The Wolf-Leader

CHAPTER XV

THE LORD OF VAUPARFOND

THIBAULT, on arriving at the Dauphin d’Or, ordered himself as fine a dinner as he could think of. It would have been quite easy for him to have engaged a private room, but he would not then have enjoyed the personal sense of superiority. He wished the company of ordinary diners to see him eat his pullet, and his eel in its delicate sauce. He wished the other drinkers to envy him his three different wines, drunk out of three different shaped glasses. He wished everybody to hear him give his orders in a haughty voice, to hear the ring of his money.

As he gave his first order, a man in a grey coat, seated in the darkest corner of the room with a half bottle of wine before him, turned round, as if recognising a voice he knew. And, as it turned out, this was one of Thibault’s acquaintances – it is scarcely necessary to add, a tavern acquaintance.

Thibault, since he had given up making shoes by day and, instead, had his wolves about at night, had made many such acquaintances. On seeing that it was Thibault, the other man turned his face away quickly, but not so quickly but that Thibault had time to recognise Auguste François Levasseur, valet to Raoul the Lord of Vauparfond.

“Halloa! François!” Thibault called out, “what are you doing sitting there in the corner, and sulking like a Monk in Lent, instead of taking your dinner openly and cheerfully as I am doing, in full view of everybody?”

François made no reply to this interrogation, but signed to Thibault to hold his tongue.

“I am not to speak? not to speak?” said Thibault, “and supposing it does not suit me to hold my tongue, supposing I wish to talk, and that I am bored at having to dine alone? and that it pleases me to say; ‘Friend François, come here; I invite you to dine with me?!’ You will not? no? very well, then I shall come and fetch you.” And Thibault rose from his seat, and followed by all eyes, went up to his friend and gave him a slap on the shoulder vigorous enough to dislocate it.

“Pretend that you have made a mistake, Thibault, or you will lose me my place; do you not see that I am not in livery, but am only wearing my drab great-coat! I am here as proxy in a love affair for my master, and I am waiting for a letter from a lady to carry back to him.”

“That’s another matter altogether, and I understand now and am sorry for my indiscretion. I should like, however, to have dined in your company.”

“Well, nothing is easier; order your dinner to be served in a separate room, and I will give word to our host, that if another man dressed in grey like me comes in, he is to show him upstairs; he and I are old cronies, and understand one another.”

“Good,” said Thibault; and he therewith ordered his dinner to be taken up to a room on the first floor, which looked out upon the street.

François seated himself so as to be able to see the person he was expecting, while some distance off, as he came down the hill of Ferté-Milon. The dinner which Thibault had ordered was quite sufficient for the two; all that he did was to send for another bottle or so of wine. Thibault had only taken two lessons from Maître Magloire, but he had been an apt pupil, and they had done their work; moreover Thibault had something which he wished to forget, and he counted on the wine to accomplish this for him. It was good fortune, he felt, to have met a friend with whom he could talk, for, in the state of mind and heart in which he was, talking was as good a help towards oblivion as drinking. Accordingly, he was no sooner seated, and the door shut, and his hat stuck well down on to his head so that François might not notice the change in the colour of his hair, than he burst at once into conversation, boldly taking the bull by the horns.

“And now, friend François,” he said, “you are going to explain to me some of your words which I did not quite understand.”

“I am not surprised at that,” replied François, leaning back in his chair with an air of conceited impertinence, “we attendants on fashionable lords learn to speak court language, which everyone of course does not understand.”

“Perhaps not, but if you explain it to your friends, they may possibly understand.”

“Quite so! ask what you like and I will answer.”

“I look to your doing so the more, that I will undertake to supply you with what will help to loosen your tongue. First, let me ask, why do you call yourself a grey-coat? I thought grey-coat another name for a jack-ass.”

“Jack-ass yourself, friend Thibault,” said François, laughing at the shoe-maker’s ignorance. “No, a grey-coat is a liveried servant, who puts on a grey overall to hide his livery, while he stands sentinel behind a pillar, or mounts guard inside a doorway.”

“So you mean that at this moment then, my good François, you are on sentry go? And who is coming to relieve you?”

“Champagne, who is in the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert’s service.”

“I see; I understand exactly. Your master, the Lord of Vauparfond, is in love with the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert, and you are now awaiting a letter which Champagne is to bring from the lady.”

“Optimé! as the tutor to Monsieur Raoul’s young brother says.”

“My Lord Raoul is a lucky fellow!”

“Yes indeed,” said François, drawing himself up.

“And what a beautiful creature the Countess is!”

“You know her then?”

“I have seen her out hunting with his Highness the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson.”

Thibault in speaking had said out hunting.

“My friend, let me tell you that in society we do not say hunting and shooting, but huntin’ and shootin’.”

“Oh!” said Thibault, “I am not so particular to a letter as all that. To the health of my Lord Raoul!”

As François put down his glass on the table, he uttered an exclamation; he had that moment caught sight of Champagne.

They threw open the window and called to this third comer, and Champagne, with all the ready intuition of the well-bred servant, understood at once, and went upstairs. He was dressed, like François, in a long grey coat, and had brought a letter with him.

“Well,” asked François, as he caught sight of the letter in his hand, “and is there to be a meeting to-night?”

“Yes,” answered Champagne, with evident delight.

“That’s all right,” said François cheerfully.

Thibault was surprised at these expressions of apparent sympathy on the part of the servants with their master’s happiness.

“Is it your master’s good luck that you are so pleased about?” he asked of François.

“Oh, dear me no!” replied the latter, “but when my master is engaged, I am at liberty!”

“And do you make use of your liberty?”

“One may be a valet, and yet have one’s own share of good luck, and also know how to spend the time more or less profitably,” answered François, bridling as he spoke.

“And you, Champagne?”

“Oh, I,” replied the last comer, holding his wine up to the light, “yes, I too hope to make good use of it.”

“Well, then, here’s to all your love affairs! since everybody seems to have one or more on hand,” said Thibault.

“The same to yours!” replied the two other men in chorus.

“As to myself,” said the shoe-maker, a look of hatred to his fellow creatures passing over his face, “I am the only person who loves nobody, and whom nobody loves.”

His companion looked at him with a certain surprised curiosity.

“Ah! ah!” said François, “is the report that is whispered abroad about you in the country-side a true tale then?”

“Report about me?”

“Yes, about you,” put in Champagne.

“Oh, then they say the same thing about me at Mont-Gobert as they do at Vauparfond?”

Champagne nodded his head.

“Well, and what is it they do say?”

“That you are a were-wolf,” said François.

Thibault laughed aloud. “Tell me, now, have I a tail?” he said, “have I a wolf’s claws, have I a wolf’s snout?”

“We only repeat what other people say,” rejoined Champagne, “we do not say that it is so.”

“Well, anyhow, you must acknowledge,” said Thibault, “that were-wolves have excellent wine.”

“By my faith, yes!” exclaimed both the valets.

“To the health of the devil who provides it, gentlemen.”

The two men who were holding their glasses in their hand, put both glasses down on the table.

“What is that for?” asked Thibault.

“You must find someone else to drink that health with you,” said François, “I won’t, that’s flat!”

“Nor I,” added Champagne.

“Well and good then! I will drink all three glasses myself,” and he immediately proceeded to do so.

“Friend Thibault,” said the Baron’s valet, “it is time we separated.”

“So soon?” said Thibault. “My master is awaiting me, and no doubt with some impatience … the letter, Champagne?”

“Here it is.”

“Let us take farewell then of your friend Thibault, and be off to our business and our pleasures, and leave him to his pleasures and business.” And so saying, François winked at his friend, who responded with a similar sign of understanding between them.

“We must not separate,” said Thibault, “without drinking a stirrup-cup together.”

“But not in those glasses,” said François, pointing to the three from which Thibault had drunk to the enemy of mankind.

“You are very particular, gentlemen; better call the sacristan and have them washed in holy water.”

“Not quite that, but rather than refuse the polite invitation of a friend, we will call for the waiter, and have fresh glasses brought.”

“These three, then,” said Thibault, who was beginning to feel the effects of the wine he had drunk, “are fit for nothing more than to be thrown out of window? To the devil with you!” he exclaimed as he took up one of them and sent it flying. As the glass went through the air it left a track of light behind it, which blazed and went out like a flash of lightning. Thibault took up the two remaining glasses and threw them in turn, and each time the same thing happened, but the third flash was followed by a loud peal of thunder.

Thibault shut the window, and was thinking, as he turned to his seat again, how he should explain this strange occurrence to his companions; but his two companions had disappeared.

“Cowards!” he muttered. Then he looked for a glass, but found none left.

“Hum! that’s awkward,” he said. “I must drink out of the bottle, that’s all!”

And suiting the action to the word, Thibault finished up his dinner by draining the bottle, which did not help to steady his brain, already somewhat shaky.

At nine o’clock, Thibault called the innkeeper, paid his account, and departed.

He was in an angry disposition of enmity against all the world; the thoughts from which he had hoped to escape possessed him more and more. Agnelette was being taken farther and farther from him as the time went by; everyone, wife or mistress, had someone to love them. This day which had been one of hatred and despair to him, had been one full of the promise of joy and happiness for everybody else; the lord of Vauparfond, the two wretched valets, François and Champagne, each of them had a bright star of hope to follow; while he, he alone, went stumbling along in the darkness. Decidedly there was a curse upon him. “But,” he went on thinking to himself, “if so, the pleasures of the damned belong to me, and I have a right to claim them.”

As these thoughts went surging through his brain, as he walked along cursing aloud, shaking his fist at the sky, he was on the way to his hut and had nearly reached it, when he heard a horse coming up behind him at a gallop.

“Ah!” said Thibault, “here comes the Lord of Vauparfond, hastening to the meeting with his love. I should laugh, my fine Sir Raoul, if my Lord of Mont-Gobert managed just to catch you! You would not get off quite so easily as if it were Maître Magloire; there would be swords out, and blows given and received!”

Thus engaged in thinking what would happen if the Comte de Mont-Gobert were to surprise his rival, Thibault, who was walking in the road, evidently did not get out of the way quickly enough, for the horseman, seeing a peasant of some kind barring his passage, brought his whip down upon him in a violent blow, calling out at the same time: “Get out of the way, you beggar, if you don’t wish to be trampled under the horse’s feet!”

Thibault, still half drunk, was conscious of a crowd of mingled sensations, of the lashing of the whip, the collision with the horse, and the rolling through cold water and mud, while the horseman passed on.

He rose to his knees, furious with anger, and shaking his fist at the retreating figure:

“Would the devil,” he exclaimed, “I might just for once have my turn at being one of you great lords, might just for twenty-four hours take your place, Monsieur Raoul de Vauparfond, instead of being only Thibault, the shoe-maker, so that I might know what it was to have a fine horse to ride, instead of tramping on foot; might be able to whip the peasants I met on the road, and have the opportunity of paying court to these beautiful women, who deceive their husbands, as the Comtesse de Mont-Gobert does!”

The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the Baron’s horse shied, throwing the rider over its head.

CHAPTER XVI

MY LADY’S LADY

THIBAULT was delighted at seeing what had happened to the young Baron, whose hand, anything but light, had so shortly before made use of his whip on Thibault’s shoulders, which still smarted with the blow. The latter now ran at full speed to see how far Monsieur Raoul de Vauparfond was injured; he found a body lying insensible, stretched across the road, with the horse standing and snorting beside it.

But Thibault could hardly believe his senses on perceiving that the figure lying in the road was not the same as had, but five minutes previously, ridden past him and given him the lash with the whip. In the first place, this figure was not in the dress of a gentleman, but clothed like a peasant, and, what was more, the clothes he had on seemed to Thibault to be the same as he himself had been wearing only a moment before. His surprise increased more and more and amounted almost to stupefaction on further recognising, in the inert, unconscious figure, not only his own clothes, but his own face. His astonishment naturally led him to turn his eyes from this second Thibault to his own person, when he became aware that an equally remarkable change had come over his costume. Instead of shoes and gaiters, his legs were now encased in an elegant pair of hunting boots, reaching to the knee, as soft and smooth as a pair of silk stockings, with a roll over the instep, and finished off with a pair of fine silver spurs. The knee-breeches were no longer of corduroy, but of the most beautiful buckskin, fastened with little gold buckles. His long coarse olive-coloured coat was replaced by a handsome green hunting-coat, with gold lace facings, thrown open to display a waistcoat of fine white jean, while over the artistically pleated shirt hung the soft wavy folds of a cambric cravat. Not a single article of dress about him but had been transformed, even to his old lantern-shaped hat, which was now a three-cornered one, trimmed with gold lace to match the coat. The stick also, such as workmen carry partly for walking and partly for self-defence, and which he had been holding in his hand a minute before, had now given place to a light whip, with which he gave a cut through the air, listening with a sense of aristocratic pleasure to the whistling sound it made. And finally, his slender figure was drawn in at the waist by a belt, from which hung a hunting-knife, half-sword, half-dagger.

Thibault was pleased beyond measure at finding himself clothed in such a delightful costume, and with a feeling of vanity, natural under the circumstances, he was overcome with the desire to ascertain without delay how the dress suited his face. But where could he go to look at himself, out there in the midst of pitch darkness? Then, looking about him, he saw that he was only a stone’s throw from his own hut.

“Ah! to be sure!” he said, “nothing easier, for I have my glass there.”

And he made haste towards his hut, intending, like Narcissus, to enjoy his own beauty in peace and all to himself. But the door of the hut was locked, and Thibault felt vainly for the key. All he could find in his pockets was a well-filled purse, a sweet-meat box containing scented lozenges, and a little mother-of-pearl and gold penknife. What could he have done then with his door-key? Then suddenly a bright thought occurred to him – possibly the key was in the pocket of that other Thibault who was lying out there in the road. He went back and felt in the breeches pocket, where he discovered the key at once, in company with a few sous. Holding the rough clumsy thing in the tips of his fingers, he returned to open the door. The inside of the hut was even darker that the night outside, and Thibault groped about to find the steel, the tinder and flint, and the matches, and then proceeded to try and light the candle, which consisted of an end stuck into an empty bottle. In a second or two this was accomplished, but in the course of the operation Thibault was obliged to take hold of the candle with his fingers.

“Pah!” he said, “what pigs these peasants are! I wonder how they can live in this dirty sort of way!”

However, the candle was alight, which was the chief matter, and Thibault now took down his mirror, and bringing it to the light, looked at himself in it. His eye had scarcely caught sight of the reflected image, than he uttered a cry of astonishment, it was no longer himself that he saw, or rather, although it was still Thibault in spirit, it was no longer Thibault in body. His spirit had entered into the body of a handsome young man of twenty-five or twenty-six years of age, with blue eyes, pink fresh cheeks, red lips, and white teeth; in short, it had entered into the body of the Baron Raoul de Vauparfond. Then Thibault re-called the wish that he had uttered in his moment of anger after the blow from the whip and his collision with the horse. His wish had been that for four and twenty hours he might be the Baron de Vauparfond, and the Baron de Vauparfond be Thibault, which now explained to him what had at first seemed inexplicable, why the unconscious man now lying in the road was dressed in his clothes and had his face.

“But I must not forget one thing,” he said, “that is, that although I seem to be here, I am not really here, but lying out there, so I must be careful to see that during the twenty-four hours, during which I shall be imprudent enough to be away from myself, no irreparable harm comes to me. Come now, Monsieur de Vauparfond, do not be so fastidious; carry the poor man in, and lay him gently on his bed here.” And, although with his aristocratic instincts Monsieur de Vauparfond found the task very repugnant to him, Thibault, nevertheless, courageously took up his own body in his arms and carried himself from the road to the bed. Having thus placed the body in safety, he blew out the light, for fear that any harm should come to this other self before he came to; then, carefully locking the door, he hid the key in the hollow of a tree, where he was in the habit of leaving it when not wishing to take it with him.

The next thing to do was to get hold of the horse’s bridle and mount into the saddle. Once there, Thibault had a preliminary moment of some uneasiness, for, having travelled more on foot than on horseback, he was not an accomplished rider, and he naturally feared that he might not be able to keep his seat when the horse began to move. But it seemed, that, while inheriting Raoul’s body, he also inherited his physical qualities, for the horse, being an intelligent beast, and perfectly conscious of the momentary want of assurance on the part of his rider, made an effort to throw him, whereupon Thibault instinctively gathered up the reins, pressed his knees against the horse’s sides, dug his spurs into them, and gave the animal two or three cuts of the whip, which brought it to order on the spot.

Thibault, perfectly unknown to himself, was a past master in horsemanship. This little affair with the horse enabled Thibault more fully to realise his duality. As far as the body was concerned, he was the Baron Raoul de Vauparfond from top to toe; but as far as the spirit was concerned, he was still Thibault. It was, therefore, certain that the spirit of the young lord who had lent him his body was now sleeping in the form of the unconscious Thibault which he had left behind in the hut.

The division of substance and spirit between himself and the Baron, however, left him with a very vague idea of what he was going, or would have, to do. That he was going to Mont-Gobert in answer to the Countess’s letter, so much he knew. But what was in the letter? At what hour was he expected? How was he to gain admission to the Castle? Not one of these questions could he answer, and it only remained for him to discover what to do, step by step, as he proceeded. Suddenly it flashed across him that probably the Countess’s letter was somewhere on his person. He felt about his dress, and, sure enough, inside the side pocket of his coat was something, which by its shape, seemed to be the article he wanted. He stopped his horse, and putting his hand into his pocket, drew out a little scented leather case lined with white satin. In one side of the case were several letters, in the other only one; no doubt the latter would tell him what he wanted to know, if he could once get to read it. He was now only a short distance from the village of Fleury, and he galloped on hoping that he might find a house still lighted up. But villagers go to bed early, in those days even earlier than they do now, and Thibault went from one end of the street to the other without seeing a single light. At last, thinking he heard some kind of movement in the stables of an Inn, he called. A stable boy sallied out with a lantern, and Thibault, forgetting for the moment that he was a lord, said: “Friend, could you show me a light for a moment? You would be doing me a service.”