Cyrano Read online

  Cyrano

  by

  H. Bedford-Jones

  Altus Press • 2014

  Copyright Information

  © 2014 Altus Press

  Publication History:

  “Cyrano” originally appeared in the November 16–December 21, 1929 issues of Argosy magazine (Vol. 208, Nos. 1–6). Copyright 1929 by The Frank A. Munsey Company. Copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Steeger Properties, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Designed by Matthew Moring/Altus Press

  Special Thanks to Joel Frieman, Everard P. Digges LaTouche, & Gerd Pircher

  Chapter I

  —MAKES ENGAGEMENTS WHEN DRUNK.

  A DUST-COVERED, travel-weary cavalier dismounted from a very lame horse at the Tavern of the Three Kings, toward noon of a warm Spring day. He had obviously ridden far and hard, for he was spent with fatigue and stiff in the knees. He yielded his reins to the host and pointed to his lame beast.

  “A stone—I cannot dislodge it,” he croaked. “Have it attended to at once. Fetch me wine, a bite to eat. And quick about it, you rascal!”

  The surly rider staggered across the little courtyard and vanished in the tavern. The host shrugged and called angrily for a groom. Little did any of them imagine that upon this lamed foot of a horse hung the lives of men, the fate of kingdoms, the destinies of unborn generations. This stone wedged between hoof and shoe created invisible circles which reached out and out, lapping at the years to come.

  Destiny, however surprising, is never illogical. True, the Three Kings was a shabby tavern, haunted by grooms and lackeys and cutthroats and loose women, but it lay just within the Barrier St. Jacques. A rider coming into Paris by the Orleans route would quite naturally stop at the Three Kings—if forced to stop by thirst and a lame beast.

  Not that Paris cared for riders from the South. In this Spring of 1642, Paris was ruling itself in happy-may-care fashion. Paris was its own little world; the court was a separate world entirely, and now the court was out of Paris. King Louis XIII and Cardinal de Richelieu were both in Narbonne, directing the war against Spain, and the court had been moved south to Tarascon; another army was in Savoy, pushing the war against Italy. Paris, which loved the careless king for his vices and hated the too-patriotic cardinal for his virtues, was content to have them both far away, for it could go about its own business unconcernedly.

  The cavalier who entered the dark wineshop, blinking, was of the court. This was very obvious in his garments and bearing and face; a thin-featured, intolerantly proud man who looked about him in unconcealed disgust.

  The place was empty except for a shaggy, tattered man who sat at the only window-table, bending over among empty wine bottles, writing furiously; at his elbow were ink-horn and sand-box. He did not so much as glance up at the visitor.

  “Out of the way, fellow—I desire this table,” said the arrogant noble.

  THE writer looked up abstractedly. He was of most extraordinary appearance. He had long, uncut hair, a finely sensitive mouth, liquid dark eyes and a very large, hooked nose; his face was much cut about by sword-scars, lending him a most bizarre look. His once-rich clothes were shabby rags; his unkempt hair was a filthy mat. He was unshaved. His hands left smears on the paper whereon he wrote. He was very pale—a sure sign that he was drunk, had the cavalier known it. But the cavalier knew nothing of Paris or its characters.

  “You heard me!” snapped the weary, haughty noble. “Out of the way, gutter scum!”

  The two eyes, like stars set in a mass of dirt, peered up at him. A maudlin laugh broke from the writer.

  “Ha! M. de Luynes, grandson of the great marshal, gentleman of the court, noble, warrior, in all his splendor. And Cyrano de Bergerac, grandson of the great fish monger, wastrel of the back alleys, poet, gambler, in all his squalor! Here’s contrast for you!”

  “Eh! You know me?” exclaimed Luynes.

  “I know every one,” muttered Cyrano, and with shaking hand reached for his wine cup and drained it. Luynes regarded him with insolent disdain.

  “Move, canaille! Dog, make way for your betters. Writing, indeed! Since when did gutter cats learn writing? Away with you!”

  As he spoke, with his gloved hand he swept paper, ink-horn and sand-box to the floor. Then he started back a step, hand going to sword, swift, startled alarm in his face.

  Cyrano had come to his feet suddenly. His eyes blazed; in his scarred countenance was such unspeakable fury, such a wild and reckless burst of rage, that the cavalier drew back before it.

  Hot words poured from the poet-warrior’s lips.

  “Beast that you are—to touch a letter to her! Oh; foul hands!”

  Luynes perceived the drunken menace, and half bared his blade—but too late. Cyrano had snatched up an empty bottle; his arm moved with the rapidity of light. Struck above the ear, the hapless noble coughed and collapsed in a limp mass, as the bottle smashed.

  Cyrano blinked, then stared down in gaping, slack-jawed realization; upon the instant, he was half sobered. Dimly the penalties pierced to his brain; the archers of the watch, imprisonment in the Châtelet, perhaps the scaffold or gibbet. His hand groped for a full wine bottle, and he lifted it to his lips, gulped down the wine, then lowered the bottle and stared anew. After a moment he leaned over and touched the fallen man. There was no mark where the bottle struck, but Luynes was dead. His skull had been broken.

  The eyes of Cyrano darted about. They were alone; the swift incident had passed unseen. He staggered, then stooped and with an effort lifted the limp body, placing it in the corner of the window-seat. He arranged it there in a natural position, and pulled down the wide-brimmed beaver over the eyes of the cavalier.

  A part of his brain was clearly enough at work. Now he stooped and retrieved his scattered writing materials, picked up his unfinished letter, and stood swaying as he eyed it drunkenly.

  “Ha, my good Bergerac—my good poet, my good lover, my good rogue!” he muttered. “What though she will never read it! This is little short of sublime. But now—”

  He thrust the letter into his pocket, sagged down into his seat, poured more wine.

  THE hapless Cyrano was already in the depths of debt, drunkenness and dissipation, with all his future a hopeless blank. Cursed with a nose larger than that of other men, a hooked eagle’s beak that gave him the look of a bird of prey, he had entered the guards.

  Pretending to be a Gascon noble, and taking the name of Bergerac, he had won a place among the swashbuckling Gascon fighters. He served the sword well, becoming the deadliest rapier in all Paris, so that men laughed at him and his nose no more, but feared him, and wisely so.

  However, the sword served him ill. He was repeatedly wounded on campaign.

  But that was nothing; the tragedy came in Paris. One day, embroiled with a crowd of lackeys, he mistook a trained monkey for a man and killed the animal.

  Thus ended Cyrano the guardsman. Laughed out of his world by mirth that would not down, he forswore the sword. Vowing he would never wear rapier again, he turned to the philosopher Gassendi at the College of Lisieux, and took up the pursuit of letters. For the past year, gambling, dissipation and the dregs of Paris had claimed him. Money he had none, save what he could borrow or win at dice. His family shunned him. Thus, at the age of twenty-three.

  There was, however, this peculiarity about M. Savinien de Cyrano; what he lacked in scruple, he made up in roaring mirth, and he had respect for no man.

  The host came into the place with a tray of wine and stopped short, looking around for the cavalier. As it chanced, Cyrano was not known at this particular tavern; his own haunts were across the Seine. He looked up and beckoned.

  “Here we are—your man has gone to sleep. Leave the wine. I can use it.”

  The host came to the table, glanced at the apparently sleeping cavalier, and set down his tray. He regarded Cyrano dubiously.

  “As to payment, monsieur—there is already a matter of three crowns for wine.”

  “Leave it, leave it,” and Cyrano waved his hand grandly. “I have not finished.”

  The host, being impressed by the fact that his drunken and questionable customer could write, decided to chance payment, and departed. Cyrano poured more wine and gulped it down. Then he stared at the limp figure opposite.

  “Think, M. de Bergerac, think!” he murmured. “Think yourself out of this in a hurry, my poor Savinien! This man is a grandson of the great Marshal de Luynes, who sprang, it is true, from the lesser noblesse; but you spring from no noblesse whatever. Now you must use your wits, or you’ll end like poor Villon on the gibbet! Come, wits, come! Pox on me! If I were not so drunk—let’s see, now.”

  He leaned far over the table, and his long arms sent prying fingers over the body of Luynes. It was true that the latter came of a renowned family, but for a year or two past had fallen into some disgrace and had been exiled to his estates. This would not avail his slayer, however.

  Cyrano pulled forth gold pieces, silver coins, a fat silken purse, papers, a sealed packet and an unsealed letter. He sat blinking at them for a moment, dizzily, until his eyes focused upon the letter. It was addressed to M. d’Effiat, at his chambers in the Louvre.

  “Mordious! What’s this?” Cyrano clutched at it, spread it open. “Effiat? That will be the cousin of M. le Grand Equerry Cinq-Mars, favorite of the king! Here, now!”

  The portion of his befuddled br
ain which was a trifle sober, slowly comprehended the lines of writing that greeted him:

  Dear Cousin:

  Make use of the bearer. He is not acquainted with our plans, but is favorable to our cause. He has great ability, and can be of extreme value to us. As yet no further news.

  Cinq-Mars.

  Cyrano did not attempt to pierce beyond externals. The instant he read this epistle, he perceived salvation in it. Effiat obviously was not acquainted with M. de Luynes, who was not named in the letter. A wide grin showed Cyrano’s large and even teeth, and his sudden roaring laugh shook the glasses on the table.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed, sweeping coins, purse and sealed packet into his pocket. “Quick, now! M. Savinien de Cyrano, you are no more; I baptise thee M. le Marquis de Bergerac! Aye, a marquis at the very least. Off with you, before they examine yonder clay! Here’s a friend, shelter, money—a whole purse of gold pieces! But you can’t appear at the Louvre in this shape. Stop on the Pont Neuf, aye! A barber, a decent suit; half an hour at most. Then to the Louvre, with honest lies ready to hand. Ha, there’s fortune in it! On with the game, Cyrano!”’

  He perceived the host at the door, called to him, drained a last flagon of wine.

  “Here, my good man,” and Cyrano gave him a gold piece. “Keep the change, I beg of you. Let this gentleman sleep; he said not to waken him for an hour at least.”

  The inn-keeper bowed and scraped. Cyrano gathered his rags about him, and sauntered forth. Once in the street, he turned and made for the Pont Neuf as rapidly as his unsteady legs would bear him. Oddly enough, his muscles were seldom affected by liquor, but it fired his imagination, stimulated his brain—and usually ruined him completely.

  IN his room on the second floor of the Louvre sat M. Claude d’Effiat, Sieur d’Ernonville, titular Abbé of the great fortress of Mont St. Michel. He was the only gentleman at present occupying the Louvre palace of the Kings of France. Three years with the embassy in Venice had ended a few months since, when he found himself invested through Cinq-Mars’s influence with the splendid fief of Mont St. Michel, which had been stripped from the Duc de Guise.

  A touch of fever had kept Effiat from going south with the court; and now he was the picture of a great noble, with his frills and laces, his pomades and dogs and horses, his daintiness and his lechery, as became the cousin of the royal favorite. But in the eyes of Claude d’Effiat was a steely glint, in the set of his long and narrow jaw was a firmness, such as his debauched cousin Cinq-Mars never knew.

  He was a handsome gentleman, not well known at court. When the rebellion of Guise, in the previous year, sent that prince into exile, many men had desired that marvelous abbey of wealth and beauty, the impregnable fortress of Mont St. Michel; Effiat had obtained it. True, he had never seen his abbey, but he enjoyed its net revenues of 20,000 livres, which was the main thing.

  “Monsieur, a gentleman with a letter. The Marquis de Bergerac.”

  Mervaut, Effiat’s lackey, stood in the door. He was a wide-shouldered rogue with heavy, sullen features, but had a way with women, and had served Effiat well.

  “Admit him,” said Effiat carelessly, and surveyed himself in his mirror. If M. d’Effiat was handsome, his raiment was superb. His suit of scarlet silk, slashed with silver and sewed in patterns with seed pearls, had cost nine thousand crowns. His narrow features held pride and arrogance, with some reason; also, he could be charming when he so desired. Hard and cold as steel were his gray eyes, yet at times, as those who had faced his rapier well knew, they could glow and scintillate with sparks of cruel light.

  Cyrano entered and bowed—not the same man who had sat in the Three Kings, but a Cyrano cleansed, shorn, shaved, clad in passable garments, with a magnificent silver-hilted poniard at his girdle. The silver hilt bore, after the fashion under Henri IV, very elaborately chased arms, and Cyrano had paid two livres for it at a booth on the Pont Neuf.

  “You seek me, monsieur?” asked Effiat, surveying his visitor curiously. Cyrano bowed and presented his letter.

  “This will speak for me, monsieur,” he rejoined. He was apparently quite master of himself, but his glassy eye and thick tongue told a different story. “I have but just reached Paris; my fool of a lackey took my spare horse and portmanteau to my lodgings, and I hastened here without awaiting a change of clothes.”

  “You did well,” said Effiat dryly. “At this hour to-morrow I shall be gone. Ha! The hand of Cinq-Mars! You are from the South?”

  CYRANO assented and twirled his mustaches with his best Gascon air, as Effiat scanned the paper. If his assumed manner of Gascony had fooled all the Gascons in the guards, it was assuredly good enough to deceive Sieur d’Effiat.

  “Alexandre Hercule Savinien de Cyrano, Marquis de Bergerac, at your service, monsieur!” he declaimed grandly. “I have been for some years with the army in Italy, and have had the honor of commanding a regiment for His Majesty the King of Hungary; but upon coming into my estates returned to France and had the pleasure of meeting your very excellent and worthy cousin. Since my time is my own, he suggested that I might settle certain business in Paris and—”

  “Pray be seated, monsieur. I am charmed to make your acquaintance,” said Effiat. “Most unfortunately, I am compelled to leave Paris to-morrow. It would give me great pleasure if you would accompany me to my abbey of Mont St. Michel.”

  “There or to the moon,” said Cyrano, refusing the proffered chair. “No, no wine, I beg of you! I have drunk too much already. I am mortified at appearing in these miserable garments, monsieur, and beg of you to excuse my appearance and lay it to my anxiety to present myself.”

  Effiat was somewhat astonished at the words of this strange marquis, but they showed him the truth—or a little of it—and he broke into a laugh.

  “A frank confession, M. de Bergerac; you are absolved!” he exclaimed. “You have lodgings, then? Or may I offer you hospitality?”

  “Thank you, monsieur, I am provided,” said Cyrano.

  “Very well. You are weary, you have business—suppose we appoint a meeting for the morrow? That is to say, if your affairs will permit a departure.”

  Cyrano gestured magnificently. “My affairs are not many. Chief of them is the excellent Barsac they used to have at that tavern behind the Palais Cardinal, at the corner of the Rue des Bon Enfants—the cru of ’35. An admirable wine, monsieur! It is like the ichor of the gods. No, that’s not the word either. Nectar and ambrosia—eh?”

  “Correct.” Effiat chuckled softly. “Shall we meet there at noon to-morrow, then?”

  “With all my heart, monsieur,” and Cyrano bowed profoundly. “Ready for campaign.”

  “Agreed, then!”

  Cyrano left the Louvre in a most confused state; yet, at the back of his head, he remembered what had happened. He was to meet Effiat on the morrow and leave Paris with him; excellent! Meantime, he had a few debts to pay and must have clothes worthy of his new estate. The better to ponder this, he dropped into the first wine shop on the quay, one of many which catered for the gentlemen of the guards, and ordered something to eat and more to drink.

  The meal steadied him if it did not sober him, and two more bottles of wine served to bring him into a very singular condition indeed. In the midst of his meal he felt something hard in his pocket and drew it forth. It was the sealed packet he had taken from M. de Luynes. He set it on the table, looked at it, turned it over, looked at it again.

  A queer sort of sobriety seized upon him; a frozen sense of most deadly peril.

  A silk cord tied about the packet was sealed, and with the seal of Cardinal de Richelieu. On the other side was an address: Père Hugo Carré, at the Novitiate of Preaching Friars, in Rue St. Jacques.

  Founded by Richelieu for his own purposes, this establishment of Dominicans embraced the whole system of espionage and news reports started by Père Joseph, the “Gray Cardinal,” and greatly developed since his death. Cyrano, like every one in Paris, knew that it were better to stand as a felon before the high court of Parliament than to incur the anger of Père Carré. What was more to the point, he now understood that M. de Luynes had carried a private letter, and also dispatches from Richelieu to Père Carré; and these dispatches now lay under his hand!

  “Devil fly away with me!” swore Cyrano, hastily putting the packet out of sight. “I only wish he would! What now? If I destroy these letters, every spy in France will seek to unearth the slayer of Luynes; were I hidden in the Bastille, they would uncover me! If, on the other hand—by the saints!”