anew, and, pulling thebook from his bosom, resumed his reading and hissilent mouthing, while something of a gloom broodedover his fellows at the table. It was to dissipate thisgloom that presently the man who sat at the headof the table, a bald and red-faced fellow who lookeda German, and who seemed to exercise some kind ofheadship over the others, pushed back his chair alittle from the board and glanced half anxiously andhalf angrily towards the inn door. Then he thumpedhis red fist upon the wood till the flagons clattered andrattled.

The Italian, Faenza, began to laugh a little, quiet,teasing laugh; the sullen Biscayan, Pinto, patted elMatador on the back; Joel de Jurgan the Breton,stared stolidly; and Saldagno the Portuguese, refreshedhimself with a drink. Encouraged by whathe conceived to be the sympathy of his comrades,Pepe renewed the attack. "Come, Staupitz, come,"he questioned, "are not those swords long enoughand sharp enough to scare the devil?"

Staupitz struck the table again. "No, no, my children,"he said, "not for this job. Monsieur Peyrollestold me to bring nine of my babies, and nine we mustbe, and nine we should be at this moment if ourtruants were at hand."

At this moment Saldagno set down his beaker. "Ihear footsteps," he said. In the momentary silencewhich followed this remark, all present could heardistinctly enough the tramp of feet outside, and inanother instant the door was flung open and the twomen whom Staupitz had been expecting so impatientlymade their appearance.

If the contrast had been marked between the sixmen who sat at the table and the seventh man whosat apart, the contrast that existed between the twonew-comers was still more striking. The first to enterwas a big, jovial, red-faced, black-haired manwith a huge mustache and a manner that suggestedan ebullient admiration of himself and an ebullientappreciation of all possible pleasures. He was habitedmuch like his predecessors, in that he was booted,cloaked, hatted, and sworded as they were booted,cloaked, hatted, and sworded, but everything withhim, owing, it may be, to his flagrant Gascon nationality,tended to an extravagance of exaggeration thatmade him seem almost like a caricature of the others.His hat was bigger, his cloak more voluminous, hisboots more assertive, his sword longer, his taste forcolors at once more pronounced and more gaudy. Ifthe others might be likened in their coloring to fadedwild flowers, this man seemed to blaze like somemonstrous exotic. He was a swashbuckler whomCallot would have loved to paint.

While he entered the room with his air of splendidassurance that suggested that the Inn belonged to him,and greeted those that awaited him with such a nodas a monarch might accord to his vassals, he was followedby one that showed in almost every particularhis opposite. This one, that represented an extremeof Norman character as his ally represented an extremeof Gascon character, this one that seemed toshelter timidly behind the effulgence of his companion,was a lean, lanky, pallid fellow, clad wholly inblack of a rustier and shabbier kind than that wornby the reader in the window. From beneath hisdingy black felt hat thin wisps of flaxen hair flowedridiculously enough about his scraggy neck. Whilehis Gascon comrade entered the room with the mannerof one who carries all before him, the Normanseemed to creep, or rather to slink, in with lack-lustreeyes peering apologetically about him through loweredpink eyelids, while his twitching fingers appeared toprotest apologetically for his intrusion into a societyso far above his deserts. But if in almost every particularhe was the opposite to his friend, in oneparticular, however, he resembled him, for a long rapierhung from his side and slapped against his leancalves.

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