Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/250

226 Count employed for the rough jobs in the château and who posed as models in his studio. But these rough simple fellows were devoted to their patron, and would have badly handled the enemy at the first word broached of his nefarious plan. It was necessary to use stratagem, to gain them in some other way, cautiously, without hurrying matters.

He confined himself, for the time, to canvassing those of Klaarvatsch,who did not work continuously at the château, the sculpturesque sailors, the supernumeraries of the athletic games and ornamental tourneys, the personages of the "masks" and living pictures arranged by the Dykgrave. Landrillon accordingly, instilled into them a feeling against the five privileged ones and especially against the little favourite, who took the principal parts in these masquerades, as they were called by the valet, who had himself been rigorously excluded from these aesthetic interludes on account of his vulgarity. The men ended by agreeing with Landrillon that the ascendency of that little, beardless brat, Guidon Govaertz, over the Dykgrave was far too great. Ill-disposed towards the page, it would not be long, calculated this Machiavel