She could not help smiling.
“There, there, sir! Leave my beauty out of the question, and answer me. Fine beauty, indeed!”
“Well, dear cousin, I was sent back to garrison.”
“And where, pray? And why didn’t you come and take leave of me?”
“At Queue-en-Brie.”
Ph?bus was enchanted that the first question helped him to evade the second.
“But that is close by, sir. Why did you never come to see us?”
Here Ph?bus was seriously embarrassed.
“Why—my duties—And then, fair cousin, I have been ill.”
“Ill!” she repeated in alarm.
“Yes,—wounded.”
“Wounded!”
The poor child was quite overcome.
“Oh, don’t be frightened about that!” said Ph?bus, indifferently; “it was nothing. A quarrel, a sword-thrust; why should that trouble you?”
“Why should that trouble me?” cried Fleur-de-Lys, raising her lovely eyes bathed in tears. “Oh, you do not really mean what you say! What was this sword-thrust? I insist upon knowing everything.”
“Well, then, my dear, I had a row with Mahé Fédy,—you know whom I mean,—the lieutenant from Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and each of us ripped up a few inches of the other’s skin. That’s all there is about it.”
The lying captain was well aware that an affair of honor always exalts a man in a woman’s eyes. In fact, Fleur-de-Lys looked him in the face, quivering with terror, delight, and admiration. Still, she was not completely reassured.
“If you are sure that you are quite cured, dear Phoebus!” said she. “I don’t know your Mahé Fédy, but he is a bad man. And what did you quarrel about?”
Here Phoebus, whose imagination was only tolerably active, began to wonder how he was to get out of the scrape.
“Oh, I don’t know,—a trifle, a horse, a bit of gossip! Fair cousin,” cried he, in order to change the conversation, “what can that noise be in the square?”
He stepped to the window.
“Heavens! fair cousin, what a crowd there is in the square!”
“I don’t know,” said Fleur-de-Lys, “but I heard that a witch was to do public penance this morning before the church, and to be hanged afterwards.”
The captain felt so sure that Esmeralda’s affair was well over, that he took very little interest in Fleur-de-Lys’ words. Still he asked her one or two questions.
“What is this witch’s name?”
“I do not know,” replied she.
“And what do they claim that she has done?”
She again shrugged her white shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, my sweet Savior!” said the mother, “there are so many sorcerers nowadays that they burn them, I verily believe, without knowing their names. You might as well try to find out the name of every cloud in the sky. After all, we may rest easy. The good God keeps his list.” Here the venerable lady rose, and came to the window. “Good Lord!” said she, “you’re right, Phoebus. What a rabble! Bless me! if they haven’t climbed upon the house-tops! Do you know, Ph?bus, it reminds me of my young days. When King Charles VII entered Paris, there was exactly such a crowd. I’ve forgotten, now, just what year that was. When I talk to you of such matters, it seems to you like ancient history, doesn’t it, while to me it seems quite recent. Oh, that was a much finer-looking crowd than this is! They even hung upon the battlements of the Porte Saint-Antoine. The king had the queen on the crupper behind him, and after their Highnesses came all the ladies riding on the cruppers of all the lords. I remember people laughed well because beside Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short of stature, was my lord Matefelon, a knight of gigantic size, who had killed heaps of Englishmen. It was a splendid sight. A procession of all the gentlemen in France, with their oriflammes blazing in our very eyes. Some bore pennons and some bore banners. How can I tell you who they all were? There was the Lord of Calan, with his pennon; Jean de Chateaumorant with his banner; the Lord of Coucy, with his banner, and a showier one it was, too, than any of the others except that of the Duc de Bourbon. Alas! how sad it is to think that all that has been, and that nothing of it remains!”
The two lovers did not listen to the worthy dowager. Ph?bus again leaned on the back of his sweetheart’s chair,—a charming position, whence his impudent gaze pierced every opening in Fleur-de-Lys’ neckerchief. This neckerchief gaped so opportunely, and permitted him to note so many exquisite things, and to divine so many others, that, dazzled by her skin with its satiny gloss, he said to himself, “How can anybody ever fall in love with any but a fair-skinned woman?”