The servant bowed and disappeared. Gonzague went to the golden doors and threw them open. Standing in the aperture, he summoned his friends to join him. Instantly there was a great noise of rising revellers, of chairs set back, of glasses set down, of fans caught up, of fluttered skirts and lifted rapiers. Men and women, the guests of Gonzague, flooded from the supper-room into the great hall, and under the gaze of the Three Louis, Oriol with his fancy, Navailles with Cidalise, Taranne, Nocé, and the others, each with his raddled Egeria of the opera-house and the ballet. As they fluttered and flirted and laughed and chattered into the great hall, Gonzague held up his hand for a moment, as one that calls for silence, and in a moment the revellers were silent. Gonzague spoke: "Friends, I have good news. Lagardere is dead." A wild burst of applause greeted these words. The pretty women clapped their hands as they would have clapped them in the theatre for some dance or song that took their fancy. The men were not less enthusiastic. The difference between the men and the women was that the men applauded because they knew why their master was pleased; the women applauded because their master was pleased without asking the reason why. The name of Lagardere meant little or nothing to them. Nocé spoke a short funeral oration: "The scamp has cheated the gallows." When the applause had died down, Gonzague spoke again: "Also I have good sport for you. To-night you shall witness a wedding." XXVII ÆSOP IN LOVE Again the applause broke forth. Oriol, his round eyes growing rounder, echoed the last words as a question: "A wedding?" Gonzague nodded. "A wonderful wedding. The bride is a beauty, and the bridegroom is Æsop." Navailles looked round over his companions and sighed for the absence of a choice spirit. "How Chavernay would have laughed!" he said. "I wish he were here." "I did not invite Chavernay," Gonzague replied, coldly. And even as he spoke the door of the antechamber opened and Chavernay made his appearance unannounced, as briskly impudent, as cheerfully self-confident as ever. He shook a finger in playful reproof at Gonzague as he advanced, wholly unimpressed by the slight frown which knitted the brows of his unexpected host. "It was most unkind of you; but another makes good your neglect, whose invitation I really had not the strength of purpose to refuse." Gonzague's irritation was not altogether dissipated by the coolness of his kinsman, but he judged that any show of anger was unbefitting so felicitous an occasion, so he smiled slightly as he asked: "Who invites you?" Chavernay looked all around him, scanning the faces of the men in the brilliant group of Gonzague's guests, as if seeking there a countenance he failed to find. Then he answered, in a tone of voice that was unusually grave for the light-hearted marquis: "Henri de Lagardere."