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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14219 ***
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+Bertha Runkle.
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+[Illustration: THE FLORENTINES IN THE HÔTEL DE MAYENNE]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BY BERTHA RUNKLE
+
+
+THE HELMET OF
+
+NAVARRE
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE
+
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+NEW YORK 1901
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+     Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
+     And be your oriflamme to-day the Helmet of Navarre.
+
+                             LORD MACAULAY'S "IVRY."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+     I  A FLASH OF LIGHTNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
+    II  AT THE AMOUR DE DIEU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
+   III  M. LE DUC IS WELL GUARDED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
+    IV  THE THREE MEN IN THE WINDOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
+     V  RAPIERS AND A VOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
+    VI  A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
+   VII  A DIVIDED DUTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  62
+  VIII  CHARLES-ANDRÉ-ÉTIENNE-MARIE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  74
+    IX  THE HONOUR OF ST. QUENTIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  85
+     X  LUCAS AND "LE GAUCHER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  96
+    XI  VIGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
+   XII  THE COMTE DE MAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
+  XIII  MADEMOISELLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
+   XIV  IN THE ORATORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
+    XV  MY LORD MAYENNE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
+   XVI  MAYENNE'S WARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
+  XVII  "I'LL WIN MY LADY!". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
+ XVIII  TO THE BASTILLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
+   XIX  TO THE HÔTEL DE LORRAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
+    XX  "ON GUARD, MONSIEUR" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
+   XXI  A CHANCE ENCOUNTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
+  XXII  THE SIGNET OF THE KING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
+ XXIII  THE CHEVALIER OF THE TOURNELLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
+  XXIV  THE FLORENTINES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
+   XXV  A DOUBLE MASQUERADE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
+  XXVI  WITHIN THE SPIDER'S WEB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
+ XXVII  THE COUNTERSIGN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
+XXVIII  ST. DENIS--AND NAVARRE!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
+  XXIX  THE TWO DUKES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
+   XXX  MY YOUNG LORD SETTLES SCORES WITH TWO FOES AT ONCE . . . . 440
+  XXXI  "THE VERY PATTERN OF A KING" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+THE FLORENTINES IN THE HÔTEL DE MAYENNE. . . . . . . .  _Frontispiece_
+"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  87
+"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE ALLEY". . . 117
+"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY". . . . . . . . 149
+MLLE. DE MONTLUC AND FÉLIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY. . . . . . . . . . 169
+"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE FED". . . . . . 205
+"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH". . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
+"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP" . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
+AT THE "BONNE FEMME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
+"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY" . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
+ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
+THE MEETING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_A flash of lightning._
+
+
+At the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a candle.
+The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would not have you
+break your neck."
+
+"And give the house a bad name," I said.
+
+"No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer inn in
+all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you will have
+larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance."
+
+This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been bragging a
+bit of my prospects. I retorted:
+
+"When I am, Maître Jacques, look out for a rise in your taxes."
+
+The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the honours of
+that encounter. And though the stairs were the steepest I ever climbed,
+I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the way up. What mattered
+it that already I ached in every bone, that the stair was long and my
+bed but a heap of straw in the garret of a mean inn in a poor quarter? I
+was in Paris, the city of my dreams!
+
+I am a Broux of St. Quentin. The great world has never heard of the
+Broux? No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years, Masters of
+the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St. Quentin. The great
+world has heard of the St. Quentins? I warrant you! As loudly as it has
+of Sully and Villeroi, Trémouille and Biron. That is enough for the
+Broux.
+
+I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I loved and
+revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court, seemed as far
+away from us as the saints in heaven. But the year after King Henry III
+was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his estate, to make high and low
+love him for himself.
+
+In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two Leagues were
+tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found himself between the
+devil and the deep sea. He was no friend to the League; for years he had
+stood between the king, his master, and the machinations of the Guises.
+On the other hand, he was no friend to the Huguenots. "To seat a heretic
+on the throne of France were to deny God," he said. Therefore he came
+home to St. Quentin, where he abode in quiet for some three years, to
+the great wonderment of all the world.
+
+Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead, his
+compeers would have understood readily enough that he was waiting to see
+how the cat would jump, taking no part in the quarrel lest he should
+mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's
+character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was
+known to all as a hotspur--a man who acted quickly and seldom counted
+the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of
+the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist
+his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too
+deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a
+pretty word. If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw
+his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward.
+
+Thus he stayed alone in the château for a long, irksome three years.
+Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to stand aside and watch
+while other men fought out great issues. It was a weary procession of
+days to him. His only son, a lad a few years older than I, shared none
+of his father's scruples and refused point-blank to follow him into
+exile. He remained in Paris, where they knew how to be gay in spite of
+sieges. Therefore I, the Forester's son, whom Monsieur took for a page,
+had a chance to come closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere
+servant, and I loved him as the dogs did. Aye, and admired him for a
+fortitude almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive
+here in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and ÃŽle de France battles
+raged and towns fell and captains won glory.
+
+At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to have a
+frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for that he was
+accorded long interviews with Monsieur. After these visits my lord was
+always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs, like a stallion when he
+is led out of the stable. I looked for something to happen, and it was
+no surprise to me when M. le Duc announced one day, quite without
+warning, that he was done with St. Quentin and would be off in the
+morning for Mantes. I was in the seventh heaven of joy when he added
+that he should take me with him. I knew the King of Navarre was at
+Mantes--at last we were going to make history! There was no bound to my
+golden dreams, no limit to my future.
+
+But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but my
+father's. He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old servitor's
+privilege, begged him to leave me at home.
+
+"I have lost two sons in Monsieur's service," he said: "Jean, hunting in
+this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois. I have never grudged them
+to Monsieur. But Félix is all I have left."
+
+Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the hay-loft, when
+my duke rode away. I could not watch his going.
+
+Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed. Time does pass, at
+length, even when one is young. It was July. The King of Navarre had
+moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most folk thought he
+would never win the city, the hotbed of the League. Of M. le Duc we
+heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller, putting up at the inn
+in the village, told a startling tale. The Duke of St. Quentin, though
+known to have been at Mantes and strongly suspected of espousing
+Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly into Paris and opened his hôtel! It
+was madness--madness sheer and stark. Thus far his religion had saved
+him, yet any day he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.
+
+My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on the
+grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for keeping
+me at home and spoiling my chances in life. He gave me straightway the
+whole of the story. Long before it was over I had sprung to my feet.
+
+"Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?" he said.
+
+"Father!" was all I could gasp.
+
+"Then you shall go," he answered. That was not bad for an old man who
+had lost two sons for Monsieur!
+
+I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart. I can tell
+naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end of it lay
+Paris. I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered without a
+passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly so strict as
+Mayenne supposed. I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry, in no guise to
+present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no farther that night
+than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue des Coupejarrets.
+
+Far below my garret window lay the street--a trench between the high
+houses. Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the house
+opposite. To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it seemed the
+desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the rabbits in a warren.
+So ingenious were they at contriving to waste no inch of open space
+that the houses, standing at the base but a scant street's width apart,
+ever jutted out farther at each story till they looked to be fairly
+toppling together. I could see into the windows up and down the way; see
+the people move about within; hear opposite neighbours call to each
+other. But across from my aery were no lights and no people, for that
+house was shuttered tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as
+expressionless as a blind face. I marvelled how it came to stand empty
+in that teeming quarter.
+
+Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and was
+asleep before I could shut my eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Crash! Crash! Crash!
+
+I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was bombarding
+Paris. Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the noise was thunder.
+
+From the window I peered into floods of rain. The peals died away.
+Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in
+astonishment. For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid
+vision of three men in the window.
+
+Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.
+
+I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next flash.
+When it came it showed me the window barred as before. Flash followed
+flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain. The shutter
+remained closed as if it had never been opened. Sleep rolled over me in
+a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_At the Amour de Dieu._
+
+
+When I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the room,
+glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared at them,
+sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the thunder-storm and the
+open shutter and the three men. I jumped up and ran to the window. The
+shutters opposite were closed; the house just as I had seen it first,
+save for the long streaks of wet down the wall. The street below was one
+vast puddle. At all events, the storm was no dream, as I half believed
+the vision to be.
+
+I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was deserted save
+for Maître Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of me whether I took myself
+for a prince, that I lay in bed till all decent folk had been hours
+about their business, and then expected breakfast. However, he brought
+me a meal, and I made no complaint that it was a poor one.
+
+"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.
+
+He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed over on
+the table.
+
+"What neighbours?"
+
+"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep them
+open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said airily. "Last
+night I saw three men in the window opposite mine."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is how you
+came to see visions."
+
+"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for that,
+let me tell you, Maître Jacques."
+
+"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no one has
+lived in that house these twenty years."
+
+Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head over
+night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So, with a
+fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:
+
+"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"
+
+He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see that no one
+was by, leaned across the table, up to me.
+
+"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you
+first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted."
+
+"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.
+
+"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre--you know naught of that:
+you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy. But I was
+here, and I know. A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day. The
+gutters ran blood."
+
+"And that house--what happened in that house?"
+
+"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Béthune," he
+answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice. "They were
+all put to the sword--the whole household. It was Guise's work. The Duc
+de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was
+going on. Parbleu! that was a day."
+
+"Mon dieu! yes."
+
+"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different tone.
+"One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen now. But
+the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house.
+No one will live there."
+
+"And have others seen as well as I?"
+
+"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises. Folk
+might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis another matter
+with you, though, since you have had the vision."
+
+"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre dress--"
+
+"M. de Béthune and his cousins. What further? Did you hear shrieks?"
+
+"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for the
+space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute the
+shutters were closed again."
+
+"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has disturbed
+them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have lost their
+leader."
+
+I stared at him blankly, and he added:
+
+"Their Henry of Navarre."
+
+"But he is not lost. There has been no battle."
+
+"Lost to them," said Maître Jacques, "when he turns Catholic."
+
+"Oh!" I cried.
+
+"Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know these
+things."
+
+"But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!"
+
+"Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do the
+learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?"
+
+"Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Maître Jacques."
+
+"If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out, spit me
+on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he added:
+
+"It should be welcome news to you."
+
+Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of base. Yet
+it was my duty to be discreet.
+
+"I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I said.
+
+"Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open secret
+that your patron has gone over to Navarre."
+
+"I know naught of it."
+
+"Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to Paris M.
+de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his parleyings, he
+was a fool."
+
+"His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.
+
+"Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre. For, mark
+you, all France has been wondering these many months where St. Quentin
+was coming out. His movements do not go unnoted like a yokel's. But, i'
+faith, he is not dull; he understands that well enough. Nay, 'tis my
+belief he came into the city in pure effrontery to show them how much he
+dared. He is a bold blade, your duke. And, mon dieu! it had its effect.
+For the Leaguers have been so agape with astonishment ever since that
+they have not raised a finger against him."
+
+"Yet you do not think him safe?"
+
+"Safe, say you? Safe! Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of lions, and
+they did not in the first instant eat you, would you therefore feel
+safe? He was stark mad to come to Paris. There is no man the League
+hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no man they can afford
+so ill to spare to King Henry. A great Catholic noble, he would be meat
+and drink to the Béarnais. He was mad to come here."
+
+"And yet nothing has happened to him."
+
+"Verily, fortune favours the brave. No, nothing has happened--yet. But I
+tell you true, Félix, I had rather be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de
+Dieu than stand in M. de St. Quentin's shoes."
+
+"I was talking with the men here last night," I said. "There was not one
+but had a good word for Monsieur."
+
+"Aye, so they have. They like his pluck. And if the League kills him it
+is quite on the cards that the people will rise up and make the town
+lively. But that will not profit M. de St. Quentin if he is dead."
+
+I would not be dampened, though, by an old croaker.
+
+"Nay, maître, if the people are with him, the League will not dare--"
+
+"There you fool yourself, my springald. If there is one thing which the
+nobles of the League neither know nor care about it is what the people
+think. They sit wrangling over their French League and their Spanish
+League, their kings and their princesses, and what this lord does and
+that lord threatens, and they give no heed at all to us--us, the people.
+But they will find out their mistake. Some day they will be taught that
+the nobles are not all of France. There will come a reckoning when more
+blood will flow in Paris than ever flowed on St. Bartholomew's day. They
+think we are chained down, do they? Pardieu! there will come a day!"
+
+I scarcely knew the man; his face was flushed, his eyes sparkling as if
+they saw more than the common room and mean street. But as I stared the
+glow faded, and he said in a lower tone:
+
+"At least, it will happen unless Henry of Navarre comes to save us from
+it. He is a good fellow, this Navarre."
+
+"They say he can never enter Paris."
+
+"They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he can
+enter Paris to-morrow."
+
+"Mayenne does not think so."
+
+"No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep an inn
+in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.
+
+"Laugh if you like; but I tell you, Félix Broux, my lord's
+council-chamber is not the only place where they make kings. We do it,
+too, we of the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Well," said I, "I leave you, then, to make kings. I must be off to my
+duke. What's the scot, maître?"
+
+He dropped the politician, and was all innkeeper in a second.
+
+"A crown!" I cried in indignation. "Do you think I am made of crowns?
+Remember, I am not yet Minister of Finance."
+
+"No, but soon will be," he grinned. "Besides, what I ask is little
+enough, God knows. Do you think food is cheap in a siege?"
+
+"Then I pray Navarre may come soon and end it."
+
+"Amen to that," said old Jacques, quite gravely. "If he comes a Catholic
+it cannot be too soon."
+
+I counted out my pennies with a last grumble.
+
+"They ought to call this the Rue Coupebourses."
+
+He laughed; he could afford to, with my silver jingling in his pouch. He
+embraced me tenderly at parting, and hoped to see me again at his inn. I
+smiled to myself; I had not come to Paris--I--to stay in the Rue
+Coupejarrets!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_M. le Duc is well guarded._
+
+
+I stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to inquire my
+way to the Hôtel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew, in the Quartier
+Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had found the broad,
+straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to follow it over the hill
+down to the river-bank; my eyes were free, therefore, to stare at all
+the strange sights of the great city--markets and shops and churches and
+prisons. But most of all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had
+scarce realized there were so many people in the world as passed me that
+summer morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the
+place appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris
+was at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by
+the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.
+
+I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as not to
+see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I looked at
+the people I passed who were going about their business so tranquilly.
+Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or Navarre's. Before a
+week was out these peaceable citizens might be using pikes for tools and
+exchanging bullets for good mornings. Whatever happened, here was I in
+Paris in the thick of it! My feet fairly danced under me; I could not
+reach the hôtel soon enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for
+it gave me chance to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die
+for him--whatever fate could offer I was ready for.
+
+The hôtel, when at length I arrived before it, was no disappointment.
+Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun; the street was of
+decent width, and the houses held themselves back with reserve, like the
+proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did one here regret his
+possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+Of all the mansions in the place, the Hôtel St. Quentin was, in my
+opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and stately, with
+gardens at the side. But there was about it none of that stir and
+liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors
+passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were
+looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days
+preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had
+never been a time when they were proud to be seen in his hall.
+
+Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of Monsieur's
+men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him boldly.
+
+He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce repaid him.
+
+"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M. le Duc."
+
+"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which, none of
+the newest, showed signs of my journey.
+
+"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his men."
+
+He looked me up and down with a grin.
+
+"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is not
+receiving to-day."
+
+"I am Félix Broux," I told him.
+
+"You may be Félix anybody for all it avails; you cannot see Monsieur."
+
+"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the
+staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common fellow
+picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been at his side
+these twenty years.
+
+"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."
+
+"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You shall
+smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."
+
+"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to bother
+with you."
+
+"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and resumed
+his pacing up and down the court.
+
+"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he could
+hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by and by. I'll
+pay you off."
+
+It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal; it made
+a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an outcry that
+would bring forward some officer with more sense than the surly sentry,
+or whether to seek some other entrance, I became aware of a sudden
+bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which I could see through the
+gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair of flunkeys passed. There was
+some noise of voices and, finally, of hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen
+men-at-arms ran to the gates and swung them open, taking their stand on
+each side. Clearly, M. le Duc was about to drive out.
+
+A little knot of people had quickly collected--sprung from between the
+stones of the pavement, it would seem--to see Monsieur emerge.
+
+"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye, and a
+handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.
+
+I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in my
+throat now that the moment had come when I should see my Monsieur. At
+the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the coach-step, crying, all
+my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le Duc!"
+
+Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of recognition.
+The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang up-and struck me
+a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where the ponderous wheels
+would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick and kind, pulled me out
+of the way. Some one shouted, "Assassin!"
+
+"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with Monsieur."
+
+"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the sentry.
+"He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He was one of
+Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well, we have seen how
+Monsieur treats him!"
+
+"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young gentleman
+treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a common man so
+much as look at him."
+
+They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.
+
+"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because _he_ knocked
+him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe there's harm in the boy.
+What meant you, lad?"
+
+"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the street. This,
+then, was what I had come to Paris for--to be denied entrance to the
+house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and threatened with a drubbing
+from the lackeys!
+
+For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From waking
+in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was Monsieur's. Never
+was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte more throw his soul
+into his service than I into mine. Never did lover hate to be parted
+from his mistress more than I from Monsieur. The journey to Paris had
+been a journey to Paradise. And now, this!
+
+Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me beseech
+him and not answered--not lifted a finger to save me from being mangled
+under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were two very different
+places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had been pleased to take
+me into the château and treat me to more intimacy than he accorded to
+the high-born lads, his other pages. So much the easier, then, to cast
+me off when he had tired of me. My heart seethed with rage and
+bitterness against Monsieur, against the sentry, and, more than all,
+against the young Comte de Mar, who had flung me under the wheels.
+
+I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son of M. le
+Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share his father's
+exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore him, which he so
+little repaid. I had never thought to like him, St. Quentin though he
+were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His handsome face looked ugly
+enough to me as he struck me that blow.
+
+I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts
+louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not remain in this
+trance forever, and at length I woke to two unpleasant facts: first, I
+had no idea where I was, and, second, I should be no better off if I
+knew.
+
+Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I go back
+to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it was equally
+obvious that never, so long as my father retained the spirit that was
+his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account of my morning's
+achievements. It was just here that, looking at the business with my
+father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I had behaved like an
+insolent young fool. But I was still too angry to acknowledge it.
+
+Remained, then, but one course--to stay in Paris, and keep from
+starvation as best I might.
+
+My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to throw away
+in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely what I should need
+to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for accidents; so that,
+after paying Maître Jacques, I had hardly two pieces to jingle together.
+
+For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I could
+write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian, thanks to
+Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and handle a sword
+none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that it should not be hard
+to pick up a livelihood. But how to start about it I had no notion, and
+finally I made up my mind to go and consult him whom I now called my one
+friend in Paris, Jacques the innkeeper.
+
+'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly Rue St.
+Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might have been laid
+out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so did they twist and
+turn and double on themselves. I could make my way only at a snail's
+pace, asking new guidance at every corner. Noon was long past when at
+length I came on laggard feet around the corner by the Amour de Dieu.
+
+Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though I had
+resolved to seek out Maître Jacques, still 'twas a hateful thing to
+enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I had paid for my
+breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for my dinner. I had
+bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have to tell how I had been
+flung under the coach-wheels. My pace slackened to a stop. I could not
+bring myself to enter the door. I tried to think how to better my story,
+so to tell it that it should redound to my credit. But my invention
+stuck in my pate.
+
+As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found myself
+gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my thoughts
+shifted back to my vision.
+
+Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had appeared to
+me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I had beheld them
+but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up their faces like
+those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was small, pale, with
+pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The second man was conspicuously
+big and burly, black-haired and-bearded. The third and youngest--all
+three were young--stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
+was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
+gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain; the
+next they had vanished like a dream.
+
+It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
+fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from their
+unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son of the
+Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen? Maître Jacques had
+hinted at further terrors, and said no one dared enter the place. Well,
+grant me but the opportunity, and I would dare.
+
+Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance into that
+banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to do whatever mad
+mischief presented itself. Here was the house just across the street.
+
+Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in the
+row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the
+door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it did, for
+there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the
+Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side street, and after
+exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small
+square court bounded on three sides by a tall house with shuttered
+windows.
+
+Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two doors were
+both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor were small, high,
+and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters swung half open, but I
+could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did not despair; I was not
+without experience of shutters. I selected one closed not quite tight,
+leaving a crack for my knife-blade. I found the hook inside, got my
+dagger under it, and at length drove it up. The shutter creaked shrilly
+open.
+
+A few good blows knocked in the casement. I followed.
+
+I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust. From this,
+once a porter's room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway dimly
+lighted from the open window behind me. The hall was large, paved with
+black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway mounted into
+mysterious gloom.
+
+My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a choked cry
+rasping my throat. For, as I crossed the hall, peering into the dimness,
+I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with upraised bludgeon, a man.
+
+For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless, motionless,
+waiting for him to brain me. Then my half-uttered scream changed to a
+quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to the gloom, discovered my
+bogy to be but a figure carved in wood, holding aloft a long since
+quenched flambeau.
+
+I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear. I
+thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled at the
+sword's point up these very stairs. The silence seemed to shriek at me,
+and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering out from the
+shadowed corners. Yet for all that--nay, because of that--I would not
+give up the adventure. I went back into the little room and carefully
+closed the shutter, lest some other meddler should spy my misdeed. Then
+I set my feet on the stair.
+
+If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was naught to
+the blackness now. My hand on the rail was damp. Yet I mounted steadily.
+
+Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of the next
+flight, and went on. Suddenly, above, I heard a noise. I came to an
+instant halt. All was as still as the tomb. I listened; not a breath
+broke the silence. It never occurred to me to imagine a rat in this
+house of the dead, and the noise shook me. With a sick feeling about my
+heart I went on again.
+
+On the next floor it was lighter. Faint outlines of doors and passages
+were visible. I could not stand the gloom a moment longer; I strode into
+the nearest doorway and across the room to where a gleam of brightness
+outlined the window. My shaking fingers found the hook of the shutter
+and flung it wide, letting in a burst of honest sunshine. I leaned out
+into the free air, and saw below me the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of
+the Amour de Dieu.
+
+The next instant a cloth fell over my face and was twisted tight; strong
+arms pulled me back, and a deep voice commanded:
+
+"Close the shutter."
+
+Some one pushed past me and shut it with a clang.
+
+"Devil take you! You'll rouse the quarter," cried my captor, fiercely,
+yet not loud. "Go join monsieur." With that he picked me up in his arms
+and walked across the room.
+
+The capture had been so quick I had no time for outcry. I fought my best
+with him, half strangled as I was by the cloth. I might as well have
+struggled against the grip of the Maiden. The man carried me the length
+of the house, it seemed; flung me down upon the floor, and banged a door
+on me.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_The three men in the window_
+
+
+I tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in pitch-darkness. I
+dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the walls, I discovered
+myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all my force I flung myself
+once more upon the door. It stood firm.
+
+"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.
+
+They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced at that.
+I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil? These might be
+villains--doubtless were, skulking in this deserted house,--yet with
+readiness and pluck I could escape them.
+
+It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the grave. The
+men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had gone cautiously
+down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had given them a fine
+fright, clattering through the house as I had, and even now they were
+looking for my accomplices.
+
+It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness. If ever
+you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water from a rag,
+shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will thank you to take him
+out into the daylight and hang him. In token whereof, my heart welcomed
+like brothers the men returning.
+
+They came into the room, and I thought they were three in number. I
+heard the door shut, and then steps approached my closet.
+
+"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough voice of a
+man without breeding.
+
+"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the deep tones
+of my captor.
+
+Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick voice:
+
+"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do you look
+out for him, Gervais."
+
+I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for freedom. But
+the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for me--to the effect
+that my knife went one way and I another before I could wink. I reeled
+against the wall and stayed there, cursing myself for a fool that I had
+not trusted to fair words instead of to my dagger.
+
+"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid voice--a tall
+fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So had I seen the stalwart
+blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was older, a common-looking fellow
+whose face was new to me. All three were in their shirts on account of
+the heat; all were plain, even shabby, in their dress. But the two young
+men wore swords at their sides.
+
+The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of light
+into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few old chairs
+and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken food and
+wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs, two or three
+hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of dress littered the
+floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean quality except the bearing
+of the two young men. A gentleman is a gentleman even in the Rue
+Coupejarrets--all the more, maybe, in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two
+were gently born.
+
+The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name was
+Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris alone--for so I
+dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well open under dark
+brows--Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or angered; the only emotion to
+be read in his face was a gay interest as the blackavised Gervais put me
+questions.
+
+"How came you here? What are you about?"
+
+"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my stupidity with
+that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I thought the house
+was deserted."
+
+He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.
+
+"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the truth."
+
+"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was the whole
+of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any one. They said the
+house was haunted."
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"Maître Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."
+
+He stared at me in surprise.
+
+"What had you been asking about this house?"
+
+Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:
+
+"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the window
+last night. Did you not?"
+
+"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw you
+plain as day. But Maître Jacques said it was a vision."
+
+"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed very
+neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I thought. So old
+Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de Béthune, who was
+a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.
+
+"He said my house belonged to the Béthunes! Well played, Jacques! You
+owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I took to make him
+think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for Henri Quatre. Did he
+say, perchance, that in this very courtyard Coligny fell?"
+
+"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my terrors
+for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I to know it
+was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but yesterday from St.
+Quentin."
+
+"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be quiet,
+fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.
+
+"Félix Broux."
+
+"Who sent you here?"
+
+"Monsieur, no one."
+
+"You lie."
+
+Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears stood in my
+eyes.
+
+"No one, monsieur; I swear it."
+
+"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."
+
+He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other, torture with
+strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the table.
+
+"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."
+
+"He is a spy."
+
+"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes, forsooth! No
+spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first seized him he was no
+spy. I say it again, now I have heard his story. He saw us by chance,
+and Maître Jacques's bogy story spurred him on instead of keeping him
+off. You are a fool, my cousin."
+
+"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You will bring
+us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a spy it means the
+whole crew are down upon us."
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Pardieu! is it nothing?"
+
+Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:
+
+"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."
+
+Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
+boisterously:
+
+"And do you want Monsieur here?"
+
+Yeux-gris flushed red.
+
+"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble himself to
+come."
+
+Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of several
+things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair of fools,
+you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us now. He shall
+not live to carry the tale of us."
+
+"Then you have me to kill as well!"
+
+Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his sword-hilt.
+
+"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a ruffian," he
+cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then Yeux-gris, with a sudden
+exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke into laughter.
+
+Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For Gervais was
+taking the situation with a seriousness that was as terrifying as it was
+stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I could not but think the end
+of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's laugh said the very notion was
+ridiculous; I was innocent of all harmful intent, and they were
+gentlemen, not cutthroats.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I told
+you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or what you do,
+I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no party and am no man's
+man. As for why you choose to live in this empty house, it is not my
+concern and I care no whit about it. Let me go, messieurs, and I will
+swear to keep silence about what I have seen."
+
+"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me he had
+yet assumed. He answered:
+
+"If he had not said the name--"
+
+"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more. If he
+were what you think, it is the very last name he would have said."
+
+This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Maître Jacques's and
+my own. And he was their friend.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you, why, I
+can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at least it is an
+honest one and has ever been held so down where we live."
+
+"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest to the
+Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+He started, and Gervais cried out:
+
+"Voilà! who is the fool now?"
+
+My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my rescue,
+quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St. Quentin, and
+the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he whom they had
+spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There was more in this
+than I had thought at first. It was no longer a mere question of my
+liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever information I could
+gather.
+
+Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:
+
+"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris. What
+brought you?"
+
+"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered, deeming
+the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in Paris, my
+father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night, and lay at the
+Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's hôtel, but the guard
+would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur drove out I tried to get speech
+with him, but he would have none of me."
+
+The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice and
+face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:
+
+"And do you hate him for that?"
+
+"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he chooses. But I
+hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul blow."
+
+"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.
+
+"His son."
+
+"He has no son."
+
+"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de--"
+
+"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Why, we knew naught--" I was beginning, when Gervais broke in:
+
+"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this! He saw
+the Comte de Mar--!"
+
+"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by
+Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline face--"
+
+"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as who
+should say, "That is his scullion."
+
+Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and
+demanded of me:
+
+"What next?"
+
+"I came away angry."
+
+"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted house?
+Pardieu! too plain a lie."
+
+"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in the
+daytime," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in two lies;
+first the Béthunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a clumsy spy; they
+might have found a better one. Not but what that touch about
+ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of. That was
+Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked like a dolt
+else."
+
+"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not tell me
+about the Béthunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did not know the Comte de
+Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is handsome enough for a count. I
+came here, as I told you, in curiosity concerning Maître Jacques's
+story. I had no idea of seeing you or any living man. It is the truth,
+monsieur."
+
+"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face. You came
+into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite you to stay. You
+shall be my valet."
+
+"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.
+
+The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:
+
+"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand the
+services of M. Félix are not engaged."
+
+"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy--this sneak--"
+
+"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris, with a
+cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this shabby room. He
+added lightly again:
+
+"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not blab of us.
+Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry, they need it."
+
+Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I said:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in rebellion,
+"what! you will not."
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.
+
+"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.
+
+"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by chance; it is
+true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was born on his land and
+I am no traitor. I will not be valet or henchman for either of you, if I
+die for it."
+
+I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and sprang
+for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais struck me
+over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_Rapiers and a vow._
+
+
+I came to my senses slowly, to hear loud, angry voices. As I opened my
+eyes and stirred, the room reeled from me and all was blank again.
+Awhile after, I grew aware of a clashing of steel. I lay wondering
+thickly what it was and why it had to be going on while my head ached
+so, till at length it dawned on my dull brain that swords were crossing.
+I opened my eyes again, then.
+
+They were fighting each other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter was
+almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to the wall.
+Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other round in a circle
+till the room seemed to spin once more.
+
+I crawled out of the way and watched them, bewildered, absorbed. I had
+more reason to thrill over the contest than the mere excellence of
+it,--which was great,--since I was the cause of the duel, and my very
+life, belike, hung on its issue.
+
+They were both admirable swordsmen, yet it was clear from the first
+where the palm lay. Anything nimbler, lighter, easier than the
+sword-play of Yeux-gris I never hope to see in this imperfect world.
+The heavier adversary was hot, angry, breathing hard. A smile hovered
+over Yeux-gris's lips; already a red disk on Gervais's shirt showed
+where his cousin's sword had been and would soon go again, and deeper. I
+had forgotten my bruise in my interest and delight, when, of a sudden,
+one whom we all had ignored took a hand in the game. Gervais's lackey
+started forward and knocked up Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and
+Gervais slashed his arm from wrist to elbow.
+
+With a smothered cry, Yeux-gris caught at his wound. Gervais, ablaze
+with rage, sprang past him on his creature. The man gaped with
+amazement; then, for there was no time for parley, leaped for the door.
+It was locked. He turned, and with a look of deathly terror fell on his
+knees, crouched up against the door-post. Gervais lunged. His blade
+passed clean through the man's shoulders and pinned him to the door. His
+head fell heavily forward.
+
+"Have you killed him?" cried Yeux-gris.
+
+"By my faith! I meant to," came the answer. Gervais was bending over the
+man. With an abrupt laugh he called out: "Killed him, pardieu! He has
+come off cheap."
+
+He raised the fellow's limp head, and we saw that the sword had passed
+just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh. He had
+swooned from sheer terror, being in truth not so much as scratched.
+
+Gervais turned to his cousin.
+
+"I never meant that foul trick. It was no thought of mine. I would have
+turned the blade if I could. I will kill Pontou now, if you say the
+word."
+
+"Nay," answered the other, faintly; "help me."
+
+The blood was pouring from his arm; he was half swooning. Gervais and I
+ran to him and, between us, bathed the cut, bandaged it with strips torn
+from a shirt, and made a sling of a scarf. The wound was long, but not
+deep, and when we had poured some wine down his throat he was himself
+again.
+
+"You will not bear me malice for that poltroon's work, Étienne?" Gervais
+asked, more humbly than I ever thought to hear him speak. "That was a
+foul cut, but it was no fault of mine. I am no blackguard; I fight fair.
+I will kill the knave, if you like."
+
+"You are ungrateful, Gervais; he saved you when you needed saving,"
+Yeux-gris laughed. "Faith! let him live. I forgive him. You will pay me
+for my hurt by yielding me Félix."
+
+Gervais looked at me. While we had worked side by side over Yeux-gris he
+seemed to have forgotten that he was my enemy. But now all the old
+suspicion and dislike came into his face again. However, he answered:
+
+"Aye, you would have been the victor had it not been for Pontou. You
+shall do what you like with your boy. I promise you that."
+
+"Now that is well said, Gervais," returned Yeux-gris, rising, and
+picking up his sword, which he sheathed. "That is very well said. For if
+you did not feel like promising it, why, I should have to begin over
+again with my left hand."
+
+"Oh, I give you the boy," Gervais repeated rather sullenly, turning away
+to pour himself some wine.
+
+I could not but wonder at Yeux-gris, at his gaiety and his
+steadfastness. He had hardly looked grave through the whole affair; he
+had fought with a smile on his lips and had taken a cruel wound with a
+laugh. Withal, he had been the constant champion of my innocence, even
+to drawing his sword on his cousin for me. Now, with his bloody arm in
+its sling, he was as debonair and careless as ever. I had been stupid
+enough to imagine the big Gervais the leader of the two, and I found
+myself mistaken. I dropped on my knee and kissed my saviour's hand in
+all gratitude.
+
+"Aha," said Yeux-gris, "what think you now of being my valet?"
+
+Verily, I was hard pushed.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I owe you much more than I can ever pay. If you
+were any man's enemy but my duke's, I would serve you on my knees. But I
+was born on the duke's land and I cannot be disloyal. You may kill me
+yourself, if you like."
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "that is not my métier."
+
+Gervais laughed.
+
+"Make me that offer, and I accept."
+
+Yeux-gris turned to him with that little hauteur he assumed
+occasionally.
+
+"You are helpless, my cousin. You have passed your word."
+
+"Aye. I leave him to you."
+
+His sullen eyes told me it was no new-born tenderness for me that
+prompted his surrender. Nor had I, truth to tell, any great faith in the
+sacredness of his word. Yet I believed he would let me be. For it was
+borne in upon me that, despite his passion and temper, he had no wish to
+quarrel with Yeux-gris. Whether at bottom he loved him or in some way
+dreaded him, I could not tell; but of this my fear-sharpened wits were
+sure: he had no desire to press an open breach. He was honestly ashamed
+of his henchman's low deed; yet even before that his judgment had
+disliked the quarrel. Else why had he struck me with the hilt of the
+sword?
+
+"I leave him to you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you deem his
+life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a taste for
+insolence, Étienne? Time was when you were touchy on that score."
+
+"Time never was when I did not love courage."
+
+"Oh, it is courage!" With a sneer he turned away.
+
+"Gervais," said Yeux-gris, "have the kindness to unlock the door."
+
+Gervais wheeled around, his face an angry question.
+
+Yeux-gris answered it with cold politeness:
+
+"That Félix Broux may pass out."
+
+"By Heaven, he shall not!"
+
+"You gave your word you would leave him to me. Did you lie?"
+
+"I do leave him to you!" Gervais thundered. "I would slit his impudent
+throat; but since you love him, you may have him to eat out of your
+plate and sleep in your bosom. I will put up with it. But go out of
+that door till the thing is done, sang dieu! he shall not!"
+
+"If he goes straight to the duke, what then? He will say he found us
+living in my house. What harm? We are no felons. Let him say it."
+
+"And put Lucas on his guard?" returned Gervais. He was angry, yet he
+spoke with evident attempt at restraint. "Put Lucas on the trail? He is
+wary as a cat. Let him get wind of us here, and he will never let us
+catch him."
+
+"Well," said Yeux-gris, reluctantly, "it is true. And though I will not
+have the boy harmed, he shall stay here. I will not put a spoke in the
+wheel. We will take no risks till Lucas is shent. The boy shall be held
+prisoner. And afterward--"
+
+"I will come myself and let him out," said Gervais, and laughed.
+
+I glanced at my protector, not liking to think of that moment, whenever
+it might be, "afterward." He went up to Gervais.
+
+"My cousin, are we friends or foes? For, faith! you treat me strangely
+like a foe."
+
+"We are friends."
+
+"I am your friend, since it is in your cause that I am here. I have
+stood at your shoulder like a brother--you cannot deny it."
+
+"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,--my one friend in that
+house,--as I was yours. I stood at your shoulder in the Montluc
+affair--you cannot deny that. I have been your ally, your servant, your
+messenger to mademoiselle, your envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my
+power to win you your lady."
+
+A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face.
+
+"That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais."
+
+He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a sudden as far
+away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue Coupejarrets. He
+shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on Gervais's shoulder:
+"It's beyond you, cousin."
+
+Gervais brought him back to the point.
+
+"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me when you
+let loose a spy to warn Lucas."
+
+"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder than I
+when that knave is dead. But I will not have Félix Broux suffer because
+he dared speak for the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you keep
+him from Lucas."
+
+Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great
+that the words came out of themselves:
+
+"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"
+
+Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him:
+
+"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"
+
+Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me
+nothing I might ask, exclaimed:
+
+"Why, Lucas!"
+
+He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that
+the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight,
+and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair.
+
+A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing
+wet-handed by me.
+
+"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so
+much this Lucas who struck you?"
+
+"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke."
+
+"Did you take us for Leaguers?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself right in my
+eyes.
+
+"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen with a
+grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we have the
+Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to me; I am not
+putting either on the throne. So if you have got it into your head that
+we are plotting for the League, why, get it out again."
+
+"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"
+
+He answered me slowly:
+
+"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his way
+unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man, skulks behind
+the bars of the Hôtel st. Quentin and will not face my cousin's sword.
+So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do you believe me?"
+
+I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my defence,
+and I could not but believe him.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," I said.
+
+He regarded me curiously.
+
+"The duke's life seems much to you."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I am a Broux."
+
+"And could not be disloyal to save your life?"
+
+"My life! Monsieur, the Broux would not seek to save their souls if M.
+le Duc preferred them damned."
+
+I expected he would rebuke me for the outburst, but he did not; he
+merely said:
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Oh, Lucas!" I said. "I know nothing of him. He is new with the duke
+since my time. I do not owe him anything, save a grudge for that blow
+this morning. Mon dieu, monsieur, I am thankful to you for befriending
+me. Dying for Monsieur is all in a day's work; we expect to do that.
+But, my faith, if I had died just now, it would have been for Lucas."
+
+At this moment a long groan came from the end of the room. We turned;
+the lackey was waking from his swoon, under the ministration of Gervais.
+He opened his eyes; their glance was dull till they fell upon his
+master. And then at once they looked venomous.
+
+Gervais kicked him into fuller consciousness.
+
+"Get up, hound. It is time to meet Martin."
+
+The wretch scrambled shakily to his feet, and stood clutching the
+door-jamb and eying Gervais, terror writ large on his chalky
+countenance. Yet there was more than terror in his face; there was the
+look you see in the eyes of a trapped animal that watches its chance to
+bite. Yeux-gris cried out:
+
+"You dare not send that man, Gervais."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because the moment he is clear of the house he will betray you. Look at
+his face."
+
+"He shall swear on the cross!"
+
+"Aye. But you cannot trust the oath of such as he."
+
+"What would you? We must send."
+
+"As you will. But you are mad if you send him."
+
+Gervais pondered a moment, his slower wits taking in the situation. Then
+he seized the man by the collar, fairly flung him across the room into
+the closet, and bolted the door upon him.
+
+"I will settle with him later. But you are right. We cannot send him."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into laughter.
+
+"My faith! we could not have more trouble if we were heads of the League
+than this little duel of yours is giving us. Why, what if we are seen? I
+will go."
+
+Gervais started.
+
+"No; that will not do."
+
+"Eh, bien, then, what will you propose?"
+
+But it was some one else who proposed. I said to Yeux-gris:
+
+"Monsieur, if all your purpose is against Lucas and no other, I am your
+man. I will go."
+
+"What, my stubborn-neck, you?"
+
+"Why, monsieur, I owe you a great debt. While I thought you meant ill to
+M. le Duc, I could not serve you. But this Lucas is another pair of
+sleeves. I owe him no allegiance. Moreover, he nearly killed me this
+morning. Therefore I am quite at your disposal."
+
+"Now, I wonder if you are lying," said Gervais.
+
+"I do not think he is lying," Yeux-gris said. "I trow, Gervais, we have
+got our messenger."
+
+"You tell me to beware of Pontou because he hates me, and then would
+have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some acumen.
+
+I said: "Monsieur, you do not seem to understand how I come to make this
+offer."
+
+"To get out of the house with a whole skin."
+
+I had a joy in daring him, being sure of Yeux-gris.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I should be glad to leave this house with my skin
+whole or broken, so long as I left on my own feet. But you have
+mentioned the very reason why I shall not betray you. I do not love you
+and I do not love Lucas. Therefore, if you and M. Lucas are to fight, I
+ask nothing better than to help the quarrel on."
+
+He stared at me with an air more of bewilderment than aught else, but
+Yeux-gris's ready laughter rang out.
+
+"Bravo, Félix! I am proud of you. That is an idea worthy of Cæsar! You
+would set your enemies to exterminate each other. And I asked you to be
+my valet!"
+
+"Which do you wish to see slain?" demanded the black Gervais.
+
+I answered quite truthfully:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way."
+
+I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out at once:
+
+"Bravo, Félix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough to know whether
+you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but I love you."
+
+"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a well, truth
+lies at the bottom."
+
+"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.
+
+"Do you say, trust him?"
+
+"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest, nor
+honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve against
+the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no coward; he
+was no liar. I think he is not those now."
+
+Gervais was still doubtful.
+
+"It is a risk. If he betrays--"
+
+"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you too good a
+gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."
+
+"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you like."
+
+Yeux-gris said at once to me:
+
+"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open
+fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of
+doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him. Therefore we
+have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a man in the house
+to tell of his movements. He is to fare out secretly at night on a
+mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade only. M. Gervais and I will
+interrupt that little journey."
+
+"Very good, monsieur. And I?"
+
+"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition. Last night,
+when he told us of the plan, it had not been decided."
+
+"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know him."
+
+"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will not know
+you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little alley to the north of the
+Hôtel St. Quentin. Do you know your way to the hôtel? Well, then, you
+are to go down the passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's
+garden--you cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the
+street, on the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway.
+Half-way down the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our
+man, Louis Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"
+
+I repeated the directions.
+
+"You have learned your lesson. You will ask him the hour--only that."
+
+"And you will take oath not to betray us," commanded Gervais.
+
+I took out the cross that hung on my rosary. I was ready to swear.
+Gervais prompted:
+
+"I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but Martin."
+
+With all solemnity I swore it on my cross.
+
+"That oath will be kept," said Yeux-gris. He held out a sudden hand for
+the cross, which I gave him, wondering.
+
+"I swear that we mean no harm whatsoever to the Duke of St. Quentin." He
+kissed the cross and flung the chain back over my neck.
+
+At last I saw the door unlocked. Yeux-gris even returned to me my knife.
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs."
+
+Gervais, sullen to the last, vouchsafed no answer, but Yeux-gris called
+out cheerily, "Au revoir."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_A matter of life and death._
+
+
+Nothing in life can be so sweet as freedom after captivity, safety after
+danger. When I gained the open street once more and breathed the open
+air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could have sung with joy. I
+fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in getting out of my plight. As
+for the combat I was furthering, my only doubt about that was lest the
+skulking Lucas should not prove good sword enough to give trouble to M.
+Gervais. It was very far from my wish that he should come out of the
+attempt unscathed.
+
+But as I went along and had more time to ponder the matter, other doubts
+forced themselves into my reluctant mind. Put it as I pleased, the
+affair smacked too much of secrecy to be quite savoury. It was curious,
+to say the least, that an honest encounter should require so much
+plotting. Also, Lucas, coward and rascal though he might be, was
+Monsieur's man, doing Monsieur's errand, and for me to mix myself up in
+a plot against him was scarcely in keeping with my vaunted loyalty to
+the house of St. Quentin. My friend Gervais's quarrel might be just;
+his manner of procedure, even, might be just, and yet I have no right to
+take part in it.
+
+And yet Monsieur had signified plainly enough that he was no longer my
+patron. For my birth's sake I might never work against him, but I was
+free to do whatever else I chose. Monsieur himself had made it necessary
+for me to take another master, and assuredly I owed something to
+Yeux-gris. I had reason to feel confidence in his honour; surely I might
+reckon that he would not be in the affair unless it were honest. Lucas
+was like enough a scoundrel of whom Monsieur would be well rid. And
+lastly and finally and above all, I was sworn, so there was no use
+worrying about it. I had taken oath, and could not draw back.
+
+I hurried along to the rendezvous, only pausing one moment at the
+street-corner to buy sausages hot from the brazier, which I crammed into
+my mouth as I ran. But after all was there no need of haste; the little
+arch, when I panted up to it, was all deserted.
+
+No better place for a tryst could have been found in the heart of busy
+Paris. Only the one door opened into the alley; M. de Portreuse's high
+garden wall, forming the other side of the passage, was unbroken by a
+gate, and no curious eyes from the house could look into the deep arch
+and see the narrow nail-studded door at the back where I awaited the
+rat-faced Martin.
+
+I stood there long, first on one foot and then on the other, fearful
+every moment lest some one of Monsieur's true men should come along to
+demand my business. No one appeared, either foe or friend, for so long
+that I began to think Yeux-gris had tricked me and sent me here on a
+fool's errand, when, all at once, a low voice said close to my ear:
+
+"What seek you here?"
+
+I jumped on finding at my side a little, pale, sharp-faced man--the man
+of the vision. He had slipped through the door so suddenly and quietly
+that I was once more tempted to take him for a ghost. He eyed me for a
+bare second; then his eyes dropped before mine.
+
+"I am come to learn the hour," said I.
+
+"Did you not hear the chimes ring five?"
+
+"Oh, no need for disguise. I am come from the two in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour."
+
+He favoured me with another of his shifty glances.
+
+"What hour meant they?"
+
+I said bluntly, in a louder tone:
+
+"The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission."
+
+"Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud--his or the other's."
+
+"Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more time than
+I care to lose. How much longer before you will tell me what I came to
+know?"
+
+He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his eyes slunk
+away from mine.
+
+"You should have a password."
+
+"They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the shuttered house
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be enough."
+
+"How came you into this business?"
+
+"By a back window."
+
+He gave me another suspicious glance, but making nothing by it, he
+rejoined:
+
+"Eh bien, I trust you. I will tell you."
+
+He clutched my arm and drew me to the back of the arch, where the
+afternoon shadows were already gathered.
+
+"What have you for me?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing. What should I have?"
+
+"No gold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He promised me ten pistoles to-day. He did not give them to you?"
+
+"I tell you, no."
+
+"You are a thief! You have them!"
+
+He stepped forward menacingly; so did I. He then fell back as abruptly.
+
+"Nay, it was a jest; I know you are honest. But he promised me ten
+pistoles."
+
+"He did not give them to me," I said. "Perhaps he was not so convinced
+of my honesty. He will doubtless pay you afterward."
+
+"Afterward!" he retorted in a high key. "By our Lady, he shall pay me
+afterward! The gutters will run gold then, will they? Pardieu! I will
+see that a good stream flows my way. But one cannot play to-day with
+to-morrow's coin. He said I should have ten pistoles when I let him know
+the hour."
+
+"I cannot mend that. It lies between you and him. I have not seen or
+heard of any money."
+
+Martin edged up close to the door of retreat and waxed defiant.
+
+"Then all I have to say is, he may go whistle for his news."
+
+Now, had I but thought of it, here was an easy road out of a bad
+business. If Martin would not tell the hour of rendezvous, Lucas was
+saved, Monsieur's interests not endangered, yet at the same time I was
+not forsworn. But touch pitch and be defiled. You cannot go hand and
+glove with villains and remain an honest man. I returned directly:
+
+"As you choose. But M. Gervais carries a long sword."
+
+He started at that and made no instant reply, seeming to be balancing
+considerations. Then he gave his decision.
+
+"I will tell you. But your M. Gervais is wrong if he thinks I can be
+slighted and robbed of my dues. I know enough to make trouble for him,
+and I know where to take my knowledge. He will not find it easy to shut
+my mouth afterward, except with good broad gold pieces."
+
+"Enfin, are you telling me the hour?" I said impatiently. I was ill at
+ease; my only wish was to get the errand done and be gone.
+
+He laid a hand on my shoulder and made me bend to him, and even then
+spoke so low I could scarce catch the words.
+
+"They have fixed positively on to-night. They will leave by this door
+and take the route I described last night to M. Gervais. They will start
+as soon as the streets are quiet, sometime between ten and eleven. They
+must allow an hour to reach the gate, and the man goes off at twelve. In
+all likelihood they will not set out before a quarter of eleven; M. le
+Duc does not care to be recognized."
+
+So they planned to kill Lucas at Monsieur's side? Yeux-gris had not
+dared to tell me that. But he had looked me straight in the face and
+sworn on the cross no harm was meant to M. le Duc. Natheless, the thing
+looked ugly. My heart leaped up at the next words:
+
+"Also Vigo will go."
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Not so loud! You will have the guard on us! Yes, he is to go. At first
+Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this visit to the
+king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his confidence, and
+nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches over Monsieur like a
+hen over a chick."
+
+"Then it will be three to three," I said. I thought of Gervais,
+Yeux-gris, and Pontou, for of course I would take no part in it.
+
+"Three to two; Lucas will not fight."
+
+Lucas must be a poltroon, indeed!
+
+"But Vigo and Monsieur--" I began.
+
+"Aye, they are quick enough with their swords. Your side must be
+quicker, that's all. If you are sudden enough you can easily kill the
+duke before he can draw."
+
+Talk of words like thunderbolts! All the thunder of heaven could not
+have whelmed me like those words. Yeux-gris and his oaths! It _was_ the
+duke, after all!
+
+I could not speak. I looked I know not how. But it was dusky in the
+arch.
+
+"It sounds simple," he went on. "But, three of you as you are, you will
+have trouble with Vigo. That is all. I have told you all. I must get
+back before I am missed. Good luck to the enterprise."
+
+Still I stood like a block of wood.
+
+"Tell M. Gervais to remember me," he said, and opening the door, passed
+in. I heard him lock and bolt it after him, and his footsteps hurrying
+down the passageway.
+
+Then I came to myself and sprang to the door and beat upon it furiously.
+But if he heard he was afraid to respond. After a futile moment that
+seemed an hour I rushed out of the arch and around to the great gate.
+
+The grilles were closed as before, but the sentry's face, luckily, was
+strange to me.
+
+"Open! open!" I shouted, breathless. "I must see M. le Duc!"
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded, staring.
+
+"My name is Broux. I have news for M. le Duc. Let me in. It is a matter
+of life and death."
+
+"Why, I suppose, then, I must let you in," that good fellow answered,
+drawing back the bolts. "But you must wait here till--"
+
+The gate was open. I took base advantage of him by sliding under his arm
+and shooting across the court up the steps to the house. The door stood
+open, and a couple of lackeys lounged on a bench in the hall.
+
+"M. le Duc!" I cried. "I must see him."
+
+They jumped up, the picture of bewilderment.
+
+"Who are you? How came you here?" cried the quicker-tongued of the two.
+
+"The sentry opened for me. Where am I to find M. le Duc? I must see him!
+I have news!"
+
+"M. le Duc sees no one to-day," the second lackey announced pompously.
+
+"But I must see him, I tell you," I repeated. I had completely lost what
+little head I ever had; it seemed to me that if I could not see M. le
+Duc on the instant I should find him weltering in his gore. "I must see
+him," I cried, parrot-like. "It is a matter of life and death."
+
+"From whom do you come?"
+
+"That's my affair. Enough that I come with news of the highest moment.
+You will be sorry if I you do not get me quickly to M. le Duc."
+
+They looked at each other, somewhat impressed.
+
+"I will go for M. Constant," said the one who had spoken first.
+
+Constant was Master of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited him with
+the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake. He was old,
+fussy, and self-important, and withal no friend to me.
+
+"I had rather you fetched Vigo," I said.
+
+"Oh, Vigo will not come. He is with Monsieur. If I bring M. Constant, it
+is the best I can do for you."
+
+I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the nature
+of lackeys, and gave the messenger the last silver piece I had in the
+world. He regarded it contemptuously, but pocketed it and departed in
+leisurely fashion up the stairs.
+
+The other was not too grand to cross-examine me.
+
+"What sort of news have you? Do you come from the king?" he asked in a
+lowered voice.
+
+"No."
+
+"From M. de Valère?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then who the devil are you?"
+
+"Félix Broux of St. Quentin."
+
+"Ah, St. Quentin," he said, as if he found that rather tame. "You bring
+news from there?"
+
+"No, I do not. Think you I shall tell you? This news is for Monsieur."
+
+"It won't reach Monsieur unless you learn politeness toward the
+gentlemen of his household," he retorted.
+
+We were getting into a lively quarrel when Constant appeared on the
+stairway--Constant and the lackey who had fetched him, and two more
+lackeys, and a page, all of whom had somehow scented that something was
+in the wind. They came flocking about us as I said:
+
+"Ah, M. Constant! You know me, Félix Broux of St. Quentin. I must see M.
+le Duc."
+
+Constant's face of surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down at St.
+Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow, peevish old
+dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I had not thought he
+would revenge himself at such time as this. He looked at me with a
+spiteful grin, and said to the men:
+
+"He lies. I do not know him. I never saw him."
+
+"Never saw me, Félix Broux!" I cried, completely taken aback.
+
+"No," maintained Constant. "You are an impostor."
+
+"Impostor! Nonsense!" I cried out. "Constant, you know me as well as you
+know yourself. I say I must see the duke; his life is in danger!"
+
+Constant was paying off old scores with interest.
+
+"An impostor," he yelled shrilly, "or else a madman--or an assassin."
+
+"That is the truth," said some one, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder.
+
+I turned; two men of the guard had come up, my friend of just now and my
+foe of the morning. It was the latter who held me and said:
+
+"This is the very rascal who sprang on Monsieur's coach-step in the
+morning. M. Lucas threw him off, else he might have stabbed Monsieur. We
+were fools enough to let him go free. But this time he shall not get off
+so easy."
+
+"I am innocent of all thought of harm," I cried. "I am M. le Duc's loyal
+servant. I meant no harm this morning, and I mean none now. I am here to
+save Monsieur's life."
+
+"He is here to kill Monsieur; he is an assassin!" screamed Constant.
+"Flog him, men; he will own the truth then!"
+
+"I am no assassin!" I shouted, struggling in their grasp. "Let me go,
+villains, let me go! I tell you, Monsieur's life is at stake--Monsieur's
+very life, I tell you!"
+
+They paid me no heed. Not one of them--save hat lying knave
+Constant--knew me as other than the shabby fellow who had acted
+suspiciously in the morning. They were dragging me to the door in spite
+of my shouts and struggles, when suddenly a ringing voice spoke from
+above:
+
+"What is this rumpus? Who talks of Monsieur's life?"
+
+The guards halted dead, and I cried out joyfully:
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Yes, I am Vigo," the big man answered, striding down the stairs. "Who
+are you?"
+
+I wanted to shout, "Félix Broux, Monsieur's page," but a sort of
+nightmare dread came over me lest Vigo, too, should disclaim me, and my
+voice stuck in my throat.
+
+"Whoever you are, you will be taught not to make a racket in M. le Duc's
+hall. By the saints! it's the boy Félix."
+
+At the friendliness in his voice the guards dropped their hands from me.
+
+"M. Vigo," I said, "I have news for Monsieur of the gravest moment. I am
+come on a matter of life and death. And I am stopped in the hall by
+lackeys."
+
+He looked at me sternly.
+
+"This is not one of your fooleries, Félix?"
+
+"No, M. Vigo."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_A divided duty._
+
+
+That was Vigo's way. The toughest snarl untangled at his touch. He had
+more sense and fewer airs than any other, he saw at once that I was in
+earnest; and Constant's voluble protests were as so much wind. The title
+does not make the man. Though Constant was Master of the Household and
+Vigo only Equery, yet Vigo ruled every corner of the establishment and
+every man in it, save only Monsieur, who ruled him.
+
+He said no word to me as we climbed the broad stair; neither reproved me
+for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He would not pry into
+Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned Monsieur, he had no
+interest in me whatsoever. He led the way straight into an antechamber,
+where a page sprang up to bar our passage.
+
+"No one may enter, M. Vigo, not even you. M. le Duc has ordered it. Why,
+Félix! You in Paris!"
+
+"I enter," said Vigo; and, sweeping Marcel aside, he knocked loudly.
+
+"I came last night," I found time to say under my breath to my old
+comrade before the door was opened.
+
+The handsome secretary whom I had taken for the count stood in the
+doorway looking askance at us. He knew me at once and wondered.
+
+"You cannot enter, Vigo. M. le Duc is occupied."
+
+He made to shut the door, but Vigo's foot was over the sill.
+
+"Natheless, I must enter," he answered unabashed and pushed his way into
+the room.
+
+"Then you must answer for it," returned the secretary, with a scowl that
+sat ill on his delicate face.
+
+"_You_ shall answer for it if it turns out a mare's nest," said Vigo, in
+a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I passed him and
+Lucas, and flew down the long room to Monsieur.
+
+M. le Duc was seated before a table heaped with papers. He had been
+watching the scene at the door in surprise and anger. He looked at me
+with a sharp frown, while the deer-hound at his feet rose on its
+haunches growling.
+
+"Roland!" I said. The dog sprang up and came to me.
+
+"Félix Broux!" Monsieur exclaimed, with his quick, warm smile--a smile
+no man in France could match for radiance.
+
+I had no thought of kneeling, of making obeisance, of waiting permission
+to speak.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, half choked, "there is a plot--a vile plot to
+murder you!"
+
+"Where? At St. Quentin?"
+
+"No, Monsieur. Here in Paris. In the streets to-night, when you go to
+the king."
+
+Monsieur sprang to his feet, his hand on his sword. Lucas turned white.
+Vigo swore. Monsieur cried:
+
+"How, in God's name, know you that?"
+
+"You have been betrayed, Monsieur. Your plan is known. You leave the
+house to-night, near a quarter of eleven, to go in secret to the king.
+You leave by the little door in the alley--"
+
+"Diable!" breathed Vigo.
+
+"They set on you on your way--three of them--to run you through before
+you can draw."
+
+"But, ventre bleu! Monsieur is not alone."
+
+"No; he walks between you and M. Lucas."
+
+Not one of them spoke. They stared at me as if I were something uncanny.
+I, a raw country boy, disclosing a perfect knowledge of their most
+intimate plans!
+
+"How know you this?" Monsieur demanded of me. But he was not looking at
+me. His keen glance went first to Lucas, then to Vigo, the two men who
+had shared his confidence. The secretary cried out:
+
+"You cannot think, Monsieur, that I betrayed you?"
+
+Vigo said nothing. His steady eyes never left Monsieur's face.
+
+"No," answered Monsieur to Lucas, "I cannot think it." And to Vigo he
+said: "I shall accuse you when I accuse myself. But--none knew this
+thing save our three selves." And his gaze went back to Lucas.
+
+"It is not likely to be he," I said, impelled to be just to him though I
+did not like him, "for they meant to kill him as well."
+
+Lucas started, then instantly recovered himself.
+
+"A comprehensive plot, Monsieur," he said, with a smile.
+
+"Then who was it?" cried Monsieur to me. "You know. Speak."
+
+"There is a spy in the house--an eavesdropper," I said, and then paused.
+
+"Aye?" said Monsieur. "Who?"
+
+Now the answer to this was easy, yet I flinched before it; for I knew
+well enough what Monsieur would do. He feared no man, and waited on no
+man's advice. And if he was a good lover, he was a good hater. He would
+not inform the governor, and await the tardy course of justice, that
+would probably accomplish--nothing. Nor would he consider the troubled
+times and the danger of his position, and ignore the affair, as many
+would have deemed best. He would not stop to think what the Sixteen
+might have to say to it. No; he would call out his guards and slay the
+plotters in the Rue Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right
+he should, but--I owed my life to Yeux-gris.
+
+"His name, man, his name!" Monsieur was crying.
+
+"Monsieur," I returned, flushing hot, "Monsieur--"
+
+"Do you know his name?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, I know his name, but--"
+
+Monsieur looked at me in surprise and frowning, impatience. Quickly
+Lucas struck in:
+
+"Monsieur, I have grave doubts of the boy's honesty."
+
+"Doubts!" cried Monsieur, with a sudden laugh. "It is not a case for
+doubts. The boy states facts."
+
+He seated himself in his chair, his face growing stern again. The little
+action seemed to make him no longer merely my questioner, but my judge.
+
+"Now, Félix Broux, let us get to the bottom of this."
+
+"Monsieur," I began, struggling to put the case clearly, "I learned of
+the plot by accident. I did not guess for a long time it was you who
+were the victim. When I found out that, I came straight here to you.
+Monsieur, there are four men in the plot, and one of them has stood my
+friend."
+
+"And my assassin!"
+
+"He is a black-hearted villain!" I acknowledged. "For he swore no harm
+was meant to you. He swore it was only a private grudge against M.
+Lucas. But when one of them let out the truth I came straight to you."
+
+"That is likely true," said Vigo, "for he was ready to kill the men who
+barred his way."
+
+"You were in a plot to kill my secretary!"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried.
+
+"You--Félix Broux!"
+
+I curled with shame.
+
+"M. Lucas had struck me," I muttered; "I thought the fight was fair
+enough. And they threatened my life."
+
+Monsieur's contemptuous eyes shrivelled me as flame shrivels a leaf.
+
+"You--a Broux of St. Quentin!"
+
+Lucas, who had watched me close all the while, as they all three did,
+said now:
+
+"I believe he is a cheat, Monsieur. There is no plot. He has learned of
+your plan through the eavesdropper he speaks of and thinks to make
+credit out of a trumped-up tale of murder."
+
+"No," answered Monsieur. "You may think that, Lucas, for he is a
+stranger to you. But I know him. He was a fool sometimes, but he was
+never dishonest. You used to be fond of me, Félix. What has happened to
+make you consort with my enemies?"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I love you. I have always loved you," I cried. "I am not
+lying now, nor cheating you. There is a plot. I learned it and came
+straight to you, though I was under oath not to betray them."
+
+"Then, in Heaven's name, Félix," burst out Vigo, "which side are you
+on?"
+
+Monsieur began to laugh.
+
+"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can make
+nothing of it."
+
+"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him a
+trickster now."
+
+Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.
+
+"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to get
+some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we have not
+yet fathomed."
+
+"Will Monsieur let me speak?"
+
+"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past," he
+answered dryly.
+
+"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin with
+you, three months back. But at length he said I should come, and I
+reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an inn. This
+morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let me enter. I was
+so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove out I sprang up on your
+coach-step--"
+
+"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was you,
+Félix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters. And Lucas
+took you for a miscreant. Now I _am_ sorry."
+
+If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology. But at
+once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you in all good
+faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save me, you turn
+traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him! I had
+believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."
+
+"Monsieur, I was wrong--a thousand times wrong. I knew that as soon as I
+had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath
+or no oath."
+
+"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile. "Now
+you are Félix. Who are my would-be murderers?"
+
+We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before,
+and here we stuck again.
+
+"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten--tell you
+their names, their whereabouts, everything--were it not for one man who
+stood my friend."
+
+The duke's eyes flashed.
+
+"You call him that--my assassin!"
+
+"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's
+assassin--and a perjurer. But--but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the
+other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back by betraying him?"
+
+"According to your own account, he betrayed you."
+
+"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were your
+own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the gutter,
+would you send him to his death?"
+
+"To whom do you owe your first duty?"
+
+"Monsieur, to you."
+
+"Then speak."
+
+But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain, yet he had
+saved my life.
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot."
+
+The duke cried out:
+
+"This to me!"
+
+There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a
+shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to meet
+Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater in
+Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover. Monsieur had
+been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the lightning to strike,
+he said with utmost gentleness:
+
+"Félix, let me understand you. In what manner did this man save your
+life?"
+
+Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness and ever
+strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the finer that it was
+not his nature. His leniency fired me with a sudden hope.
+
+"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be as vile
+as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell you, will you
+let that one go?"
+
+"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke. "Félix, will you
+speak?"
+
+"If Monsieur will promise to let him go--"
+
+"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."
+
+His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger, and for
+the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his sentence. And again
+he did what I could not guess. He cried out:
+
+"Félix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what you do. I am in
+constant danger. The city is filled with my enemies. The Leagues hate me
+and are ever plotting mischief against me. Every day their mistrust and
+hatred grow. I did a bold thing in coming to Paris, but I had a great
+end to serve--to pave a way into the capital for the Catholic king and
+bring the land to peace. For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk
+my life to-night on foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my
+life is lost. The Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours
+be harried to a desert in the civil wars!"
+
+I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this unlooked-for
+appeal pierced me through and through. All the love and loyalty in
+me--and I had much, though it may not have seemed so--rose in answer to
+Monsieur's call. I fell on my knees before him, choked with sobs.
+
+Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:
+
+"Now, Félix, speak."
+
+I answered huskily:
+
+"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"
+
+"Judas betrayed his _master_."
+
+It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my head to
+tell him all.
+
+Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le Duc, I
+saw--not him, but Yeux-gris--Yeux-gris looking at me with warm good
+will, as he had looked when he was saving me from Gervais. I saw him, I
+say, plain before my eyes. The next instant there was nothing but
+Monsieur's face of rising impatience.
+
+I rose to my feet, and said:
+
+"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."
+
+"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.
+
+I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it were no
+more than my deserts.
+
+"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"
+
+I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow knotted, his
+hands clenched as if to keep them off me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever you
+please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not that I
+will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I _cannot_."
+
+He burst into an angry laugh.
+
+"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My faith!
+though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I seem to be
+getting the worst of it."
+
+"There is the boot, Monsieur."
+
+Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.
+
+"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a Broux."
+
+"There Monsieur is wrong. The lad has been disloyal and insolent, if he
+is a Broux."
+
+"Granted, Vigo," said M. le Duc. But he did not add, "Fetch the boot."
+
+Vigo went on with steady persistence. "He has not been loyal to Monsieur
+and his interests in refusing to tell what he knows. And if he goes
+counter to Monsieur's interests he is a traitor, Broux or no Broux. He
+has no claim to be treated as other than an enemy. These are serious
+times. Monsieur does not well to play with his dangers. The boy must
+tell what he knows. Am I to go for the boot, Monsieur?"
+
+M. le Duc was silent for a moment, while the hot flush that had sprung
+to his face died away. Then he answered Vigo:
+
+"Nevertheless, it is owing to Félix that I shall not walk out to meet my
+death to-night."
+
+The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering nervously the
+papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence, when now he stepped
+forward and said:
+
+"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur--"
+
+Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.
+
+"Félix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a bad plan. No
+man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You are either my
+loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the other. Now I am loath to
+hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to hurt you. I give you one more
+chance to be honest. Go and think it over. If in half an hour you have
+decided that you are my true man, well and good. If not, by St. Quentin,
+we will see what a flogging can do!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_Charles-André-Étienne-Marie._
+
+
+Unpleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom. Those
+men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's iron ways,
+said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.
+
+The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned to the
+inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the page burst
+out:
+
+"What is it? What is the coil? What have you done, Félix?"
+
+Now you can guess I was too sick-hearted for chatter. I had defied and
+disobeyed my liege lord; I could never hope for pardon or any man's
+respect. They threatened me with flogging; well, let them flog. They
+could not make my back any sorer than my conscience was. For I had not
+the satisfaction in my trouble of thinking that I had done right.
+Monsieur's danger should have been my first consideration. What was
+Yeux-gris, perjured scoundrel, in comparison with M. le Duc? And yet I
+knew that at the end of the half-hour I should not tell; at the end of
+the flogging I should not tell. I had warned Monsieur; that I would
+have done had it been the breaking of a thousand oaths. But give up
+Yeux-gris? Not if they tore me limb from limb!
+
+"What is it all about?" cried Marcel, again. "You look as glum as a
+Jesuit in Lent. What is the matter with you, Félix?"
+
+"I have cooked my goose," I said gloomily.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Nothing that I can speak about. But I am out of Monsieur's books."
+
+"What was old Vigo after when he took you in to Monsieur? I never saw
+anything so bold. When Monsieur says he is not to be disturbed he means
+it."
+
+I had nothing to tell him, and was silent.
+
+"What is it? Can't you tell an old chum?"
+
+"No; it is Monsieur's private business."
+
+"Well, you are grumpy!" he cried out pettishly. "You must be out of
+grace." He seemed to decide that nothing was to be made out of me just
+now on this tack, and with unabated persistence tried another.
+
+"Is it true, Félix, what one of the men said just now, that you tried to
+speak with Monsieur this morning when he drove out?"
+
+"Yes. But Monsieur did not recognize me."
+
+"Like enough," Marcel answered. "He has a way of late of falling into
+these absent fits. Monsieur is not the man he was."
+
+"He does look older," I said, "and worn. I trow the risk he is
+running--"
+
+"Pshaw!" cried Marcel, with scorn. "Is Monsieur a man to mind risks? No;
+it is M. le Comte."
+
+I started like a guilty thing, remembering what Yeux-gris had told me
+and I, wrapped in my petty troubles, had forgotten. Monsieur had lost
+his only son. And I had chosen this time to defy him!
+
+"How long ago was it?" I asked in a hushed voice.
+
+"Since M. le Comte left us? It will be three weeks next Friday."
+
+"How did he die?"
+
+"Die?" echoed Marcel. "You crazy fellow, he is not dead!"
+
+It was my turn to stare.
+
+"Then where is he?"
+
+"It would be money in my pouch if I knew. What made you think him dead,
+Félix?"
+
+"A man told me so."
+
+"Pardieu!" he cried in some excitement. "When? Who was it?"
+
+"To-day. I do not know the man's name."
+
+"It seems you know very little. Pardieu! I do not believe M. le Comte is
+dead. What else did your man say?"
+
+"Nothing. He only said the Comte de Mar was dead."
+
+"Pshaw! I don't believe it. You believe everything you hear because you
+are just from the country. No; if M. le Comte were dead we should hear
+of it. Oh, certainly, we should hear."
+
+"But where is he, then? You say he is lost."
+
+"Aye. He has not been seen or heard of since the day they had the
+quarrel."
+
+"Who quarrelled?"
+
+"Why, he and Monsieur," answered Marcel, in a lower voice, pointing to
+the door of the inner room. "M. le Comte has been his own master too
+long to take kindly to a hand over him; that is the whole of it. He has
+a quick temper. So has Monsieur."
+
+But I thought of Monsieur's wonderful patience, and I cried:
+
+"Shame!"
+
+"What now?"
+
+"To speak like that of Monsieur."
+
+"Enfin, it is true. He is none the worse for that. But I suppose if
+Monsieur had a cloven hoof one must not mention it."
+
+"One would get his head broken."
+
+"Oh, you Broux!" he cried out. "I have not seen you for half a year. I
+had forgotten that with you the St. Quentins rank with the saints."
+
+"You--you are a hired servant. You come to Monsieur as you might come to
+anybody. With the Broux it is different," I retorted angrily. Yet I
+could not but know in my heart that any hired servant might have served
+Monsieur better than I. My boasted loyalty--what was it but lip-service?
+I said more humbly: "Pshaw! it is no great matter. Tell me about the
+quarrel."
+
+"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was the
+question of M. le Comte's marriage."
+
+"What! is he married?"
+
+"Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see, Félix," Marcel
+said in a tone deep with importance, "we're Navarre's men now."
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne himself.
+You greenhorn! It is as much as our lives are worth to side openly with
+Navarre. The League may attack us any day."
+
+"I know," I said uneasily. Every chance word Marcel spoke seemed to dye
+my guilt the deeper. "But what has this to do with M. le Comte's
+marriage?" I asked him.
+
+"Why, he was more than half a Leaguer. Perhaps he is one now. Some say
+he and Monsieur were at daggers drawn about politics; but I warrant it
+was about Mlle. de Montluc. They call her the Rose of Lorraine. She's
+the Duke of Mayenne's own cousin and housemate. And we're king's men, so
+of course it was no match for Monsieur's son. They say Mayenne himself
+favoured the marriage, but our duke wouldn't hear of it. However, the
+backbone of the trouble was M. de Grammont."
+
+"And who may he be?"
+
+"He's a cousin of the house. He and M. le Comte are as thick as thieves.
+Before we came to Paris they lodged together. So when M. le Comte came
+here he brought M. de Grammont. Dare I speak ill of Monsieur's cousin,
+Félix? For I would say, at the risk of a broken head, that he is a
+sour-faced churl. You cannot deny it. You never saw him."
+
+"No, nor M. le Comte, either."
+
+"Why, you have seen M. le Comte!"
+
+"Never. The only time he came to St. Quentin I was laid up in bed with a
+strained leg. I missed the chase. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Why, you are right; that was the time you fell out of the buttery
+window when you were stealing tarts, and Margot got after you with the
+broomstick. I remember very well."
+
+He was for calling up all our old pranks at the château, but it was
+little joy to me to think on those fortunate days when I was Monsieur's
+favourite. I said:
+
+"Nay, Marcel, you were telling me of M. le Comte and the quarrel."
+
+"Oh, as for that, it is easy told. You see M. le Comte and this Grammont
+took no interest in Monsieur's affairs, and they had very little to say
+to him, and he to them. They had plenty of friends in Paris, Leaguers or
+not, and they used to go about amusing themselves. But at last M. de
+Grammont had such a run of bad luck at the tables that he not only
+emptied his own pockets but M. le Comte's as well. I will say for M. le
+Comte that he would share his last sou with any one who asked."
+
+"And so would any St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, you are always piping up for the St. Quentins."
+
+"He should have no need in this house."
+
+We jumped up to find Vigo standing behind us.
+
+"What have you been saying of Monsieur?"
+
+"Nothing, M. Vigo," stammered the page. "I only said M. le Comte--"
+
+"You are not to discuss M. le Comte. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, M. Vigo."
+
+"Then obey. And you, Félix, I shall have a little interview with you
+shortly."
+
+"As you will, M. Vigo," I said hopelessly.
+
+He went off down the corridor, and Marcel turned angrily on me.
+
+"Mon dieu, Félix, you have got me into a nice scrape with your eternal
+chanting of the praises of Monsieur. Like as not I shall get a beating
+for it. Vigo never forgets."
+
+"I am sorry," I said. "We should not have been talking of it."
+
+"No, we should not. Come over here where we can watch both doors, and
+I'll tell you the rest before the old lynx gets back."
+
+We sat down close together, and he proceeded in a low tone to disobey
+Vigo.
+
+"Enfin, as I said, the two young gentlemen were quite sans le sou, for
+things had come to a point where M. le Duc looked pretty black at any
+application for funds--he has other uses for his gold, you see. One day
+Monsieur was expecting some one to whom he was to pay a thousand
+pistoles, and to have the money handy he put it in a secret drawer in
+his cabinet in the room yonder. The man arrives and is taken to
+Monsieur's private room. Monsieur gives him his orders and goes to the
+cabinet for his pistoles. No pistoles there!"
+
+Marcel paused dramatically. "And what then?" I asked.
+
+"Well, it appears he had once shown M. le Comte the trick of the drawer,
+so he sent for him--not to accuse him, mind you. For M. le Comte is wild
+enough, yet Monsieur did not think he would steal pistoles, nor would
+he, I will stake my oath. No, Monsieur merely asked him if he had ever
+shown any one the drawer, and M. le Comte answered, 'Only Grammont.'"
+
+And how have you learned all this?"
+
+"Oh, one hears."
+
+"One does, with one's ears to the keyhole."
+
+"It behooves you, Félix, to be civil to your better!"
+
+I made pretence of looking about me.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He sits here. I am page to the Duke of St. Quentin. And you?"
+
+"Touché!" I admitted bitterly enough. Little Marcel, my junior, my
+unquestioning follower in the old days, was now indeed my better, quite
+in a position to patronize.
+
+"Continue, if you please, Marcel. Yet, in passing, I should like to ask
+you how much you heard our talk in there just now."
+
+"Nothing," he answered candidly. "When they are so far down the room one
+cannot hear a word. In the affair of the pistoles they stood near the
+cabinet at this end. One could not help but hear. As for listening at
+keyholes, I scorn it."
+
+"Yes, it is well to scorn it. People have an unpleasant trick of opening
+doors so suddenly."
+
+He laughed cheerfully.
+
+"Old Vigo caught us, certes. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, then
+Monsieur put on his proud look and said, if it was a case of no one but
+his son and his cousin, he preferred to drop the matter. But M. le Comte
+got out of him what the trouble was and went off for Grammont, red as
+fire. The two together came back to Monsieur and denied up and down
+that either of them knew aught of his pistoles, or had told of the
+secret to any one. They say it was easy to see that Monsieur did not
+believe Grammont, but he did not give him the lie, and the matter came
+near dropping there, for M. le Duc would not accuse a kinsman. But then
+Lucas gave a new turn to the affair."
+
+"How long has Lucas been here, Marcel? Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, he's a rascal of a Huguenot. Monsieur picked him up at Mantes, just
+before we came to the city. And if he spies on Monsieur's enemies as
+well as he does on this household, he must be a useful man. He has that
+long nose of his in everything, let me tell you. Of course he was
+present when Monsieur missed the pistoles. So then, quite on his own
+account, without any orders, he took two of the men and searched M. de
+Grammont's room. And in a locked chest of his which they forced open
+they found five hundred of the pistoles in the very box Monsieur had
+kept them in."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Marcel made a fine gesture.
+
+"And then, pardieu! the storm broke. M. de Grammont raved like a madman.
+He said Lucas was the thief and had put half the sum in his chest to
+divert suspicion. He said it was a plot to ruin him contrived between
+Monsieur and his henchman, Lucas. It is true enough, certes, that
+Monsieur never liked him. He threatened Monsieur's life and Lucas's. He
+challenged Monsieur, and Monsieur declined to cross swords with a
+thief. He challenged Lucas, and Lucas took the cue from Monsieur. I was
+not there--on either side of the door. What I tell you has leaked out
+bit by bit from Lucas, for Monsieur keeps his mouth shut. The upshot of
+the matter was that Grammont goes at Lucas with a knife, and Monsieur
+has the guards pitch my gentleman into the street. Then M. le Comte
+swore a big oath that he would go with Grammont. Monsieur told him if he
+went in such company it would be forever. M. le Comte swore he would
+never come back under his father's roof if M. le Duc crawled to him on
+his knees to beg him."
+
+"Ah!" I cried; "and then?"
+
+"Marry, that's all. M. le Comte went straight out of this gate, without
+horse or squire. And we have not heard a word of either of them since."
+
+He paused, and when I made no comment, said, a trifle aggrieved:
+
+"Eh bien, you take it calmly, but you would not had you been here. It
+was an altogether lively affair. It wouldn't surprise me a whit if some
+day Monsieur should be attacked as he drives out. He's not one to forget
+an injury, this M. Gervais de Grammont."
+
+At the name, intelligence flashed over me, sudden and clear as last
+night's lightning-gleam. Yet this thing I seemed to see was so hideous,
+so horrible, that my mind recoiled from it.
+
+"Marcel," I stammered, shuddering, "Marcel--"
+
+"Mordieu! what ails you? Is some one walking on your grave?"
+
+"Marcel, how is M. le Comte named?"
+
+"The Comte de Mar? Oh, do you mean his names in baptism?
+Charles-André-Étienne-Marie. They call him Étienne. Why do you ask? What
+is it?"
+
+It was a certainty, then. Yet I could not bring myself to believe this
+horrible thing.
+
+"I have never seen him. How does he look?"
+
+"Oh, not at all like Monsieur. He has fair hair and gray eyes--que
+diable!"
+
+For I had flung open Monsieur's door and dashed in.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_The honour of St. Quentin._
+
+
+Monsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and hurriedly to
+Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon them, and then
+Monsieur cried out to me:
+
+"Ah, Félix! You have come to your senses."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."
+
+He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at Marcel,
+standing agape in the doorway.
+
+"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and shut the
+door into the corridor."
+
+Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.
+
+"Now, Félix."
+
+I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was disposed
+of.
+
+"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I have found
+out. They--"
+
+My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the words died
+on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know that this was no
+story to tell Monsieur before another.
+
+"I will tell Monsieur alone."
+
+"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.
+
+"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."
+
+He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and said to
+the secretary:
+
+"You may go, Lucas."
+
+Lucas protested.
+
+"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be trusted.
+Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your life."
+
+The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:
+
+"You may go."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Go!"
+
+Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that startled
+me. But I did not pay it much heed.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.
+
+But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I had to
+tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two words. I stood
+silent, not knowing how to start.
+
+"Félix! Beware how much longer you abuse my patience!"
+
+"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."
+
+"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he knew--But go on.
+The others--"
+
+"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St. Denis
+gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of the Amour
+de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron from garret
+to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is here that they
+plot."
+
+[Illustration: "WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."]
+
+Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall something
+half remembered, half forgotten.
+
+"But the men," he cried, "the men!"
+
+"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."
+
+"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning forward
+eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking--the quickest way to reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young men--noble."
+
+I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon him.
+
+"Their names, lad!"
+
+Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up and
+covered every other feeling. I burst out:
+
+"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."
+
+He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.
+Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling the
+truth.
+
+I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave
+man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that gray-eyed
+cheat.
+
+With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.
+
+"You lie, you cur!"
+
+"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."
+
+He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog, who had
+sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which the dumb
+beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed head, a man
+stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was, the tears came to
+my eyes for Monsieur.
+
+He recovered himself.
+
+"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"
+
+My rage blazed up again.
+
+"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not who they
+were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things fitted."
+
+"Then it is your guess! You dare to say--"
+
+"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember respect.
+"Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen M. le Comte nor
+M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and heavy, with a black
+beard and a black scowl, whom the other called Gervais. The younger was
+called Étienne, tall and slender, with gray eyes and fair hair. And like
+Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like,
+though he is light! In face, in voice, in manner! He speaks like
+Monsieur. He has Monsieur's laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe
+that was why I loved him so much."
+
+"It was he whom you would not betray?"
+
+"Aye. That was before I knew."
+
+Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.
+Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would look
+through me to the naked soul.
+
+"How do I know that you are not lying?"
+
+"Monsieur does know it."
+
+"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."
+
+He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever saw--the face of
+a man whose son has sought to murder him. Looking back on it now, I
+wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with that story. I wonder why I did
+not bury the shame and disgrace of it in my own heart, at whatever cost
+keep it from Monsieur. But the thought never entered my head then. I was
+so full of black rage against Yeux-gris--him most of all, because he had
+won me so--that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied
+Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.
+
+"Tell me everything--how you met them--all. Else I shall not believe a
+word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur cried out.
+
+I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning
+vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in
+hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had
+spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face
+drew the cry from me:
+
+"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"
+
+"Take care, Félix, he is my son!"
+
+I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.
+
+"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was not
+against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I swore, too,
+never to betray them! Two perjuries!"
+
+I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering it.
+
+"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.
+
+"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since he has
+touched it. He has made it vile--scoundrel, assassin, parricide!"
+
+Monsieur struck the words from my lips.
+
+"It is true," I muttered.
+
+"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."
+
+"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of a St.
+Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came uppermost
+again.
+
+"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a handful
+of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught amiss. They are
+only three--he and Grammont and the lackey."
+
+But Monsieur shook his head.
+
+"I cannot do that."
+
+"Why not, Monsieur?"
+
+"Can I take my own son prisoner?"
+
+"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would have
+gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and two more
+can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame him before the
+men." I guessed at what he was thinking.
+
+"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest my son
+like a common felon--shame him like that?"
+
+"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a right to
+say it. "He has forgotten his honour."
+
+"Aye. But I have remembered mine."
+
+"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"
+
+But his eyes told me that he did mean it.
+
+"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives him?"
+
+His face set sternly.
+
+"No," he answered. "No, Félix. He has placed himself beyond my
+forgiveness."
+
+"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the three!"
+
+He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.
+
+"You would have me kill my son?"
+
+"He would have killed you."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and
+catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud and
+honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry heart.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished for the
+sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back, but the case
+was changed now.
+
+"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."
+
+"Monsieur would spare him as well--him, the ringleader!"
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"He forgets it."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"
+
+Monsieur looked at me.
+
+"When you are a man, Félix Broux, you will know that there are other
+things in this world besides vengeance. You will know that some injuries
+cannot be avenged. You will know that a gentleman cannot use the same
+weapons that blackguards use to him."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I was
+furious with him for it.
+
+He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had been
+standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me with puzzled,
+troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was wrong, and vented his
+feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur spoke to him; Roland bounded
+up to him and licked his hand. They walked up and down together,
+comforting each other.
+
+"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."
+
+He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then as he
+did.
+
+"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat, Félix? But
+does it seem to you fair that a tool should be punished when the leaders
+go free?"
+
+"No," said I; "but it is the common way."
+
+"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.
+
+I waited till he faced me once more.
+
+"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"
+
+"No, Félix. He shall be punished lest he betray again."
+
+He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by me, a
+broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take up his life
+once more. But I thought he would never get over the blow. A husband may
+forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will forgive her child's, but
+a father can neither forget nor forgive the crime of the son who bears
+his name.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the depths
+of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.
+
+Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.
+
+"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be looking to the
+country's business."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_Lucas and "Le Gaucher."_
+
+
+I cursed myself for a fool that I had carried the tale to Monsieur. It
+should have been my business to keep a still tongue and go kill
+Yeux-gris myself. For this last it was not yet too late.
+
+Marcel was hanging about in the corridor, and to him I gave the word for
+Vigo. I tore away from his eager questionings and hurried to the gate.
+
+In the morning I had not been able to get in, and now I could no more
+get out. By Vigo's orders, no man might leave the house.
+
+Vigo was after the spy, of course. Monsieur knew the traitor now; he
+would inform Vigo, and the gates would be open for honest men. But that
+might take time and I could not wait five minutes. I had the audacity to
+cry to the guards:
+
+"M. le Duc will let me pass out. I refer you to M. le Duc."
+
+The men were impressed. They had a respect for me, since I had been
+closeted with Monsieur. Yet they dared not disobey Vigo for their lives.
+In this dilemma the poor sentry, fearful of getting into trouble
+whatever he did, sent up an envoy to ask Monsieur. I was frightened
+then. I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and was very doubtful as
+to how he would answer my impudence. But he was utterly careless, I
+trow, what I did, for presently the word came down that I might pass
+out.
+
+The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for me. A man in
+his senses would have known there was no hope anyway. Who but a madman
+would think of venturing back, forsworn, to those three villains, for
+the killing of one? It would be a miracle if aught resulted but failure
+and death. Yet I felt no jot of fear as I plunged into the mesh of
+crooked streets in the Coupejarrets quarter--only ardour to reach my
+goal. When, on turning a corner, I came upon a group of idlers choking
+the narrow ruelle, I said to myself that a dozen Parisians in the way
+could no more stop me than they could stop a charge of horse. All heels
+and elbows, I pushed into them. But, to my abasement, promptly was I
+seized upon by a burly porter and bidden, with a cuff, to mind my
+manners. Then I discovered the occasion of the crowd to be a little
+procession of choristers out of a neighbouring church--St. Jean of the
+Spire it was, though I knew then no name for it. The boys were singing,
+the watchers quiet, bareheaded. They sang as if there were nothing in
+the world but piety and love. The last level rays of the sun crowned
+them with radiant aureoles, painted their white robes with glory. I shut
+my eyes, dazzled; it was as if I beheld a heavenly host. When I opened
+them again the folk at my side were kneeling as the cross came by. I
+knelt, too, but the holy sign spoke to me only of the crucifix I had
+trampled on, of Yeux-gris and his lies. I prayed to the good God to let
+me kill Yeux-gris, prayed, kneeling there on the cobbles, with a fervour
+I had never reached before. When I rose I ran on at redoubled speed,
+never doubting that a just God would strengthen my hand, would make my
+cause his.
+
+I entered the little court. The shutter was fastened, as before, but I
+had my dagger, and could again free the bolt. I could creep up-stairs
+and mayhap stab Yeux-gris before they were aware of my coming. But that
+was not my purpose. I was no bravo to strike in the back, but the
+instrument of a righteous vengeance. He must know why he died.
+
+One to three, I had no chance. But if I knocked openly it was likely
+that Yeux-gris, being my patron, would be the one to come down to me.
+Then there was the opportunity, man to man. If it were Grammont or the
+lackey, I would boldly declare that I would give my news to none but
+Yeux-gris. In pursuance of this plan I was pounding vigorously on the
+door when a voice behind me cried out blithely:
+
+"So you are back at last, Félix Broux"
+
+At the first word I wheeled around. In the court entrance stood
+Yeux-gris, smiling and debonair. He had laid aside his sword, and held
+on his left arm a basket containing a loaf of bread, a roast capon, and
+some bottles, for all the world like an honest prentice doing his
+master's errand.
+
+"Yes, I am back!" I shouted. "Back to kill you, parricide!"
+
+He had a knife in his belt; the fight was even. I was upon him, my
+dagger raised to strike. He made no motion to draw, and I remembered in
+a flash he could not: his right arm was powerless. He sprang back,
+flinging up his burdened left as a shield, and my blade buried itself in
+the side of the basket.
+
+As I stabbed I heard feet thundering down the stairs within. I jerked my
+knife from the wicker and turned to face this new enemy. "Grammont," I
+thought, and that my end had come.
+
+The door flew open and, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, out rushed
+Grammont and--Lucas!
+
+My fear was drowned in amaze. I forgot to run and stood staring in
+sheer, blank bewilderment. Crying "Damned traitor!" Gervais, with drawn
+sword, charged at me.
+
+I had only the little dagger. I owe my life to Yeux-gris's quick wits
+and no less quick fingers. Dropping the basket, he snatched a bottle
+from it and hurled it at Gervais.
+
+"Ware, Grammont!" shouted Lucas, springing forward. But the missile flew
+too quickly. It struck Grammont square on the forehead, and he went down
+like a slaughtered ox.
+
+We looked, not at him, but at Lucas--Lucas, the duke's deferential
+servant, the coward and skulker, Grammont's hatred, standing here by
+Grammont's side, glaring at us over his naked sword.
+
+I saw in one glance that Yeux-gris was no less astounded than I, and
+from that instant, though the inwardness of the matter was still a
+riddle to me, my heart acquitted him of all dishonesty, of all
+complicity. His was not the face of a parricide.
+
+"Lucas!" he cried, in a dearth of words. "_Lucas!_"
+
+I was staring at Lucas in thick bewilderment. The man was transformed
+from the one I knew. At M. le Duc's he had been pale, nervous, and
+shaken--senselessly and contemptibly scared, as I thought, since he was
+warned of the danger and need not face it. But now he was another man. I
+can think only of those lanterns I have seen, set with coloured glass.
+They look dull enough all day, but when the taper within is lighted
+shine like jewels. So Lucas now. His face, so keen and handsome of
+feature, was brilliant, his eyes sparkling, his figure instinct with
+defiance. A smile crossed his face.
+
+"Aye," he answered evenly, "it is Lucas."
+
+M. le Comte appeared to be in a state of stupor. He could not for a
+space find his tongue to demand:
+
+"How, in the name of Heaven, come you here?"
+
+"To fight Grammont," Lucas answered at once.
+
+"A lie!" I shouted. "You're Grammont's friend. You came here to warn him
+off. It's your plot!"
+
+"Félix! The plot?" Yeux-gris cried.
+
+"The plot's to murder Monsieur. Martin let it out. I thought it was you
+and Grammont. But it's Lucas and Grammont!"
+
+Lucas hesitated. Even now he debated whether he could not lie out of it.
+Then he burst into laughter.
+
+"It seems the cat's out of the bag. Aye, M. le Comte de Mar, I came to
+warn Grammont off. The duke will be here straightway. How will you like
+to swing for parricide?"
+
+Yeux-gris stared at him, neither in fear nor in fury, but in utter
+stupefaction.
+
+"But Gervais? He plotted with you? But he hates you!"
+
+We gaped at Lucas like yokels at a conjurer. He made us no answer but
+looked from one to the other of us with the alertness of an angry viper.
+We were two, but without swords. I knew he was thinking how easiest to
+end us both.
+
+M. le Comte cried: "You! You come from Navarre's camp, from M. de
+Rosny!"
+
+"Aye. I have outwitted more than one man."
+
+"Mordieu! I was right to hate you!"
+
+Lucas laughed. Yeux-gris blazed out:
+
+"Traitor and thief! You stole the money. I said that from the first. You
+drove us from the house. How you and Grammont--"
+
+"Came together? Very simple," Lucas answered with easy insolence.
+"Grammont did not love Monsieur, your honoured father. It was child's
+play to make an assignation with him and to lament the part forced on me
+by Monsieur. Grammont was ready enough to scent a scheme of M. le Duc's
+to ruin him. He had said as much to Monsieur, as you may deign to
+remember."
+
+"Aye," said M. le Comte, still like a puzzled child, "he was angry with
+my father. But afterward he changed his mind. He knew it was you, and
+only you."
+
+Lucas broke again into derisive laughter.
+
+"M. de Grammont is as dull a dolt as ever I met, yet clever enough to
+gull you. He thought you must suspect. I dreaded it--needlessly. You
+wise St. Quentins! You cannot see what goes on under your very nose."
+
+M. le Comte sprang forward, scarlet. Lucas flourished the sword.
+
+"The boy there caught at a glance what you had not found out in a
+fortnight. He gets to the duke and blocks my game--for to-day. But if
+they sent him ahead to hold us till their men came up, they were fools,
+too. I'll have the duke yet, and I'll have you now."
+
+He rushed at the unarmed Yeux-gris. The latter darted at Grammont's
+fallen sword, seized it, was on guard, all in the second before Lucas
+reached him. He might have been in a fortnight's trance, but he was
+awake at last.
+
+I trembled for him, then took heart again, as he parried thrust after
+thrust and pressed Lucas hard. I had never seen a man fight with his
+left arm before; I had not realized it could be done, being myself
+helpless with that hand. But as I watched this combat I speedily
+perceived how dangerous is a left-handed adversary. In later years I was
+to understand better, when M. le Comte had become known the length of
+the land by the title "Le Gaucher." But at this time he was in the
+habit, like the rest of the world, of fencing with his right hand; his
+dexterity with the other he rated only as a pretty accomplishment to
+surprise the crowd. He used his left hand scarcely as well as Lucas the
+right; yet, the thrust sinister being in itself a strength, they were
+not badly matched. I stood watching with all my eyes, when of a sudden I
+felt a grasp on my ankle and the next instant was thrown heavily to the
+pavement.
+
+Grammont had come to life and taken prompt part in the fray.
+
+I fell close to him, and instantly he let go my leg and wound his arms
+around me. I tried to rise and could not, and we rolled about together
+in the wine and blood and broken glass. All the while I heard the
+sword-blades clashing. Yeux-gris, God be thanked! seemed to be holding
+his own.
+
+Fighting Gervais was like fighting two men. Slowly but steadily he
+pressed me down and held me. I struggled for dear life--and could not
+push him back an inch.
+
+I still held my knife but my arms were pinned down. Gervais raised
+himself a little to get a better clutch, and his fingers closed on my
+throat. One grip, and life seemed flowing from me. My arm was free now
+if I could but lift it. If I could not, nevermore should I lift it on
+this sunny earth. I did lift it, and drove the dagger deep into him.
+
+I could not take aim; I could not tell where the knife struck. A gasp
+showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight went from
+me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then thought went, too.
+
+But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed, and I
+wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw Grammont
+clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all, the blow had
+gone home. I had struck him in the left side under the arm. Three good
+inches of steel were in him.
+
+He had turned over on his side, half off me. I scrambled out from under
+him. To my surprise, Yeux-gris and Lucas were still engaged. I had
+thought it hours since Grammont pulled me down.
+
+As I rose, Yeux-gris turned his head toward me. Only for a second, but
+in that second Lucas pinked his shoulder. I dashed between them; they
+lowered their points.
+
+"First blood for me!" cried Lucas. "That serves for to-day, M. le Comte.
+I regret that I cannot wait to kill you, but that will come. It is
+necessary that I go before M. le Duc arrives. Clear the way."
+
+M. le Comte stood his ground, barring the alley. They glared at each
+other motionless.
+
+Grammont had raised himself to his knees and was trying painfully to get
+on his feet.
+
+"A hand, Lucas," he gasped.
+
+Lucas gave him a startled glance but neither went nor spoke to him.
+
+"I am not much hurt," said Grammont, huskily. Holding by the wall, he
+clambered up on his feet. He swayed, reeled forward, and clutched
+Lucas's arm.
+
+"Lucas, Lucas, help me! Draw out the knife. I cannot. I shall be myself
+when the knife is out. Lucas, for God's sake!"
+
+"You will die when the knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching himself
+free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed as he saw the
+blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble in his hand.
+
+"Come on, then," he cried to Yeux-gris.
+
+But I sprang forward and seized the sword from M. le Comte's hand.
+
+"On guard!" I shouted, and we went to work.
+
+I could handle a sword as well as the next one. M. le Duc had taught me
+in his idle days at St. Quentin. It served me well now, and him, too.
+
+The light was fading in the narrow court. Our blades shone white in the
+twilight as the weapons clashed in and out. I saw, without looking,
+Grammont leaning against the wall, his gory face ashen, and Yeux-gris
+watching me with all his soul, now and then shouting a word of advice.
+
+I had had good training, and I fought for all there was in me. Yet I was
+a boy not come to my full strength, and Lucas was more than my match. He
+drove me back farther and farther toward the house-wall. Of a sudden I
+slipped in a smear of blood ('tis no lying excuse, I did slip) and lost
+my guard. He ran his blade into my shoulder, as he had done with
+Yeux-gris.
+
+He would likely have finished me had not a cry from Grammont shaken him.
+
+"The duke!"
+
+In truth, a deepening noise of hoofs and shouts came down the alley from
+the street.
+
+Lucas looked at me, who had regained my guard and stood, little hurt,
+between him and M. le Comte. He could not push past me into the house
+and so through to the other street. He made for the alley, crying out:
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs! We shall meet again."
+
+Grammont seized him.
+
+"Help me, Lucas, for the love of Christ! Don't leave me, Lucas!"
+
+Lucas beat him off with the sword.
+
+"Every man for himself!" he cried, and sprang down the alley.
+
+"It is not the duke," I said to Yeux-gris. "It is most likely the
+watch." I paled at the thought, for the watch was the League's, and
+Lucas by all signs the League's tool. It might go hard with us if
+captured. "Go through the house, M. le Comte," I cried. "Quick, if you
+love your life! I'll keep them at the alley's mouth as long as I can."
+
+Not waiting for his answer, I rushed down the passage. At the end of it
+I ran against Lucas, who, in his turn, had bowled into Vigo.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_Vigo._
+
+
+I knew of old that it was easier to catch a weasel asleep than Vigo
+absent where he was needed; yet I did not expect to meet him in the
+alley. Monsieur, then, had changed his mind.
+
+"Well caught!" cried Vigo, winding his arms round Lucas, who was
+struggling furiously for liberty. "Here, Maurice, Jules, I have number
+one. Ah, you young sinner! with your crew again? I thought as much. Tie
+the knots hard, boys. Better be quiet, you snake; you can't get away."
+
+Lucas seemed to make up his mind to this, for he quieted down directly.
+
+"So the game is up," he said pleasantly. "I had hoped to be gone before
+you arrived, dear Vigo."
+
+We had both been deprived promptly of our swords and Lucas's wrists were
+roped together, but my only bond was Vigo's hand on my arm.
+
+"Where are the others?" he demanded. "No tricks, now."
+
+"Here," I said, and led the way down the passage. Maurice and Jules,
+with their prisoner, pressed after us, and half a dozen of the duke's
+guard after them. The rest stayed without to mind the horses and keep
+off the gathering crowd.
+
+One of the men had a torch which lighted the red pavement. Vigo saw this
+first.
+
+"Morbleu! is it a shambles?"
+
+"That is wine," I said.
+
+"They spilled wine for effect, they spilled so little blood!" Thus
+Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded the
+situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no questions;
+instead, bade Lucas hold his tongue.
+
+"I am dumb," Lucas rejoined, with a mock meekness more insolent than
+insolence. But we paid it no heed for M. le Comte came forward out of
+the shadows. He held his head well up but his face was white above his
+crimsoned doublet.
+
+"M. Étienne! Are you hurt?" shouted Vigo.
+
+"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont leaning
+against the wall.
+
+"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at Gervais.
+
+"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my back,"
+Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo, draw it out."
+
+With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"I."
+
+"You, Félix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to demand again which
+side I was on.
+
+"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I
+could."
+
+"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless, here comes
+the knife."
+
+It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against Vigo's
+man, clapping his hand to his side.
+
+"I am done for," he gasped faintly.
+
+"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.
+
+"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.
+
+"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.
+
+Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage in his
+face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said fretfully:
+
+"Which--which is Étienne?"
+
+He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward silently.
+Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I put my arm
+about him and helped the guardsman to hold him straighter. He reached
+out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's sleeve.
+
+"Étienne--Étienne--pardon. It was wrong toward you--but I never had the
+pistoles. He called me thief--the duke. I beseech--your--pardon."
+
+M. le Comte was silent.
+
+"It was all Lucas--Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with stiffening
+lips. "I am sorry for--it. I am dying--I cannot die--without a chance.
+Say you--for--give--"
+
+Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less treachery
+though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were cousins,
+bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte said nothing.
+
+How Grammont found the strength only God knows, who haply in his
+goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened his
+sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his cousin,
+both hands outstretched in appeal.
+
+M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered forward.
+Then M. Étienne, never changing his countenance, slowly, half
+reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his hand.
+
+But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp again.
+As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.
+
+"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up and added
+the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin. Otherwise he had
+no emotions.
+
+But I was not case-hardened. And I--I myself--had slain this man, who
+had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice sounded to me far off as
+he said bluntly:
+
+"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."
+
+"No, by Heaven!" cried M. Étienne, in a vibrating voice that brought me
+back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer. Things may look black
+against me but I am innocent. You have one villain at your feet and one
+a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am a St. Quentin; I do not plot
+against my father. I was to aid Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not
+answer a challenge. I have been tricked. Gervais asked my
+forgiveness--you heard him. Their dupe, yes--accomplice I was not.
+Never have I lifted my hand against my father, nor would I, whatever
+came. That I swear. Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left
+Monsieur's presence, till now when he came out of that door side by side
+with Grammont. Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St.
+Quentin--no parricide!"
+
+The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with haggard eyes
+on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment he could not have
+waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman and servant, never
+minced words to any man nor swerved from the stark truth.
+
+I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of course he
+believed M. Étienne; how dared he make his master wait for the
+assurance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le Comte's pardon.
+
+But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he pronounce
+judgment, but merely said:
+
+"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his story
+to my master."
+
+"I will tell it before this hour is out!"
+
+"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M. Étienne. Monsieur
+suspects nothing against you. Félix kept your name from him. And by the
+time I had screwed it out of Martin, Monsieur was gone."
+
+"Gone out of Paris?" M. Étienne echoed blankly. To his eagerness it was
+as if M. le Duc were out of France.
+
+"Aye. He meant to go to-night--Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But when Monsieur
+learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day. 'If the League must
+kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight, with all Paris
+watching.' That's Monsieur!"
+
+At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from that unhappy
+house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices, the equery,
+struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant hands on Martin
+the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the household, had had some
+intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that M. le Comte, if guilty,
+should be spared. At once he had sounded boots and saddles.
+
+"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the meanest
+lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet the charge.
+My father and I have differed but if we are no longer friends we are
+still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor could he for one
+moment believe it of me."
+
+I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than to
+confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went back a
+second time and told him."
+
+"And he?" cried M. Étienne.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."
+
+"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him he gave
+no sign."
+
+"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said he could
+not move in the matter; he could not punish his own kin."
+
+M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:
+
+"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I expected
+his faith."
+
+"You had no claim to it, M. le Comte."
+
+"Vigo!" cried the young noble, "you are insolent, sirrah!"
+
+"I cry monsieur's pardon."
+
+He was quite respectful and quite unabashed. He had meant no insolence.
+But M. Étienne had dared criticise the duke and that Vigo did not allow.
+
+M. Étienne glared at him in speechless wrath. It would have liked him
+well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees. But how? It was a
+byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the duke's. The King of France
+could not dash him.
+
+Vigo went on:
+
+"It seems I have exceeded my duty, monsieur, in coming here. Yet it
+turns out for the best, since Lucas is caught and M. de Grammont dead
+and you cleared of suspicion."
+
+"What!" Yeux-gris cried. "What! you call me cleared!"
+
+Vigo looked at him in surprise.
+
+"You said you were innocent, M. le Comte."
+
+M. le Comte stared, without a word to answer. The equery, all unaware of
+having said anything unexpected, turned to the guardsman Maurice:
+
+"Well, is Lucas trussed? Have you searched him?"
+
+Maurice displayed a poniard and a handful of small coins for sole booty,
+but Jules made haste to announce: "He has something else, though--a
+paper sewed up in his doublet. Shall I rip it out, M. Vigo?"
+
+With Lucas's own knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet from
+throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your palm. Vigo
+pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home with the work of a
+quill, save those that winged arrows. M. Étienne, coming forward, with a
+sharp exclamation snatched the packet.
+
+"How came you by my letter?" he demanded of Lucas.
+
+"M. le Comte was pleased to consign it for delivery to Martin."
+
+"What purpose had you with it?"
+
+"Rest assured, dear monsieur, I had a purpose."
+
+The questions were stormily vehement, the answers so gentle as to be
+fairly caressing. It was waste of time and dignity to parley with the
+scoundrel till one could back one's queries with the boot. But M.
+Étienne's passion knew no waiting. Thrusting the letter into his breast
+ere I, who had edged up to him, could catch a glimpse of its address, he
+cried upon Lucas:
+
+"Speak! You were ready enough to jeer at me for a dupe. Tell me what you
+would do with your dupe. You dared not open the plot to me--you did me
+the honour to know I would not kill my father. Then why use me
+blindfold? An awkward game, Lucas."
+
+Lucas disagreed as politely as if exchanging pleasantries in a salon.
+
+"A dexterous game, M. le Comte. Your best friends deemed you guilty.
+What would your enemies have said?"
+
+"Ah-h," breathed M. Étienne.
+
+"It dawns on you, monsieur? You are marvellous thick-witted, yet surely
+you must perceive. We had a dozen fellows ready to swear that your hand
+killed Monsieur."
+
+"You would kill me for my father's murder?"
+
+"Ma foi, no!" cried Lucas, airily. "Never in the world! We should have
+let you live, in the knowledge that whenever you displeased us we could
+send you to the gallows."
+
+M. le Comte, silent, stared at him with wild eyes, like one who looks
+into the open roof of hell. Lucas fell to laughing.
+
+"What! hang you and let our cousin Valère succeed? Mon dieu, no! M. de
+Valère is a man!"
+
+With a blow the guardsman struck the words and the laughter from his
+lips. But I, who no more than Lucas knew how to hold my tongue, thought
+I saw a better way to punish this brazen knave. I cried out:
+
+"You are the dupe, Lucas! Aye, and coward to boot, fleeing here
+from--nothing. I knew naught against you--you saw that. To slip out and
+warn Martin before Vigo got a chance at him--that was all you had to do.
+Yet you never thought of that but rushed away here, leaving Martin to
+betray you. Had you stuck to your post you had been now on the road to
+St. Denis, instead of the road to the Grève! Fool! fool! fool!"
+
+He winced. He had not been ashamed to betray his benefactor, to bite the
+hand that fed him, to desert a wounded comrade; but he was ashamed to
+confront his own blunder. I had the satisfaction of pricking, not his
+conscience, for he had none, but his pride.
+
+"I had to warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St. Quentin
+such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were his kin? You
+did better than you knew when you shut the door on me. You tracked me,
+you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the coil?"
+
+"By God's grace," M. le Comte answered. He laid a hand on my shoulder
+and leaned there heavily. Lucas grinned.
+
+"Ah, waxing pious, is he? The prodigal prepares to return."
+
+M. Étienne's hand clinched on my shoulder. Vigo commanded a gag for
+Lucas, saying, with the only touch of anger I ever knew him to show:
+
+"He shall hang when the king comes in. And now to horse, lads, and out
+of the quarter; we have wasted too much time palavering. King Henry is
+not in Paris yet. We shall do well not to rouse Belin, though we can
+make him trouble if he troubles us. Come, monsieur. Men, guard your
+prisoner. I misjudge if he is not cropful of the devil still."
+
+He did not look it. His figure was drooping; his face purple and
+contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the man's
+mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a sudden frantic
+effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the gag to cry out
+wildly:
+
+"Oh, M. l'Écuyer, have mercy! Have pity upon me! For Christ's sake,
+pity!"
+
+[Illustration: "IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE
+ALLEY."]
+
+His bravado had broken down at last. He tried to fling himself at Vigo's
+feet. The guards relaxed their hold to see him grovel.
+
+That was what he had hoped for. In a flash he was out of their grasp,
+flying down the alley.
+
+"To Vigo! Vigo is attacked," we heard him shout.
+
+It was so quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after,
+pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley we
+ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We lost
+precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it was a ruse
+and our prisoner escaped. When they comprehended, we all rushed together
+out of the passage, emerging among frightened horses and a great press
+of excited men.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_The Comte de Mar._
+
+
+"Which way went he?"
+
+"The man who just came out?"
+
+"This way!"
+
+"No, yonder!"
+
+"Nay, I saw him not."
+
+"A man with bound hands, you say?"
+
+"Here!"
+
+"Down that way!"
+
+"A man in black, was he? Here he is!"
+
+"Fool, no; he went that way!"
+
+M. Étienne, Vigo, I, and the guardsmen rushed hither and thither into
+the ever-thickening crowd, shouting after Lucas and exchanging rapid
+questions with every one we passed. But from the very first the search
+was hopeless. It was dark by this time and a mass of people blocked the
+street, surging this way and that, some eagerly joining in the chase,
+others, from ready sympathy with any rogue, doing their best to hinder
+and confuse us. There was no way to tell how he had gone. A needle in a
+haystack is easy found compared with him who loses himself in a Paris
+crowd by night.
+
+M. Étienne plunged into the first opening he saw, elbowing his way
+manfully. I followed in his wake, his tall bright head making as good an
+oriflamme as the king's plume at Ivry, but when at length we came out
+far down the street we had seen no trace of Lucas.
+
+"He is gone," said M. le Comte.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. If it were day they might find him, but not now."
+
+"No. Even Vigo will not find him. He is worsted for once. He has let
+slip the shrewdest knave in France. Well, he is gone," he repeated after
+a minute. "It cannot be mended by me. He is off, and so am I."
+
+"Whither, monsieur?"
+
+"That is my concern."
+
+"But monsieur will see M. le Duc?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+He broke in on me fiercely.
+
+"Think you that I--I, smirched and sullied, reeking with plots of
+murder--am likely to betake myself to the noblest gentleman in France?"
+
+"He will welcome M. le Comte."
+
+"Nay; he believed me guilty."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"You may not say 'but' to me."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur. Am I to tell Vigo monsieur is gone?"
+
+"Yes, tell him." His lip quivered; he struggled hard for steadiness.
+"You will go to M. le Duc, Félix, and rise in his favour, for it was you
+saved his life. Then tell him this from me--that some day, when I have
+made me worthy to enter his presence, then will I go to him and beg his
+forgiveness on my knees. And now farewell."
+
+He slipped away into the darkness.
+
+I stood hesitating for a moment. Then I followed my lord.
+
+He slackened his pace as he heard footsteps overtake him, and where a
+beam of light shone out from an open door he wheeled about, thinking me
+a footpad.
+
+"You, Félix?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I go with M. le Comte."
+
+"I have not permitted you."
+
+"Then must I go in despite. Monsieur is wounded; I cannot leave him to
+go unsquired."
+
+"There are lackeys to hire. I bade you seek M. le Duc."
+
+"Is not monsieur a thought unreasonable? I cannot be in two places at
+once. Monsieur can send a letter. The duke has Vigo and a household. I
+go with M. le Comte."
+
+"Oh," he cried, "you are a faithful servant! We are ridden to death by
+our faithful servants, we St. Quentins. Myself, I prefer fleas!" He
+added, growing angrier, "Will you leave me?"
+
+"No, monsieur," said I.
+
+He glowered at me and I think he had some notion of chasing me away with
+his sword. But since his dignity could not so stoop, he growled:
+
+"Come, then, if you choose to come unasked and most unwelcome!"
+
+With this he walked on a yard ahead of me, never turning his head nor
+saying a word, I following meekly, wondering whither, and devoutly
+hoping it might be to supper. Presently I observed that we were in a
+better quarter of the town, and before long we came to a broad,
+well-lighted inn, whence proceeded a merry chatter and rattle of dice.
+M. Étienne with accustomed feet turned into the court at the side, and
+seizing upon a drawer who was crossing from door to door despatched him
+for the landlord. Mine host came, fat and smiling, unworried by the hard
+times, greeted Yeux-gris with acclaim as "this dear M. le Comte,"
+wondered at his long absence and bloody shirt, and granted with all
+alacrity his three demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood
+back, ill at ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering
+whether I were to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le
+Comte, without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my
+serving-man," I knew my stomach was safe.
+
+That was the most I thought of then, I do confess, for, except for my
+sausage, I had not tasted food since morning. The barber came and
+bandaged M. le Comte and put him straight to bed, and I was left free to
+fall on the ample victuals set before me, and was so comfortable and
+happy that the Rue Coupejarrets seemed like an evil dream. Since that
+day I have been an easy mark for beggars if they could but manage to
+look starved.
+
+Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le Comte's
+room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for I saw by this
+token that I was forgiven. Indeed, no sooner had I got fairly inside
+the door than my master raised himself on his sound elbow and called
+out:
+
+"Ah, Félix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful churl?"
+
+"I bear malice?" I cried, flushing. "Monsieur is mocking me. I know
+monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life. Yet my wish is to
+be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget it."
+
+"Nay," he said; "I have forgotten it. And it was freely forgiven from
+the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin's side."
+
+"For the second time," I said, "monsieur saved my life." And I dropped
+on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand. But he snatched it away
+from me and flung his arm around my neck and kissed my cheek.
+
+"Félix," he cried, "but for you my hands would be red with my father's
+blood. You rescued him from death and me from worse. If I have any
+shreds of honour left 'tis you have saved them to me."
+
+"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I die."
+
+"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's fool!"
+
+"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what he
+said--"
+
+"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for some time
+what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin Valère duke! He
+was a man. But I--nom de dieu, I was not worth the killing."
+
+"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."
+
+"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot against
+dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind Lucas--I dare
+swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no secret now where Monsieur
+stands. Yet the king's party grows so strong and the mob so cheers
+Monsieur, the League dare not strike openly. So they put a spy in the
+house to choose time and way. And the spy would not stab, for he saw he
+could make me do his work for him. He saw I needed but a push to come to
+open breach with my father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull
+his chestnuts from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I
+could never strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their
+thrall forever!"
+
+"Never that, monsieur; never that!"
+
+"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of a stray
+boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose through. I
+was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais to be morose
+and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always stood his friend. I
+thought him shamefully used; I let myself be turned out of my father's
+house to champion him. I had no more notion he was plotting my ruin than
+a child playing with his dolls. I was their doll, mordieu! their toy,
+their crazy fool on a chain. But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to
+pledge my sword to Henry of Navarre."
+
+"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith--"
+
+"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he were
+better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and
+generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he will not
+starve us. He looks the other way, and the provision-trains come in. But
+the Leaguers, with all their regiments, dare not openly strike down one
+man,--one man who has come all alone into their country,--they put a spy
+into his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin
+to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they are
+most Catholic and noble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these pious
+plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and make me
+outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime with the
+League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"
+
+I caught his fire.
+
+"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers yet!"
+
+He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.
+
+"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, Félix, you and I alone will
+overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are made of. They
+think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with my father. I lazed
+about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my pleasure, too shallow a fop
+even to take sides in the fight for a kingdom. What should they see in
+me but an empty-headed roisterer, frittering away his life in follies?
+But they will find I am something more. Well, enter there!"
+
+He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as Maître
+Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood shuffling on the
+threshold.
+
+"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I think he
+could not but have heard M. Étienne's tirading half-way down the
+passage.
+
+"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"
+
+"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it be sent
+in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had been wounded and
+was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him for a letter that
+would keep till morning. But he would have it 'twas of instant import,
+and so--"
+
+"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the maître in, my
+mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason save my ardent wish, that
+Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.
+
+"I dared not deny him further," added Maître Menard. "He wore the
+liveries of M. de Mayenne."
+
+"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. Étienne had said. "Pardieu,
+it may be Lucas himself!" And snatching up my master's sword I dashed
+out of the door and was in the cabaret in three steps.
+
+The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by the
+uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise resembled
+Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my sudden entrance
+had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his outraged dignity to
+cross swords with me. On any other day I had deemed it impossible to say
+him nay, but now with a real vengeance, a quarrel à outrance on my
+hands, he seemed of no consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I
+demanded M. de Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the
+dark court and the darker street.
+
+A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pass out, and he
+opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I ran a hundred
+yards up street and a hundred yards down street, shouting on the name of
+Lucas, calling him coward and skulker, bidding him come forth and fight
+me. The whole neighbourhood became aware than I wanted one Lucas to
+fight: lights twinkled in windows; men, women, and children poured out
+of doors. But Lucas, if it were he, had for the second time vanished
+soft-footed into the night.
+
+I returned with drooping tail to M. Étienne. He was alone, sitting up in
+bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes blazing.
+
+"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone. Oh, if I
+caught Lucas--"
+
+"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you waited
+long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This is no errand
+of Lucas but a very different matter."
+
+He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement in his
+eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and started to rise.
+
+"Get my clothes, Félix. I must go to the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and dragging the
+cover over him by main force.
+
+"You can go nowhere, M. Étienne; it is madness. The surgeon said you
+must lie here for three days. You will get a fever in your wounds; you
+shall not go."
+
+"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped. Cautiously I
+relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed: "Félix, I must go.
+So long as there is a spark of life left in me, I have no choice but to
+go."
+
+"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers--with M. de
+Mayenne."
+
+"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this--but this is Lorance."
+
+Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand and
+tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.
+
+I read:
+
+     _M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence,
+     or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hôtel
+     de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed? Or is he so sure of
+     his standing that he fears no supplanting? In either case he is
+     wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed forever. He may, if
+     he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be forgotten. If he
+     would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at the eleventh hour,
+     to lay his apologies at the feet of_
+
+     LORANCE DE MONTLUC.
+
+"And she--"
+
+"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's desire."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see why I have
+stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow my father into
+exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused the breach with
+Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de Grammont. That was the
+spark kindled the powder, but the train was laid."
+
+"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"
+
+"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,--or my shame, as you
+choose,--I was not. I was neither one nor the other, neither fish nor
+flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was not. I was not
+disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore me. Monsieur reviled
+me for a skulker, a fainéant; nom de diable, he might have remembered
+his own three years of idleness!"
+
+"Monsieur held out for his religion--"
+
+"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not merrily.
+
+"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked and evaded
+and temporized--for nothing. I would not join the League and break my
+father's heart; would not stand out against it and lose Lorance. I have
+been trying these three years to please both the goat and the
+cabbage--with the usual ending. I have pleased nobody. I am out of
+Mayenne's books: he made me overtures and I refused him. I am out of my
+father's books: he thinks me a traitor and parricide. And I am out of
+mademoiselle's: she despises me for a laggard. Had I gone in with
+Mayenne I had won her. Had I gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command
+in King Henry's army. But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two
+stools, I fall miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a
+do-nothing, the butt and laughing-stock of all brave men.
+
+"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his breath. "For
+once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given me a last chance.
+She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on her threshold, I at
+least die looking at her."
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die looking at
+her, for you will die out here in the street, and that will profit
+neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."
+
+"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I sent her
+a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She thinks me careless
+of her. I must go."
+
+"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself Mayenne is
+likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk into the enemies'
+very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."
+
+"Félix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with quick-blazing ire. "I
+do not permit such words to be spoken in connection with Mlle. de
+Montluc."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of pistolet. The
+St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in those they loved. I
+remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of resentment had forbidden
+me to speak ill of his son. And I remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith
+had been justified and that my accusations were lies. Natheless, I
+liked not the look of this affair, and I attempted further warnings.
+
+"Monsieur, in my opinion--"
+
+"You are not here to hold opinions, Félix, but your tongue."
+
+I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it liked
+him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes lay, only to
+drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and dashed half the water
+in it into his face.
+
+"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it was but
+a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was forced to seize
+my shoulder to keep from falling.
+
+"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I am all
+well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about like a ship at
+sea."
+
+I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue about
+it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the white bed-linen
+I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could drench him again he
+raised his lids.
+
+"Félix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that I shall reach
+Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you cannot walk
+across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M. Étienne."
+
+"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you say to
+her--pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her myself."
+
+"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt--how you would come, but
+cannot."
+
+"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her think it a
+flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you," he added, with
+half a laugh. "There is something very trust-compelling about you,
+Félix. And assure her of my lifelong, never-failing service."
+
+"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of
+Navarre."
+
+"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, Félix, was ever a poor wight so harried
+and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would destroy he first makes
+mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I have done with it."
+
+"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I go now,
+monsieur."
+
+"And good luck to you! Félix, I offer you no reward for this midnight
+journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense you will see her."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_Mademoiselle._
+
+
+I went to find Maître Menard, to urge upon him that some one should stay
+with M. Étienne while I was gone, lest he swooned or became
+light-headed. But the surgeon himself was present, having returned from
+bandaging up some common skull to see how his noble patient rested. He
+promised that he would stay the night with M. le Comte; so, eased of
+that care, I set out for the Hôtel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants
+with a flambeau coming along to guide and guard me. M. Étienne was a
+favourite in this inn of Maître Menard's; they did not stop to ask
+whether he had money in his purse before falling over one another in
+their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one gets more out of
+the world by dint of fair words than by a long purse or a long sword.
+
+We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the right-about,
+to the impatience of my escort.
+
+"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a moment, but
+see Maître Menard I must."
+
+He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.
+
+"Now what brings you back?"
+
+"This, maître," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been
+in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy
+gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at
+large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him
+here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maître, I beg you to admit no one
+to M. le Comte--no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from
+the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the maître declared.
+
+"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St. Quentin's
+equery. You will know him for the biggest man in France."
+
+"Good. And this other; what is he like?"
+
+"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall and
+slim,--oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown hair and thin,
+aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."
+
+"His tongue shall not get around me," Maître Menard promised. "The host
+of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you."
+
+With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition
+with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business. It was
+all very well for M. Étienne to declare grandly that as recompense for
+my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc. But I was not her lover and I
+thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her. I knew
+not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had
+dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had
+not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was
+scared.
+
+And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I
+was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's
+cousin. What mocking devil had driven Étienne de Mar, out of a whole
+France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this
+Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his father's friends no daughters,
+that he must seek a mistress from the black duke's household? Were there
+no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself
+with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?
+
+I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it not. If
+Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I marvelled that my
+master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his
+servant there. Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to
+do his bidding. Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought
+myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do
+confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house
+in Paris, the very core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not
+been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully
+enough.
+
+Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the streets,
+the clear summer night, and all of them were talking politics. As Jean
+and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the wine-shop lanterns, we
+caught always the names of Mayenne and Navarre. Everywhere they asked
+the same two questions: Was it true that Henry was coming into the
+Church? And if so, what would Mayenne do next? I perceived that old
+Maître Jacques of the Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the
+people of Paris were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery,
+galled to desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.
+
+Mayenne's fine new hôtel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a
+fête. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling
+dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a
+happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex
+him in the present situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.
+
+The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by men-at-arms;
+but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers lounged on the stone
+benches in the archway. Some of them were talking to a little knot of
+street idlers who had gathered about the entrance, while others, with
+the aid of a torch and a greasy pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.
+
+I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc, declaring
+that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.
+
+"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard replied at
+once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay, no need to ask,"
+he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would make."
+
+"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for
+mademoiselle."
+
+"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in.
+If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the
+consolation of a message."
+
+A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:
+
+"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the Comte
+de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and M. Paul
+for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the earth. It seemed
+as if she must take the little cheese or nothing. But now things are
+looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly in, and here is a
+messenger at least from the other."
+
+"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took up the
+tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's graces."
+
+"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in his
+ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le Balafré's
+own."
+
+"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came the
+retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him into the
+house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole history, false
+and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down before the lofty of
+the earth, we underlings, but behind their backs there is none with
+whose names we make so free. And there we have the advantage of our
+masters; for they know little of our private matters while we know
+everything of theirs.
+
+In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted me
+through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence issued a
+merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while I remained to
+undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose repose we had
+invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again, lifting the curtain
+for me to enter.
+
+The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces along the
+walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There was a crowd of
+people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my dazzled eyes; grouped,
+most of them, about the tables set up and down, either taking hands
+themselves at cards or dice or betting on those who did. Bluff soldiers
+in breastplate and jack-boots were not wanting in the throng, but the
+larger number of the gallants were brave in silken doublets and spotless
+ruffs, as became a noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what
+am I to say of them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun,
+agleam with jewels--eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had
+thought so fine, were but serving-maids to these.
+
+I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the chatter,
+unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the congregation
+of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me if I could, for
+here close about were a dozen fair women, any one of whom might be
+Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat. I knew not whom to
+address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in a suit of pink, took the
+burden on himself.
+
+"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."
+
+He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In truth, I
+must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned out of a bag in
+the midst of that gorgeous company.
+
+"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"I have wondered what has become of Étienne de Mar this last month,"
+spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his place behind a fair
+one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so fine as the other, but in
+his short, stocky figure and square face there was a force which his
+comrade lacked. He regarded me with a far keener glance as he asked:
+
+"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do for a
+lackey."
+
+"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de
+Montluc," suggested the pink youth.
+
+"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying down her
+hand at cards, rose and came toward me.
+
+She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried herself with
+stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as purely white and pink
+as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl, while her eyes, under their
+sooty lashes, shone blue as corn-flowers.
+
+I began to understand M. Étienne.
+
+"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood
+regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain
+myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her
+with his soft drawl:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
+extraordinary--most extraordinary--from the court of his Highness the
+Comte de Mar."
+
+"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my
+uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.
+
+"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"
+
+"It appears not, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:
+
+"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
+triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not
+produce M. de Mar."
+
+"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de
+Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not
+come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He
+tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."
+
+"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
+"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
+messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."
+
+"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc
+replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished
+for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant
+squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before
+her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled
+from between her fingers.
+
+By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general
+interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of
+authority demanded:
+
+"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"
+
+"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with
+instant gravity and respect.
+
+"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.
+
+"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out
+of the house again now."
+
+"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did
+not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the
+leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
+herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.
+
+"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a
+stable-boy into my salon."
+
+"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
+protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de
+Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they
+were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back
+if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my
+cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is
+the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But
+I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know
+not their duties, not me."
+
+"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I
+consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must
+hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs--to the
+stables."
+
+A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.
+
+"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who
+had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on
+Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed
+her, a curious circle still surrounded us.
+
+"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
+mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
+vanished Mar."
+
+"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
+messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
+demoiselle.
+
+I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out
+in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the
+stables--anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such
+intent.
+
+"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not
+for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de
+Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."
+
+"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."
+
+"Whom was he fighting?"
+
+"And for what lady's favour?"
+
+"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"
+
+"Does she make him read his Bible?"
+
+"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"
+
+The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
+mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:
+
+"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other
+matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that
+his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too
+weak and faint to walk across the floor."
+
+"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been
+about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."
+
+I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Étienne's chosen lady and
+therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could
+not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of
+rudeness that caused my short answer:
+
+"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."
+
+"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly
+fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my
+face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."
+
+"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:
+
+"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my
+haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself
+that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."
+
+Brie had me by the collar.
+
+"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought
+as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom
+de dieu, they are no secret."
+
+He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my
+teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried
+on, his voice rising with excitement:
+
+"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been
+about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
+forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast
+and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last
+month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better
+than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone,
+free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
+pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
+entered the room.
+
+M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I
+turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.
+
+He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His
+wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while
+his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his
+full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the
+Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was
+Mayenne himself.
+
+He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his
+glance travelling straight to me and my captor.
+
+"What have we here, François?"
+
+"This is a fellow of Étienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He
+came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him
+what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."
+
+"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear François; I already know Mar's
+whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."
+
+Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I
+perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but
+you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little;
+what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety.
+If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be
+thinking how well you would grace the gallows.
+
+M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:
+
+"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late,
+François. You little boys are fools; you think because you do not know a
+thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my information from you, ma
+belle Lorance?"
+
+The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe her.
+Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was neither
+loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.
+
+"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"
+
+She met his look unflinching.
+
+"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar, monsieur."
+
+"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"
+
+"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since
+May--until to-night."
+
+"And what has happened to-night?"
+
+"To-night--Paul appeared."
+
+"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his phlegm.
+"Paul here?"
+
+"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I know
+not whither or for what."
+
+Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.
+
+"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"
+
+She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure, but to go
+through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was moistening her
+dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide with apprehension.
+But he answered amiably, half absently, as if the whole affair were a
+triviality:
+
+"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."
+
+He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over our
+childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made him a
+curtsey, laughing lightly.
+
+"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is the
+best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I confess I
+am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might remember me still
+after a month of absence. I should have known it too much to ask of
+mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will you keep our memories
+green for more than a week, messieurs."
+
+"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue, Mlle.
+Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be awake the
+night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a
+far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de
+Mar--behold him!"
+
+She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us
+all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face
+with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M.
+Étienne.
+
+"Behold M. de Mar--behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white
+fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent
+them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.
+
+[Illustration: "I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."]
+
+"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a
+laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the
+flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the
+Holy League?"
+
+But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.
+
+"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come
+himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"
+
+Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.
+
+"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive--and
+forget--his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his
+horse-boy."
+
+Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her faithlessness, her
+vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my master's plight. I knew it was
+sheer madness for me to attempt his defence before this hostile company;
+nay, there was no object in defending him; there was not one here who
+cared to hear good of him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled
+so hot that I lost all command of myself, and I burst out:
+
+"If I were a horse-boy,--which I am not,--I were twenty times too good
+to be carrying messages hither. You need not rail at his poverty,
+mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It was for you he was turned
+out of his father's house. But for you he would not now be lying in a
+garret, penniless and dishonoured. Whatever ills he suffers, it is you
+and your false house have brought them."
+
+Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without excitement.
+
+"Don't strangle him, François; I may need him later. Let him be flogged
+and locked in the oratory."
+
+He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the lackeys
+dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc saying:
+
+"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of
+diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_In the oratory._
+
+
+"Here, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a
+candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He reckoned
+wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay on well, boys;
+make him howl."
+
+Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and see the
+fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon. Pierre, the same
+who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led the way into a long
+oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was a huge chimney carved
+with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door led into a little oratory
+where tapers burned before the image of the Virgin; at the other, before
+the two narrow windows, stood a long table with writing-materials.
+Chests and cupboards nearly filled the walls. I took this to be a sort
+of council-room of my Lord Mayenne.
+
+Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested that he
+should quench the Virgin's candles.
+
+"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a light in
+there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind; she has a
+million others to see by."
+
+I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one good blow
+at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it. But as I gathered
+myself for the rush he spoke to me low and cautiously:
+
+"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."
+
+My clinched fist dropped to my side.
+
+"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think you half
+killed, and I'll manage."
+
+I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the way of
+the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much kindness, too.
+
+"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed boisterously. "Give
+it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left when I get through."
+
+"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the oratory.
+
+"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants him,"
+Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my wrists in front
+of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre laid on. And he, good
+fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull my loose jerkin away from
+my back, so that he dusted it down without greatly incommoding me. Some
+hard whacks I did get, but they were nothing to what a strong man could
+have given in grim earnest.
+
+I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as
+anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should have. I
+yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight of Jean and
+his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning varlets to the door
+before my performance was over. But at length, when I thought I had done
+enough for their pleasure and that of the nobles in the salon, I dropped
+down on the floor and lay quiet, with shut eyes.
+
+"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the master,"
+Pierre said.
+
+"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you have not
+even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back, whereat I
+groaned my hollowest.
+
+"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back touched,"
+laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I wonder what Our Lady
+thinks of some of the devotees we bring her."
+
+As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and I
+squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on the
+oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.
+
+I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my handcuff with
+my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in two. I was minded
+as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered whether he had managed
+to rid himself of their inconvenience. He went straightway, doubtless,
+to some confederate who cut them for him, and even now was planning
+fresh evil against the St. Quentins. I remembered his face as he cried
+to M. le Comte that they should meet again; and I thought that M.
+Étienne was likely to have his hands full with Lucas, without this
+unlucky tanglement with Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I
+called down a murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl
+alone? There were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on
+humanity if there were none kindlier.
+
+He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this girl's
+fair face had stood between him and his home, between him and action,
+between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly; yet, in my
+opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains. If she had
+loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl spurned and flouted
+him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not put the jade out of his
+mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the road to glory? When I got
+back to him and told him how she had mocked him, hang me but he should,
+though!
+
+Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me but with
+my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General, dark-minded Mayenne.
+What he wanted with me he had not revealed; nor was it a pleasant
+subject for speculation. He meant me, of course, to tell him all I knew
+of the St. Quentins; well, that was soon done; belike he understood more
+than I of the day's work. But after he had questioned me, what?
+
+Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never done him
+any harm? Or would he--I wondered, if they flung me out stark into some
+alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would search for me and claim my
+carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen by the blades of the League?
+
+I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not even this
+morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been in such mortal
+dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M. Étienne; but I was not
+likely to happen on succour here. Pierre, for all his kind heart, could
+not save me from the Duke of Mayenne.
+
+Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with me in the
+little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and prayed her to save
+me, and if she might not, then to stand by me during the hard moment of
+dying and receive my seeking soul. Comforted now and deeming I could
+pass, if it came to that, with a steady face, I laid me down, my head on
+the prie-dieu cushion, and presently went to sleep.
+
+I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet
+my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over
+me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not save you
+the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have availed you
+nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."
+
+With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her
+lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too confused
+for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the
+altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands,
+sobbing.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's tears! The
+man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half
+flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard. He did not hurt so
+much."
+
+She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and presently
+dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her shining wet
+eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make sure, she laid her
+hand delicately on my back.
+
+"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St. Généviève, they
+have not brought the blood. I saw a man flogged once--" she shut her
+eyes, shuddering, and her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt,
+mademoiselle," I answered her.
+
+She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks, her hand
+still trembling. I could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your life!" she
+breathed.
+
+It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly I found
+myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this noblewoman for my
+death.
+
+"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can die
+happily."
+
+She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some
+menacing thrust.
+
+"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue fire. "They
+shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a thing that she
+cannot save a serving-boy?"
+
+She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to stifle
+their throbbing.
+
+"It was my fault," she cried--"it was all my fault. It was my vanity and
+silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that
+letter--a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen
+M. de Mar for five weeks--I did not know, what I readily guess now, that
+he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique."
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M. Étienne
+did not come himself."
+
+"You are glad for that?"
+
+"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"
+
+She caught her breath as if in pain.
+
+"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When
+I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my
+gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I
+had accomplished--mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"
+
+I had to tell her I had not thought it.
+
+"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must
+needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the
+throat--there has been bad blood between him and your lord this
+twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I
+interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would
+have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had
+seen to your beating himself."
+
+It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of
+guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display
+so much venom against M. Étienne unless he were a serious obstacle to
+his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a
+serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn
+her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show
+it to me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Étienne
+rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and
+loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to
+make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her
+a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."
+
+"Is he hurt dangerously?"
+
+"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the
+right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."
+
+"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was
+penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."
+
+She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had taken
+from her bosom; but I retreated.
+
+"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we are not
+penniless--or if we are, we get on very well sans le sou. They do
+everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he has only to
+return to the Hôtel St. Quentin to get all the gold pieces he can spend.
+Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle. I was angry when I said it; I
+did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's pardon."
+
+She looked at me a little hesitatingly.
+
+"You are telling me true?"
+
+"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed, indeed, I
+would not refuse it."
+
+"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for yourself. It
+will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find something you like as a
+token from me." With her own white fingers she slipped some tinkling
+coins into my pouch, and cut short my thanks with the little wailing
+cry:
+
+"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I could free
+them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with you they never
+will let you go."
+
+"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her to go
+back to bed. M. Étienne did not send me hither to bring her grief and
+trouble."
+
+"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here before
+on monsieur's errands?"
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I belong on
+the St. Quentin estate. My name is Félix Broux."
+
+"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"
+
+"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing it."
+
+"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered soberly.
+
+She stood looking at me helplessly.
+
+"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to herself; "but
+I might weep François de Brie's rough heart to softness. Then it is a
+question whether he could turn Mayenne. I wish I knew whether the duke
+himself or only Paul de Lorraine has planned this move to-night. That
+is," she added, blushing, but speaking out candidly, "whether they
+attack M. de Mar as the League's enemy or as my lover."
+
+"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as I knew
+how, but eager to find out all I could for M. Étienne--"this M. de
+Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover, too?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We are all
+pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses. For a
+time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my cousin Paul came back
+after a two years' disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de
+Mar was down. And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come,
+and it became the turn of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as
+suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky
+letter. And what it bodes for _him_ I know not."
+
+She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact
+of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as lonely in
+this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would have talked
+delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has been
+happening to my M. Étienne this last month, if you are not afraid to
+stay long enough to hear it."
+
+"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes, you may
+tell me if you wish."
+
+She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I
+began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if
+the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all
+what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the
+affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned
+forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions.
+And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:
+
+"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas,
+without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked reluctantly:
+
+"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne's?"
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for
+their own pleasure."
+
+"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she said with
+an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin. I saw
+well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne's guilt. I
+thought I might tell her a little more.
+
+"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M. de
+Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them. So then
+M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin,
+invented this."
+
+"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave Paris. He
+will--he must!"
+
+"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered; "but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But then the letter came."
+
+"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time is over
+for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am a Ligueuse
+born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is his father's
+side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another day."
+
+"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."
+
+"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for him. If
+he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him a letter
+myself to tell him he must."
+
+"Then he will never go."
+
+"Félix!"
+
+"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted him; when
+he finds she does not--well, if he budges a step out of Paris, I do not
+know him. When he thought himself despised--"
+
+"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did not
+mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I made a mock
+of him, that he might hate me and keep away from me."
+
+"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with her."
+
+"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring out with
+impudent speech."
+
+"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played
+too well."
+
+"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do--well, I will not
+say despise him--but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis?
+Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my
+esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I
+would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore
+me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark.
+Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry
+for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
+mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry
+Brie and Lorraine?"
+
+"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden
+rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said
+woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."
+
+I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.
+
+"Ah, Félix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out
+of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.
+
+I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At
+length she sobbed out:
+
+"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar,
+when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all
+my fault."
+
+"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."
+
+But she shook her head.
+
+"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in
+his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap.
+But I will do my utmost, Félix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I
+will go to François de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."
+
+She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
+quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,--with my
+fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,--and on the threshold
+turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a
+gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door
+shut again.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_My Lord Mayenne._
+
+
+I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next
+second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.
+"What--" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line
+of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on
+account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and
+she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something
+else--a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the
+council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.
+
+Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.
+
+I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a
+sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.
+
+Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just
+roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the
+three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his
+back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared glance at him,
+for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our door seemed to call
+aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light scarcely pierced the
+shadows of the long room.
+
+More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair about,
+sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A tall man in
+black entered, saluting the general from the threshold.
+
+"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It was
+impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a sentence.
+
+"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as Mayenne's own.
+He shut the door after him and walked over to the table.
+
+"And how goes it?"
+
+"Badly."
+
+The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting for an
+invitation.
+
+"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to me with
+that report?"
+
+"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence, leaning back
+in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and proved to me what
+I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night visitor was Lucas.
+"Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone badly. In fact, your game
+is up."
+
+Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the table.
+
+"You tell me this?"
+
+Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.
+
+"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."
+
+[Illustration: MLLE. De MONTLUC AND FÉLIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY]
+
+Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a cat
+sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.
+
+"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.
+
+"When you put up yours, monsieur."
+
+"I have drawn none!"
+
+"In your sleeve, monsieur."
+
+"Liar!" cried Mayenne.
+
+I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade that
+flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from his belt.
+But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and rushed at Lucas. He
+dodged and they circled round each other, wary as two matched cocks.
+Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne, the less agile by reason
+of his weight, could make no chance to strike. He drew off presently.
+
+"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.
+
+"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending
+myself?"
+
+Mayenne let the charge go by default.
+
+"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu, do I
+employ you to fail?"
+
+"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."
+
+Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on
+the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good humour--no mean
+tribute to his power of self-control. For the written words can convey
+no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas's bearing--an insolence so
+studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh
+impossible to silence.
+
+"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."
+
+Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:
+
+"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was
+unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."
+
+"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you
+dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"
+
+He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into
+Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his
+guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas.
+He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the
+first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen rôle was the unmoved, the
+inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into
+the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man
+lived--unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.
+
+"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me
+that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."
+
+"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne
+went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was
+wrong--unless the thing were done."
+
+"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."
+
+"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling--"
+
+"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat
+he had shown. "It was fate--and that fool Grammont."
+
+"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."
+
+Lucas sat down, the table between them.
+
+"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you
+Mar's boy?"
+
+"What boy?"
+
+"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to
+come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message
+to Lorance."
+
+"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of mademoiselle's
+love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It is plain to the very
+lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at present we are discussing
+l'affaire St. Quentin."
+
+"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be the
+reward of my success."
+
+"I thought you told me you had failed."
+
+Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of
+it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.
+
+"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is
+immortal."
+
+"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I
+shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher."
+
+"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I have
+missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."
+
+"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne, reflectively.
+"François de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress. And he
+has not made any failures--as yet."
+
+Lucas sprang to his feet.
+
+"You swore to me I should have her."
+
+"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price."
+
+"I will bring you the price."
+
+"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the
+mouse--"e'en then I might change my mind."
+
+"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead duke in
+France."
+
+Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of
+mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to draw dagger,
+Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I somehow thought that
+the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there
+quiet was the party leader.
+
+He said now, evenly:
+
+"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."
+
+"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.
+
+So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of
+unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself
+began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it
+had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:
+
+"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love
+of my affectionate uncle?"
+
+"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you
+say."
+
+"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
+Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast
+off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the
+Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at
+Ivry."
+
+"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You
+had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized
+you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you
+and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my
+army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."
+
+"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.
+
+"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the
+name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward,
+Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off
+with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering
+house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de
+Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the
+people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the
+scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you
+promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the
+royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's
+camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you
+listened to proposals from Mar again."
+
+"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your
+brother Charles, either."
+
+"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in
+your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you
+would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise
+you mean."
+
+"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.
+
+"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your
+brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the
+Béarnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."
+
+"Nom de dieu, Paul--" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning
+forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on:
+
+"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am
+ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in
+your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk
+the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to
+tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's
+certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with
+mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to
+kill you St. Quentin."
+
+"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not
+killed him."
+
+Lucas reddened with ire.
+
+"I am no Jacques Clément to stab and be massacred. You cannot buy such a
+service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's work for you I choose my
+own time and way. I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you
+to deal with as it liked you. But you with your army at your back were
+afraid to kill him. You flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the
+onus of his death. Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to
+make his own son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke
+and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
+way--"
+
+"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my way; he was
+of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your way."
+
+"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he was a
+hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his ruin."
+
+"Something--not as much. I did not want him killed--I preferred him to
+Valère."
+
+"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."
+
+"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some other
+who might appear?"
+
+"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas answered.
+
+Mayenne broke into laughter.
+
+"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille? Lorance and
+no lovers! Ho, ho!"
+
+"I mean none whom she favours."
+
+"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow," Mayenne said.
+I had no idea whether he really thought it or only said it to annoy
+Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's brows were knotted; he
+spoke with an effort, like a man under stress of physical pain.
+
+"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she would
+not love him a parricide."
+
+"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker the
+villain the more they adore him."
+
+"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you have had
+successes."
+
+Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a laugh.
+
+"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of Lorance; you
+must also have her love?"
+
+"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."
+
+"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how long
+would it last? _Souvent femme varie_--that is the only fixed fact about
+her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will love some one else to-morrow,
+and some one else still the day after to-morrow. It is not worth while
+disturbing yourself about it."
+
+"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"You are very young, Paul."
+
+"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she shall
+not!"
+
+Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him out of
+his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a hundredfold. Lucas's
+face was seared with his passions as with the torture-iron; he clinched
+his hands together, breathing hard. On my side of the door I heard a
+sharp little sound in the darkness; mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.
+
+"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said, "since
+mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become so."
+
+"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would leap over
+the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the duke to take up
+his dagger.
+
+"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have not
+killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the scheme--my
+scheme--is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my scheme. I never advocated
+stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses and angered nephews and deceived
+sons and the rest of your cumbrous machinery. I would have had you stab
+him as he bent over his papers, and walk out of the house before they
+discovered him. But you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot
+and replot to make some one else do your work. Now, after months of
+intriguing and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed.
+Morbleu! is there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the
+gutter, as no true son of the valourous Le Balafré?"
+
+Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to come
+around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did not move;
+and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an effort, he
+said:
+
+"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured harder or
+planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been clever. I have
+made my worst enemy my willing tool--I have made Monsieur's own son my
+cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no contingency unprovided for--and
+I am ruined by a freak of fate."
+
+"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's," Mayenne
+returned.
+
+"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you like!"
+Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen, monsieur."
+
+He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to
+reconquer something of his old coolness.
+
+"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I spoke
+of. You said he had not been here?"
+
+"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I have
+something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's maids."
+
+"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to keep him.
+Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw him."
+
+He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought had
+travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of mademoiselle's
+affections.
+
+"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"
+
+It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low and
+hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it was no fear
+of listeners that kept his voice down--they had shouted at each other
+as if there was no one within a mile. I guessed that Lucas, for all his
+bravado, took little pride in his tale, nor felt happy about its
+reception. I could catch names now and then, Monsieur's, M. Étienne's,
+Grammont's, but the hero of the tale was myself.
+
+"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.
+
+At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old
+defiance:
+
+"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the
+acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your lansquenets
+couldn't keep him out."
+
+"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with shut
+fingers over the table and then opening them.
+
+"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own hôtel stuffed
+with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to do, alone in my enemy's
+house, when at the least suspicion of me they had broken me on the
+wheel."
+
+"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble with
+all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins than of
+accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be to-day--where would
+the Cause be--if my first care was my own peril?"
+
+"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a cold sneer.
+"You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the Church and the
+King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare of Charles of
+Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine, your humble nephew,
+lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I am toiling for no one
+but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should find it most inconvenient
+to get on without a head on my shoulders, and I shall do my best to keep
+it there."
+
+"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne answered.
+"You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time, Paul, you will
+do well to remember that your interest is to forward my interest."
+
+"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet. You need
+not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than any man in your
+ranks."
+
+"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."
+
+Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word of blame.
+He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M. le Duc's
+departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with a sharp oath.
+
+"What! by daylight?"
+
+"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at night."
+
+"He went out in broad day?"
+
+"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of his old
+nonchalance.
+
+"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true, if he
+got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that let him.
+I'll nail it over his own gate."
+
+"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If you did,
+how long would it avail? _Souvent homme trahie_; that is the only fixed
+fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day, they will pass some one
+else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after."
+
+Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some deeper
+emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.
+
+     "Souvent homme trahie,
+     Mal habile qui s'y fie,"
+
+he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto of the
+house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good faith, as no
+man believed in theirs.
+
+"_Souvent homme trahie_," Mayenne said again, as if in the words he
+recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King Francis's
+version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."
+
+"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.
+
+I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne, because, for
+all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's and ability second
+to none, he dared trust no man--not the son of his body, not his
+brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in it, and there was no need
+to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured traitor, was farther from the
+goal of his desire than if we had slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne went on
+in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him once more as
+the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France, and feared and
+hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear lord Étienne.
+
+"Trust me for that."
+
+"Then came you here?"
+
+"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings at the
+Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came here and
+worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his presence. For I
+thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow he might be out of my
+reach. Well, it appears he had not the courage to come but he sent the
+boy. I was not sorry. I thought I could settle him more quietly at the
+inn. The boy went back once and almost ran into me in the court, but he
+did not see me. I entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool
+of a host put me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally
+declared the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no
+use. Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in
+front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But
+instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the cabaret."
+
+Mayenne burst out laughing.
+
+"It was not your night, Paul."
+
+"No," said Lucas, shortly.
+
+"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put out of
+the inn."
+
+"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with whom
+Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all went our ways,
+forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was afraid some one else
+might find him and he might tell tales."
+
+"And will he tell tales?"
+
+"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."
+
+"How about your spy in the Hôtel St. Quentin?"
+
+"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas said
+easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And Grammont, you
+see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the thing but the boy
+Broux."
+
+"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for I have
+the boy."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_Mayenne's ward._
+
+
+Lucas sprang up.
+
+"You have him? Where?"
+
+"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing slowness.
+
+"Alive?"
+
+"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not done with
+him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the oratory there."
+
+"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of Mayenne's good
+faith to him struck his mind.
+
+"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might be in
+the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for that."
+
+"What will you do with him, monsieur?"
+
+"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second bidding,
+hastened down the room.
+
+All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had neither
+stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin herself. But now
+she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my shoulder with an
+encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide just as Lucas reached
+the threshold.
+
+He recoiled as from a ghost.
+
+"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"
+
+"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room. "What!
+Lorance!"
+
+He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.
+
+Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back on the
+other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she lifted her
+head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no fear, but she had
+the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on the oratory floor she
+had been in a panic lest they find her. But in the moment of discovery
+she faced them unflinching.
+
+"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.
+
+"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was here first,
+as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as mine by you."
+
+His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her pale
+cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her indignant eyes.
+
+"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.
+
+"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said. "You
+defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in
+your cowardly schemes."
+
+"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I shall kill
+M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would pleasure you to have
+a word with him first."
+
+I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret the
+speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness and
+recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and vinegar in a
+sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an end, with skill
+and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern his own gusty
+tempers.
+
+"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer tone.
+
+"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved most
+bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into danger. Since
+Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand, and since this is
+not the man you wanted but only his servant, will you not let him go
+free?"
+
+"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne protested,
+smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I thought you
+would thank me for it."
+
+"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."
+
+"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."
+
+She flushed red for very shame.
+
+"I was afraid--I knew you vexed with me," she faltered. "Oh, I have done
+ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring forgiveness. There was no
+need to ask.
+
+"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak before!
+Thank you, my cousin!"
+
+"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of
+impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."
+
+My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a craven that
+I had been overcome by groundless terror.
+
+"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle laughed
+out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall never meddle
+in your affairs again."
+
+"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to let the
+boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear what he
+should not, I have no choice but to silence him."
+
+"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.
+
+"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have made it
+impossible."
+
+Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had my hands
+been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in his heart.
+
+"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept over me,
+and that is worth dying for."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first instant of
+consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in the land! You,
+the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the League, the
+commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in stooping to take
+vengeance on a stable-boy."
+
+"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he
+answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all, since
+absolute power is not obliged to give an account of itself.
+
+"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn it? In
+that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while there is yet
+time."
+
+He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no justification. He
+advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the damsels of my
+household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room. Permit me then to
+conduct you to the staircase."
+
+She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering me as
+with a shield.
+
+"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."
+
+"Your hand, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in appeal.
+
+"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always tried
+to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy because he was
+a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St. Quentin, at least, had
+gone over to the other side. I did not know what you would do with him,
+and I could not rest in my bed because it was through me he came here.
+Monsieur, if I was foolish and frightened and indiscreet, do not punish
+the lad for my wrong-doing."
+
+Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.
+
+"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the
+door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"
+
+"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile, "if
+you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"
+
+"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my white
+cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my little
+cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have made her cry
+her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying, gave her to me to
+guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable. I am sorry. I wish I
+had not done it.'"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your bed?"
+
+She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went on as if
+thinking aloud.
+
+"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and your
+brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You would ask my
+father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I would run in to
+kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I thought you the
+handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as indeed you were."
+
+"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said
+abruptly.
+
+"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of you," she
+returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for my cousin
+Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them one night in
+all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of Henri de Guise; God
+guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you make it hard for me to
+ask it for my cousin Charles."
+
+"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said curtly.
+
+"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."
+
+"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With the
+door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and let him go.
+But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's business,
+mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him listen to my
+concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."
+
+"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble for the
+tales of boys--you, the lord of half France. But if you must needs fear
+his tongue, why, even then you should set him free. He is but a
+serving-boy sent here with a message. It is wanton murder to take his
+life; it is like killing a child."
+
+"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose, mademoiselle,"
+the duke retorted. "Since you have been eavesdropping, you have heard
+how he upset your cousin Paul's arrangements."
+
+"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved you the
+stain of a cowardly crime."
+
+"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my brother?"
+
+"The Valois."
+
+"And his henchman, St. Quentin."
+
+"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He was
+revolted at the deed."
+
+"Did they teach you that at the convent?"
+
+"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go
+to Blois."
+
+"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."
+
+"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin
+Charles."
+
+"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and
+murderer," Mayenne returned.
+
+"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from
+the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad."
+
+He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she went on:
+
+"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil
+that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you
+are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of
+Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field,
+and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of
+a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and
+loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against
+the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and
+their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray
+till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you
+head of the League."
+
+"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that
+is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to
+lead it to success."
+
+"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet
+lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with
+him!"
+
+He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her
+shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:
+
+"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"
+
+With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her
+knees before him, kissing his hand.
+
+Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood
+looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my
+heart to see.
+
+Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His
+mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St.
+Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of
+his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly
+murder. And in the Hôtel de Lorraine, as in the Hôtel de St. Quentin,
+his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both
+cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I
+had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but
+when she rose he said to her:
+
+"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I
+got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."
+
+She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an
+eager pace nearer her.
+
+"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your
+graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will not take
+me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that
+any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding
+here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day
+after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore
+to bring his proud head to the dust?"
+
+Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.
+
+"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not
+approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to
+defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your
+face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's
+housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in
+your veins and mine!"
+
+"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper
+with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and
+not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own
+revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our
+holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic
+kingdom of France."
+
+"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for
+nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever
+on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He
+hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best
+of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they
+fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them,
+they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple
+over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war
+is not a dancing-school."
+
+"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We
+have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen.
+And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in
+my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause
+with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it,
+as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did
+it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit
+for that."
+
+He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning
+her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last
+sentence I knew he spoke the truth.
+
+She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered pride in
+his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead, she eyed him
+with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape from his rampant
+desire.
+
+"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me," she said.
+
+"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I love you
+so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain you; there is
+no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame so bitter, no danger
+so awful, that I would not face it for you. Nor is there any sacrifice I
+will not make to gain your good will. I hate M. de Mar above any living
+man because you have smiled on him; but I will let him go for your sake.
+I swear to you before the figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will
+drop all enmity to Étienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither
+move against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or
+manner, so help me God!"
+
+He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She retreated from
+him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.
+
+"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the truth," she
+said.
+
+"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May my tongue
+rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"
+
+"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again curtsied
+to him.
+
+"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added. "I have
+no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more trouble for me
+than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to settle with St. Quentin.
+But I have no quarrel with the son. I will not molest him."
+
+"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her graceful
+obeisances.
+
+"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him, but not
+that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St. Quentins are
+Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I will let Mar alone;
+but if he come near you again, I will crush him as I would a buzzing
+fly."
+
+"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone. "While I live
+under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I am a Ligueuse and
+he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing between us. There shall be
+nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as Paul needs, because I have
+never lied to you."
+
+She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince under her
+stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de Montluc loved her
+enemies.
+
+"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.
+
+"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this for
+you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."
+
+"You have called me a good girl, cousin."
+
+"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so Friday-faced about
+it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give you another just as
+good."
+
+"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my looks
+belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to have
+ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."
+
+"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter whether your
+husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri was for getting
+himself into a monastery because he could not have his Margot. Yet in
+less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler with the Duchesse
+Katharine."
+
+"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she answered
+gently, if not merrily.
+
+"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But it is
+for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the credit."
+
+"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.
+
+"What use? He would not keep silence."
+
+"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of bright
+confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But Mayenne laughed.
+
+"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will not so
+flatter yourself, Lorance."
+
+Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what I had
+seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.
+
+Mayenne took out his dagger.
+
+"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you shall be."
+
+Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.
+
+"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."
+
+He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him against
+the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of the
+suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife and she cut
+my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a glance earnest,
+beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all she meant by it. The
+next moment she was making her deep curtsey before the duke.
+
+"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I thank you
+for your long patience, and bid you good night."
+
+With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go. But
+Mayenne bade her pause.
+
+"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks, Lorance?"
+
+He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her cheeks.
+
+"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said, and taking
+her hand with stately politeness led her from the room. The light seemed
+to go from it with the gleam of her yellow gown.
+
+"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He stood
+glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once
+no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery
+rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out
+at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed the
+door:
+
+"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh that
+wins; I shall have her yet."
+
+"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence I could
+muster.
+
+"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will never see
+daylight again."
+
+"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw dagger. I
+deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best of soldiers
+must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory, flinging the door
+to after me. He was upon it before I could get it shut, and the heavy
+oak was swung this way and that between us, till it seemed as if we must
+tear it off the hinges. I contrived not to let him push it open wide
+enough to enter; meantime, as I was unarmed, I thought it no shame to
+shriek for succour. I heard an answering cry and hurrying footsteps.
+Then Lucas took his weight from the door so suddenly that mine banged it
+shut. The next minute it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and
+panting, on the threshold.
+
+A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side Lucas
+lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light. His right
+hand he held behind his back, while with his left he poked his dagger
+into the candle-flame.
+
+Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.
+
+"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now, Paul?"
+
+"Mademoiselle's protégé is nervous," Lucas answered with a fine sneer.
+"When I drew out my knife to get the thief from the candle he screamed
+to wake the dead and took sanctuary in the oratory."
+
+I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from the
+darkness Mayenne commanded:
+
+"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."
+
+The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a moment I
+hesitated, burning to defend my valour before mademoiselle. Then,
+reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had previously done me, and
+that the path to freedom was now open before me, I said nothing. Nor had
+I need. For as I turned she flashed over to Lucas and said straight in
+his face:
+
+"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead wife."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_"I'll win my lady!"_
+
+
+Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For
+when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw
+was the morning sun.
+
+My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter
+day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it
+was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy
+house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as
+joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten
+in some dark corner of the Hôtel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts
+when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am
+afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man
+or any thing.
+
+Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have
+been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They
+liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning.
+Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk
+servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city,
+quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in
+the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my
+stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the
+courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut,
+but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and
+cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but,
+dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway
+into dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his
+zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for
+dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the
+pitchfork of a hostler.
+
+"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."
+
+"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M.
+le Comte."
+
+"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be
+disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."
+
+It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the
+trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting
+at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.
+
+"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was.
+Félix, what has happened to you?"
+
+[Illustration: "SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
+FED."]
+
+I glanced at the serving-man; M. Étienne ordered him at once from the
+room.
+
+"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very
+richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is--" I paused in a
+dearth of words worthy of her.
+
+"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke!
+You saw her? And she said--"
+
+He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.
+
+"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him.
+"And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."
+
+"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Félix, does she? You cannot know."
+
+"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't
+have wept so much, just over me."
+
+"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.
+
+"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down
+in the night with a candle and cried over me."
+
+"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne?
+What said she, Félix?"
+
+"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance
+of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something
+you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's
+son."
+
+"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"
+
+"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafré. His mother was Rochelaise, I
+think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to
+hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since
+then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de
+Montluc in marriage."
+
+He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.
+
+"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her
+when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."
+
+"Great God!" said M. Étienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm
+of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry
+handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:
+
+"But she--mademoiselle?"
+
+"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle
+hates him."
+
+"Does she know--"
+
+"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer.
+"Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning,
+or I shall never make it clear to you."
+
+"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.
+
+He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I
+talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got
+deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life,
+me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to
+Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Étienne, to--well, you shall know.
+
+I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:
+
+"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well
+do they call you Félix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby,
+while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for
+all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And
+make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I'll stand
+it no longer. I'm done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun.
+No; to-day I shall take part myself."
+
+"But monsieur's arm--"
+
+"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch--it is nothing. Pardieu,
+it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning.
+To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."
+
+"Monsieur--" I began, but he broke in on me:
+
+"Nom de dieu, Félix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried
+off by that beast Lucas?"
+
+"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant
+to do."
+
+"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, but how?"
+
+"Ah, if I knew!"
+
+He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found
+it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room,
+and came back to seize me by the arm.
+
+"How are we to do it, Félix?" he demanded.
+
+But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:
+
+"Sais pas."
+
+He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the
+declaration:
+
+"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."
+
+"He will only have her own dead body," I said.
+
+He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with
+unseeing eyes. "Lorance--Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he
+did not know he spoke aloud.
+
+"If I could get word to her--" he went on presently. "But I can't send
+you again. Should I write a letter--But letters are mischievous. They
+fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?"
+
+"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands of
+Pierre, that lackey who befriended me--" But he shook his head.
+
+"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these
+inn-men--if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don't
+think I'll go myself!"
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would
+never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his
+way."
+
+"My faith, Félix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."
+
+"Not of mankind, M. Étienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or
+Vigo."
+
+"And of Mayenne?"
+
+"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the worst of
+the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did."
+
+"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"
+
+"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But
+Mayenne--sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and then again
+he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."
+
+"He does not mean you shall," M. Étienne returned. "Yet the key is not
+buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one,
+do not know it."
+
+"Ah, Félix," he cried, "you may believe that till doomsday--you will--of
+Monsieur."
+
+His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his
+thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely
+silent. But of last night's bitter distress he showed no trace. Last
+night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but
+to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but
+one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and
+shames.
+
+"Félix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to eat my pride."
+
+I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to;
+he went on:
+
+"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with
+anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."
+
+"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."
+
+"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were
+churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain
+them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur
+replies, I must go tell him I repent."
+
+I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.
+
+"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like
+sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"
+
+"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped hound."
+
+"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same
+thing."
+
+"I have heard M. l'Abbé read the story of the prodigal son," I said.
+"And he was a vaurien, if you like--no more monsieur's sort than Lucas
+himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off,
+he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck."
+
+M. Étienne looked not altogether convinced.
+
+"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is only
+decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should not go if
+it were not for mademoiselle."
+
+"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"
+
+"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry off
+mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand--well, I confess for the nonce that
+beats me."
+
+"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"Aye, and we will! Come, Félix, you may put your knife in my dish. We
+must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the wine warm, but
+never mind."
+
+I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once
+resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long
+before we were in the streets, bound for the Hôtel St. Quentin. He said
+no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about
+Mlle. de Montluc--not only as to every word she said, but as to every
+turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf
+when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell
+silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. He had his fair
+allowance of pride, this M. Étienne; he found his own words no palatable
+meal.
+
+However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he dropped, as
+one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure, and approached
+the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young gallant who had
+lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll he called to the
+sentry:
+
+"Holà, squinting Charlot! Open now!"
+
+"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw the bolts.
+"Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."
+
+M. Étienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into him, I could see,
+that his first greeting should be thus friendly.
+
+"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot
+volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night,
+after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us all
+blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time, nom d'un
+chien!"
+
+"Eh bien, I am found," M. Étienne returned. "In time we'll get Lucas,
+too. Is Monsieur back?"
+
+"No, M. Étienne, not yet."
+
+I think he was half sorry, half glad.
+
+"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.
+
+"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."
+
+"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."
+
+He went straight across the court and in at the door he had sworn never
+again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there,
+but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without
+a falter.
+
+Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice against
+himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of us, agleam with
+excitement.
+
+"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M. l'Écuyer?"
+
+"I think in the stables, monsieur."
+
+"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."
+
+He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the hall
+where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my duty to
+keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel came flying
+back to say Vigo was on his way. M. Étienne thanked him, and he hung
+about, longing to pump me, and, in my lord's presence, not quite daring,
+till I took him by the shoulders and turned him out. I hate curiosity.
+
+M. Étienne stood behind the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure
+of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern
+determination to set this insolent servant in his place.
+
+The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young lord's
+side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there had never
+been a hard word between them:
+
+"M. Étienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the king himself."
+
+M. Étienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He had been
+prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de haut en bas,
+shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the wind out of his
+sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then laughed. And then he held
+out his hand, saying simply:
+
+"Thank you, Vigo."
+
+Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand had
+itched to box his ears.
+
+"What became of you last night, M. Étienne?" he inquired.
+
+"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"
+
+"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."
+
+"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.
+
+"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on the cards
+that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I want every man
+I have if they do."
+
+"I understand that," M. Étienne said, "but--"
+
+"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo
+pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he will
+not return till the king comes in. But since you are impatient, M. le
+Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If _he_ can get through the gates
+_you_ can."
+
+"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry, Vigo.
+There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would like me
+well to bear away my share. But--"
+
+He broke off, to begin again abruptly:
+
+"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that there was
+more cause of trouble between my father and me than the pistoles?"
+
+"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur. But you
+are cured of that."
+
+"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of it. If I
+hung around the Hôtel de Lorraine, it was not for politics; it was for
+petticoats."
+
+Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth twitched.
+
+"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you may as
+well know more. Step up, Félix, and tell your tale."
+
+I did as I was bid, M. Étienne now and then taking the words out of my
+mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both with grave attention.
+I had for the second time in my career the pleasure of startling him out
+of his iron composure when I told him the true name and condition of
+Lucas. But at the end of the adventure all the comment he made was:
+
+"A fool for luck."
+
+"Well," said M. Étienne, impatiently, "is that all you have to say? What
+are we to do about it?"
+
+"Do? Why, nothing."
+
+"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And let that
+scoundrel have her?"
+
+"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help it."
+
+"I will help it!" M. Étienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to let that
+traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will surely
+get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."
+
+"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"
+
+"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we storm the
+Hôtel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the sea."
+
+"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my lord
+declared.
+
+But Vigo shook his head.
+
+"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance. You
+have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a man ask
+in the world than that? Your father has been without it these three
+years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out. You have been
+without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts of mischief. But
+now all that is coming straight. King Henry is turning Catholic, so that
+a man may follow him without offence to God. He is a good fellow and a
+first-rate general. He's just out there, at St. Denis. There's your
+place, M. Étienne."
+
+"Not to-day, Vigo."
+
+"Yes, M. Étienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo said with his
+steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by staying here to drink
+up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your lady to you now than he would
+give her to Félix. And you can no more carry her off than could Félix.
+Mayenne will have you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat
+breakfast."
+
+"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you, Vigo."
+
+"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to die
+afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell fighting for
+Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve deep. But we should
+say it was well; we grudged not your life to the country and the king.
+While, if you fall in this fool affair--"
+
+"I fall for my lady," M. Étienne finished. "The bravest captain of them
+all does no better than that."
+
+"M. Étienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her. And if you
+could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now on are a staunch
+Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this maggot in your brain
+this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go to St. Denis; take your
+troop among Biron's horse. That is the place for you. You will marry a
+maid of honour and die a marshal of France."
+
+M. Étienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a smile.
+
+"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton waiting
+you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were alone and in
+peril, would you go off after glory?"
+
+"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would go."
+
+"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. Étienne cried. "You would do nothing of
+the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years in that hole, St.
+Quentin?"
+
+"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."
+
+"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I
+shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change me."
+
+"What is your purpose, M. Étienne?" Vigo asked.
+
+Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.
+
+"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can
+contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the
+Hôtel de Lorraine--such feats have been accomplished before and may be
+again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers."
+
+"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."
+
+"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.
+
+"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army after her."
+
+"Coward!" shouted M. Étienne.
+
+I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw
+us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:
+
+"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to hold this
+house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it till the last
+man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hôtel, his
+moneys, and his papers. I don't call it guarding to throw a firebrand
+among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece here would be worse than that."
+
+"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!" M.
+Étienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend the lady if
+every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!'"
+
+A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.
+
+"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage
+as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing
+the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."
+
+"Well, then," cried M. Étienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more
+do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on
+Mayenne's ruffians."
+
+"No, M. Étienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the
+command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with
+a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to
+succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before
+now."
+
+"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know,
+Monsieur would approve."
+
+"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot
+move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur
+returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no
+way with your liberty to proceed as you please."
+
+"I should think not, forsooth!" M. Étienne blazed out furiously.
+
+"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could
+order the guard--and they would obey--to lock you up in your chamber. I
+believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you
+free to act as it likes you."
+
+My lord was white with ire.
+
+"Who is master here, you or I?"
+
+"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my
+hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M.
+Étienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will
+get no countenance from me."
+
+"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. Étienne cried.
+
+Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add
+or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being
+angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.
+
+"Very well." M. Étienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I
+get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Félix
+here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_To the Bastille._
+
+
+But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no
+countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested
+M. Étienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarrassed or
+offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no
+feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in
+the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule,
+nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he
+was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would
+forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.
+
+On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M.
+Étienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would
+have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young
+lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside
+from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.
+
+M. Étienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's attitude,
+but he said little. He accepted the advance of money--"Of course
+Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained--and
+despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.
+
+I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished
+nothing by our return to the hôtel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were
+both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our
+ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to
+Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very
+well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not
+his station, for Vigo never disobeyed _him_, but stood by him in all
+things. But I imagined that, were M. Étienne master, Vigo, for all his
+years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.
+
+I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Étienne did purpose to
+rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was
+somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he
+had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the
+matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hôtel de Lorraine
+hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to
+try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.
+
+"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Félix."
+
+But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois
+Lanternes.
+
+The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared
+to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's
+throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at
+the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once,
+for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my
+master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I
+readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business
+indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.
+
+I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and
+clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth
+while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask
+the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to
+snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was
+so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it
+seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of
+the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good
+will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged
+with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys
+might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.
+
+The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and
+carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale.
+"This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the
+lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and
+shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where
+the staircase was.
+
+Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the
+serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men
+looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door
+of Maître Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:
+
+"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know
+nothing of his whereabouts."
+
+As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look
+at me in fresh dread.
+
+"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a
+little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group
+and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a
+panther had got me.
+
+"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to
+bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour
+our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now,
+go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and
+see how you like it yourself!"
+
+She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door,
+shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.
+
+The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong
+box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.
+
+The bureau stood by the window, with Maître Menard's account-books on
+it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two
+men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe
+of Maître Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of
+Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.
+
+"I say I know not where he went," Maître Menard was gasping, black in
+the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell--I have no
+notion. Ah--" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and
+bulging, rolled toward me.
+
+"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"
+
+He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city
+guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I
+entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance,
+as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.
+
+"My name is Félix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill--"
+
+"His servant," Maître Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing
+him a breath.
+
+"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left
+your master?"
+
+"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.
+
+"Never you mind. I want him."
+
+"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of
+Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."
+
+"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he
+had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is
+friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long.
+But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."
+
+"On what charge?"
+
+"A trifle. Merely murder."
+
+"_Murder?_"
+
+"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."
+
+"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not--"
+
+I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas--Paul de Lorraine
+killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling
+wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I
+had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I
+should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte--" I began again,
+and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn
+last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me
+that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a
+very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.
+
+"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.
+
+At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness
+was the last thing I desired.
+
+"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very
+fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles. The Comte
+de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as
+lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not
+what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for
+him to the Hôtel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last,
+and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he
+employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him.
+But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about
+him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."
+
+To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain
+only laughed at my patent fright.
+
+"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest.
+I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing
+about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."
+
+I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and
+merely answered:
+
+"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would
+have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were
+teaching me something.
+
+"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell
+me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it
+than this old mule."
+
+Maître Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He
+knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled
+him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.
+
+"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where.
+But I know he will be back here to supper."
+
+"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your
+memory."
+
+At the word the soldier who had attended to Maître Menard came over to
+me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I
+had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak
+I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared
+in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For
+had I said that my master was in the Hôtel St Quentin, still those
+fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be
+ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to
+the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maître Menard
+had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.
+
+Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed
+like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for
+M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of
+me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But
+Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could
+only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was
+flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung
+before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the
+threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of
+triumph.
+
+"Oh, M. Étienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing.
+Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my
+master, but--Lucas!
+
+"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For
+the second soldier had seized his other arm.
+
+"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but he is
+wanted at the Bastille."
+
+"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.
+
+He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed him.
+Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for another man.
+
+"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man, Pontou."
+
+He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I had been
+at three o'clock this morning.
+
+"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never seen him
+since."
+
+"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to me. "I am
+not trying you. The handcuffs, men."
+
+One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his captors'
+grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the other, calling
+down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they snapped the handcuffs
+on for all that.
+
+"If this is Mayenne's work--" he panted.
+
+The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.
+
+"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but orders are
+orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de Belin."
+
+"At whose instigation?"
+
+"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught to do
+with it but to arrest you."
+
+"Let me see the warrant."
+
+"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your bluster."
+
+He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before Lucas's
+eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.
+
+"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"
+
+"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it sooner."
+
+"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to my Lord
+Mayenne."
+
+"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de Guise?"
+
+"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He must have
+been cursing himself that he had not given his name sooner. "But I am
+his brother."
+
+"You take me for a fool."
+
+"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"
+
+"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of Guise's
+eldest brother is but seventeen--"
+
+"I did not say I was legitimate."
+
+"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off
+the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so
+simple as you think. You will come along with me to the Bastille."
+
+"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed.
+"I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old
+turnspit," he shouted to Maître Menard. "Am I he?"
+
+Poor Maître Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too limp and sick
+to know what was going on. He only stared helplessly.
+
+"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"
+
+"No," the maître answered in low, faltering tones. He was at the last
+point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as he says. He is
+not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Who is he, then?"
+
+"I know not," the maître stammered. "He came here last night. But it is
+as he says--he is not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're lying."
+
+I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to know
+otherwise, I had thought myself the maître was lying.
+
+"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the captain
+said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass, before I cram
+your lie down your throat. And clear your people away from this door.
+I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack about his business, or
+it will be the worse for him. And every woman Jill, too."
+
+"M. le Capitaine," Maître Menard quavered, rising unsteadily to his
+feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you mistake; this is
+not--"
+
+"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot. Maître
+Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.
+
+A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given way to
+fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now alarm was
+born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake? This obstinate
+disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of all who could swear to
+his identity--was it not rather a plot for his ruin? He swallowed hard
+once or twice, fear gripping his throat harder than ever the dragoon's
+fingers had gripped mine. Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but
+then he was the man who had killed Pontou.
+
+"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have orders to
+arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de Lorraine, not of
+Étienne de Mar."
+
+"The name of Étienne de Mar will do," the captain returned; "we have no
+fancy for aliases at the Bastille."
+
+"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.
+
+"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"
+
+"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.
+
+His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a plot he had
+done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled himself together;
+error or intention, he would act as if he knew it must be error.
+
+"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your
+shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows him
+well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask these
+inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask that boy
+there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."
+
+His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of
+challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie. But
+the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his sword-belt,
+spared me the necessity.
+
+"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the Comte right
+enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen this gentleman a
+score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that the
+captain burst out laughing.
+
+"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's
+nephew--you are a nephew, are you not?--to explain how he comes to ride
+with the Duc de St. Quentin."
+
+It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no future
+for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out angrily:
+
+"He lies! I never rode out with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, come now. Really you waste a great deal of breath," the captain
+said. "I regret the cruel necessity of arresting you, M. de Mar; but
+there is nothing gained by blustering about it. I usually know what I am
+about."
+
+"You do not know! Nom de dieu, you do not know. Félix Broux, speak up
+there. If you have told him behind my back that I am Étienne de Mar, I
+defy you to say it to my face."
+
+"I know nothing about it, messieurs." I repeated my little refrain.
+"Monsieur captain, remember, if you please, I never saw him till
+yesterday; he may be Paul de Lorraine for all I know. But he did not
+call himself that yesterday."
+
+"You hell-hound!" Lucas cried.
+
+"Go tell Louis to drive up to the cabaret door, Gaspard," bade the
+captain.
+
+Lucas gazed at him as if to tear out of him the truth of the matter. I
+think he was still a prey to suspicion of a plot in this, and it
+paralyzed his tongue. He so reeked with intrigue that he smelled one
+wherever he went. He was much too clever to believe that this arresting
+officer was simply thick-witted.
+
+"I say no more," he cried. "You may spare yourself your lies, the whole
+crew of you. I go as your prisoner, but I go as Paul of Lorraine, son of
+Henry, Duke of Guise."
+
+He said it with a certain superbness; but the young captain, bourgeois
+of the bourgeois, did not mean to let himself be put down by any sprig
+of the noblesse.
+
+"Certainly, if it is any comfort to you," he retorted. "But you are very
+dull, monsieur, not to be aware that your identity is known perfectly
+to others besides your lackey here and my man. I did not come to arrest
+you without a minute description of you from M. de Belin himself."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Lucas shouted. "I wrote the description. I myself lodged
+information against Mar. I came here to make sure you took him. Carry me
+before Belin; he will know me."
+
+I trembled lest the officer could not but see that the man spoke truth.
+But I had no need to fear; there is a combination of stupidity and
+vanity which nothing can move.
+
+"I have no orders to take you to M. de Belin," he returned calmly. "So
+you wrote the description, did you? Perhaps you will deny that it fits
+you?"
+
+He read from the paper:
+
+"'Charles-André-Étienne-Marie de St. Quentin, Comte de Mar. Age,
+three-and-twenty; figure, tall and slender; was dressed yesterday in
+black with a plain falling-band; carries his right arm in a sling--"
+
+"Is my arm in a sling?" Lucas demanded.
+
+"No, in a handcuff," the captain laughed, at the same moment that his
+dragoon exclaimed, "His right wrist is bandaged, though."
+
+"That is nothing! It is a mere scratch. I did it myself last night by
+accident," Lucas shouted, striving with his hampered left hand to pull
+the folds apart to show it. But he could not, and fell silent,
+wide-eyed, like one who sees the net of fate drawing in about him. The
+captain went on reading from his little paper:
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH."]
+
+"'Fair hair, gray eyes, aquiline nose'--I suppose you will still tell
+us, monsieur, that you are not the man?"
+
+"I am not he. The Comte de Mar and I are nothing alike. We are both
+young, tall, yes; but that is all. He is slashed all up the forearm; my
+wrist is but scratched with a knife-edge. He has yellow hair; mine is
+brown. His eyes--"
+
+"It is plain to me, monsieur," the officer interrupted, "that the
+description fits you in every particular." And so it did.
+
+I, who had heard M. Étienne described twenty times, had yesterday
+mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both. It was the more
+remarkable because they actually looked no more alike than chalk and
+cheese. Lucas had set down his catalogue without a thought that he was
+drawing his own picture. If ever hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas
+was!
+
+"You lie!" he cried furiously. "You know I am not Mar. You lie, the
+whole pack of you!"
+
+"Gag him, Ravelle," the captain commanded with an angry flush.
+
+"I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!" Lucas shouted.
+
+The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his mouth.
+
+"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in time to
+aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."
+
+He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their prisoner. And
+this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not slip from his
+captors' fingers between the room and the street. He was deposited in
+the big black coach that had aroused my wonder. Louis cracked his whip
+and off they rumbled.
+
+I laughed all the way back to the Hôtel St. Quentin.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_To the Hôtel de Lorraine._
+
+
+I found M. Étienne sitting on the steps before the house. He had doffed
+his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard
+were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat, its white plume pinned in
+a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him. He had discarded his sling
+and was engaged in tuning a lute.
+
+Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he asked at
+once:
+
+"What has happened, Félix?"
+
+"Such a lark!" I cried.
+
+"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your trouble?"
+
+"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."
+
+I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain what
+was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed interest,
+which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to distress.
+
+"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I resemble that
+dirt--"
+
+"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could possibly
+mistake you for two of the same race. But there was nothing in his
+catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be sure, the right arm
+in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist bandaged. I think he cut
+himself last night when he was after me and I flung the door in his
+face, for afterward he held his hand behind his back. At any rate, there
+was the bandage; that was enough to satisfy the captain."
+
+"And they took him off?"
+
+"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged him
+off."
+
+"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize the
+event.
+
+"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer and his
+men. He may be there by this time."
+
+He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe the thing.
+
+"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent
+anything better; but it is true."
+
+"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half so
+good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit--" he broke off,
+laughing.
+
+"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen their
+faces--the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the more the
+officer was sure he was."
+
+"Félix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you should go about
+no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid errand, and see what
+you get into!"
+
+"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas have
+been arrested for Comte de Mar?"
+
+"He won't stay arrested long--more's the pity."
+
+"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."
+
+"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say that my
+face is not known at the Bastille."
+
+"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that he had
+never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he lay perdu.
+At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence of a Paul de
+Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his word already, if they
+are arresting you on this trumped-up charge, you must get out of the
+gates to-night."
+
+"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in Paris."
+
+"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."
+
+"I must go nowhere but to the Hôtel Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Félix; it is the safest spot for me in all Paris; it is
+the last place where they will look for me. Besides, now that they think
+me behind bars, they will not be looking for me at all. I shall be as
+safe as the hottest Leaguer in the camp."
+
+"But in the hôtel-"
+
+"Be comforted; I shall not enter the hôtel. There is a limit to my
+madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in the side street
+under which I have often stood in the old days. She used to contrive to
+be in her chamber after supper."
+
+"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"
+
+"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after my
+father--So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me to-night."
+
+"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.
+
+"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her to-night.
+And I think she will be at the window."
+
+The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet blanket
+in the house was enough.
+
+"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."
+
+"Then I propose supper."
+
+Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles mademoiselle
+had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed to what he was
+about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to see if it was dark
+enough to start. At length, when it was still between dog and wolf, he
+announced that he would delay no longer.
+
+"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.
+
+"But you are not to come!"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."
+
+"But, monsieur, you will need me. You will need some one to watch the
+street while you speak with mademoiselle."
+
+"I can have no listener to-night," he replied immovably.
+
+"But I will not listen, monsieur! I shall stand out of ear-shot. But you
+must have some one to give you warning should the guard set on you."
+
+"I can manage my own affairs," he retorted haughtily; "I desire neither
+your advice nor your company."
+
+"Monsieur!" I cried, almost in tears.
+
+"Enough!" he bade sharply. "Go send me Vigo."
+
+I went like one in whose face the doors of heaven had shut.
+
+Vigo came at once from the guard-room at my summons. It was on my tongue
+to tell him of M. le Comte's mad resolve to fare forth alone; to beg him
+to stop it. But I remembered how blameworthy I myself had held the
+equery for interfering with M. Étienne, and I made up my mind that no
+word of cavil at my lord should ever pass my lips. I lagged across the
+court at Vigo's heels, silent.
+
+M. Étienne was standing in the doorway.
+
+"Vigo," he said, without a change of countenance, "get Félix a rapier,
+which he can use prettily enough. I cannot take him out to-night
+unarmed."
+
+Vigo hesitated a moment, saluted, and went.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried out, "you meant all the time to take me!"
+
+He gazed down on my heated visage and laughed and laughed.
+
+"Félix," he gasped, "you had your sport over there at the inn. But I
+have seen nothing this summer as funny as _your_ face."
+
+Vigo came back with a sword and baldric for me, and a horse-pistol
+besides, but M. Étienne would not let me have it.
+
+"Circumstances are such, Vigo, that I want no noisy weapons."
+
+The equery regarded him with a troubled countenance.
+
+"I wish I knew, monsieur, whether I do right to let you go."
+
+"We will not discuss that, an it please you."
+
+"I do not, monsieur. I have no right to curtail M. le Comte's liberties.
+But I let you go with a heavy heart."
+
+He looked after us with foreboding eyes as we went out of the great
+gate, alone, with not so much as a linkboy. But if his heart was heavy,
+our hearts were light. We paced along as merrily as though to a feast.
+M. Étienne hung his lute over his neck and strummed it; and whenever we
+passed under a window whence leaned a pretty head, he sang snatches of
+love-songs. We were alone in the dark streets of a hostile city, bound
+for the house of a mighty foe; and one of us was wounded and one a tyro.
+Yet we laughed as we went; for there was Lucas languishing in prison,
+and here were we, free as air, steering our course for mademoiselle's
+window. One of us was in love, and the other wore a sword for the first
+time, and all the power of Mayenne daunted us not.
+
+We came at length within bow-shot of the Hôtel de Lorraine, where M.
+Étienne was willing to abate somewhat his swagger. We left the Rue St.
+Antoine, creeping around behind the house through a narrow and twisting
+alley--it was pitch-black, but he knew the way well--into a little
+street dim-lighted from the windows of the houses upon it. It was only a
+few rods long, running from the open square in front of the hôtel to the
+network of unpaved alleys behind. On the farther side stood a row of
+high-gabled houses, their doors opening directly on the pavement; on
+this side was but one big pile, the Hôtel de Lorraine. The wall was
+broken by few windows, most of them dark; this was not the gay side of
+the house. The overhanging turret on the low second story, under which
+M. Étienne halted, was as dark as the rest, nor, though the casement was
+open wide, could we tell whether any one was in the room. We could hear
+nothing but the breeze crackling in the silken curtains.
+
+"Take your station at the corner there," he bade, "and shout if they
+seem to be coming for us. But I think we shall not be molested. My
+fingers are so stiff they will hardly recognize my hand on the strings."
+
+I went to my post, and he began singing, scarce loud enough for any but
+his lady above to mark him:
+
+     _Fairest blossom ever grew
+         Once she loosened from her breast.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     From her breast the rose she drew,
+         Dole for me, her servant blest,
+     Fairest blossom ever grew._
+
+The music paused, and I turned from my watch of the shadowy figures
+crossing the square, in instant alarm lest something was wrong. But
+whatever startled him ceased, for in a moment he went on again, and as
+he sang his voice rang fuller:
+
+     _Of my love the guerdon true,
+         'Tis my bosom's only guest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     Still to me 'tis bright of hue
+         As when first my kisses prest
+     Fairest blossom ever grew.
+
+     Sweeter than when gathered new
+         'Twas the sign her love confest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He stopped again and stood gazing up into the window, but whether he saw
+something or heard something I could not tell. Apparently he was not
+sure himself, for presently, a little tremulous, he added the four
+verses:
+
+     _Askest thou of me a clue
+         To that lady I love best?
+     Fairest blossom ever grew!
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and waited,
+eager, hopeful. There was a little stir in the room that one thought was
+not the wind.
+
+I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the ardour of
+my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by the sound of men
+running round the corner behind me. One glance was enough; two abreast,
+swords in hand, they were charging us. I ran before them, drawing blade
+as I went and shouting to M. Étienne. But even as I called an answering
+shout came from the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the
+darkness and at us.
+
+M. Étienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the lute off his
+neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung it at the head of
+his nearest assailant, who received it full in the face, stopped,
+hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had come. But three foes
+remained, with the whole Hôtel de Lorraine behind them.
+
+We put our backs to the wall and set to. The remaining Spaniard engaged
+me; M. Étienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure of a doorway, held
+at bay with his good left arm a pair of attackers. These were in the
+dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as if their cheeks blushed (well they
+might) for the deeds of their hands.
+
+A broad window in the Hôtel de Lorraine was flung open; a man leaned far
+out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces bewildered our
+gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was about, and rammed my
+point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my blade.
+
+The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M. Étienne, who,
+with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw everything, cried to me,
+"Here!"
+
+I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants finding
+that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather hampered each
+other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the cleverer swordsman.
+This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than
+my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M.
+Étienne was up one step. He could not force home any of his
+shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Étienne out of his coign
+to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers
+clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again;
+and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his
+knees, with M. Étienne's sword in his breast.
+
+M. Étienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his
+mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had thought him--François de
+Brie.
+
+M. Étienne was ready for the second gentleman, but neither he nor the
+soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the window, with a shout, waved
+his arm toward the square. A mob of armed men hurled itself around the
+corner, a pikeman with lowered point in the van.
+
+This was not combat; it was butchery. M. Étienne, with a little moan,
+lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant to the turret
+window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us give. Throwing my
+whole weight upon it, I seized M. Étienne and pulled him over the
+threshold. Some one inside slammed the door to, just as the Spaniard
+hurled himself against it.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_"On guard, monsieur."_
+
+
+We found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a
+flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our
+preserver--a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in chuckling
+triumph against the shot bolts.
+
+She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and shrunken, a
+pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair was as white as
+her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment, furrowed with a
+thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like a girl's.
+
+"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she cried in a
+shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have listened to your
+singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad to-night to find the
+nightingale back again. When I saw that crew rush at you, I said I would
+save you if only you would put your back to my door. Monsieur, you are a
+young man of intelligence."
+
+"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M. Étienne replied,
+with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet blade. "I owe you a debt of
+gratitude which is ill repaid in the base coin of bringing trouble to
+this house."
+
+"Not at all--not at all!" she protested with animation. "No one is
+likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M. Ferou."
+
+"Of the Sixteen?"
+
+"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with mischief. "In
+truth, if my son were within, you were little likely to find harbourage
+here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping with his Grace of
+Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to mass, leaving madame
+grand'mère to shift for herself. No, no, my good friends; you may knock
+till you drop, but you won't get in."
+
+The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the door,
+shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes of the old
+lady glittered with new delight at every rap.
+
+"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M. Ferou's door!
+Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at finding you sanctuaried
+in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's jackal, François de Brie?"
+
+"Yes; and Marc Latour."
+
+"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her sharpness.
+"It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old, but I knew
+them! And which of the ladies is it?"
+
+He could do no less than answer his saviour.
+
+"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once--but that is a
+long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she was not much
+given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she repeated briskly, "and
+now they think I am too old to do aught but tell my beads and wait for
+death. But I like to have a hand in the game."
+
+"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M. Étienne
+assured her. "I like the way you play."
+
+She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.
+
+"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by halves. No; I
+shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as to lift the
+lantern from the hook."
+
+I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like
+spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made no
+protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she paused,
+opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the left, but,
+passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot, suddenly she
+flung it wide.
+
+"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can make
+shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go first."
+
+I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady, gathering her
+petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty, but M. Étienne was
+put to some trouble to bow his tall head low enough. We stood at the top
+of a flight of stone steps descending into blackness. The old lady
+unhesitatingly tripped down before us.
+
+At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway, slippery with
+lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall. Turning two corners,
+we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded door.
+
+"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have only to
+walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the rope once and
+wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and draw a crown with
+your finger in the air."
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne cried, "I hope the day may come when I shall make
+you suitable acknowledgements. My name--"
+
+"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him. "I will
+call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for acknowledgments--pooh! I
+am overpaid in the sport it has been."
+
+"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers--"
+
+"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she
+cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was not.
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne said, "I trust we shall meet again when I shall
+have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped on his knees
+before her, kissing both her hands.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored
+apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to die at
+your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and you too, you
+fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you well."
+
+"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."
+
+"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you, that I
+cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries, but get on
+your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber working my
+altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."
+
+Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly hustled us
+through.
+
+"Good-by--you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon us. We were
+in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of the dank, foul air,
+we heard bolts snap into place.
+
+"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M. Étienne,
+cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it is to throw them off
+the scent should they track us."
+
+I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same thought
+which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her
+beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days;
+she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.
+
+I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it
+as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the
+passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder.
+There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something
+swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and a
+laugh from him.
+
+"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, Félix; they don't bite." But I would not
+go on till I had made sure, as well as I could without seeing, that the
+cursed thing was not clinging on me somewhere.
+
+We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our tread.
+We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of Paris; and I
+wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming and loving over our
+heads. M. Étienne said at length:
+
+"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the Seine."
+But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere, I should not
+greatly mind the Seine.
+
+At this very moment M. Étienne clutched my arm, jerking me to a halt. I
+bounded backward, trying in the blackness to discern a precipice yawning
+at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low, tense voice. I perceived, far
+before us in the gloom, a point of light, which, as we watched it, grew
+bigger and bigger, till it became an approaching lantern.
+
+"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. Étienne.
+
+The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread; naturally he
+did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him alone, but it was
+hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.
+
+He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing without
+becoming aware of me, but M. Étienne's azure and white caught the
+lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped short, holding up the
+light between us and his face. We could make nothing of him, save that
+he was a large man, soberly clad.
+
+"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady. "Is it
+you, Ferou?"
+
+M. Étienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward into the clear
+circle of light.
+
+"No, M. de Mayenne; it is Étienne de Mar."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with comical
+alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My master's came
+bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in silence, till
+Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry from him:
+
+"How the devil come you here?"
+
+"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. Étienne answered. Mayenne
+still stared in thick amazement; after a moment my master added: "I must
+in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware that I am using this passage;
+he is, with madame his wife, supping with the Archbishop of Lyons."
+
+M. Étienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling pleasantly, and
+waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne kept a nonplussed
+silence. The situation was indeed somewhat awkward. He could not come
+forward without encountering an agile opponent, whose exceeding skill
+with the sword was probably known to him. He could not turn tail, had
+his dignity allowed the course, without exposing himself to be spitted.
+He was in the predicament of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping
+at us less in fear, I think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I
+learned later, was one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter.
+Mayenne had as soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a
+foe. He cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a
+great prince's question must be answered:
+
+"How came you here?"
+
+"I don't ask," said M. Étienne, "how it happens that M. le Duc is
+walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to make any
+explanation to him."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready, will
+make adequate explanation."
+
+"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. Étienne, "as it is evident
+that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience your Grace more
+than it will me."
+
+The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his lantern
+on a projecting stone.
+
+"On guard, sir," he answered.
+
+The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following him. He was
+alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state, but only a man
+with a sword, standing opposite another man with a sword. Nor was he in
+the pink of form. Though he gave the effect, from his clear colour and
+proud bearing, perhaps also from his masterful energy, of tremendous
+force and strength, his body was in truth but a poor machine, his great
+corpulence making him clumsy and scant of breath. He must have known, as
+he eyed his supple antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely
+said:
+
+"On guard, monsieur."
+
+M. Étienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace, that I might
+not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring on him. M. Étienne
+said slowly:
+
+"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor have I any
+wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be deprecated.
+Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must respectfully beg to
+be released from the obligation of fighting you."
+
+A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may, even as
+Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But if he insists
+on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must be a hothead
+indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant, feeling that he
+was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and should be still more
+ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his sword, only to lower it
+again, till at last his good sense came to his relief in a laugh.
+
+"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are necessary.
+You think that in declining to fight you put me in your debt. Possibly
+you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I shall hand over
+Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken. Never, while I live,
+shall she marry into the king's camp. Now, monsieur, that we understand
+each other, I abide by your decision whether we fight or not."
+
+For answer, M. Étienne put up his blade. The Duke of Mayenne, saluting
+with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you stood off from us, like a
+coquetting girl, for three years. At length, last May, you refused
+point-blank to join us. I do not often ask a man twice, but I ask you.
+Will you join the League to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"
+
+No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I
+believe now, he meant it. M. Étienne believed he meant it.
+
+"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am planted
+squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put your
+interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall not sign
+myself with the League."
+
+"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each continue on his
+way."
+
+"With all my heart, monsieur."
+
+Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a wary eye
+for daggers. Then M. Étienne, laughing a little, but watching Mayenne
+like a lynx, started to go by. The duke, seeing the look, suddenly
+raised his hands over his head, holding them there while both of us
+squeezed past him.
+
+"Cousin Charles," said M. Étienne, "I see that when I have married
+Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then, God have you ever
+in guard."
+
+"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."
+
+"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have
+submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have as
+delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will yet
+drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your good enemy.
+Fare you well, monsieur."
+
+He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire, returned
+the obeisance with all pomp. M. Étienne took me by the arm and departed.
+Mayenne stood still for a space; then we heard his retreating
+footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly faded away.
+
+[Illustration: "WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP."]
+
+"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M. Étienne
+muttered.
+
+We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor which
+had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was that we
+stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force like to break
+our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran headlong up the
+stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel back on M. Étienne,
+sweeping him off his feet, so that we rolled in a struggling heap on the
+stones of the passage. And for the minute the place was no longer dark;
+I saw more lightning than even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"Are you hurt, Félix?" cried M. Étienne, the first to disentangle
+himself.
+
+"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say it was a
+trap-door."
+
+We ascended the stairs a second time--this time most cautiously on our
+hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of
+spirit, a wooden ceiling.
+
+"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.
+
+The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere
+above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we
+heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and
+then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a silk-mercer's shop.
+
+"Faith, my man," said M. Étienne to the little bourgeois who had opened
+to us, "I am glad to see you appear so promptly."
+
+He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.
+
+"You must have met--" he suggested with hesitancy.
+
+"Yes," said M. Étienne; "but he did not object. We are, of course, of
+the initiated."
+
+"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny
+assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret of the
+passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty few mercers
+have a duke in their shop as often as I."
+
+We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with piles of
+stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the
+counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them--gorgeous
+brocades and satins. Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.
+
+"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said, following our
+glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from. And if I am not at
+liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on the floor--But they told
+you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he added, regarding M. Étienne again a
+little uneasily.
+
+"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M. Étienne answered,
+and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the password, "For the Cause."
+
+"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing in the
+air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.
+
+M. Étienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the shopkeeper had
+felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who wore no hat, they
+vanished in its radiance.
+
+"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our faces."
+
+The man took up his candle to light us to the door.
+
+"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over there?"
+he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M. le Duc has
+every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if monsieur should
+mention how quickly I let him out."
+
+"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. Étienne promised him.
+"Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There is another man to
+come."
+
+Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked out into
+the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we took to our
+heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen streets between
+us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked along in breathless
+silence.
+
+Presently M. Étienne cried out:
+
+"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should have
+changed the history of France!"
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_A chance encounter._
+
+
+The street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame. Few
+way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as placidly as if
+love-trysts and mêlées existed not, and tunnels and countersigns were
+but the smoke of a dream. It was a street of shops, all shuttered,
+while, above, the burghers' families went respectably to bed.
+
+"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a moment to
+take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of the Pierced
+Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We are close by the
+Halles--we must have come half a mile underground. Well, we'll swing
+about in a circle to get home. For this night I've had enough of the
+Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.
+
+"They were wider awake than I thought--those Lorrainers. Pardieu! Féix,
+you and I came closer quarters with death than is entirely amusing."
+
+"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.
+
+"A new saint in the calendar--la Sainte Ferou! But what a madcap of a
+saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance when Francis I was
+king!
+
+"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know that I
+was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated the
+enemy--worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near flinging away
+two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a lady's window."
+
+"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."
+
+"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in the
+morning and find out."
+
+"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."
+
+"Not to-night, Félix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home without
+passing near the Hôtel de Lorraine, if we go outside the walls to do it.
+To-night I draw my sword no more."
+
+To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange city at
+night--Paris of all cities--is a labyrinth. I know that after a time we
+came out in some meadows along the river-bank, traversed them, and
+plunged once more into narrow, high-walled streets. It was very late,
+and lights were few. We had started in clear starlight, but now a rack
+of clouds hid even their pale shine.
+
+"The snake-hole over again," said M. Étienne. "But we are almost at our
+own gates."
+
+But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner, we ran
+straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging along at as
+smart a pace as we.
+
+"A thousand pardons," M. Étienne cried to his encounterer, the possessor
+of years and gravity but of no great size, whom he had almost knocked
+down. "I heard you, but knew not you were so close. We were speeding to
+get home."
+
+The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked
+the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As he scanned
+M. Étienne's open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.
+
+"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he
+said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall
+certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."
+
+"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. Étienne asked with immense
+respect.
+
+"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied, delighted to
+impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.
+
+"Oh," said M. Étienne, with increasing solemnity, "perhaps monsieur had
+a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?"
+
+The little man began to look uneasy.
+
+"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he stammered.
+
+"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. Étienne rejoined, "most
+offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he fingered his sword.
+
+"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his Grace,
+or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all these years of
+blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that
+even he will come to see the matter in a different light--"
+
+"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne," M.
+Étienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the
+street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched little deputy's
+teeth chattered.
+
+The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he seemed
+on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I thought it
+would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble home in the dark,
+so I growled out to the fellow:
+
+"Stir one step at your peril!"
+
+I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not; he only
+sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding deference. He
+knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the scabbard.
+
+The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Étienne's
+example, but there was no help to be seen or heard. He turned to his
+tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay.
+
+"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"
+
+"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he
+happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?"
+
+"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I--we had a little con--that
+is, not to say a conference, but merely a little discussion on matters
+of no importance--"
+
+"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. Étienne, sternly, "of knowing
+where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this direction is not
+accounted for."
+
+"But I was going home--on my sacred honour I was! Ask Jacques, else. But
+as we went down the Rue de l'Évêque we saw two men in front of us. As
+they reached the wall by M. de Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell
+on them. The two drew blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians
+were a dozen--a score. We ran for our lives."
+
+M. Étienne wheeled round to me.
+
+"Félix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau, your decree is
+most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore, since he is my
+particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful night, is it not,
+sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."
+
+He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.
+
+At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to our ears.
+M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the direction of
+the sound.
+
+"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a mob! We
+know how it feels."
+
+The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled around a
+jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.
+
+"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. Étienne. "Shout, Félix! Montjoie St.
+Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"
+
+We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at the top
+of our lungs.
+
+It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures, with
+every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light flashing out, to
+fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm. We could scarce tell
+which were the attackers, which the two comrades we had come to save.
+
+But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We shouted as
+boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter of their heels on
+the stones they could not count our feet. They knew not how many
+followers the darkness held. The group parted. Two men remained in hot
+combat close under the left wall. Across the way one sturdy fighter held
+off two, while a sixth man, crying on his mates to follow, fled down the
+lane.
+
+M. Étienne knew now what he was about, and at once took sides with the
+solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I started in pursuit of
+the flying figure. I had run but a few yards, however, when I tripped
+and fell prostrate over the body of a man. I was up in a moment, feeling
+him to find out if he were dead; my hands over his heart dipped into a
+pool of something wet and warm like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve
+as best I could, and hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need
+it now, and I did.
+
+When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows. M.
+Étienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot in the gloom,
+had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven him, some rods up
+the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed, not knowing where to
+busy myself. M. Étienne's side I could not reach past the two duels; and
+of the four men near me, I could by no means tell, as they circled
+about and about, which were my chosen allies. They were all sombrely
+clad, their faces blurred in the darkness. When one made a clever pass,
+I knew not whether to rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one
+who fenced, though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the
+rest; and I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and
+must certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of
+succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as his
+foe ran him through the arm.
+
+The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the wall to
+face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell from his loose
+fingers.
+
+"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late
+combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off,
+stumbling where I had.
+
+There had been little light toward the last in the court of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the Hôtel de
+Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my sword solely by the
+feel of his against it, and I underwent chilling qualms lest presently,
+without in the least knowing how it got there, I should find his point
+sticking out of my back. I could hardly believe he was not hitting me; I
+began to prickle in half a dozen places, and knew not whether the stings
+were real or imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which
+Lucas had pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I
+fancied that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I
+was bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I
+had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment one of
+the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his weapon
+square through his vis-à-vis's breast.
+
+"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword snapped in
+two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay still, his face in
+the dirt.
+
+My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade, made off
+down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him depart in
+peace.
+
+The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's cry,
+and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and fainter. I
+deemed that the battle was over.
+
+The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his face
+and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He held a
+sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me hesitatingly, not sure
+whether friend or foe remained to him. I felt that an explanation was
+due from me, but in my ignorance as to who he was and who his foes were,
+and why they had been fighting him and why we had been fighting them, I
+stood for a moment confused. It is hard to open conversation with a
+shadow.
+
+He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting four--we came
+to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt, but he got away safe to
+fetch aid."
+
+The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying, "What--"
+
+But at the word M. Étienne emerged from the shadows.
+
+"Who lives?" he called out. "You, Félix?"
+
+"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"
+
+"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to congratulate you,
+monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we did."
+
+The unknown said one word:
+
+"Étienne!"
+
+I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in the
+pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we had
+rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been content to
+mind our own business, had sheered away like the deputy--it turned me
+faint to think how long we had delayed with old Marceau, we were so
+nearly too late. I wanted to seize Monsieur, to convince myself that he
+was all safe, to feel him quick and warm.
+
+I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape stood
+between me and Monsieur--that horrible lying story.
+
+"Dieu!" gasped M. Étienne, "Monsieur!"
+
+For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur flung his
+sword over the wall.
+
+"Do your will, Étienne."
+
+His son darted forward with a cry.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid not
+dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a hundred
+times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the honour of a St.
+Quentin I swear it."
+
+Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not know
+whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.
+
+M. Étienne, catching at his breath, went on:
+
+"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to you,
+unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter words. But
+I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me whipped from the
+house, still would I never have raised hand against you. I knew nothing
+of the plot. Félix told you I was in it--small blame to him. But he was
+wrong. I knew naught of it."
+
+Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur could not
+but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The stones in the
+pavement must have known that he was uttering truth. But he in his
+eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun Monsieur with
+statements new and amazing to his ear.
+
+"My cousin Grammont--who is dead--was in the plot, and his lackey
+Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was Lucas."
+
+"Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas," continued M. Étienne. "Or, to give him his true title, Paul de
+Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."
+
+"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.
+
+"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a Lorraine--Mayenne's nephew,
+and for years Mayenne's spy. He came to you to kill you--for that
+object pure and simple. Last spring, before he came to you, he was here
+in Paris with Mayenne, making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot,
+no Kingsman. He is Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."
+
+"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.
+
+"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck him, he
+fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that, I have no
+more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the darkness.
+
+That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I was sure
+Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of bewilderment.
+
+"M. Étienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the truth. Indeed it
+is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas _is_ a Guise. Monsieur, you must
+listen to me. M. Étienne, you must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble
+with my story to you, Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was
+telling the truth. I was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to
+the Rue Coupejarrets to kill your son--your murderer, I thought. And
+there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them sworn
+foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me because I had
+told, and M. Étienne saved me. Lucas mocked him to his face because he
+had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it was his own scheme--that M.
+Étienne was his dupe. Vigo will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme
+was to saddle M. Étienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed
+what he told me--that the thing was a duel between Lucas and Grammont.
+You must believe it, Monsieur!"
+
+M. Étienne, who had actually obeyed me,--me, his lackey,--turned to his
+father once again.
+
+"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe Félix. You believed him
+when he took away my good name. Believe him now when he restores it."
+
+"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, Étienne."
+
+And he took his son in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_The signet of the king._
+
+
+Already a wan light was revealing the round tops of the plum-trees in M.
+de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the narrow alleyway
+beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no longer vague shapes,
+but were turning moment by moment, as if coming out of an enchantment,
+into their true forms. It really was Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet
+glint in his eyes as he kissed his boy.
+
+Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they said to
+each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a curve in the
+wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the eastern sky, in utter
+content. Never before had the world seemed to me so good a place. Since
+this misery had come right, I knew all the rest would; I should yet
+dance at M. Étienne's wedding.
+
+I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to consider
+the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.
+
+"Félix! Félix! Where is the boy got to?"
+
+The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and wondered
+how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs came hand in
+hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering on Monsieur's
+burnished breastplate, on M. Étienne's bright head, and on both their
+shining faces. Now that for the first time I saw them together, I found
+them, despite the dark hair and the yellow, the brown eyes and the gray,
+wonderfully alike. There was the same carriage, the same cock of the
+head, the same smile. If I had not known before, I knew now, the instant
+I looked at them, that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a
+deeper love of each other, it might never have been.
+
+I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.
+
+"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, Félix?" M. Étienne said.
+"But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what madness sent you
+traversing this back passage at two in the morning."
+
+"I might ask you that, Étienne."
+
+The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:
+
+"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M. Étienne cried
+out:
+
+"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle if I
+would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he would
+kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was why I
+tried."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the window?"
+
+He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.
+
+"Étienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that Mlle. de Montluc is
+not for you?"
+
+"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed says she
+is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."
+
+"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"
+
+"You! You'll help me?"
+
+"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think of you
+in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a Spaniard to
+the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it is a question of
+stealing the lady--well, I never prosed about prudence yet, thank God!"
+
+M. Étienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.
+
+"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage while I
+thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you sacrifice your
+honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your life--that is different."
+
+"My life is a little thing."
+
+"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal--one's life. But one is not to
+guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life sweet."
+
+"Ah, you know how I love her!"
+
+"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I risk my
+life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For they who
+think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to procure it,
+why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when all is done, they
+have never really lived. And that is why they hate death so, these
+worthies. While I, who have never cringed to fear, I live like a king.
+I go my ways without any man's leave; and if death comes to me a little
+sooner for that, I am a poor creature if I do not meet him smiling. If I
+may live as I please, I am content to die when I must."
+
+"Aye," said M. Étienne, "and if we live as we do not please, still we
+must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never to give over striving
+after my lady."
+
+"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's Félix yawning
+his head off. Come, come."
+
+We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at their
+heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden anxiety.
+
+"Félix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I answered,
+remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.
+
+"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to get in,"
+M. Étienne said easily.
+
+But Monsieur asked of me:
+
+"Was he much hurt, Félix?"
+
+"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am sure he
+was not hurt otherwise."
+
+We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M. Étienne
+exclaimed:
+
+"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur! How many
+of the rascals were there?"
+
+"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."
+
+"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the dark?"
+
+"Why, what to do, Étienne? I came in at the gate just after midnight. I
+could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is my time to enter Paris.
+The inns were shut--"
+
+"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered you."
+
+"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the Sixteen."
+
+"Tarigny is no craven."
+
+"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.
+
+"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save you next
+time."
+
+"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."
+
+M. Étienne laughed and said no more.
+
+"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If these
+fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip
+of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost
+home."
+
+M. Étienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run
+through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed
+by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled
+mustache.
+
+"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before,
+Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done
+naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder
+how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed
+him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence
+better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."
+
+But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.
+
+"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"
+
+M. Étienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring
+with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about
+his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.
+
+"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran
+him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A
+boy like that!"
+
+"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Étienne said. "And it is no
+disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."
+
+But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and
+at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.
+
+On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.
+
+"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M.
+Étienne.
+
+"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red
+track."
+
+But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little
+street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned
+the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came
+suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it
+was the squire Huguet.
+
+He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any
+forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail,
+and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we
+had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of
+ours to kill twenty.
+
+Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.
+
+"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about," I said.
+"Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend himself."
+
+"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M. Étienne answered.
+"And one of those who fled last came upon him helpless and did this."
+
+"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John o'dreams?" I
+cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I forgot Huguet."
+
+"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would not have
+forgotten me."
+
+"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You could have
+saved him only by following when he ran. And that was impossible."
+
+"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his own door."
+
+We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.
+
+"I never lost a better man."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say that
+of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."
+
+He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only smile, I
+was content it should be at me.
+
+"Nay, Félix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who compose your
+epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after poor Huguet."
+
+"Félix and I will carry him," M. Étienne said, and we lifted him between
+us--no easy task, for he was a heavy fellow. But it was little enough to
+do for him.
+
+We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a sudden he
+turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn breast.
+
+"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.
+
+"My papers."
+
+We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to toe,
+stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted linen,
+prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed themselves.
+
+"What were they, Monsieur?"
+
+A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.
+
+"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor, have
+lost."
+
+I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his hat on
+the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to its beginning,
+looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass; but no papers. In my
+desperation I even pulled about the dead man, lest the packet had been
+covered, falling from Huguet in the fray. The two gentlemen joined me
+in the search, and we went over every inch of the ground, but to no
+purpose.
+
+"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur groaned. "I
+knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the object of attack; I
+bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the papers."
+
+"And of course he would not."
+
+"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life perhaps, and
+lost me what is dearer than life--my honour."
+
+"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking the
+impossible."
+
+"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur cried.
+"The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's officers
+pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had them for
+Lemaître. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they spell the men's
+destruction. Huguet should have known that if I told him to desert me, I
+meant it."
+
+M. Étienne ventured no word, understanding well enough that in such
+bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc added after a moment:
+
+"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied than in
+blaming the dead--the brave and faithful dead. Belike he could not run,
+they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did go, and he went to his
+death. They were my charge, the papers. I had no right to put the
+responsibility on any other. I should have kept them myself. I should
+have gone to Tarigny. I should never have ventured myself through these
+black lanes. Fool! traitorous fool!"
+
+"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."
+
+"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen Rosny!"
+Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a lack-wit who
+rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can handle a sword, but I
+have no business to meddle in statecraft."
+
+"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to employ you,"
+M. Étienne said. "He is not unknown to fame, this Duke of St. Quentin;
+everybody knows how he goes about things. Monsieur, they gave you the
+papers because no one else would carry them into Paris. They knew you
+had no fear in you; and it is because of that that the papers are
+lacking. But take heart, Monsieur. We'll get them back."
+
+"When? How?"
+
+"Soon," M. Étienne answered, "and easily, if you will tell me what they
+are like. Are they open?"
+
+"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and a
+fourth sheet, a letter--all in cipher."
+
+"Ah, but in that case--"
+
+Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.
+
+"But--Lucas."
+
+"Of course--I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"
+
+"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."
+
+"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne, and
+all is saved," M. Étienne declared cheerfully. "These fellows can't read
+a cipher. If the packet be not open, Monsieur?"
+
+"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the letters _St.
+Q._ in the corner. It was tied with red cord and bore the seal of a
+flying falcon, and the motto, _Je reviendrai_."
+
+"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur, to see
+the papers in an hour's time."
+
+"Étienne, Étienne," Monsieur cried, "are you mad?"
+
+"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough. I told
+you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who lodged at an
+inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake ourselves thither, we
+may easily fall in with some comrades of his bosom who have not the
+misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane, who will know something of
+your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots; while they work for the League,
+they will lend a kindly ear to the chink of Kingsmen's florins."
+
+"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. Étienne laid a
+restraining hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully as in
+the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."
+
+He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to prove his
+devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.
+
+"But," M. Étienne added generously, "you may have the honour of paying
+the piper."
+
+"I give you carte blanche, my son. Étienne, if you put that packet into
+my hand, it is more than if you brought the sceptre of France."
+
+"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."
+
+He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.
+
+The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the labours of
+the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour, for we ran no risk
+now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it behooves not a man
+supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself too liberally to the
+broad eye of the streets. Every time--and it was often--that we
+approached a person who to my nervous imagination looked official, I
+shook in my shoes. The way seemed fairly to bristle with soldiers,
+officers, judges; for aught I knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor
+Belin himself. It was a great surprise to me when at length we arrived
+without let or hindrance before the door of a mean little
+drinking-place, our goal.
+
+We went in, and M. Étienne ordered wine, much to my satisfaction. My
+stomach was beginning to remind me that I had given it nothing for
+twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs hard.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the landlord. We
+were his only patrons at the moment.
+
+"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not mine. I
+but rent the ground floor for my purposes."
+
+"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"
+
+"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off the Rue
+Clichet."
+
+"But he comes here often?"
+
+"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings, too."
+
+M. Étienne laid down the drink-money, and something more.
+
+"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll standing in
+my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he never chances to see
+me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good morning, Jean. Anything in
+the casks to-day?' He can no more get by my door than he'll get by
+Death's when the time comes."
+
+"No," agreed M. Étienne; "we all stop there, soon or late. Those friends
+of M. Bernet, then--there is none you could put a name to?"
+
+"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this quarter.
+M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he lives here, it
+is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere for his friends."
+
+"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"
+
+"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind the bar,
+eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed gallant. "Just
+round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court. The first house on
+the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur, only I cannot leave the
+shop alone, and the wife not back from market. But monsieur cannot miss
+it. The first house in the court. Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir,
+monsieur."
+
+In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little court stood
+an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse out of the
+passage.
+
+"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M. Étienne
+murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can you tell me, friend,
+where I may find M. Bernet?"
+
+The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means ceasing
+his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.
+
+"Third story back," he said.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"
+
+"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty
+broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M. Étienne, coughing,
+pursued his inquiries:
+
+"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a
+friend, then, in the building?"
+
+"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."
+
+"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Étienne
+persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M.
+Bernet?"
+
+"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of
+chattering here all day."
+
+"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Étienne, lightly setting foot
+on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to
+break your head, mon vieillard."
+
+We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the
+back, whereon M. Étienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and
+heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be
+knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it
+again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while
+we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden
+wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the
+marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a
+market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne
+away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking,
+as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
+suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him
+pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real
+creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.
+
+It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened,
+letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood
+a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess,
+"I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you
+could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"
+
+"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
+regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and
+manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not
+believe he has been in since. He went out about nine--or it may have
+been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till
+after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much
+as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last night, the
+day was so hot, and I was a long time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it
+must have been after ten, because they were asleep, and the man
+stumbling on the stairs woke Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't
+you, my angel?"
+
+She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us. M.
+Étienne asked:
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."
+
+"And what sort of person was this?"
+
+"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common passage with a
+child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."
+
+"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"
+
+"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M. Bernet
+but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only been here a
+week."
+
+"I thank you, madame," M. Étienne said, turning to the stairs.
+
+She ran out to the rail, babies and all.
+
+"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a point of
+seeing him when he comes in."
+
+"I will not burden you, madame," M. Étienne answered from the story
+below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over the railing to
+call:
+
+"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are not so
+tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their rubbish out
+in the public way."
+
+The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and a big,
+brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:
+
+"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you slut?"
+
+We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives down
+the stair.
+
+The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom on the
+outer step.
+
+"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as much had
+you been civil enough to ask."
+
+I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. Étienne drew two gold
+pieces from his pouch.
+
+"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M. Bernet
+went out last night?"
+
+"Who says he went out with anybody?"
+
+"I do," and M. Étienne made a motion to return the coins to their place.
+
+"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little more," the
+old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his, but he goes by
+the name of Peyrot."
+
+"And where does he lodge?"
+
+"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my own
+lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."
+
+"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M. Étienne said
+patiently, with a persuasive chink of his pouch. "Recollect now; you
+have been sent to this monsieur with a message."
+
+"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old carl spat
+out at last.
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Hang me else."
+
+"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a jelly with
+your own broom."
+
+"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of respect at
+last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles. You may beat me
+to a jelly if I lie."
+
+"It would do you good in any event," M. Étienne told him, but flinging
+him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped upon them,
+gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in one movement.
+But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in the upper panel, and
+stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:
+
+"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be. I've told
+you what will profit you none."
+
+"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. Étienne called over his shoulder. "Your
+information is entirely to my needs."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_The Chevalier of the Tournelles._
+
+
+It was a long walk to the Rue des Tournelles, which lay in our own
+quarter, not a dozen streets from the Hôtel St. Quentin itself. We found
+the Gilded Shears hung before a tailor's shop in the cellar of a tall,
+cramped structure, only one window wide. Its narrow door was
+inhospitably shut, but at our summons the concierge appeared to inform
+us that M. Peyrot did truly live here and, moreover, was at home, having
+arrived but half an hour earlier than we. He would go up and find out
+whether monsieur could see us.
+
+But M. Étienne thought that formality unnecessary, and was able, at
+small expense, to convince the concierge of it. We went alone up the
+stairs and crept very quietly along the passage toward the door of M.
+Peyrot. But our shoes made some noise on the flags; had he been
+listening, he might have heard us as easily as we heard him. Peyrot had
+not yet gone to bed after the night's exertion; a certain clatter and
+gurgle convinced us that he was refreshing himself with supper, or
+breakfast, before reposing.
+
+M. Étienne stood still, his hand on the door-knob, eager, hesitating.
+Here was the man; were the papers here? If they were, should we secure
+them? A single false step, a single wrong word, might foil us.
+
+The sound of a chair pushed back came from within, and a young man's
+quick, firm step passed across to the far side of the room. We heard a
+box shut and locked. M. Étienne nipped my arm; we thought we knew what
+went in. Then came steps again and a loud yawn, and presently two whacks
+on the floor. We knew as well as if we could see that Peyrot had thrown
+his boots across the room. Next a clash and jangle of metal, that meant
+his sword-belt with its accoutrements flung on the table. M. Étienne,
+with the rapid murmur, "If I look at you, nab him," turned the
+door-handle.
+
+But M. Peyrot had prepared against surprise by the simple expedient of
+locking his door. He heard us, too, for he stopped in the very middle of
+a prolonged yawn and held himself absolutely still. M. Étienne called
+out softly:
+
+"Peyrot!"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I want to speak with you about something important."
+
+"Who are you, then?"
+
+"I'll tell you when you let me in."
+
+"I'll let you in when you tell me."
+
+"My name's Martin. I'm a friend of Bernet. I want to speak to you
+quietly about a matter of importance."
+
+"A friend of Bernet. Hmm! Well, friend of Bernet, it appears to me you
+speak very well through the door."
+
+"I want to speak with you about the affair of to-night."
+
+"What affair?"
+
+"To-night's affair."
+
+"To-night? I go to a supper-party at St. Germain. What have you to say
+about that?"
+
+"Last night, then," M. Étienne amended, with rising temper. "If you want
+me to shout it out on your stairs, the St. Quentin affair."
+
+"Now, what may you mean by that?" called the voice from within. If
+Peyrot was startled by the name, he carried it off well.
+
+"You know what I mean. Shall I take the house into our confidence?"
+
+"The house knows as much of your meaning as I. See here, friend of
+Bernet, if you are that gentleman's mate, perhaps you have a password
+about you."
+
+"Aye," said M. Étienne, readily. "This is it: twenty pistoles."
+
+No answer came immediately; I could guess Peyrot puzzled. Presently he
+called to us:
+
+"By the bones of St. Anne, I don't believe a word you've been saying.
+But I'll have you in and see what you look like."
+
+We heard him getting into his boots again and buckling on his baldric.
+Then we listened to the turning of a key; a lid was raised and banged
+down again, and the lock refastened. It was the box once more. M.
+Étienne and I looked at each other.
+
+At length Peyrot opened the door and surveyed us.
+
+"What, two friends of Bernet, ventre bleu!" But he allowed us to enter.
+
+He drew back before us with a flourishing bow, his hand resting lightly
+on his belt, in which was stuck a brace of pistols. Any idea of doing
+violence on the person of M. Peyrot we dismissed for the present.
+
+Our eyes travelled from his pistols over the rest of him. He was small,
+lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling eyes. One
+moment's glance gave us to know that Peyrot was no fool.
+
+My lord closed the door after him and went straight to the point.
+
+"M. Peyrot, you were engaged last night in an attack on the Duke of St.
+Quentin. You did not succeed in slaying him, but you did kill his man,
+and you took from him a packet. I come to buy it."
+
+He looked at us a little dazed, not understanding, I deem, how we knew
+this. Certes, it had been too dark in the lane for his face to be seen,
+and he had doubtless made sure that he was not followed home. He said
+directly:
+
+"You are the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Even so, M. Peyrot. I did not care to have the whole stair know it, but
+to you I have no hesitation in confiding that I am M. de Mar."
+
+M. Peyrot swept a bow till his head almost touched the floor.
+
+"My poor apartment is honoured."
+
+As he louted low, I made a spring forward; I thought to pin him before
+he could rise. But he was up with the lightness of a bird from the bough
+and standing three yards away from me, where I crouched on the spring
+like a foiled cat. He grinned at me in open enjoyment.
+
+"Monsieur desired?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+"No, it is I who desire," said M. Étienne, clearing himself a place to
+sit on the corner of the table. "I desire that packet, monsieur. You
+know this little expedition of yours to-night was something of a
+failure. When you report to the general-duke, he will not be in the best
+of humours. He does not like failures, the general; he will not incline
+to reward you dear. While I am in the very best humour in the world."
+
+He smiled to prove it. Nor do I think his complaisance altogether
+feigned. The temper of our host amused him.
+
+As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed. I thought it was because he
+had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had I viewed him
+with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his bewilderment genuine.
+
+"Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what monsieur is
+driving at?" he suggested. "Monsieur's remarks about his noble father
+and the general-duke are interesting, but humble Jean Peyrot, who does
+not move in court circles, is at a loss to translate them. In other
+words, I have no notion what you are talking about."
+
+"Oh, come," M. Étienne cried, "no shuffling, Peyrot. We know as well as
+you where you were before dawn."
+
+"Before dawn? Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous."
+
+M. Étienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's self might
+have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an alcove, and
+disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow undisturbed. He turned with
+a triumphant grin on the owner, who showed all his teeth pleasantly in
+answer, no whit abashed.
+
+"For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners ever came
+inside these walls."
+
+M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour about the
+room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture, even to the
+dishes and tankards on the table. Peyrot, leaning against the wall by
+the window, regarded him steadily, with impassive face. At length M.
+Étienne walked over to the chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately
+put his hand on the key.
+
+Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. Étienne, turning, looked
+into his pistol-barrel.
+
+My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his fingers on the
+key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with raised, protesting
+eyebrows and laughing mouth. But though he laughed, he stood still.
+
+"If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot you as I
+would a rat. Your side is down and mine is up; I have no fear to kill
+you. It will be painful to me, but if necessary I shall do it."
+
+M. Étienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably than ever.
+
+"Why--have I never known you before, Peyrot?"
+
+"One moment, monsieur." The nose of the pistol pointed around to me. "Go
+over there to the door, you."
+
+I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that pleased him.
+
+"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair over
+against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee. "Monsieur was
+saying?"
+
+Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he liked his
+present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of the noble into
+this business, realizing shrewdly that they would but hamper him, as
+lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless adventurer, living by
+his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a count no more than a
+hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference was more insulting than
+outright rudeness; but M. Étienne bore it unruffled. Possibly he
+schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so
+easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence
+merely tickled him.
+
+"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in
+this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks."
+
+"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory bringing a
+deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left
+a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within
+its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged
+friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints
+and living sinners, at twenty."
+
+"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."
+
+"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
+leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
+Paris. And never regretted it, neither."
+
+He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling,
+and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark's:
+
+     _Piety and Grace and Gloom,
+     For such like guests I have no room!
+     Piety and Gloom and Grace,
+     I bang my door shut in your face!
+     Gloom and Grace and Piety,
+     I set my dog on such as ye!_
+
+Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the
+floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have
+twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Étienne rose and leaned
+across the table toward him.
+
+"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in wealth, of
+course?"
+
+Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a
+mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty
+clothing.
+
+"Do I look it?" he answered.
+
+"Oh," said M. Étienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea,
+"I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the
+subject of turning an honest penny."
+
+Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.
+
+"Say on," he permitted lazily.
+
+"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from
+the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."
+
+"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. Étienne had
+been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.
+Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success. I will look about a
+bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your
+packet. I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."
+
+"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are risen
+earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for five minutes
+while you consult your friends."
+
+Peyrot grinned cheerfully.
+
+"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I know
+nothing whatever of this affair."
+
+"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."
+
+Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such as he
+might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be
+convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.
+
+"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so
+misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do
+solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this
+affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that Monsieur,
+your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I pained to hear
+it. These be evil days when such things can happen. As for your packet,
+I learn of it only through your word, having no more to do with this
+deplorable business than a babe unborn."
+
+I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged him. But M.
+Étienne gauged him otherwise.
+
+"Your words please me," he began.
+
+"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn lips,
+in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."
+
+"You have boasted," M. Étienne went on, "that your side was up and mine
+down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be up and yours down,
+you would hardly be at such pains to deny that you ever bared blade
+against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses, far too
+honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on the duke,"
+Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of course it is
+possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the scent of your packet.
+Twenty pistoles, though. That is not much."
+
+M. Étienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table, not pleased with
+the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better it. Had we been sure of
+our suspicions, we would have charged him, pistol or no pistol,
+trusting that our quickness would prevent his shooting, or that the
+powder would miss fire, or that the ball would fly wide, or that we
+should be hit in no vital part; trusting, in short, that God was with us
+and would in some fashion save us. But we could not be sure that the
+packet was with Peyrot. What we had heard him lock in the chest might
+have been these very pistols that he had afterward taken out again.
+Three men had fled from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of
+knowing whether this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had
+encountered, or he who had engaged M. Étienne. And did we know, that
+would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and plundered Huguet.
+Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know who had it, or he might
+be in honest ignorance of its existence. If he had it, it were a crying
+shame to pay out honest money for what we might take by force; to buy
+your own goods from a thief were a sin. But supposing he had it not? If
+we could seize upon him, disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him,
+rack him, would he--granted he knew--reveal its whereabouts? Writ large
+in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice.
+He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went
+to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from
+the very beginning, with some other knave mayhap worse than this.
+
+Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to his lead.
+
+"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this day at
+eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M. Étienne said.
+
+"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur forgets
+the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must be
+reimbursed for that."
+
+"Conscience, quotha!"
+
+"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in yours. I
+have never been false to the hand that fed me. If, therefore, I divert
+to you a certain packet which of rights goes elsewhere, my sin must be
+made worth my while. My conscience will sting me sorely, but with the
+aid of a glass and a lass I may contrive to forget the pain.
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear,
+     Baggages, you're welcome here!_
+
+I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le Comte. Fifty
+in all will bring the packet to your hand."
+
+It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the fellow's
+face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers for Monsieur,
+and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld him.
+
+"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven. You may
+do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my fifty
+pistoles."
+
+"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"
+
+"The word of a St. Quentin."
+
+"Sufficient, of course."
+
+The scamp rose with a bow.
+
+"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I give you
+the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius, that he and the
+packet will be there. This has been a delightful call, monsieur, and I
+am loath to let you go. But it is time I was free to look for that
+packet."
+
+M. Étienne's eyes went over to the chest.
+
+"I wish you all success in your arduous search."
+
+"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot sighed.
+"My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my task difficult
+indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall question every man in
+Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone unturned."
+
+M. Étienne still pensively regarded the chest.
+
+"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the purpose."
+
+"You appear yet to nurse the belief that I have the packet. But as a
+matter of fact, monsieur, I have not."
+
+I studied his grave face, and could not for the life of me make out
+whether he were lying. M. Étienne said merely:
+
+"Come, Félix."
+
+"You'll drink a glass before you go?" Peyrot cried hospitably, running
+to fill a goblet muddy with his last pouring. But M. Étienne drew back.
+
+"Well, I don't blame you. I wouldn't drink it myself if I were a count,"
+Peyrot said, setting the draught to his own lips. "After this noon I
+shall drink it no more all summer. I shall live like a king.
+
+     _Kiss me, Folly; hug me, Mirth:
+     Life without you's nothing worth!_
+
+Monsieur, can I lend you a hat?"
+
+I had already opened the door and was holding it for my master to pass,
+when Peyrot picked up from the floor and held out to him a battered and
+dirty toque, with its draggled feather hanging forlornly over the side.
+Chafed as he was, M. Étienne could not deny a laugh to the rascal's
+impudence.
+
+"I cannot rob monsieur," he said.
+
+"M. le Comte need have no scruple. I shall buy me better out of his
+fifty pistoles."
+
+But M. Étienne was out in the passage, I following, banging the door
+after me. We went down the stair in time to Peyrot's lusty carolling:
+
+     _Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly,
+     While Folly's sure to linger by!_
+
+"Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked.
+
+"Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling to let
+this dog set the terms."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "perhaps he'll not stir out at once. I'll run home
+for Vigo and his men, and we'll make the rascal disgorge."
+
+"Now are you more zealous than honest, boy."
+
+I was silent, abashed, and he added:
+
+"I had not been afraid to try conclusions with him, pistols or not, were
+I sure that he had the packet. I believe he has, yet there is the
+chance that, after all, in this one particular he speaks truth. I cannot
+take any chances; I must get those papers for Monsieur."
+
+"Yes, we could not have done otherwise, M. Étienne. But, monsieur, will
+you dare go to this inn? M. le Comte is a man in jeopardy; he may not
+keep rendezvous of the enemy's choosing."
+
+"I might not keep one of Lucas's choosing. Though," he added, with a
+smile, "natheless, I think I should. But it is not likely this fellow
+knows of the warrant against me. Paris is a big place; news does not
+travel all over town as quickly as at St. Quentin. I think friend Peyrot
+has more to gain by playing fair than playing false, and appointing the
+cabaret of the Bonne Femme has a very open, pleasing sound. Did he mean
+to brain me he would scarce have set that place."
+
+"It was not Peyrot alone I meant. But monsieur is so well known. In the
+streets, or at the dinner-hour, some one may see you who knows Mayenne
+is after you."
+
+"Oh, of that I must take my chance," he made answer, no whit troubled by
+the warning. "I go home now for the ransom, and I will e'en be at the
+pains to doff this gear for something darker."
+
+"Monsieur," I pleaded, "why not stay at home to get your dues of sleep?
+Vigo will bring the gold; he and I will put the matter through."
+
+"I ask not your advice," he cried haughtily; then with instant
+softening: "Nay, this is my affair, Félix. I have taken it upon myself
+to recover Monsieur his papers. I must carry it through myself to the
+very omega."
+
+I said no more, partly because it would have done no good, partly
+because, in spite of the strange word, I understood how he felt.
+
+"Perhaps you should go home and sleep," he suggested tenderly.
+
+"Nay," cried I. "I had a cat-nap in the lane; I'm game to see it
+through."
+
+"Then," he commanded, "you may stay here-abouts and watch that door. For
+I have some curiosity to know whether he will need to fare forth after
+the treasure. If he do as I guess, he will spend the next hours as you
+counsel me, making up arrears of sleep, and you'll not see him till a
+quarter or so before eleven. But whenever he comes out, follow him. Keep
+your safe distance and dog him if you can."
+
+"And if I lose him?"
+
+"Come back home. Station yourself now where he won't notice you. That
+arch there should serve."
+
+We had been standing at the street corner, sheltered by a balcony over
+our heads from the view of Peyrot's window.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I do wish you would bring Vigo back with you."
+
+"Félix," he laughed, "you are the worst courtier I ever saw."
+
+I crossed the street as he told me, glancing up at the third story of
+the house of the Gilded Shears. No watcher was visible. From the
+archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I could well
+command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M. Étienne nodded to me and
+walked off whistling, staring full in the face every one he met.
+
+I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot to be
+doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep. But I was sternly determined
+to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater comfort--cold
+enough comfort it was--I sat me down on the paving-stones, yet I kept my
+eyelids propped open, my eyes on Peyrot's door. I was helped in carrying
+out my virtuous resolve by the fact that the court was populous and my
+carcass in the entrance much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that
+full half of them swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The
+hard part was that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on
+Peyrot's door.
+
+He delayed so long and so long that I feared with shamed misgiving I
+must have let him slip, when at length, on the very stroke of eleven, he
+sauntered forth. He was yawning prodigiously, but set off past my lair
+at a smart pace. I followed at goodly distance, but never once did he
+glance around. He led the way straight to the sign of the Bonne Femme.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE "BONNE FEMME."]
+
+I entered two minutes after him, passing from the cabaret, where my men
+were not, to the dining-hall, where, to my relief, they were. At two
+huge fireplaces savoury soups bubbled, juicy rabbits simmered, fat
+capons roasted; the smell brought the tears to my eyes. A concourse of
+people was about: gentles and burghers seated at table, or passing in
+and out; waiters running back and forth from the fires, drawers from
+the cabaret. I paused to scan the throng, jostled by one and another,
+before I descried my master and my knave. M. Étienne, the prompter at
+the rendezvous, had, like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had
+deserted it now and stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their
+elbows on the deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up
+suddenly to Peyrot's side, making him jump.
+
+"Oh, it's you, my little gentleman!" he exclaimed, smiling to show all
+his firm teeth, as white and even as a court beauty's. He looked in the
+best of humours, as was not wonderful, considering that he was engaged
+in fastening up in the breast of his doublet something hard and lumpy.
+M. Étienne held up a packet for me to see, before Peyrot's shielding
+body; it was tied with red cord and sealed with a spread falcon over the
+tiny letters, _Je reviendrai_. In the corner was written very small,
+_St. Q._ Smiling, he put it into the breast of his doublet.
+
+"Monsieur," my scamp said to him with close lips that the room might not
+hear, "you are a gentleman. If there ever comes a day when You-know-who
+is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to serve you as well as I
+have served him."
+
+"I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M. Étienne
+answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than ever.
+
+"I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have served him.
+Bear me in mind, monsieur."
+
+"Come, Félix," was all my lord's answer.
+
+Peyrot sprang forward to detain us.
+
+"Monsieur, will you not dine with me? Both of you, I beg. I will have
+every wine the cellar affords."
+
+"No," said M. Étienne, carelessly, not deigning to anger; "but there is
+my dinner for you, an you like. I have paid for it, but I have other
+business than to eat it."
+
+Bidding a waiter serve M. Peyrot, he walked from the room without other
+glance at him. A slight shade fell over the reckless, scampish face; he
+was a moment vexed that we scorned him. Merely vexed, I think; shamed
+not at all; he knew not the feel of it. Even in the brief space I
+watched him, as I passed to the door, his visage cleared, and he sat him
+down contentedly to finish M. Étienne's veal broth.
+
+My lord paced along rapidly and gladly, on fire to be before Monsieur
+with the packet. But one little cloud, transient as Peyrot's, passed
+across his lightsome countenance.
+
+"I would that knave were of my rank," he said. "I had not left him
+without slapping a glove in his face."
+
+That Peyrot had come off scot-free put me out of patience, too, but I
+regretted the gold we had given him more than the wounds we had not. The
+money, on the contrary, troubled M. Étienne no whit; what he had never
+toiled for he parted with lightly.
+
+We came to our gates and went straightway up the stairs to Monsieur's
+cabinet. He sprang to meet us at the door, snatching the packet from
+his son's eager hand.
+
+"Well done, Étienne, my champion! An you brought me the crown of France
+I were not so pleased!"
+
+The flush of joy at generous praise of good work kindled on M. Étienne's
+cheek; it were hard to say which of the two messieurs beamed the more
+delightedly on the other.
+
+"My son, you have brought me back my honour," spoke Monsieur, more
+quietly, the exuberance of his delight abating, but leaving him none the
+less happy. "If you had sinned against me--which I do not admit, dear
+lad--it were more than made up for now."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born for.
+Now I know it was for this morning."
+
+"For this and many more mornings, Étienne," Monsieur made gay answer,
+laying a hand on his son's shoulder. "Courage, comrade. We'll have our
+lady yet."
+
+He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his writing-table. For
+all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more interested in his papers
+than in Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"I'll get this off my hands at once," he went on, with the effect of
+talking to himself rather than to us. "It shall go straight off to
+Lemaître. You'd better go to bed, both of you. My faith, you've made a
+night of it!"
+
+"Won't you take me for your messenger, Monsieur? You need a trusty
+one."
+
+"A kindly offer, Étienne. But you have earned your rest. And you, true
+as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I have, God be thanked.
+Gilles will take this straight from my hand to Lemaître's."
+
+He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a thought
+striking him, he took it out again.
+
+"I'd best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the
+president's papers. I'll scratch out my initial, too. The cipher tells
+nothing."
+
+"He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur."
+
+"No, but this time we'll provide for every chance. We'll take all the
+precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute."
+
+He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to scrape
+the wax away. It slipped and severed the cords. Of its own accord the
+stiff paper of the flap unfolded.
+
+"The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if I were
+in danger of forgetting it," Monsieur said idly. "The truth is--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet, slapping it
+wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet. Each was absolutely blank!
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_The Florentines._
+
+
+M. Étienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers from his
+father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to believe his
+senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one moment from flowery
+lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he did.
+
+"But the seal!" he stammered.
+
+"The seal was genuine," Monsieur answered, startled as he. "How your
+fellow could have the king's signet--"
+
+"See," M. Étienne cried, scratching at the fragments. "This is it. Dunce
+that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is a layer of paper
+embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out, smeared hot wax on the
+false packet, pressed in the seal, and curled the new wax over the edge.
+It was cleverly done; the seal is but little thicker, little larger than
+before. It did not look tampered with. Would you have suspected it,
+Monsieur?" he demanded piteously.
+
+"I had no thought of it. But this Peyrot--it may not yet be too late--"
+
+"I will go back," M. Étienne cried, darting to the door. But Monsieur
+laid forcible hands on him.
+
+"Not you, Étienne. You were hurt yesterday; you have not closed your
+eyes for twenty-four hours. I don't want a dead son. I blame you not for
+the failure; not another man of us all would have come so near success."
+
+"Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M. Étienne
+cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I did not think to
+doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in the inn, but it was
+Lemaître's sealed packet. However, Peyrot sat down to my dinner: I can
+be back before he has finished his three kinds of wine."
+
+"Stop, Étienne," Monsieur commanded. "I forbid you. You are gray with
+fatigue. Vigo shall go."
+
+M. Étienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze in his eyes
+flickered out, and he made obedient salute.
+
+"So be it. Let him go. I am no use; I bungle everything I touch. But he
+may accomplish something."
+
+He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his face in
+his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened. A statue-maker might have
+copied him for a figure of Defeat.
+
+"Go find Vigo," Monsieur bade me, "and then get you to bed."
+
+I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.
+
+I too smarted, but mine was the private's disappointment, not the
+general's who had planned the campaign. The credit of the rescue was
+none of mine; no more was the blame of failure. I need not rack myself
+with questioning, Had I in this or that done differently, should I not
+have triumphed? I had done only what I was told. Yet I was part of the
+expedition; I could not but share the grief. If I did not wet my pillow
+with my tears, it was because I could not keep awake long enough.
+Whatever my sorrows, speedily they slipped from me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then wondered
+whether, after all, I had waked. Here, to be sure, was Marcel's bed, on
+which I had lain down; there was the high gable-window, through which
+the westering sun now poured. There was the wardrobe open, with Marcel's
+Sunday suit hanging on the peg; here were the two stools, the little
+image of the Virgin on the wall. But here was also something else, so
+out of place in the chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure
+it was real. At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign
+wood, beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man. It was
+about as large as my lord's despatch-box, bound at the edges with
+shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of leaves
+and flowers. Beside the box were set three shallow trays, lined with
+blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith's work-glittering chains,
+linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of yellow snakes with green
+eyes, buckles with ivory teeth, glove-clasps thick with pearls,
+ear-rings and finger-rings with precious stones.
+
+I stared bedazzled from the display to him who stood as showman. This
+was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller, with a
+shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face, very boyish
+and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois fashion; yet there was
+about him and his apparel something, I could not tell what, unfamiliar,
+different from us others.
+
+He, meeting my eye, smiled in the friendliest way, like a child, and
+said, in Italian:
+
+"Good day to you, my little gentleman."
+
+I had still the uncertain feeling that I must be in a dream, for why
+should an Italian jeweller be displaying his treasures to me, a
+penniless page? But the dream was amusing; I was in no haste to wake.
+
+I knew my Italian well enough, for Monsieur's confessor, the Father
+Francesco, who had followed him into exile, was Florentine; and as he
+always spoke his own tongue to Monsieur, and I was always at the duke's
+heels, I picked up a deal of it. After Monsieur's going, the father,
+already a victim, poor man, to the falling-sickness, of which he died,
+stayed behind with us, and I found a pricking pleasure in talking with
+him in the speech he loved, of Monsieur's Roman journey, of his exploits
+in the war of the Three Henrys. Therefore the words came easily to my
+lips to answer this lad from over the Alps:
+
+"I give you good day, friend."
+
+He looked somewhat surprised and more than pleased, breaking at once
+into voluble speech:
+
+"The best of greetings to you, young sir. Now, what can I sell you this
+fine day? I have not been half a week in this big city of yours, yet
+already I have but one boxful of trinkets left. They are noble,
+open-handed customers, these gallants of Paris. I have not to show them
+my wares twice, I can tell you. They know what key will unlock their
+fair mistresses' hearts. And now, what can I sell you, my little
+gentleman, to buy your sweetheart's kisses?"
+
+"Nay, I have no sweetheart," I said, "and if I had, she would not wear
+these gauds."
+
+"She would if she could get them, then," he retorted. "Now, let me give
+you a bit of advice, my friend, for I see you are but young: buy this
+gold chain of me, or this ring with this little dove on it,--see, how
+cunningly wrought,--and you'll not lack long for a sweetheart."
+
+His words huffed me a bit, for he spoke as if he were vastly my senior.
+
+"I want no sweetheart," I returned with dignity, "to be bought with
+gold."
+
+"Nay," he cried quickly, "but when your own valour and prowess have
+inflamed her with passion, you should be willing to reward her devotion
+and set at rest her suspense by a suitable gift."
+
+I looked at him uneasily, for I had a suspicion that he might be making
+fun of me. But his countenance was as guileless as a kitten's.
+
+"Well, I tell you again I have no sweetheart and I want no sweetheart,"
+I said; "I have no time to bother with girls."
+
+At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making naught by
+it.
+
+"The messer is very much occupied?" he asked with exceeding deference.
+"The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he is occupied with
+great matters? Oh, that can I well believe, and I cry the messer's
+pardon. For when the mind is taken up with affairs of state, it is
+distasteful to listen even for a moment to light talk of maids and
+jewels."
+
+Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly unconscious,
+was sorting over his treasures. I made up my mind his queer talk was but
+the outlandish way of a foreigner. He looked at me again, serious and
+respectful.
+
+"The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous
+encounters. Is it not so? Then he will do well to carry ever over his
+heart the sacred image of our Lord."
+
+He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended a
+crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon it.
+Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin, was
+nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm
+of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed
+myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix;
+the stranger all unwittingly had struck a bull's-eye. I had committed
+grave offence against God, but perhaps if, putting gewgaws aside, I
+should give my all for this cross, he would call the account even. I
+knew nothing of the value of a carving such as this, but I remembered I
+was not moneyless, and I said, albeit somewhat shyly:
+
+"I cannot take the rosary. But I should like well the crucifix. But
+then, I have only ten pistoles."
+
+"Ten pistoles!" he repeated contemptuously. "Corpo di Bacco! The
+workmanship alone is worth twenty." Then, viewing my fallen visage, he
+added: "However, I have received fair treatment in this house, beshrew
+me but I have! I have made good sales to your young count. What sort of
+master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?"
+
+"Oh, there's nobody like him," I answered, "except, of course, M. le
+Duc."
+
+"Ah, then you have two masters?" he inquired curiously, yet with a
+certain careless air. It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he was
+a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman. But he should
+gain nothing from me.
+
+"This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin," I said. "Surely you
+could not come in at the gate without discovering that?"
+
+"He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?"
+
+"Assuredly," I replied cautiously.
+
+"More of a man than the Comte de Mar?"
+
+I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been for my
+hopes of the crucifix. If he planned to sell it to me cheap, thereby
+hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I should not buy
+it at his price--and withhold the information. So I made civil answer:
+
+"They are both as gallant gentlemen as any living. About this cross,
+now--"
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered at once, accepting with willingness--well
+feigned, I thought--the change of topic. "You can give me ten pistoles,
+say you? 'Tis making you a present of the treasure. Yet, since I have
+received good treatment at the hands of your master, I will e'en give it
+to you. You shall have your cross."
+
+With suspicions now at point of certainty, I drew out my pouch from
+under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces which were my
+store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it when I shattered
+the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it together for me with a
+thread, and it served very well. The Italian unhooked the delicate
+carving from the silver chain and hung it on my wooden one, which I
+threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my new possession. Marcel's
+Virgin was a botch compared with it. I remembered that mademoiselle, who
+had given me half my wealth, the half that won me the rest, had bidden
+me buy something in the marts of Paris; and I told myself with pride
+that she could not fail to hold me high did she know how, passing by all
+vanities, I had spent my whole store for a holy image. Few boys of my
+age would be capable of the like. Certes, I had done piously, and should
+now take a further pious joy, my purchase safe on my neck, in thwarting
+the wiles of this serpent. I would play with him awhile, tease and
+baffle him, before handing him over in triumph to Vigo.
+
+Sure enough, he began as I had expected:
+
+"This M. de Mar down-stairs, he is a very good master, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," I said, without enthusiasm.
+
+"He has always treated you well?"
+
+I bethought myself of the trick I had played successfully with the
+officer of the burgess guard.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so. I have only known him two days."
+
+"But you have known him well? You have seen much of him?" he demanded
+with ill-concealed eagerness.
+
+"But not so very much," I made tepid answer. "I have not been with him
+all the time of these two days. I have seen really very little of him."
+
+"And you know not whether or no he be a good master?"
+
+"Oh, pretty good. So-so."
+
+He sprang forward to deal me a stinging box on the ear.
+
+I was out of bed at one bound, scattering the trinkets in a golden rain
+and rushing for him. He retreated before me. It was to save his jewels,
+but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of me. I dashed at him, all
+headlong confidence; the next I knew he had somehow twisted his foot
+between mine, and tripped me before I could grapple. Never was wight
+more confounded to find himself on the floor.
+
+I was starting up again unhurt when I saw something that made me to
+forget my purpose. I sat still where I was, with dropped jaw and bulging
+eyes. For his hair, that had been black, was golden.
+
+"Ventre bleu!" I said.
+
+"And so you know not you little villain, whether you have a good master
+or not?"
+
+"But how was I to dream it was monsieur?" I cried, confounded. "I knew
+there was something queer about him--about you, I mean--about the person
+I took you for, that is. I knew there was something wrong about
+you--that is to say, I mean, I thought there was; I mean I knew he
+wasn't what he seemed--you were not. And Peyrot fooled us, and I didn't
+want to be fooled again."
+
+"Then I am a good master?" he demanded truculently, advancing upon me.
+
+I put up my hands to my ears.
+
+"The best, monsieur. And monsieur wrestled well, too."
+
+"I can't prove that by you, Félix," he retorted, and laughed in my
+nettled face. "Well, if you've not trampled on my jewels, I forgive your
+contumacy."
+
+If I had, my bare toes had done them no harm. I crawled about the floor,
+gathering them all up and putting them on the bed, where I presently sat
+down myself to stare at him, trying to realize him for M. le Comte. He
+had seated himself, too, and was dusting his trampled wig and clapping
+it on again.
+
+He had shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and the whole
+look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke of the razor;
+he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He had stained his face
+so well that it looked for all the world as though the Southern sun had
+done it for him; his eyebrows and, lashes were dark by nature. His wig
+came much lower over his forehead than did his own hair, and altered the
+upper part of his face as much as the shaving of the lower. Only his
+eyes were the same. He had had his back to the window at first, and I
+had not noted them; but now that he had turned, his eyes gleamed so
+light as to be fairly startling in his dark face--like stars in a stormy
+sky.
+
+"Well, then, how do you like me?"
+
+"Monsieur confounds me. It's witchery. I cannot get used to him."
+
+"That's as I would have it," he returned, coming over to the bedside to
+arrange his treasures. "For if I look new to you, I think I may look so
+to the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur goes to the Hôtel de Lorraine as a jeweller?" I cried,
+enlightened.
+
+"Aye. And if the ladies do not crowd about me--" he broke off with a
+gesture, and put his trays back in his box.
+
+"Well, I wondered, monsieur. I wondered if we were going to sell
+ornaments to Peyrot."
+
+He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn Peyrot.
+He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him eating, cursed him
+drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting; cursed him summer, cursed
+him winter; cursed him young, cursed him old; living, dying, and dead. I
+inferred that the packet had not been recovered.
+
+"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne Femme, but
+Peyrot had vanished. So he galloped round to the Rue Tournelles, whither
+he had sent two of our men before him, but the bird was flown. He had
+been home half an hour before,--he left the inn just after us,--had
+paid his arrears of rent, surrendered his key, and taken away his chest,
+with all his worldly goods in it, on the shoulders of two porters, bound
+for parts unknown. Gilles is scouring Paris for him. Mordieu, I wish him
+luck!"
+
+His face betokened little hope of Gilles. We both kept chagrined
+silence.
+
+"And we thought him sleeping!" presently cried he.
+
+"Well," he added, rising, "that milk's spilt; no use crying over it.
+Plan a better venture; that's the only course. Monsieur is gone back to
+St. Denis to report to the king. Marry, he makes as little of these
+gates as if he were a tennis-ball and they the net. Time was when he
+thought he must plan and prepare, and know the captain of the watch, and
+go masked at midnight. He has got bravely over that now; he bounces in
+and out as easily as kiss my hand. I pray he may not try it once too
+often."
+
+"Mayenne dare not touch him."
+
+"What Mayenne may dare is not good betting. Monsieur thinks he dares
+not. Monsieur has come through so many perils of late, he is happily
+convinced he bears a charmed life. Félix, do you come with me to the
+Hôtel de Lorraine?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" I cried, bethinking myself that I had forgotten to
+dress.
+
+"Nay, you need not don these clothes," he interposed, with a look of
+wickedness which I could not interpret. "Wait; I'm back anon."
+
+He darted out of the room, to return speedily with an armful of apparel,
+which he threw on the bed.
+
+"Monsieur," I gasped in horror, "it's woman's gear!"
+
+"Verily."
+
+"Monsieur! you cannot mean me to wear this!"
+
+"I mean it precisely."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Félix," he laughed, "how else am I to take you? You were
+at pains to make yourself conspicuous in M. de Mayenne's salon; they
+will recognize you as quickly as me."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, put me in a wig, in cap and bells, an you like! I will be
+monsieur's clown, anything, only not this!"
+
+"I never heard of a jeweller accompanied by his clown. Nor have I any
+party-colour in my armoires. But since I have exerted myself to borrow
+this toggery,--and a fine, big lass is the owner, so I think it will
+fit,--you must wear it."
+
+I was like to burst with mortification; I stood there in dumb, agonized
+appeal.
+
+"Oh, well, then you need not go at all. If you go, you go as Félicie.
+But you may stay at home, if it likes you better."
+
+That settled me. I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not
+go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and
+clumsily in the murrain petticoats.
+
+There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and a white
+apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back collar, and a
+scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green tongue. I was soon
+in such a desperate tangle over these divers garments, so utterly
+muddled as to which to put on first, and which side forward, and which
+end up, and where and how by the grace of God to fasten them, that M.
+Étienne, with roars of laughter, came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted
+on stuffing the whole of my jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the
+proper curves, and to make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I
+was like to suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so
+that every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces
+from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and again,
+and the more it happened the more we laughed and the less he could dress
+me. I ached in every rib, and the tears were running down his cheeks,
+washing little clean channels in the stain.
+
+"Félix, this will never do," he gasped when at length he could speak.
+"Never after a carouse have I been so maudlin. Compose yourself, for the
+love of Heaven. Think of something serious; think of me! Think of
+Peyrot, think of Mayenne, think of Lucas. Think of what will happen to
+us now if Mayenne know us for ourselves."
+
+"Enough, monsieur," I said. "I am sobered."
+
+But even now that I held still we could not draw the last holes in the
+bodice-point nearly together.
+
+"Nay, monsieur, I can never wear it like this," I panted, when he had
+tied it as tight as he could. "I shall die, or I shall burst the seams."
+He had perforce to give me more room; he pulled the apron higher to
+cover gaps, and fastened a bunch of keys and a pocket at my waist. He
+set a brown wig on my head, nearly covered by a black mortier, with its
+wide scarf hanging down my back.
+
+"Hang me, but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried, proud of
+me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "Félix, you've no notion how
+handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the world when you contrived to
+be born a boy."
+
+"I thank my stars I was born a boy," I declared. "I wouldn't get into
+this toggery for any one else on earth. I tell monsieur that, flat."
+
+"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails spoil
+all."
+
+I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot.
+
+"Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?"
+
+"Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned.
+
+"No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make him
+writhe to lend them.
+
+"Constant's best," he promised, disappearing. It was as good as a play
+to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot, after a month
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages existed; or, more
+likely, he did not care to take the household into his confidence. He
+was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose, and shoes of red morocco,
+the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he brought a hand-mirror, for me
+to look on my beauty.
+
+"Nay, monsieur," I said with a sulk that started anew his laughter.
+"I'll not take it; I want not to see myself. But monsieur will do well
+to examine his own countenance."
+
+"Pardieu! I should say so," he cried. "I must e'en go repair myself; and
+you, Félix,--Félicie,--must be fed."
+
+I was in truth as hollow as a drum, yet I cried out that I had rather
+starve than venture into the kitchen.
+
+"You flatter yourself," he retorted. "You'd not be known. Old Jumel will
+give you the pick of the larder for a kiss," he roared in my sullen
+face, and added, relenting: "Well, then, I will send one of the lackeys
+up with a salver. The lazy beggars have naught else to do."
+
+I bolted the door after him, and when the man brought my tray, bade him
+set it down outside. He informed me through the panels that he would go
+drown himself before he would be content to lie slugabed the livelong
+day while his betters waited on him. I trembled for fear in his virtuous
+scorn he should take his fardel away again. But he had had his orders.
+When, after listening to his footsteps descending the stairs, I reached
+out a cautious arm, the tray was on the floor. The generous meat and
+wine put new heart into me; by the time my lord returned I was eager for
+the enterprise.
+
+"Have you finished?" he demanded. "Faith, I see you have. Then let us
+start; it grows late. The shadows, like good Mussulmans, are stretching
+to the east. I must catch the ladies in their chambers before supper.
+Come, we'll take the box between us."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I carry that on my shoulders."
+
+"What, my lass, on your dainty shoulders? Nay, 'twould make the
+townsfolk stare."
+
+I gnawed my lip in silence; he exclaimed:
+
+"Now, never have I seen a maid fresh from the convent blush so prettily.
+I'd give my right hand to walk you out past the guard-room."
+
+I shrank as a snail when you touch its horns. He cried:
+
+"Marry, but I will, though!"
+
+Now I, unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take refuge in;
+I might writhe, but I could not defend myself.
+
+"As you will, monsieur," I said, setting my teeth hard.
+
+"Nay, I dare not. Those fellows would follow us laughing to the doors of
+Lorraine House itself. I've told none of this prank; I have even
+contrived to send all the lackeys out of doors on fools' errands. We'll
+sneak out like thieves by the postern. Come, tread your wariest."
+
+On tiptoe, with the caution of malefactors, we crept from stair to
+stair, giggling under our breath like the callow lad and saucy lass we
+looked to be. We won in safety to the postern, and came out to face the
+terrible eye of the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_A double masquerade._
+
+
+"Félix, we are speaking in our own tongue. It is such lapses as these
+bring men to the gallows. Italian from this word, my girl."
+
+"Monsieur, I have no notion how to bear myself, what to say," I answered
+uneasily.
+
+"Say as little as you can. For, I confess, your voice and your hands
+give me pause; otherwise I would take you anywhere for a lass. Your part
+must be the shy maiden. My faith, you look the rôle; your cheeks are
+poppies! You will follow docile at my heels while I tell lies for two. I
+have the hope that the ladies will heed me and my jewels more than you."
+
+"Monsieur, could we not go safelier at night?"
+
+"I have thought of that. But at night the household gathers in the
+salon; we should run the gantlet of a hundred looks and tongues. While
+now, if we have luck, we may win to mademoiselle's own chamber--" He
+broke off abruptly, and walked along in a day-dream.
+
+"Well," he resumed presently, coming back to the needs of the moment,
+"let us know our names and station. I am Giovanni Rossini, son of the
+famous goldsmith of Florence; you, Giulietta, my sister. We came to
+Paris in the legate's train, trade being dull at home, the gentry having
+fled to the hills for the hot month. Of course you've never set foot out
+of France, Fé--Giulietta?"
+
+"Never out of St. Quentin till I came hither. But Father Francesco has
+talked to me much of his city of Florence."
+
+"Good; you can then make shift to answer a question or two if put to it.
+Your Italian, I swear, is of excellent quality. You speak French like
+the Picard you are, but Italian like a gentleman--that is to say, like a
+lady."
+
+"Monsieur," I bemoaned miserably, "I shall never come through it alive,
+never in the world. They will know me in the flick of an eye for a boy;
+I know they will. Why, the folk we are passing can see something wrong;
+they all are staring at me."
+
+"Of course they stare," he answered tranquilly. "I should think some
+wrong if they did not. Can your modesty never understand, my Giulietta,
+what a pretty lass you are?"
+
+He fell to laughing at my discomfort, and thus, he full of gay
+confidence, I full of misgiving, we came before the doors of the Hôtel
+de Lorraine.
+
+"Courage," he whispered to me. "Courage will conquer the devil himself.
+Put a good face on it and take the plunge." The next moment he was in
+the archway, deluging the sentry with his rapid Italian.
+
+"Nom d'un chien! What's all this? What are you after?" the man shouted
+at us, to make us understand the better. "Haven't you a word of honest
+French in your head?"
+
+M. Étienne, tapping his box, very brokenly, very laboriously stammered
+forth something about jewels for the ladies.
+
+"Get in with you, then."
+
+We were not slow to obey.
+
+The courtyard was deserted, nor did we see any one in the windows of the
+house, against which the afternoon sun struck hotly. To keep out his
+unwelcome rays, the house door was pushed almost shut. We paused a
+moment on the step, to listen to the voices of gossiping lackeys within,
+and then M. Étienne boldly knocked.
+
+There was a scurrying in the hall, as if half a dozen idlers were
+plunging into their doublets and running to their places. Then my good
+friend Pierre opened the door. In the row of underlings at his back I
+recognized the two who had taken part in my flogging. The cold sweat
+broke out upon me lest they in their turn should know me.
+
+M. Étienne looked from one to another with the childlike smile of his
+bare lips, demanding if any here spoke Italian.
+
+"I," answered Pierre himself. "Now, what may your errand be?"
+
+"Oh, it's soon told," M. Étienne cried volubly, as one delighted to find
+himself understood. "I am a jeweller from Florence; I am selling my
+wares in your great houses. I have but just sold a necklace to the
+Duchesse de Joyeuse; I crave permission to show my trinkets to the fair
+ladies here. But take me up to them, and they'll not make you repent
+it."
+
+"Go tell madame," Pierre bade one of his men, and turning again to us
+gave us kindly permission to set down our burden and wait.
+
+For incredible good luck, the heavy hangings were drawn over the sunny
+windows, making a soft twilight in the room. I sidled over to a bench in
+the far corner and was feeling almost safe, when Pierre--beshrew
+him!--called attention to me.
+
+"Now, that is a heavy box for a maid to help lug. Do you make the lasses
+do porters' work, you Florentines?"
+
+"But I am a stranger here," M. Étienne explained. "Did I hire a porter,
+how am I to tell an honest one? Belike he might run off with all my
+treasures, and where is poor Giovanni then? Besides, it were cruel to
+leave my little sister in our lodging, not a soul to speak to, the long
+day through. There is none where we lodge knows Italian, as you do so
+like an angel, Sir Master of the Household."
+
+Now, Pierre was no more maître d'hôtel than I was, but that did not
+dampen his pleasure to be called so. He sat down on the bench by M.
+Étienne.
+
+"How came you two to be in Paris?" he asked.
+
+My lord proceeded to tell him I know not what glib and convincing
+farrago, with every excellence, I made no doubt, of accent and gesture.
+But I could not listen; I had affairs of my own by this time. The
+lackeys had come up close round me, more interested in me than in my
+brother, and the same Jean who had held me for my beating, who had
+wanted my coat stripped off me that I might be whacked to bleed, now
+said:
+
+"I'll warrant you're hot and tired and thirsty, mademoiselle, for all
+you look as fresh as cress. Will you drink a cup of wine if I fetch it?"
+
+I had kept my eyes on the ground from the first moment of encounter, in
+mortal dread to look these men in the face; but now, gaining courage, I
+raised my glance and smiled at him bashfully, and faltered that I did
+not understand.
+
+He understood the sense, if not the words, of my answer, and repeated
+his offer, slowly, loudly. I strove to look as blank as the wall, and
+shook my head gently and helplessly, and turned an inquiring gaze to the
+others, as if beseeching them to interpret. One of the fellows clapped
+Jean on the shoulder with a roar of laughter.
+
+"A fall, a fall!" he shouted. "Here's the all-conquering Jean Marchand
+tripped up for once. He thinks nothing that wears petticoats can
+withstand him, but here's a maid that hasn't a word to throw at him."
+
+"Pshaw! she doesn't understand me," Jean returned, undaunted, and
+promptly pointed a finger at my mouth and then raised his fist to his
+own, with sucks and gulps. I allowed myself to comprehend then. I smiled
+in as coquettish a fashion as I could contrive, and glanced on the
+ground, and slowly looked up again and nodded.
+
+The men burst into loud applause.
+
+"Good old Jean! Jean wins. Well played, Jean! Vive Jean!"
+
+Jean, flushed with triumph, ran off on his errand, while I thought of
+Margot, the steward's daughter, at home, and tried to recollect every
+air and grace I had ever seen her flaunt before us lads. It was not bad
+fun, this. I hid my hands under my apron and spoke not at all, but
+sighed and smiled and blushed under their stares like any fine lady.
+Once in one's life, for one hour, it is rather amusing to be a girl. But
+that is quite long enough, say I.
+
+Jean came again directly with a great silver tankard.
+
+"Burgundy, pardieu!" cried one of his mates, sticking his nose into the
+pot as it passed him, "and full! Ciel, you must think your lass has a
+head."
+
+"Oh, I shall drink with her," Jean answered.
+
+I put out my hand for the tankard, running the risk of my big paw's
+betraying me, resolved that he should not drink with me of that draught,
+when of a sudden he leaned over to snatch a kiss. I dodged him, more
+frightened than the shyest maid. Though in this half-light I might
+perfectly look a girl, I could not believe I should kiss like one. In a
+panic, I fled from Jean to my master's side.
+
+M. Étienne, wheeling about, came near to laughing out in my face, when
+he remembered his part and played it with a zeal that was like to undo
+us. He sprang to his feet, drawing his dagger.
+
+"Who insults my sister?" he shouted. "Who is the dog does this!"
+
+They were on him, wrenching the knife from his hand, wrenching his lame
+arm at the same time so painfully that he gasped. I was scared chill; I
+knew if they mishandled him they would brush the wig off.
+
+"Mind your manners, sirrah!" Jean cried.
+
+Monsieur's ardour vanished; a gentle, appealing smile spread over his
+face.
+
+"I cry your pardon, sir," he said to Jean; then turning to Pierre, "This
+messer does not understand me. But tell him, I beg you, I crave his good
+pardon. I was but angered for a moment that any should think to touch my
+little sister. I meant no harm."
+
+"Nor he," Pierre retorted. "A kiss, forsooth! What do you expect with a
+handsome lass like that? If you will take her about--"
+
+"Madame says the jeweller fellow is to come up," our messenger
+announced, returning.
+
+My lord besought Pierre:
+
+"My knife? I may have my knife? By the beard of St. Peter, I swear to
+you, I meant no harm with it. I drew it in jest."
+
+Now, this, which was the sole true statement he had made since our
+arrival, was the only one Pierre did not quite believe. He took the
+knife from Jean, but he hesitated to hand it over to its owner.
+
+"No," he said; "you were angry enough. I know your Italian temper. I'm
+thinking I'll keep this little toy of yours till you come down."
+
+"Very well, Sir Majordomo," M. Étienne rejoined indifferently, "so be it
+you give it to me when I go." He grasped the handle of the box, and we
+followed our guide up the stair, my master offering me the comforting
+assurance:
+
+"It really matters not in the least, for if we be caught the dagger's
+not yet forged can save us."
+
+We were ushered into a large, fair chamber hung with arras, the carpet
+under our feet deep and soft as moss. At one side stood the bed, raised
+on its dais; opposite were the windows, the dressing-table between them,
+covered with scent-bottles and boxes, brushes and combs, very glittering
+and grand. Fluttering about the room were some half-dozen fine dames and
+demoiselles, brave in silks and jewels. Among them I was quick to
+recognize Mme. de Mayenne, and I thought I knew vaguely one or two other
+faces as those I had seen before about her. I started presently to
+discover the little Mlle. de Tavanne: that night she had worn sky-colour
+and now she wore rose, but there was no mistaking her saucy face.
+
+We set our box on a table, as the duchess bade us, and I helped M.
+Étienne to lay out its contents, which done, I retired to the
+background, well content to leave the brunt of the business to him. It
+was as he prophesied: they paid me no heed whatever. He was smoothly
+launched on the third relating of his tale; I trow by this time he
+almost believed it himself. Certes, he never faltered, but rattled on as
+if he had two tongues, telling in confidential tone of our father and
+mother, our little brothers and sisters at home in Florence; our journey
+with the legate, his kindness and care of us (I hoped that dignitary
+would not walk in just now to pay his respects to madame la générale);
+of our arrival in Paris, and our wonder and delight at the city's
+grandeur, the like of which was not to be found in Italy; and, last, but
+not least, he had much to say, with an innocent, wide-eyed gravity, in
+praise of the ladies of Paris, so beautiful, so witty, so generous! They
+were all crowding around him, calling him pretty boy, laughing at his
+compliments, handling and exclaiming over his trinkets, trying the
+effect of a buckle or a bracelet, preening and cooing like
+bright-breasted pigeons about the corn-thrower. It was as pretty a sight
+as ever I beheld, but it was not to smile at such that we had risked our
+heads. Of Mlle. de Montluc there was no sign.
+
+No one was marking me, and I wondered if I might not slip out unseen and
+make my way to mademoiselle's chamber. I knew she lodged on this story,
+near the back of the house, in a room overlooking the little street and
+having a turret-window. But I was somewhat doubtful of my skill to find
+it through the winding corridors of a great palace. I was more than
+likely to meet some one who would question my purpose, and what answer
+could I make? I scarce dared say I was seeking mademoiselle. I am not
+ready at explanations, like M. le Comte.
+
+Yet here were the golden moments flying and our cause no further
+advanced. Should I leave it all to M. Étienne, trusting that when he had
+made his sales here he would be permitted to seek out the other ladies
+of the house? Or should I strive to aid him? Could I win in safety to
+mademoiselle's chamber, what a feat!
+
+It so irked me to be doing nothing that I was on the very point of
+gingerly disappearing when one of the ladies, she with the yellow curls,
+the prettiest of them all, turned suddenly from the group, calling
+clearly:
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+Our hearts stood still--mine did, and I can vouch for his--as the heavy
+window-curtain swayed aside and she came forth.
+
+She came listlessly. Her hair sweeping against her cheek was ebony on
+snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were dark rings, like
+the smears of an inky finger. M. Étienne let fall the bracelet he was
+holding, staring at her oblivious of aught else, his brows knotted in
+distress, his face afire with love and sympathy. He made a step forward;
+I thought him about to catch her in his arms, when he recollected
+himself and dropped on his knees to grope for the fallen trinket.
+
+"You wanted me, madame?" she asked Mme. de Mayenne.
+
+"No," said the duchess, with a tartness of voice she seemed to reserve
+for Mlle. de Montluc; "'twas Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"It was I," the fair-haired beauty answered in the same breath. "I want
+you to stop moping over there in the corner. Come look at these baubles
+and see if they cannot bring a sparkle to your eye. Fie, Lorance! The
+having too many lovers is nothing to cry about. It is an affliction many
+and many a lady would give her ears to undergo."
+
+"Take heart o' grace, Lorance!" cried Mlle. de Tavanne. "If you go on
+looking as you look to-day, you'll not long be troubled by lovers."
+
+She made no answer to either, but stood there passively till it might be
+their pleasure to have done with her, with a patient weariness that it
+wrung the heart to see.
+
+"Here's a chain would become you vastly, Lorance," Mme. de Montpensier
+went on, friendlily enough, in her brisk and careless voice. "Let me try
+it on your neck. You can easily coax Paul or some one to buy it for
+you."
+
+She fumbled over the clasp. M. Étienne, with a "Permit me, madame," took
+it boldly from her hand and hooked it himself about mademoiselle's neck.
+He delayed longer than he need over the fastening of it, looking with
+burning intentness straight into her face. She lifted her eyes to his
+with a quick frown of displeasure, drawing herself back; then all at
+once the colour waved across her face like the dawn flush over a gray
+sky. She blushed to her very hair, to her very ruff. Then the red
+vanished as quickly as it had come; she clutched at her bosom, on the
+verge of a swoon.
+
+He threw out his arms to catch her. Instantly she stepped aside, and,
+turning with a little unsteady laugh to the lady at whose elbow she
+found herself, asked:
+
+"Does it become me, madame?"
+
+The little scene had passed so quickly that it seemed none had marked
+it. Mademoiselle had stood a little out of the group, monsieur with his
+back to it, and the ladies were busy over the jewels. She whom
+mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed, loud-voiced lady, older than
+any of the others, answered her bluntly:
+
+"You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for anything to
+become you."
+
+"What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly demanded.
+"Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at your son's
+bedside."
+
+Mme. de Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest, a sort
+of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne bade sharply,
+"Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger, flamed out on her and
+Mlle. de Montluc equally:
+
+"You impudent minxes! 'Tis enough that one of you should bring my son
+to his death, without the other making a mock of it."
+
+"He's not dying," began the irrepressible Blanche de Tavanne, her eyes
+twinkling with mischief; but whatever naughty answer was on her tongue,
+our mademoiselle's deeper voice overbore her:
+
+"I am guiltless of the charge, madame. It was through no wish of mine
+that your son, with half the guard at his back, set on one wounded man."
+
+"I'll warrant it was not," muttered Mlle. Blanche.
+
+"Mar has turned traitor, and deserves nothing so well as to be spitted
+in the dark," Mme. de Brie cried out.
+
+Mademoiselle waited an instant, with flashing eyes meeting madame's. She
+had spoken hotly before, but now, in the face of the other's passion,
+she held herself steady.
+
+"Your charge is as false, madame, as your wish is cruel. Do you go to
+vespers and come home to say such things? M. de Mar is no traitor; he
+was never pledged to us, and may go over to Navarre when he will."
+
+It was quietly spoken, but the blue lightning of her eyes was too much
+for Mme. de Brie. She opened her mouth to retort, faltered, dropped her
+eyes, and finally turned away, yet seething, to feign interest in the
+trinkets. It was a rout.
+
+"Then you are the traitor, Lorance," chimed the silvery tones of Mme. de
+Montpensier. "It is not denied that M. de Mar has gone over to the
+enemy; therefore are you the traitor to have intercourse with him."
+
+She spoke without heat, without any appearance of ill feeling. Hers was
+merely the desire, for the fun of it, to keep the flurry going. But
+mademoiselle answered seriously, with the fleetingest glance at M. le
+Comte, where he, forgetting he knew no French, feasted his eyes
+recklessly on her, pitying, applauding, adoring her. I went softly
+around the group to pull his sleeve; we were lost if any turned to see
+him.
+
+"Madame," mademoiselle addressed her cousin of Montpensier, speaking
+particularly clearly and distinctly, "I mean ever to be loyal to my
+house. I came here a penniless orphan to the care of my kinsman Mayenne;
+and he has always been to me generous and loving--"
+
+"If not madame," murmured Mile. Blanche to herself.
+
+"--as I in my turn have been loving and obedient. It was only two nights
+ago he told me M. de Mar must be as dead to me. Since then I have held
+no intercourse with him. Last night he came under my window; I was not
+in my chamber, as you know. I knew naught of the affair till M. de Brie
+was brought in bleeding. It was not by my will M. de Mar came here--it
+was a misery to me. I sent him word by his boy that other night to leave
+Paris; I implored him to leave Paris. If, instead, he comes here, he
+racks my heart. It is no joy to me, no triumph to me, but a bitter
+distress, that any honest gentleman should risk his life in a vain and
+empty quest. M. de Mar must go his ways, as I must go mine. Should he
+ever make attempt to reach me again, and could I speak to him, I should
+tell him just what I have said now to you."
+
+I pressed monsieur's hand in the endeavour to bring him back to sense;
+he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's earnestness had
+drawn all eyes.
+
+"Pshaw, Lorance! banish these tragedy airs!" Mme. de Montpensier
+rejoined, her lightness little touched. A wounded bird falls by the
+rippling water, but the ripples tinkle on. "M. de Mar is not likely ever
+to venture here again; he had too warm a welcome last night. My faith,
+he may be dead by this time--dead to all as well as to you. After he
+vanished into Ferou's house, no one seems to know what happened. Has
+Charles told you, my sister?"
+
+"Ferou gave him up, of course," Mme. de Mayenne answered. "Monsieur has
+done what seemed to him proper."
+
+"You are darkly mysterious, sister."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne raised her eyebrows and smiled, as one solemnly pledged
+to say no more. She could not, indeed, say more, knowing nothing
+whatever about it. Our mademoiselle spoke in a low voice, looking
+straight before her:
+
+"If Heaven willed that he escaped last night, I pray he may leave the
+city. I pray he may never try to see me more. I pray he may depart
+instantly--at once."
+
+"I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more of him,"
+Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she herself had
+started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but all this solemn
+prating about him is duller than a sermon." She raised a dainty hand
+behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames, let us get back to our
+purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these jeweller folk know no French."
+
+M. Étienne was himself again, all smiles and quick pleasantries. I
+slipped off to my post in the background, trying to get out of the eye
+of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me the last five minutes in
+a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so suspicious, so probing, was it.
+On my retreat she did indeed move her gaze from me, but only to watch M.
+le Comte as a hound watches a thicket. It was a miracle that none had
+pounced on him before, so reckless had he been. I perceived with
+sickening certainty that Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss.
+She fairly bristled with suspicion, with knowledge. I waited from
+breathless moment to moment for announcement. There was nothing to be
+done; she held us in the hollow of her hand. We could not flee, we could
+not fight. We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then
+submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.
+
+Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak. Hope flowed back to
+me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape. I wondered how high were
+the windows from the ground.
+
+As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached herself
+from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.
+
+It was thirty feet to the stones below--sure death that way. But she had
+given us a respite; something might yet be done. I seized M. Étienne's
+arm in a grip that should tell him how serious was our pass.
+Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue, I bespoke him:
+
+"Brother, it grows late. We must go. It will soon be dark. We must go
+now--now!"
+
+He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could answer,
+Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh:
+
+"And do you fear the dark, wench? Marry, you look as if you could take
+care of yourself."
+
+"Nay, madame," I protested, "but the box. Come, Giovanni. If we linger,
+we may be robbed in the dark streets."
+
+"Why, my sister, where are your manners?" he retorted, striving to shake
+me off. "The ladies have not yet dismissed me."
+
+"We shall be robbed of the box," I persisted; "and the night air is bad
+for your health, my Nino. If you stay longer you will have trouble in
+the throat."
+
+He looked at me hard. I tried to make my eyes tell him that my fear was
+no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril here and now.
+He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme. de Montpensier:
+
+"Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves the maid.
+I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells also a beautiful
+young captain--beautiful as the day. It's little of his time he spends
+at home, but we have observed that he comes every evening to array
+himself grandly for supper at some one's palace. We count our day lost
+an we cannot meet him, by accident, on the stairs."
+
+They all laughed. I, with my cheeks burning like any silly maid's, set
+to work to put up our scattered wares. But despair weighed me down; if
+we had to remember ceremony we were lost. The ladies were protesting,
+declaring they had not made their bargains, and monsieur was smirking
+and bowing, as if he had the whole night before him. Our one chance was
+to bolt; to charge past the sentry and flee as from the devil. I pulled
+monsieur's arm again, and muttered in his ear:
+
+"She knows us; she's gone to tell. We must run for it."
+
+At this moment there arose from down the corridor piercing shriek on
+shriek, the howls of a young child frantic with rage and terror. At the
+same time sounded other different cries, wild, outlandish chattering.
+
+"The baby! It's Toto! Oh, ciel!" Mme. de Mayenne gasped. "Help,
+mesdames!" She rushed from the room, Mme. de Montpensier at her heels,
+all the rest following after.
+
+All, that is, but one. Mlle. de Montluc started as the rest, but at the
+threshold paused to let them pass. She flung the door to behind them,
+and ran back to monsieur, her face drawn with terror, her hand
+outstretched.
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur!" she panted. "Go! you must go!"
+
+He seized her hand in both of his.
+
+"O Lorance! Lorance!"
+
+She laid her left hand on his for emphasis.
+
+"Go! go! An you love me, go!"
+
+For answer he fell on his knees before her, covering those sweet hands
+with kisses.
+
+The door was flung open; Mlle. de Tavanne stood on the threshold. They
+started apart, monsieur leaping to his feet, mademoiselle springing back
+with choking cry. But it was too late; she had seen us.
+
+She was rosy with running, her little face brimming over with mischief.
+She flitted into the room, crying:
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was M. de Mar! The gray eyes! M. le Duc has done
+with him as he thought proper, forsooth! Well, I have done as I thought
+proper. I unchained Mme. de Montpensier's monkey and threw him into the
+nursery, where he's scared the baby nearly into spasms. Toto carried the
+cloth-of-gold coverlet up on top of the tester, where he's picking it to
+pieces, the darling! They won't be back--you're safe for a while, my
+children. I'll keep watch for you. Make good use of your time. Kiss her
+well, monsieur."
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are an angel."
+
+"No, she is the angel," Mlle. Blanche laughed back at him. "I'm but your
+warder. Have no fear; I'll keep good watch. Here, you in the petticoats,
+that were a boy the other night, go to the farther door. Mme. de Nemours
+takes her nap in the second room beyond. You watch that door; I'll watch
+the corridor. Farewell, my children! Peste! think you Blanche de Tavanne
+is so badly off for lovers that she need grudge you yours, Lorance?"
+
+She danced out of the door, while I ran across to my station, Mlle. de
+Montluc standing bewildered, ardent, grateful, half laughing, half in
+tears.
+
+"Lorance, Lorance!" M. Étienne murmured tremulously. "She said I should
+kiss you--"
+
+I put my fingers in my ears and then took them out again, for if my ears
+were sealed, how was I to hear Mme. de Nemours approaching? But I admit
+I should have kept my eyes glued to the crack of the door; that I ever
+turned them is my shame. I have no business to know that mademoiselle
+bowed her face upon her lover's shoulder, her hand clasping his neck,
+silent, motionless. He pressed his cheek against her hair, holding her
+close; neither had any will to move or speak. It seemed they were well
+content to stand so the rest of their lives.
+
+Mademoiselle was the first to stir; she raised her head and strove to
+break away from his locked arms.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur! This is madness! You must go!"
+
+"Are you sorry I came?" he demanded vibrantly. "Are you sorry, Lorance?"
+
+His eyes held hers; she threw pretence to the winds.
+
+"No, monsieur; I am glad. For if we never meet again, we have had this."
+
+"Aye. If I die to-night, I have had to-day."
+
+Their voices were like the rune of the heart of the forest, like the
+music of deep streams. I turned away my head ashamed, and strove to
+think of nothing but the waking of Mme. de Nemours.
+
+"I thought you dead," she moaned, her voice muffled against his cheek.
+"No one would tell me what happened last night. I could not devise any
+way of escape for you--"
+
+"There is a tunnel from Ferou's house to the Rue de la Soierie. His
+mother--merciful angel--let me through."
+
+"And you were not hurt?"
+
+"Not a scratch, ma mie."
+
+"But the wound before? Félix said--"
+
+"I was put out of combat the night I got it," he explained earnestly,
+troubled even now because he had not obeyed her summons. "I was dizzy; I
+could not walk."
+
+"But now, monsieur? Does it heal?"
+
+"It is well--almost. 'Twas but a slash on the arm."
+
+"Oh, then have I no anxiety," she murmured, with a smile that twinkled
+across her lips and was gone. "I cannot perceive you to be disabled,
+monsieur."
+
+"My sweeting!" he laughed out. "If I cannot hold a sword yet, I can hold
+my love."
+
+"But you must not, monsieur," she cried, fear, that had slept a moment,
+springing on her again. "You must go, and this instant, while the others
+are yet away. I knew you, Blanche knew you; some other will. Oh, go, go,
+I implore you!"
+
+"If you will come with me."
+
+She made no answer, save to look at him as at a madman.
+
+"Nay, I mean not now, past the sentry. I am not so crazy as that. But
+you will slip out, you will find a way, and come to me."
+
+Silently, sadly, she shook her head. His arms loosened, and she freed
+herself from him. But instantly he was close on her again.
+
+"But you must! you will, you must! Ah, Lorance, my father is won over.
+He bids me win you. He has sworn to welcome you; when he sees you he
+will be your slave."
+
+"But my cousin Mayenne is not won over."
+
+"Devil fly away with your cousin Mayenne!" M. Étienne retorted with a
+vehemence that made me shudder, lest the walls have ears.
+
+"Ah, you are free to say that, monsieur, but I am not. I am of his
+blood, and dwell in his house, and eat at his board."
+
+He was looking at her with a passionate ardour, grasping her actual
+words less than their import of refusal.
+
+"Are you afraid?" he cried. "Are you frightened, heart-root of mine? You
+need not be, mignonne. You can contrive to slip from the house--Mlle. de
+Tavanne will help you. Once in the street, I will meet you; I will carry
+you home to hold you against all the world."
+
+"It is not that," she answered.
+
+"Am I your fear?" he cried quickly. "Ah, Lorance, my Lorance, you need
+not. I love you as I love the Queen of Heaven."
+
+"Ah, hush!"
+
+"As I love the Queen of Heaven. I will as soon do sacrilege toward her
+as ill to you."
+
+He dropped on his knees before her, kissing the hem of her gown. She
+stood looking down on his bowed head with a tenderness that seemed to
+infold him as with a mantle.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers, still kneeling at her feet.
+
+"Lorance, will you come with me?"
+
+She was silent a moment, with heaving breast and face a-quiver.
+
+"Monsieur, I am sworn. That night when Félix came, when I was in deadly
+terror for him and for you, Étienne, I promised my lord, an he would
+lift his hand from you, to obey him in all things. He bade me never
+again to hold intercourse with you--alack, I am already forsworn! But I
+cannot--"
+
+He leaped to his feet, crying out:
+
+"Lorance, he was the first forsworn! For he did move against me--"
+
+"He told you--the warning went through Félix--that if you tried to reach
+me he would crush you as a buzzing fly. Oh, monsieur, I implored you to
+leave Paris! You are not kind to me, you are cruel, when you venture
+here."
+
+"You are cruel to me, Lorance."
+
+Sighing, she turned from him, hiding her face in her hands.
+
+"Mayenne has not kept faith with you!" monsieur went on vehemently. "He
+has broken his oath. I mean not last night. I had my warning; the attack
+was provoked. But yesterday in the afternoon, before I made the attempt
+to see you, he sent to arrest me for the murder of the lackey Pontou."
+
+"Paul's deed!" she cried in white surprise. "He spoke of it--we heard,
+Félix and I. What, monsieur! sent to arrest you? But you are here."
+
+"They missed me. They took by mistake Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"He was not here last night!" she cried. "Mayenne was demanding him of
+me."
+
+"Then he slept pleasantly in the Bastille. May he never look on the
+outside of its walls again!"
+
+"But he will, he does. He must be free by this time; they cannot keep
+Mayenne's nephew in the Bastille. And oh, if he hated you before, how he
+will hate you now! Oh, Étienne, if you love me, go! Go to your own camp,
+your own side, at St. Denis. There are you safe. Here in Paris you may
+not draw a tranquil breath."
+
+"And shall I flee my dangers? Shall I run, in the face of my peril?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is more to me
+than tongue can tell."
+
+"My love, my love!" He snatched her into his arms; she held away from
+him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching hands on
+his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, you will go! you will go!"
+
+"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way! Only to
+meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates
+together--leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis
+keep our honeymoon."
+
+"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a
+month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League.
+Is that true?"
+
+"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love
+for you. I swear to you--"
+
+"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me. Your
+house stands against us; you would not desert your house. Am I then to
+be false to mine?"
+
+"A woman belongs to her husband's house."
+
+"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you are full
+of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father before me, in the
+shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our
+masters, our friends. When I was orphaned young, and penniless because
+King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my
+cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the
+house. Am I to turn traitor now?"
+
+"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.
+
+"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"
+
+She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her lips to
+monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his arms. I was
+at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets, he with shaking
+fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.
+
+The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de Montpensier alone
+conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's face was hot and angry,
+and bore marks of tears. Not in this room only had a combat raged.
+
+"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying
+vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she had
+not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither again."
+
+"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the ladies. "You
+have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too forbearing, too
+patient under many presumptions. One would suppose the mistress here to
+be Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"I will show who is mistress here," the Duchesse de Mayenne retorted.
+Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way softly to the
+door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon her:
+
+"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to the rescue
+of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be eaten by the
+beasts for aught you care, while you prink over trinkets."
+
+Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the whirl of
+her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little Tavanne came
+gallantly to the rescue:
+
+"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely safe;
+Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's rich
+accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her
+belongings.
+
+"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said with
+relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite right,
+Lorance."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_Within the spider's web._
+
+
+Mademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts with her.
+Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier wished than
+accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of bargaining. Mme.
+de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet, Mme. de Brie wanted a
+vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of shoe-buckles. M. Étienne developed a
+recklessness about prices that would have whitened the hair of a
+goldsmith father; I thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious
+of such prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the
+quick settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with
+longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme. de
+Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that no one
+was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine enough for a
+coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking madame for her
+reminder, with the gratitude of victims snatched from an awful fate. We
+were commanded to bundle out, which with all alacrity we did.
+
+Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I had been
+coming in. As we passed, lackey-led, through the long corridors, I had
+ease enough of mind to enable me to take my bearings, and to whisper to
+my master, "That door yonder is the door of the council-room, where I
+was." Even as I spoke the door opened, two gentlemen appearing at the
+threshold. One was a stranger; the other was Mayenne.
+
+Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood a moment
+or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his farewells, and
+went off down the staircase.
+
+Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up the
+passage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of merchandise:
+
+"What have you there, Louis?"
+
+"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just dismissed
+him."
+
+He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at length said
+to M. le Comte:
+
+"I will look at your wares."
+
+M. Étienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing his Highness
+that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.
+
+"How came you in Paris, then?"
+
+M. Étienne for the fourth time went through with his tale. I think this
+time he must have trembled over it. My Lord Mayenne had not the
+reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we knew, he might be
+informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris
+this year. He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to
+himself the number of monsieur's lies. But if M. Étienne trembled in his
+soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At
+its finish Mayenne said:
+
+"Come in here."
+
+The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his Grace of
+Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the window where he had
+sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my teeth to keep them from
+chattering together. Not Grammont's brutality, not Lucas's venom, not
+Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly
+as did Mayenne's amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I
+entered the tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I
+could not see. Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a
+way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over the
+edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look through
+iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see clearly that
+Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as placid as a summer day,
+turning over the contents of the box, showing little interest in us,
+much in our wares, every now and then speaking a generous word of praise
+or asking a friendly question. He was the very model of the gracious
+prince; the humble tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have
+worshipfully loved him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew
+us; that he was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he
+would walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab
+us.
+
+Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I should have
+braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would have been
+bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the uncertainty that was so
+heart-shaking--like crossing a morass in the dark. We might be on the
+safe path; we might with every step be wandering away farther and
+farther into the treacherous bog; there was no way to tell. Mayenne was
+quite the man to be kindly patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich
+present for a friend. He was also the man to sit in the presence of his
+enemy, unbetraying, tranquil, assured, waiting. It seemed to me that in
+a few minutes more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I
+am Félix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"
+
+But before I had verily come to this, something happened to change the
+situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the door after him,
+Lucas.
+
+M. Étienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into the embrasure of
+the window, where we stood in plain sight but with our faces blotted out
+against the light. Mayenne looked up from two rings he was comparing,
+one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came rapidly across the room.
+
+"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost believe
+myself back in night before last."
+
+"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting half from
+hurry, half from wrath.
+
+"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on indifferently,
+his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you have used your time
+profitably."
+
+"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly, arming
+himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a moment he
+had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily into the room.
+He was once more the Lucas who had entered that other night, nonchalant,
+mocking.
+
+"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a bracelet from
+the tray.
+
+The close kinship of these men betrayed itself in nothing so sharply as
+in their unerring instinct for annoying each other. Had Lucas
+volunteered explanation for his absence, Mayenne would not have listened
+to it; but as he withheld it, the duke demanded brusquely:
+
+"Well, do you give an account of yourself? You had better."
+
+Lucas repeated the tactics which he had found such good entertainment
+before. He looked with raised eyebrows toward us.
+
+"You would not have me speak before these vermin, uncle?"
+
+"These vermin understand no French," Mayenne made answer. "But do as it
+likes you. It is nothing to me."
+
+My master pinched my hand. Mayenne did not know us! After all, he was
+what M. Étienne had called him--a man, neither god nor devil. He could
+make mistakes like the rest of us. For once he had been caught napping.
+
+Lucas leaned back in his chair with a meditative air, as if idly
+wondering whether to speak or not. In his place I should not have
+wondered one moment. Had Mayenne assured me in that quiet tone that he
+cared nothing whether I spoke, I should scarce have been able to utter
+my words fast enough. But there was so strange a twist in Lucas's nature
+that he must sometimes thwart his own interests, value his caprice above
+his prosperity. Also, in this case his story was no triumphant one. But
+at length he did begin it:
+
+"I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday Étienne de Mar
+murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Was that your errand?" Mayenne said, looking up in slow surprise. "My
+faith! your oaths to Lorance trouble you little."
+
+Lucas started forward sharply. "Do you tell me you did not know my
+purpose?"
+
+"I knew, of course, that you were up to some warlockry," Mayenne
+answered; "I did not concern myself to discover what."
+
+"There speaks the general! There speaks the gentleman!" Lucas cried out.
+"A general hangs a spy, yet he profits by spying. The spy runs the
+risks, incurs the shames; the general sits in his tent, his honour
+untarnished, pocketing all the glory. Faugh, you gentlemen! You will not
+do dirty work, but you will have it done for you. You sit at home with
+clean hands and eyes that see not, while we go forth to serve you. You
+are the Duke of Mayenne. I am your bastard nephew, living on your
+favour. But you go too far when you sneer at my smirches."
+
+He was on his feet, standing over Mayenne, his face blazing. M. Étienne
+made an instinctive step forward, thinking him about to knife the duke.
+But Mayenne, as we well knew, was no craven.
+
+"Be a little quieter, Paul," he said, unmoved. "You will have the guard
+in, in a moment."
+
+Lucas held absolutely still for a second. So did Mayenne. He knew that
+Lucas, standing, could stab quicker than he defend. He sat there with
+both hands on the table, looking composedly up at his nephew. Lucas
+flung away across the room.
+
+"I shall have dismissed these people directly," Mayenne continued. "Then
+you can tell me your tale."
+
+"I can tell it now in two words," Lucas answered, coming abruptly back.
+"Belin signed the warrant, and sent a young ass of the burgher guard
+after Mar. I attended to some affairs of my own. Then after a time I
+went round to the Trois Lanternes to see if they had got him. He was not
+there--only that cub of a boy of his. When I came in, he swore, the
+innkeeper swore, the whole crew swore, I was Mar. The fool of an officer
+arrested me."
+
+I expected Mayenne to burst out laughing in Lucas's chagrined face. But
+instead he seemed less struck with his nephew's misfortunes than with
+some other aspect of the affair. He said slowly:
+
+"You told Belin this arrest was my desire?"
+
+"I may have implied something of the sort."
+
+"You repeated it to the arresting officer before Mar's boy!"
+
+"I had no time to say anything before they hustled me off," Lucas
+exclaimed. "Mille tonnerres! Never had any man such luck as I. It's
+enough to make me sign papers with the devil."
+
+"Mar would believe I had broken faith with him?"
+
+"I dare say. One isn't responsible for what Mar believes," Lucas
+answered carelessly.
+
+Mayenne was silent, with knit brows, drumming his hand on the table.
+Lucas went on with the tale of his woes:
+
+"At the Bastille, I ordered the commissary to send to you. He did not;
+he sent to Belin. Belin was busy, didn't understand the message,
+wouldn't be bothered. I lay in my cell like a mouse in a trap till an
+hour agone, when at last he saw fit to appear--damn him!"
+
+Mayenne fell to laughing. Lucas cried out:
+
+"When they arrested me my first thought was that this was your work."
+
+"In that case, how should you be free now?"
+
+"You found you needed me."
+
+"You are twice wrong, Paul. For I knew nothing of your arrest. Nor do I
+think I need you. Pardieu! you succeed too badly to give me confidence."
+
+Lucas stood glowering, gnawing his lip, picturing the chagrin, the angry
+reproaches, the justifications he did not utter. I am certain he pitied
+himself as the sport of fate and of tyrants, the most shamefully used
+of mortal men. And so long as he aspired to the hand of Mayenne's ward,
+so long was he helpless under Mayenne's will.
+
+"'Twas pity," Mayenne said reflectively, "that you thought best to be
+absent last night. Had you been here, you had had sport. Your young
+friend Mar came to sing under his lady's window."
+
+"Saw she him?" Lucas cried sharply.
+
+"How should I know? She does not confide in me."
+
+"You took care to find out!" Lucas cried, knowing he was being badgered,
+yet powerless to keep himself from writhing.
+
+"I may have."
+
+"Did she see him?" Lucas demanded again, the heavy lines of hatred and
+jealousy searing his face.
+
+"No credit to you if she did not. You accomplish singularly little to
+harass M. de Mar in his love-making. You deserve that she should have
+seen him. But, as a matter of fact, she did not. She was in the chapel
+with madame."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"François de Brie--now there is a youngster, Paul," Mayenne interrupted
+himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of your cleverness; but he
+has the advantage of being on the spot when needed. Desiring a word with
+mademoiselle, he betook himself to her chamber. She was not there, but
+Mar was warbling under the window."
+
+"Brie?"
+
+"Brie bestirred himself. He sent two of the guard round behind the
+house to cut off the retreat, while he and Latour attacked from the
+front."
+
+"Mar's killed?" Lucas cried. "He's killed!"
+
+"By no means," answered Mayenne. "He got away."
+
+Before he could explain further,--if he meant to,--the door opened, and
+Mlle. de Montluc came in.
+
+Her eyes travelled first to us, in anxiety; then with relief to Mayenne,
+sitting over the jewels; last, to Lucas, with startlement. She advanced
+without hesitation to the duke.
+
+"I am come, monsieur, to fetch you to supper."
+
+"Pardieu, Lorance!" Mayenne exclaimed, "you show me a different face
+from that of dinner-time." Indeed, so she did, for her eyes were shining
+with excitement, while the colour that M. Étienne had kissed into them
+still flushed her cheeks.
+
+"If I do," she made quick answer, "it is because, the more I think on
+it, the surer I grow that my loving cousin will not break my heart."
+
+"I want a word with you, Lorance," Mayenne said quietly.
+
+"As many as you like, monsieur," she replied promptly. "But will you not
+send these creatures from the room first?"
+
+"Do you include your cousin Paul in that term?"
+
+"I meant these jewellers. But since you suggest it, perhaps it would be
+as well for Paul to go."
+
+"You hear your orders, Paul."
+
+"Aye, I hear and I disobey," Lucas retorted. "Mademoiselle, I take too
+much joy in your presence to be willing to leave it."
+
+"Monsieur," she said to the duke, ignoring her cousin Paul with a
+coolness that must have maddened him, "will you not dismiss your
+tradespeople? Then can we talk comfortably."
+
+"Aye," answered Mayenne, "I will. I am more gallant than Paul. If you
+command it, out they go, though I have not half had time to look their
+wares over. Here, master jeweller," he addressed M. Étienne, slipping
+easily into Italian, "pack up your wares and depart."
+
+M. Étienne, bursting into rapid thanks to his Highness for his
+condescension in noticing the dirt of the way, set about his packing.
+Mayenne turned to his lovely cousin.
+
+"Now for my word to you, mademoiselle. You wept so last night, it was
+impossible to discuss the subject properly. But now I rejoice to see you
+more tranquil. Here is the beginning and the middle and the end of the
+matter: your marriage is my affair, and I shall do as I like about it."
+
+She searched his face; before his steady look her colour slowly died. M.
+Étienne, whether by accident or design, knocked his tray of jewels off
+the table. Murmuring profuse apologies, he dropped on his knees to grope
+for them. Neither of the men heeded him, but kept their eyes steadily on
+the lady.
+
+"Mademoiselle," Mayenne deliberately went on, "I have been over-fond
+with you. Had I followed my own interests instead of bowing to your
+whims, you had been a wife these two years. I have indulged you,
+mademoiselle, because you were my ally Montluc's daughter, because you
+came to me a lonely orphan, because you were my little cousin whose
+baby mouth I kissed. I have let you cavil at this suitor and that, pout
+that one was too tall and one too short, and a third too bold and a
+fourth not bold enough. I have been pleased to let you cajole me. But
+now, mademoiselle, I am at the end of my patience."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, "I never meant to abuse your kindness. You let me
+cajole you, as you say, else I could not have done it. You treated my
+whims as a jest. You let me air them. But when you frowned, I have put
+them by. I have always done your will."
+
+"Then do it now, mademoiselle. Be faithful to me and to your birth.
+Cease sighing for the enemy of our house."
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "when you first brought him to me, he was not the
+enemy of our house. When he came here, day after day, season after
+season, he was not our enemy. When I wrote that letter, at Paul's
+dictation, I did not know he was our enemy. You told me that night that
+I was not for him. I promised you obedience. Did he come here to me and
+implore me to wed with him, I would send him away."
+
+Mayenne little imagined how truly she spoke; but he could not look in
+her eyes and doubt her honesty.
+
+"You are a good child, Lorance," he said. "I could wish your lover as
+docile."
+
+"He will not come here again," she cried. "He knows I am not for him. He
+gives it up, monsieur--he takes himself out of Paris. I promise you it
+is over. He gives me up."
+
+"I have not his promise for that," Mayenne said dryly; "but the next
+time he comes after you, he may settle with your husband."
+
+She uttered a little gasp, but scarce of surprise--almost of relief that
+the blow, so long expected, had at last been dealt.
+
+"You will marry me, monsieur?" she murmured. "To M. de Brie?"
+
+"You are shrewd, mademoiselle. You know that it will be a good three
+months before François de Brie can stand up to be wed. You say to
+yourself that much may happen in three months. So it may. Therefore will
+your bridegroom be at hand to-morrow morning."
+
+She made no rejoinder, but her eyes, wide like a hunted animal's, moved
+fearsomely, loathingly, to Lucas. Mayenne uttered an abrupt laugh.
+
+"No; Paul is not the happy man. Besides bungling the St. Quentin affair,
+he has seen fit to make free with my name in an enterprise of his own.
+Therefore, Paul, you will dance at Lorance's wedding a bachelor.
+Mademoiselle, you marry in the morning Señor el Conde del Rondelar y
+Saragossa of his Majesty King Philip's court. After dinner you will
+depart with your husband for Spain."
+
+Lucas sprang forward, hand on sword, face ablaze with furious protest.
+Mayenne, heeding him no more than if he had not been there, rose and
+went to Mlle de Montluc.
+
+"Have I your obedience, cousin?"
+
+"You know it, monsieur."
+
+She was curtseying to him when he folded her in his arms, kissing both
+her cheeks.
+
+"You are as good as you are lovely, and that says much, ma mie. We will
+talk a little more about this after supper. Permit me, mademoiselle."
+
+He took her hand and led her in leisurely fashion out of the room.
+
+It wondered me that Lucas had not killed him. He looked murder. Haply
+had the duke disclosed by so much as a quivering eyelid a consciousness
+of Lucas's rage, of danger to himself, Lucas had struck him down. But he
+walked straight past, clad in his composure as in armour, and Lucas made
+no move. I think to stab was the impulse of a moment, gone in a moment.
+Instantly he was glad he had not killed the Duke of Mayenne, to be cut
+himself into dice by the guard. After the duke was gone, Lucas stood
+still a long time, no less furious, but cogitating deeply.
+
+We had gathered up our jewels and locked our box, and stood holding it
+between us, waiting our chance to depart. We might have gone a dozen
+times during the talking, for none marked us; but M. Étienne, despite my
+tuggings, refused to budge so long as mademoiselle was in the room. Now
+was he ready enough to go, but hesitated to see if Lucas would not leave
+first. That worthy, however, showed no intention of stirring, but
+remained in his pose, buried in thought, unaware of our presence. To get
+out, we had to walk round one end or the other of the table, passing
+either before or behind him. M. le Comte was for marching carelessly
+before his face, but I pulled so violently in the other direction that
+he gave way to me. I think now that had we passed in front of him, Lucas
+would have let us go by without a look. As it was, hearing steps at his
+back, he wheeled about to confront us. If the eye of love is quick, so
+is the eye of hate. He cried out instantly:
+
+"Mar!"
+
+We dropped the box, and sprang at him. But he was too quick for us. He
+leaped back, whipping out his sword.
+
+"I have you now, Mar!" he cried.
+
+M. Étienne grabbed up the heavy box in both hands to brain him. Lucas
+retreated. He might run through M. Étienne, but only at the risk of
+having his head split. After all, it suited his book as well to take us
+alive. Shouting for the guards, he retreated toward the door.
+
+But I was there before him. As he ran at M. Étienne, I had dashed by,
+slammed the door shut, and bolted it. If we were caught, we would make a
+fight for it. I snatched up a stool for weapon.
+
+He halted. Then he darted over to the chimney, and pulled violently the
+bell-rope hanging near. We heard through the closed door two loud peals
+somewhere in the corridor.
+
+We both ran for him. Even as he pulled the rope, M. Étienne struck the
+box over his sword, snapping it. I dropped my stool, as he his box, and
+we pinned Lucas in our arms.
+
+"The oratory!" I gasped. With a strength born of our desperation, we
+dragged him kicking and cursing across the room, heaved him with all our
+force into the oratory, and bolted the door on him.
+
+"Your wig!" cried M. Étienne, running to recover his box. While I picked
+it up and endeavoured with clumsy fingers to put it on properly, he set
+on its legs the stool I had flung down, threw the pieces of Lucas's
+sword into the fireplace, seized his box, dashed to me and set my wig
+straight, dashed to the outer door, and opened it just as Pierre came up
+the corridor.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" the lackey demanded. "You ring as if it was a
+question of life and death."
+
+"I want to be shown out, if the messer will be so kind. His Highness the
+duke, when he went to supper, left me here to put up my wares, but I
+know not my way to the door."
+
+It was after sunset, and the room, back from the windows, was dusky. The
+lackey seemed not to mark our flushed and rumpled looks, and to be quite
+satisfied with M. Étienne's explanation, when of a sudden Lucas, who had
+been stunned for the moment by the violent meeting of his head and the
+tiles, began to pound and kick on the oratory door.
+
+He was shouting as well. But the door closed with absolute tightness; it
+had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us muffled and inarticulate.
+
+"Corpo di Bacco!" M. Étienne exclaimed, with a face of childlike
+surprise. "Some one is in a fine hurry to enter! Do you not let him in,
+Sir Master of the Household?"
+
+"I wonder who he's got there now," Pierre muttered to himself in
+French, staring in puzzled wise at the door. Then he answered M. Étienne
+with a laugh:
+
+"No, my innocent; I do not let him in. It might cost me my neck to open
+that door. Come along now. I must see you out and get back to my
+trenchers."
+
+We met not a soul on the stairs, every one, served or servants, being in
+the supper-room. We passed the sentry without question, and round the
+corner without hindrance. M. Étienne stopped to heave a sigh of
+thanksgiving.
+
+"I thought we were done for that time!" he panted. "Mordieu! another
+scored off Lucas! Come, let us make good time home! 'Twere wise to be
+inside our gates when he gets out of that closet."
+
+We made good time, ever listening for the haro after us. But we heard it
+not. We came unmolested up the street at the back, of the Hôtel St.
+Quentin, on our way to the postern. Monsieur took the key out of his
+doublet, saying as we walked around the corner tower:
+
+"Well, it appears we are safe at home."
+
+"Yes, M. Étienne."
+
+Even as I uttered the words, three men from the shadow of the wall
+sprang out and seized us.
+
+"This is he!" one cried. "M. le Comte de Mar, I have the pleasure of
+taking you to the Bastille."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_The countersign._
+
+
+Instantly two more men came running from the postern arch. The five were
+upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while another gagged me.
+Two held M. Étienne, a third stopping his mouth.
+
+"Prettily done," quoth the leader. "Not a squeal! Morbleu! I wasn't
+anxious to have old Vigo out disputing my rights."
+
+M. Étienne's wrists were neatly trussed by this time. At a word from the
+leader, our captors turned us about and marched us up the lane by
+Mirabeau's garden, where Bernet's blood lay rusty on the stones. We
+offered no resistance whatever; we should only have been prodded with a
+sword-point for our pains. I made out, despite the thickening twilight,
+the familiar uniform of the burgher guard; M. de Belin, having bagged
+the wrong bird once, had now caught the right one.
+
+The captain bade one of the fellows go call the others off; I could
+guess that the job had been done thoroughly, every approach to the house
+guarded. I gnashed my teeth over the gag, that I had not suspected the
+danger. The truth was, both of us had our heads so full of mademoiselle,
+of Mayenne, and of Lucas, that we had forgotten the governor and his
+preposterous warrant.
+
+They led us into the Rue de l'Évêque, where was waiting the same black
+coach that had stood before the Oie d'Or, the same Louis on the box. Its
+lamps were lighted; by their glimmer our captors for the first time saw
+us fairly.
+
+"Why, captain," cried the man at M. Étienne's elbow, "this is no Comte
+de Mar! The Comte de Mar is fair-haired; I've seen him scores of times."
+
+"The Comte de Mar answers to the name of Étienne, and so does this
+fellow," the captain answered. He took the candle from one of the lamps
+and held it in M. Étienne's face. Then he put out a sudden hand, and
+pulled the wig off.
+
+"Good for you, captain!" cried the men. We were indeed unfortunate to
+encounter an officer with brains.
+
+"We'll take your gag off too, M. le Comte, in the coach," the captain
+told him.
+
+"Will you bring the lass along, captain?"
+
+"Not exactly," the leader laughed. "A fine prison it would be, could a
+felon have his bonnibel at his side. No, I'll leave the maid; but she
+needn't give the alarm yet. Do you stay awhile with her, L'Estrange;
+you'll not mind the job. Keep her a quarter of an hour, and then let her
+go her ways."
+
+They bundled my lord into the coach, box and all, the captain and two
+men with him. The fourth clambered up beside Louis as he cracked his
+whip and rattled smartly down the street.
+
+My guardian stole a loving arm around my waist and marched me down the
+quiet lane between the garden walls. He was clutching my right wrist,
+but my left hand was free, and I fumbled at my gag. In the middle of the
+deserted lane he halted.
+
+"Now, my beauty, if you'll be good I'll take that stopper off. But if
+you make a scream, by Heaven, it'll be your last!"
+
+I shook my head and squeezed his hand imploringly, while he, holding me
+tight in one sinewy arm, plucked left-handedly at the knot. I waited,
+meek as Griselda, till the gag was off, and then I let him have it.
+Volleying curses, I hammered him square in the eye.
+
+It was a mad course, for he was armed, I not. But instead of stabbing,
+he dropped me like a hot coal, gasping in the blankest consternation:
+
+"Thousand devils! It's a boy!"
+
+A second later, when he recollected himself, I was tearing down the
+lane.
+
+I am a good runner, and then, any one can run well when he runs for his
+life. Despite the wretched kirtle tying up my legs, I gained on him, and
+when I had reached the corner of our house, he dropped the pursuit and
+made off in the darkness. I ran full tilt round to the great gate,
+bellowing for the sentry to open. He came at once, with a dripping
+torch, to burst into roars of laughter at the sight of me. My wig was
+somewhere in the lane behind me; he knew me perfectly in my silly
+toggery. He leaned against the wall, helpless with laughing, shouting
+feebly to his comrades to come share the jest. I, you may well imagine,
+saw nothing funny about it, but kicked and shook the grilles in my rage
+and impatience. He did open to me at length, and in I dashed, clamouring
+for Vigo. He had appeared in the court by this, as also half a dozen of
+the guard, who surrounded me with shouts of astonished mockery; but I,
+little heeding, cried to the equery:
+
+"Vigo, M. le Comte is arrested! He's in the Bastille!"
+
+Vigo grasped my arm, and lifted rather than led me in at the guard-room
+door, slamming it in the soldiers' faces.
+
+"Now, Félix."
+
+"M. Étienne!" I gasped--"M. Étienne is arrested! They were lying in wait
+for him at the back of the house, by the tower. They've taken him off in
+a coach to the Bastille."
+
+"Who have?"
+
+"The governor's guard. You'll saddle and pursue? You'll rescue him?"
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+"About ten minutes. The coach was standing in the Rue de l'Évêque. They
+left a man guarding me, but I broke away."
+
+"It can't be done," Vigo said. "They'll be out of the quarter by now. If
+I could catch them at all, it would be close by the Bastille. No good in
+that; no use fighting four regiments. What the devil are they arresting
+him for, Félix? I understand Mayenne wants his blood, but what has the
+city guard to do with it?"
+
+"It's Lucas's game," I said. Then I remembered that we had not confided
+to him the tale of the first arrest. I went on to tell of the adventure
+of the Trois Lanternes, and, reflecting that he might better know just
+how the land lay with us, I made a clean breast of everything--the fight
+before Ferou's house, the rescue, the rencounter in the tunnel, to-day's
+excursion, and all that befell in the council-room. I wound up with a
+second full account of our capture under the very walls of the house,
+our garroting before we could cry on the guards to save us. Vigo said
+nothing for some time; at length he delivered himself:
+
+"Monsieur wouldn't have a patrol about the house. He wouldn't publish to
+the mob that he feared any danger whatever. Of course no one foresaw
+this. However, the arrest is the best thing could have happened."
+
+"Vigo!" I gasped in horror. Was Vigo turned traitor? The solid earth
+reeled beneath my feet.
+
+"He'd never rest till he got himself killed," Vigo went on. "Monsieur's
+hot enough, but M. Étienne's mad to bind. If they hadn't caught him
+to-night he'd have been in some worse pickle to-morrow; while, as it is,
+he's safe from swords at least."
+
+"But they can murder as well in the Bastille as elsewhere!" I cried.
+
+Vigo shook his head.
+
+"No; had they meant murder, they'd have settled him here in the alley.
+Since they lugged him off unhurt, they don't mean it. I know not what
+the devil they are up to, but it isn't that."
+
+"It was Lucas's game in the first place," I repeated. "He's too prudent
+to come out in the open and fight M. Étienne. He never strikes with his
+own hand; his way is to make some one else strike for him. So he gets M.
+Étienne into the Bastille. That's the first step. I suppose he thinks
+Mayenne will attend to the second."
+
+"Mayenne dares not take the boy's life," Vigo answered. "He could have
+killed him, an he chose, in the streets, and nobody the wiser. But now
+that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille, Mayenne dares not kill
+him there, by foul play or by law--the Duke of St. Quentin's son. No;
+all Mayenne can do is to confine him at his good pleasure. Whence
+presently we will pluck him out at King Henry's good pleasure."
+
+"And meantime is he to rot behind bars?"
+
+"Unless Monsieur can get him out. But then," Vigo went on, "a month or
+two in a cell won't be a bad thing for him, neither. His head will have
+a chance to cool. After a dose of Mayenne's purge he may recover of his
+fever for Mayenne's ward."
+
+"Monsieur! You will send to Monsieur?"
+
+"Of course. You will go. And Gilles with you to keep you out of
+mischief."
+
+"When? Now?"
+
+"No," said Vigo. "You will go clothe yourself in breeches first, else
+are you not likely to arrive anywhere but at the mad-house. And then eat
+your supper. It's a long road to St. Denis."
+
+I ran at once, through a fusillade of jeers from soldiers, grooms, and
+house-men, across the court, through the hall, and up the stairs to
+Marcel's chamber. Never was I gladder of anything in my life than to
+doff those swaddling petticoats. Two minutes, and I was a man again. I
+found it in my heart to pity the poor things who must wear the trappings
+their lives long.
+
+But for all my joy in my freedom, I choked over my supper and pushed it
+away half tasted, in misery over M. Étienne. Vigo might say comfortably
+that Mayenne dared not kill him, but I thought there were few things
+that gentleman dared not do. Then there was Lucas to be reckoned with.
+He had caught his fly in the web; he was not likely to let him go long
+undevoured. At best, if M. Étienne's life were safe, yet was he
+helpless, while to-morrow our mademoiselle was to marry. Vigo seemed to
+think that a blessing, but I was nigh to weeping into my soup. The one
+ray of light was that she was not to marry Lucas. That was something.
+Still, when M. Étienne came out of prison, if ever he did,--I could
+scarce bring myself to believe it,--he would find his dear vanished over
+the rocky Pyrenees.
+
+Vigo would not even let me start when I was ready. Since we were too
+late to find the gates open, we must wait till ten of the clock, at
+which hour the St. Denis gate would be in the hands of a certain
+Brissac, who would pass us with a wink at the word St. Quentin.
+
+I was so wroth with Vigo that I would not stay with him, but went
+up-stairs into M. Étienne's silent chamber, and flung myself down on the
+window-bench his head might never touch again, and wondered how he was
+faring in prison. I wished I were there with him. I cared not much what
+the place was, so long as we were together. I had gone down the mouth of
+hell smiling, so be it I went at his heels. Mayhap if I had struggled
+harder with my captors, shown my sex earlier, they had taken me too.
+Heartily I wished they had; I trow I am the only wight ever did wish
+himself behind bars. And promptly I repented me, for if Vigo had proved
+but a broken reed, there was Monsieur. Monsieur was not likely to sit
+smug and declare prison the best place for his son.
+
+The slow twilight faded altogether, and the dark came. The city was very
+still. Once in a while a shout or a sound of bell was borne over the
+roofs, or infrequent voices and footsteps sounded in the street beyond
+our gate. The men in the court under my window were quiet too, talking
+among themselves without much raillery or laughter; I knew they
+discussed the unhappy plight of the heir of St. Quentin. The chimes had
+rung some time ago the half-hour after nine, and I was fidgeting to be
+off, but huffed as I was with him, I could not lower myself to go ask
+Vigo's leave to start. He might come after me when he wanted me.
+
+"Félix! Félix!" Marcel shouted down the corridor. I sprang up; then,
+remembering my dignity, moved no further, but bade him come in to me.
+
+"Where are you mooning in the dark?" he demanded, stumbling over the
+threshold. "Oh, there you are. Dame! you'd come down-stairs mighty quick
+if you knew what was there for you?"
+
+"What?" I cried, divided between the wild hope that it was Monsieur and
+the wilder one that it was M. Étienne.
+
+"Don't you wish I'd tell you? Well, you're a good boy, and I will. It's
+the prettiest lass I've seen in a month of Sundays--you in your
+petticoats don't come near her."
+
+"For me?" I stuttered.
+
+"Aye; she asked for M. le Duc, and when he wasn't here, for you. I
+suppose it's some friend of M. Étienne's."
+
+I supposed so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my borrowed
+plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had not returned
+it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my eyes out because I
+had lost the cap--whether I could find it if I went to look with a
+light. None too eagerly I descended to her.
+
+She was standing against the wall in the archway. Two or three of the
+guardsmen were about her, one with a flambeau, by which they were all
+surveying her. She wore the coif and blouse, the black bodice and short
+striped skirt, of the country peasant girl, and, like a country girl,
+she showed a face flushed and downcast under the soldiers' bold
+scrutiny. She looked up at me as at a rescuing angel. It was Mlle. de
+Montluc!
+
+I dashed past the torch-bearer, nearly upsetting him in my haste, and
+snatched her hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle! Come into the house!"
+
+She clutched me with fingers as cold as marble, which trembled on mine.
+
+"Where is M. de St. Quentin?"
+
+"At St. Denis."
+
+"You must take me there to-night."
+
+"I was going," I stammered, bewildered; "but you, mademoiselle--"
+
+"You knew of M. de Mar's arrest?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"What coil is this, Félix?" demanded Vigo, coming up. He took the torch
+from his man, and held it in mademoiselle's face, whereupon an amazing
+change came over his own. He lowered the light, shielding it with his
+hand, as if it were an impertinent eye.
+
+"You are Vigo," she said at once.
+
+"Yes; and I know not what noble lady mademoiselle can be, save--will it
+please her to come into the house?"
+
+He led the way with his torch, not suffering himself to look at her
+again. He had his foot on the staircase, when she called to him, as if
+she had been accustomed to addressing him all her life:
+
+"Vigo, this will do. I will speak to you here."
+
+"As mademoiselle wishes. I thought the salon fitter. My cabinet here
+will be quieter than the hall, mademoiselle."
+
+He opened the door, and she entered. He pushed me in next, giving me the
+torch and saying:
+
+"Ask mademoiselle, Félix, whether she wants me." He amazed me--he who
+always ordered.
+
+"I want you, Vigo," mademoiselle answered him herself. "I want you to
+send two men with me to St. Denis."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"No; to-night."
+
+"But mademoiselle cannot go to St. Denis."
+
+"I can, and I must."
+
+"They will not let a horse-party through the gate at night," Vigo began.
+
+"We will go on foot."
+
+"Mademoiselle," Vigo answered, as if she had proposed flying to the
+moon, "you cannot walk to St. Denis."
+
+"I must!" she cried.
+
+I had put the flambeau in a socket on the wall. Now that the light shone
+on her steadily, I saw for the first time, though I might have known it
+from her presence here, how rent with emotion she was, white to the
+lips, with gleaming eyes and stormy breast. She had spoken low and
+quietly, but it was a main-force composure, liable to snap like glass. I
+thought her on the very verge of passionate tears. Vigo looked at her,
+puzzled, troubled, pitying, as on some beautiful, mad creature. She
+cried out on him suddenly, her rich voice going up a key:
+
+"You need not say 'cannot' to me, Vigo! You know not how I came here. I
+was locked in my chamber. I changed clothes with my Norman maid. There
+was a sentry at each end of the street. I slid down a rope of my
+bedclothes; it was dark--they did not see me. I knocked at Ferou's
+door--thank the saints, it opened to me quickly! I told M. Ferou--God
+forgive me!--I had business for the duke at the other end of the tunnel.
+He took me through, and I came here."
+
+"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.
+
+"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my hands on the
+ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn cruelly from her
+delicate palms and the inside of her fingers. Little threads of blood
+marked the scores. "Then I came here," she repeated. "In all my life I
+have never been in the streets alone--not even for one step at noonday.
+Now will you tell me, M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is yours to say what you can do."
+
+As for me, I dropped on my knees and laid my lips to her fingers,
+softly, for fear even their pressure might hurt her tenderness.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" I cried in pure delight. "Mademoiselle, that you are
+here!"
+
+She flushed under my words.
+
+"Ah, it is no little thing brought me. You knew M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+We assented; she went on, more to me than to Vigo, as if in telling me
+she was telling M. Étienne. She spoke low, as if in pain.
+
+"After supper M. de Mayenne went back to his cabinet and let out Paul de
+Lorraine."
+
+"I wish we had killed him," I muttered. "We had no time or weapons."
+
+"M. de Mayenne sent for me then," she went on, wetting her lips. "I have
+never seen him so angry. He was furious because M. de Mar had been
+before his face and he had not known it. He felt he had been made a mock
+of. He raged against me--I never knew he could be so angry. He said the
+Spanish envoy was too good for me; I should marry Paul de Lorraine
+to-morrow."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle!"
+
+"That was not it. I had borne that!" she cried. "Mayhap I deserved it.
+But while my lord thundered at me, word came that M. de Mar was taken.
+My lord swore he should die. He swore no man ever set him at naught and
+lived to boast of it."
+
+"Will--"
+
+She swept on unheeding:
+
+"He said he should be tried for the murder of Pontou--he should be
+tortured to make him confess it."
+
+She dropped down on her knees, hiding her face in her arms on the table,
+shaking from head to foot as in an ague. Vigo swore to himself, loudly,
+violently: "If Mayenne do that, by the throne of Heaven, I'll kill him!"
+
+She sprang to her feet, dry-eyed, fierce as a young lioness.
+
+"Is that all you can say? Mayenne may torture him and be killed for it?"
+
+"I shall send to the duke--" Vigo began.
+
+"Aye! I shall go to the duke! I can say who killed Pontou. I know much
+besides to tell the king. I was Mayenne's cousin, but if he would save
+his secrets he must give up M. de Mar. Mother of God! I have been his
+obedient child; I have let him do so with me as he would. I sent my
+lover away. I consented to the Spanish marriage. But to this I will not
+submit. He shall not torture and kill Étienne de Mar!"
+
+Vigo took her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Shall we start, Vigo? Once at St. Denis, I am hostage for his safety.
+The king can tell Mayenne that if Mar is tortured he will torture me!
+Mayenne may not tender me greatly, but he will not relish his cousin's
+breaking on the wheel."
+
+"Mayenne won't torture M. Étienne," Vigo said, patting her hand in both
+of his, forgetting she was a great lady, he an equery. "Fear not! you
+will save him, mademoiselle."
+
+"Let us go!" she cried feverishly. "Let us go!"
+
+Gilles was in the court waiting, stripped of his livery, dressed
+peaceably as a porter, but with a mallet in his hand that I should not
+like to receive on my crown. I thought we were ready, but Vigo bade us
+wait. I stood on the house-steps with mademoiselle, while he took aside
+Squinting Charlot for a low-voiced, emphatic interview.
+
+"Must we wait?" mademoiselle urged me, quivering like the arrow on the
+bow-string. "They may discover I am gone. Need we wait?"
+
+"Aye," I answered; "if Vigo bids us. He knows."
+
+We waited then. Vigo disappeared presently. Mademoiselle and I stood
+patient, with, oh! what impatience in our hearts, wondering how he could
+so hinder us. Not till he came back did it dawn on me for what we had
+stayed. He was dressed as an under-groom, not a tag of St. Quentin
+colours on him.
+
+"I beg a thousand pardons, mademoiselle. I had to give my lieutenant his
+orders. Now, if you will give the word, we go."
+
+"Do you go, M. Vigo?" She breathed deep. It was easy to see she looked
+upon him as a regiment.
+
+"Of course," Vigo answered, as if there could be no other way.
+
+I said in pure devilry, to try to ruffle him:
+
+"Vigo, you said you were here to guard Monsieur's interests-his house,
+his goods, his moneys. Do you desert your trust?"
+
+Mademoiselle turned quickly to him:
+
+"Vigo, you must not let me take you from your rightful post. Félix and
+your man here will care for me--"
+
+"The boy talks silliness, mademoiselle," Vigo returned tranquilly.
+"Mademoiselle is worth a dozen hôtels. I go with her."
+
+He walked beside her across the court, I following with Gilles, laughing
+to myself. Only yesterday had Vigo declared that never would he give aid
+and comfort to Mlle. de Montluc. It was no marvel she had conquered M.
+Étienne, for he must needs have been in love with some one, but in
+bringing Vigo to her feet she had won a triumph indeed.
+
+We had to go out by the great gate, because the key of the postern was
+in the Bastille. But as if by magic every guardsman and hanger-about had
+disappeared--there was not one to stare at the lady; though when we had
+passed some one locked the gates behind us. Vigo called me up to
+mademoiselle's left. Gilles was to loiter behind, far enough to seem
+not to belong to us, near enough to come up at need. Thus, at a good
+pace, mademoiselle stepping out as brave as any of us, we set out across
+the city for the Porte St. Denis.
+
+Our quarter was very quiet; we scarce met a soul. But afterward, as we
+reached the neighbourhood of the markets, the streets grew livelier. Now
+were we gladder than ever of Vigo's escort; for whenever we approached a
+band of roisterers or of gentlemen with lights, mademoiselle sheltered
+herself behind the equery's broad back, hidden as behind a tower. Once
+the gallant M. de Champfleury, he who in pink silk had adorned Mme. de
+Mayenne's salon, passed close enough to touch her. She heaved a sigh of
+relief when he was by. For her own sake she had no fear; the midnight
+streets, the open road to St. Denis, had no power to daunt her: but the
+dread of being recognized and turned back rode her like a nightmare.
+
+Close by the gate, Vigo bade us pause in the door of a shop while he
+went forward to reconnoiter. Before long he returned.
+
+"Bad luck, mademoiselle. Brissac's not on. I don't know the officer, but
+he knows me, that's the worst of it. He told me this was not St. Quentin
+night. Well, we must try the Porte Neuve."
+
+But mademoiselle demurred:
+
+"That will be out of our way, will it not, Vigo? It is a longer road
+from the Porte Neuve to St. Denis?"
+
+"Yes; but what to do? We must get through the walls."
+
+"Suppose we fare no better at the Porte Neuve? If your Brissac is
+suspected, he'll not be on at night. Vigo, I propose that we part
+company here. They will not know Gilles and Félix at the gate, will
+they?"
+
+"No," Vigo said doubtfully; "but--"
+
+"Then can we get through!" she cried. "They will not stop us, such
+humble folk! We are going to the bedside of our dying mother at St.
+Denis. Your name, Gilles?"
+
+"Forestier, mademoiselle," he stammered, startled.
+
+"Then are we all Forestiers--Gilles, Félix, and Jeanne. We can pass out,
+Vigo; I am sure we can pass out. I am loath to part with you, but I fear
+to go through the city to the Porte Neuve. My absence may be
+discovered--I must place myself without the walls speedily.
+
+"Well, mademoiselle may try it," Vigo gave reluctant consent. "If you
+are refused, we can fall back on the Porte Neuve. If you succeed--Listen
+to me, you fellows. You will deliver mademoiselle into Monsieur's hands,
+or answer to me for it. If any one touches her little finger--well,
+trust me!"
+
+"That's understood," we answered, saluting together.
+
+"Mademoiselle need have no doubts of them," Vigo said. "Félix is M. le
+Comte's own henchman. And Gilles is the best man in the household, next
+to me. God speed you, my lady. I am here, if they turn you back."
+
+We went boldly round the corner and up the street to the gate. The
+sentry walking his beat ordered us away without so much as looking at
+us. Then Gilles, appointed our spokesman, demanded to see the captain of
+the watch. His errand was urgent.
+
+But the sentry showed no disposition to budge. Had we a passport? No, we
+had no passport. Then we could go about our business. There was no
+leaving Paris to-night for us. Call the captain? No; he would do nothing
+of the kind. Be off, then!
+
+But at this moment, hearing the altercation, the officer himself came
+out of the guard-room in the tower, and to him Gilles at once began his
+story. Our mother at St. Denis had sent for us to come to her dying bed.
+He was a street-porter; the messenger had had trouble to find him. His
+young brother and sister were in service, kept to their duties till
+late. Our mother might even now be yielding up the ghost! It was a
+pitiful case, M. le Capitaine; might we not be permitted to pass?
+
+The young officer appeared less interested in this moving tale than in
+the face of mademoiselle, lighted up by the flambeau on the tower wall.
+
+"I should be glad to oblige your charming sister," he returned, smiling,
+"but none goes out of the city without a passport. Perhaps you have one,
+though, from my Lord Mayenne?"
+
+"Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of Mayenne?" quoth
+Gilles.
+
+"It seems improbable," the officer smiled, pleased with his wit. "Sorry
+to discommode you, my dear. But perhaps, lacking a passport, you can yet
+oblige me with the countersign, which does as well. Just one little
+word, now, and I'll let you through."
+
+[Illustration: "IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY."]
+
+"If monsieur will tell me the little word?" she asked innocently.
+
+He burst into laughter.
+
+"No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl."
+
+"Oh, come, monsieur captain," Gilles urged, "many and many a fellow goes
+in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a net to stop big
+fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do to my Lord Mayenne,
+or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness to let three poor
+servants through to their dying mother?"
+
+"It desolates me to hear of her extremity," the captain answered, with a
+fine irony, "but I am here to do my duty. I am thinking, my dear, that
+you are some great lady's maid?"
+
+He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to protest:
+
+"Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer's wife."
+
+"And perhaps you serve in the shop?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard against a
+trap. "No, monsieur; I am never in the shop. I am far too busy with my
+work. Monsieur does not seem to understand what a servant-lass has to
+do."
+
+For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light, revealing all
+its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.
+
+"I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either."
+
+With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in the
+folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror. He softened
+somewhat at sight of her distress.
+
+"Well, it's none of my business if a lady chooses to be masquerading
+round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey. I don't know what
+your purpose is--I don't ask to know. But I'm here to keep my gate, and
+I'll keep it. Go try to wheedle the officer at the Porte Neuve."
+
+In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned away--to
+face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel's shoulder-straps. With a
+dragoon at his back, he had come so softly out of a side alley that not
+even the captain had marked him.
+
+"What's this, Guilbert?" he demanded.
+
+"Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir. I've just turned them
+away."
+
+"What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?"
+
+"I said they could go see how that gate is kept. I showed them how this
+is."
+
+"Why must you pass through at this time of night?" said the commanding
+officer, civilly. Gilles once again bemoaned the dying mother. The young
+captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted him:
+
+"I believe that's a fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer about these
+people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and has hands like a
+duchess's."
+
+The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He
+said in a perfectly neutral manner:
+
+"It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a duchess--has a
+mother or not. The point is whether these people have the countersign.
+If they have it, they can pass, whoever they are."
+
+"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you would do
+well, sir, to demand the lady's name."
+
+Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the superior
+officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the word, she
+pronounced distinctly her name:
+
+"Lorance--"
+
+"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through, Guilbert."
+
+The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than we.
+
+"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"
+
+"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They have the
+countersign; pass them through."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_St. Denis--and Navarre!_
+
+
+As the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short in his
+tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:
+
+"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on the St.
+Denis road?"
+
+"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to herself
+as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us out for
+friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale. Mayenne always
+gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a marvel, it was mine!"
+
+I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis. The road
+was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday night's rain.
+Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they were only bushes
+or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf
+country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The
+hangers-on of the army--beggars, feagues, and footpads--hovered, like
+the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city.
+Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine
+for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
+concealment--his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere--a brace of
+pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking care, whenever a
+rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes, seemed to follow us, to
+talk loud and cheerfully of common things, the little interests of a
+humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy, or the pistol-barrels shining
+in the faint starlight, none molested us, though we encountered more
+than one mysterious company. We never passed into the gloom under an
+arch of trees without the resolution to fight for our lives. We never
+came out again into the faint light of the open road without wondering
+thanks to the saints--silent thanks, for we never spoke a word of any
+fear, Gilles and I. I trow mademoiselle knew well enough, but she spoke
+no word either. She never faltered, never showed by so much as the turn
+of her head that she suspected any danger, but, eyes on the distant
+lights of St. Denis, walked straight along, half a step ahead of us all
+the way. Stride as we might, we two strong fellows could never quite
+keep up with her.
+
+The journey could not at such pace stretch out forever. Presently the
+distant lights were no longer distant, but near, nearer, close at
+hand--the lights of the outposts of the camp. A sentinel started out
+from the quoin of a wall to stop us, but when we had told our errand he
+became as friendly as a brother. He went across the road into a
+neighbouring tournebride to report to the officer of the guard, and
+came back presently with a torch and the order to take us to the Duke of
+St. Quentin's lodging.
+
+It was near an hour after midnight, and St. Denis was in bed. Save for a
+drowsy patrol here and there, we met no one. Fewer than the patrols were
+the lanterns hung on ropes across the streets; these were the only
+lights, for the houses were one and all as dark as tombs. Not till we
+had reached the middle of the town did we see, in the second story of a
+house in the square, a beam of light shining through the shutter-chink.
+
+"Some one in mischief." Gilles pointed.
+
+"Aye," laughed the sentry, "your duke. This is where he lodges, over the
+saddler's."
+
+He knocked with the butt of his musket on the door. The shutter above
+creaked open, and a voice--Monsieur's voice--asked, "Who's there?"
+
+Mademoiselle was concealed in the embrasure of the doorway; Gilles and I
+stepped back into the street where Monsieur could see us.
+
+"Gilles Forestier and Félix Broux, Monsieur, just from Paris, with
+news."
+
+"Wait."
+
+"Is it all right, M. le Duc?" the sentry asked, saluting.
+
+"Yes," Monsieur answered, closing the shutter.
+
+The soldier, with another salute to the blank window, and a nod of
+"Good-by, then," to us, went back to his post. Left in darkness, we
+presently heard Monsieur's quick step on the flags of the hall, and the
+clatter of the bolts. He opened to us, standing there fully dressed,
+with a guttering candle.
+
+"My son?" he said instantly.
+
+Mademoiselle, crouching in the shadow of the door-post, pushed me
+forward. I saw I was to tell him.
+
+"Monsieur, he was arrested and driven to the Bastille to-night between
+seven and eight. Lucas--Paul de Lorraine--went to the governor and swore
+that M. Étienne killed the lackey Pontou in the house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. It was Lucas killed him--Lucas told Mayenne so. Mlle. de
+Montluc heard him, too. And here is mademoiselle."
+
+At the word she came out of the shadow and slowly over the threshold.
+
+Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the Hôtel St. Quentin
+as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf. She had come without thought of herself,
+without pause, without fear. But now the first heat of her impulse was
+gone. Her long tramp had left her faint and weary, and here she had to
+face not an equery and a page, hers to command, but a great duke, the
+enemy of her house. She came blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes
+dirty from the common road, hair ruffled by the night winds, to show
+herself for the first time to her lover's father, opposer of her hopes,
+thwarter of her marriage. Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill
+and stood a moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird
+whom the least movement would startle into flight.
+
+But Monsieur made none. He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as she,
+looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence real. Then as
+the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten her more than the
+harsh speech she may have feared; with a desperate courage she raised
+her eyes to his face.
+
+The spell was broken. Monsieur stepped forward at once to her.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you have come a journey. You are tired. Let me give you
+some refreshment; then will you tell me the story."
+
+It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of
+unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his escort
+down the passage. But as she went, she flung me an imploring glance; I
+was to come too. Gilles bolted the door again, and sat down to wait on
+the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden me, followed him and
+mademoiselle. It troubled me that she should so dread him--him, the
+warmest-hearted of all men. But if she needed me to give her confidence,
+here I was.
+
+Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the passage.
+It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of leather. It was
+doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the saddler's family. Monsieur
+set his candle down on the big table in the middle; then, on second
+thought, took it up again and lighted two iron sconces on the wall.
+
+"Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest," he bade, for she was starting up in
+nervousness from the chair where he had put her. "I will return in a
+moment."
+
+When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating, yet
+eagerly:
+
+"Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was good
+cause for fear. But now there is nothing to dread."
+
+She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for
+something. I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not, for she
+passed the three doors and came back to her place with an air of
+disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.
+
+"I never before went anywhere unmasked," she murmured.
+
+Monsieur entered with a salver containing a silver cup of wine and some
+Rheims biscuit. He offered it to her formally; she accepted with
+scarcely audible thanks, and sat, barely touching the wine to her lips,
+crumbling the biscuit into bits with restless fingers, making the
+pretence of a meal serve as excuse for her silence. Monsieur glanced at
+her, puzzled-wise, waiting for her to speak. Had the Infanta Isabella
+come to visit him, he could not have been more surprised. It seemed to
+him discourteous to press her; he waited for her to explain her
+presence.
+
+I wanted to shake mademoiselle. With a dozen swift words, with a glance
+of her blue eyes, she could sweep Monsieur off his feet as she had swept
+Vigo. And instead, she sat there, not daring to look at him, like a
+child caught stealing sweets. She had found words to defend herself from
+the teasing tongues at the Hôtel de Lorraine, to plead for me, to lash
+Lucas, to move Mayenne himself; but she could not find one syllable for
+the Duke of St. Quentin. She had been to admiration the laughing
+coquette, the stout champion, the haughty great lady, the frank lover;
+but now she was the shy child, blushing, stammering, constrained.
+
+Had Monsieur attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded of her
+up and down what had brought her this strange road at such amazing hour
+and in such unfitting company, she must needs have answered, and, once
+started, she would quickly have kindled her fire again. Had he, on other
+part, with a smile, an encouraging word, given her ever so little a
+push, she had gone on easily enough. But he did neither. He was
+courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on
+her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who
+had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to
+disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Étienne's plight was more to
+him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently to
+me.
+
+"Tell me, Félix, all about it."
+
+Before I could answer him the door behind us opened to admit two
+gentlemen, shoulder to shoulder. They were dressed much alike, plainly,
+in black. One was about thirty years of age, tall, thin-faced, and dark,
+and of a gravity and dignity beyond his years. Living was serious
+business to him; his eyes were thoughtful, steady, and a little cold.
+His companion was some ten years older; his beard and curling hair, worn
+away from his forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled
+with gray. He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as
+a hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him seemed
+to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we were no
+shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny candles
+before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel when she
+recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common lout, never
+heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in the flick of an eye
+that this was Henri Quatre.
+
+I was hot and cold and trembling, my heart pounding till it was like to
+choke me. I had never dreamed of finding myself in the presence. I had
+never thought to face any man greater than my duke. For the moment I was
+utterly discomfited. Then I bethought me that not for God alone were
+knees given to man, and I slid down quietly to the floor, hoping I did
+right, but reflecting for my comfort that in any case I was too small to
+give great offence.
+
+Mademoiselle started out of her chair and swept a curtsey almost to the
+ground, holding the lowly pose like a lady of marble. Only Monsieur
+remained standing as he was, as if a king was an every-day affair with
+him. I always thought Monsieur a great man, but now I knew it.
+
+The king, leaving his companion to close the door, was across the room
+in three strides.
+
+"I am come to look after you, St. Quentin," he cried, laughing. "I
+cannot have my council broken up by pretty grisettes. The precedent is
+dangerous."
+
+With the liveliest curiosity and amusement he surveyed the top of
+mademoiselle's bent head, and Monsieur's puzzled, troubled countenance.
+
+"This is no grisette, Sire," Monsieur answered, "but a very high-born
+demoiselle indeed--cousin to my Lord Mayenne."
+
+Astonishment flashed over the king's mobile face; his manner changed in
+an instant to one of utmost deference.
+
+"Rise, mademoiselle," he begged, as if her appearance were the most
+natural and desirable thing in the world. "I could wish it were my good
+adversary Mayenne himself who was come to treat with us; but be assured
+his cousin shall lack no courtesy."
+
+She swayed lightly to her feet, raising her face to the king's. Into his
+countenance, which mirrored his emotions like a glass, came a quick
+delight at the sight of her. The colour waxed and waned in her cheeks;
+her breath fluttered uncertainly; her eyes, anxious, eager, searched his
+face.
+
+"I cry your Majesty's good pardon," she faltered. "I had urgent business
+with M. de St. Quentin--I did not guess he was with your Majesty--"
+
+"The king's business is glad to step aside for yours, mademoiselle."
+
+She curtseyed, blushing, hiding her eyes under their sooty lashes;
+thinking as I did, I made no doubt, here was a king indeed. His Majesty
+went on:
+
+"I can well believe, mademoiselle, 'tis no trifling matter brings you at
+midnight to our rough camp. We will not delay you further, but be at
+pains to remember that if in anything Henry of France can aid you he
+stands at your command."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS.]
+
+He made her a noble bow and took her hand to kiss, when she, like a
+child that sees itself losing a protector, clutched his hand in her
+little trembling fingers, her wet eyes fixed imploringly on his face. He
+beamed upon her; he felt no desire whatever to be gone.
+
+"Am I to stay?" he asked radiantly; then with grave gentleness he added:
+"Mademoiselle is in trouble. Will she bring her trouble to the king?
+That is what a king is for--to ease his subjects' burdens."
+
+She could not speak; she made him her obeisance with a look out of the
+depths of her soul.
+
+"Then are you my subject, mademoiselle?" he demanded slyly.
+
+She shook the tears from her lashes, and found her voice and her smile
+to answer his:
+
+"Sire, I was a true Ligueuse this morning. But I came here half
+Navarraise, and now I swear I am wholly one."
+
+"Now, that is good hearing!" the king cried. "Such a recruit from
+Mayenne! Also is it heartening to discover that my conversion is not the
+only sudden one in the world. It has taken me five months to turn my
+coat, but here is mademoiselle turns hers in a day."
+
+He had glanced over his shoulder to point this out to his gentleman, but
+now he faced about in time to catch his recruit looking triste again.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, "you are beautiful, grave; but, as you had the
+graciousness to show me just now, still more beautiful, smiling. Now we
+are going to arrange matters so that you will smile always. Will you
+tell me what is the trouble, my child?"
+
+"Gladly, Sire," she answered, and dropped down a moment on her knees
+before him, to kiss his hand.
+
+I marvelled that Mayenne and all his armies had been able to keep this
+man off his throne and in his saddle four long years. It was plain why
+his power grew stronger every day, why every hour brought him new allies
+from the ranks of the League. You had only to see him to adore him. Once
+get him into Paris, the struggle would be over. They would put up with
+no other for king.
+
+"Sire," mademoiselle said with hesitancy, "I shall tire you with my
+story."
+
+"I am greatly in dread of it," the king answered, ceremoniously placing
+her in a chair before seating himself to listen. Then, to give her a
+moment, I think, to collect herself, he turned to his companion:
+
+"Here, Rosny, if you ache to be grubbing over your papers, do not let us
+delay you."
+
+"I am in no haste, Sire," his gentleman answered, unmoving.
+
+"Which is to say, you dare not leave me alone," the king laughed out. "I
+tell you, St. Quentin, if I am not dragooned into a staid, discreet,
+steady-paced monarch, 'twill be no lapse of Whip-King Rosny's. I am
+listening, mademoiselle."
+
+She began at once, eager and unfaltering. All her confusion was gone.
+It had been well-nigh impossible to tell the story to M. de St. Quentin,
+impossible to tell it to this impassive M. de Rosny. But to the King of
+France and Navarre it was as easy to talk as to one's playfellow.
+
+"Sire, I am Lorance de Montluc. My grandfather was the Marshal Montluc."
+
+"Were to-day next Monday, I could pray, 'God rest his soul,'" the king
+rejoined. "But even a heretic may say that he was a gallant general, an
+honour to France. He married a sister of François le Balafré? And
+mademoiselle is orphaned now, and my friend Mayenne's ward?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. I came here, Sire, to tell M. de St. Quentin concerning his
+son. And though I am talking of myself, it is all the same story. Three
+years ago, after the king died, M. de Mayenne was endeavouring with all
+his might to bring the Duke of St. Quentin into the League. He offered
+me to him for his son, M. de Mar."
+
+"And you are still Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+She turned to Monsieur with the prettiest smile in the world.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin, though he has not fought for you, Sire, has ever
+been whole-heartedly loyal."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" the king exclaimed. "He is either an incredible
+loyalist or an incredible ass!"
+
+Even the grave Rosny smiled, and the victim laughed as he defended
+himself.
+
+"That my loyalty may be credible, Sire, I make haste to say that I had
+never seen mademoiselle till this hour."
+
+"I know not whether to think better of you for that, or worse," the king
+retorted. "Had I been in your place, beshrew me but I should have seen
+her."
+
+Monsieur smiled and was silent, with anxious eyes on mademoiselle.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin withdrew to Picardie, Sire, but M. de Mar stayed in
+Paris. And my cousin Mayenne never gave up entirely the notion of the
+marriage. He is very tenacious of his plans."
+
+"Aye," said the king, with a grimace. "Well I know."
+
+"He blew hot and cold with M. de Mar. He favoured the marriage on Sunday
+and scouted it on Wednesday and discussed it again on Friday."
+
+"And what were M. de Mar's opinions?"
+
+She met his probing gaze blushing but candid.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, favoured it every day in the week."
+
+"I'll swear he did!" the king cried.
+
+"When M. le Duc came back to Paris," mademoiselle went on, "and it was
+known he had espoused your cause, Sire, Mayenne was so loath to lose the
+whole house of St. Quentin to you that he offered to marry me out of
+hand to M. de Mar. And he refused."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" Henry cried. "We will marry you to a king's son. On
+my honour, mademoiselle--"
+
+"Sire," she pleaded, "you promised to hear me."
+
+"That I will, then. But I warn you I am out of patience with these St.
+Quentins."
+
+"Then you are out of patience with devotion to your cause, Sire."
+
+"What! you speak for the recreants?"
+
+"I assure you, Sire, you have no more loyal servant than M. de Mar."
+
+"Strange I cannot recollect the face of my so loyal servant," the king
+said dryly.
+
+But she, with a fine scorn of argument, made the audacious answer:
+
+"When you see it, you will like it, Sire."
+
+"Not half so well as I like yours, mademoiselle, I promise you! But he
+comes to me well commended, since you vouch for him. Or rather, he does
+not come. What is this ardent follower doing so long away from me? Where
+the devil does this eager partizan keep himself? St. Quentin, where is
+your son?"
+
+"He had been with you long ago, Sire, but for the bright eyes of a lady
+of the League. And now she comes to tell me--my page tells me--he is in
+the Bastille."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! And how has that calamity befallen?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, embarrassed by her very wealth of matter,
+confused between her longing to set the whole case before the king, and
+her fear of wearying his patience. But his glance told her she need have
+no misgiving. Had she come to present him Paris, he could not have been
+more interested.
+
+In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his words.
+
+"Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle? Last night, for the first time in
+a month, I saw my son. He was just returned from an adventure under her
+window. Mayenne's guard had set on him, and he was escaped by the skin
+of his teeth. He declared to me that never till he was slain should he
+cease endeavour to win Mlle. de Montluc. And I? Marry, I ate my words in
+humblest fashion. After three years I made my surrender. Since you are
+his one desire, mademoiselle, then are you my one desire. I bade him
+God-speed."
+
+She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her lashes.
+
+"Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends. And I have so many!"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried in the same breath, "fear not. I will get
+you your lover if I sell France for him."
+
+She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.
+
+"I have no fear, Sire. With you and M. de St. Quentin to save him, I can
+have no fear. But he is in desperate case. Has M. de St. Quentin told
+you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de Lorraine?"
+
+"Aye," said the king, "it is a dolourous topic--very painful! Eh,
+Rosny?"
+
+"I do not shrink from my pains, Sire," M. de Rosny answered quietly. "I
+hold myself much to blame in this matter. I thought I knew the Lucases
+root and branch--I did not discover that a daughter of the house had
+ever been a friend to Henri de Guise."
+
+"And how should you discover it?" the king demanded. He had made the
+attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself to the
+defence. "How were you to dream it? Henri de Guise's side was the last
+place to look for a girl of the Religion. But I forgive him. If he stole
+a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep: we have stolen the flower of
+Lorraine."
+
+"Paul Lucas--Paul de Lorraine," she went on eagerly, "was put into M. le
+Duc's house to kill him. He went all the more willingly that he believed
+M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor. He tried to draw M. de Mar into the
+scheme, to ruin him. He failed. And the whole plot came to naught."
+
+"I have learned that," the king said. "I have been told how a country
+boy stripped his mask off."
+
+He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed. He was
+so quick that he grasped everything at half a word. Instantly he had
+turned to the lady again. "Pray continue, dear mademoiselle."
+
+"Afterward--that is, yesterday--Paul went to M. de Belin and swore
+against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in his house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. The lackey was murdered there, but Paul de Lorraine did
+it. The man knew the plot; Paul killed him to stop his tongue. I heard
+him confess it to M. de Mayenne. I and this Félix Broux were in the
+oratory and heard it."
+
+"Then M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+"Not then. The officers missed him. To-day he came to our house, dressed
+as an Italian jeweller, with a case of trinkets to sell. Madame
+admitted him; no one knew him but me and my chamber-*mate. On the way
+out, Mayenne met him and kept him while he chose a jewel. Paul de
+Lorraine was there too. I was like to die of fear. I went in to M. de
+Mayenne; I begged him to come out with me to supper, to dismiss the
+tradespeople that I might talk with him there--anything. But it availed
+not. M. de Mayenne spoke freely before them, as one does before common
+folk. Presently he led me to supper. Paul was left alone with M. de Mar
+and the boy. He recognized them. He was armed, and they were not, but
+they overbore him and locked him up in the closet."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle! I was to rescue M. de Mar for your sake, but now
+I will do it for his own. I find him much to my liking. He came away
+clear, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Aye, to be seized in the street by the governor's men. When M. de
+Mayenne found how he had been tricked, Sire, he blazed with rage."
+
+"I'll warrant he did!" the king answered, suppressing, however, in
+deference to her distress, his desire to laugh. "Ventre-saint-gris,
+mademoiselle! forgive me if this amuses me here at St. Denis. I trow it
+was not amusing in the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+"He sent for me, Sire," she went on, blanching at the memory; "he
+accused me of shielding M. de Mar. It was true. He called me liar,
+traitor, wanton. He said I was false to my house, to my bread, to my
+honour. He said I had smiling lips and a Judas-heart--that I had kissed
+him and betrayed him. I had given him my promise never to hold
+intercourse with M. de Mar again, I had given my word to be true to my
+house. M. de Mar came by no will of mine. I had no inkling of such
+purpose till I beheld him before madame and her ladies. He came to
+entreat me to fly--to wed him. I denied him, Sire. I sent him away. But
+was I to say to the guard, 'This way, gentlemen. This is my lover'?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king exclaimed, "good hap that you have turned your
+back on the house of Lorraine. Here, if we are but rough soldiers, we
+know how to tender you."
+
+"It was not for myself I came," she said more quietly. "My lord had the
+right to chasten me. I am his ward, and I did deceive him. But while he
+foamed at me came word of M. de Mar's capture. Then Mayenne swore he
+should pay for this dear. He said he should be found guilty of the
+murder. He said plenty of witnesses would swear to it. He said M. de Mar
+should be tortured to make him confess."
+
+With an oath Monsieur sprang forward.
+
+"Aye," she cried, starting up, "he swore M. de Mar should suffer the
+preparatory and the previous, the estrapade and the brodekins!"
+
+"He dare not," the king shouted. "Mordieu, he dare not!"
+
+"Sire," she cried, "you can promise him that for every blow he strikes
+Étienne de Mar you will strike me two. Mar is in his hands, but I am in
+yours. For M. de Mar, unhurt, you will deliver him me, unhurt. If he
+torture Mar, you will torture me."
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried, "rather shall he torture every chevalier
+in France than I touch a hair of your head!"
+
+"Sire--" the word died away in a sigh; like a snapt rose she fell at his
+feet.
+
+The king was quick, but Monsieur quicker. On his knees beside her,
+raising her head on his arm, he commanded me:
+
+"Up-stairs, Félix! The door at the back--bid Dame Verney come
+instantly."
+
+I flew, and was back to find him risen, holding mademoiselle in his
+arms. Her hair lay loose over his shoulder like a rippling flag; her
+lashes clung to her cheeks as they would never lift more.
+
+"St. Quentin," his Majesty was saying, "I would have married her to a
+prince. But since she wants your son she shall have him,
+ventre-saint-gris, if I storm Paris to-morrow!" And as Monsieur was
+carrying her from the room, the king bent over and kissed her.
+
+"Mademoiselle has dropped a packet from her dress," M. de Rosny said.
+"Will you take it, St. Quentin?"
+
+The king, who was nearest, turned to pass it to him; at the sight of it
+he uttered his dear "ventre-saint-gris!" It was a flat, oblong packet,
+tied about with common twine, the seal cut out. The king twitched the
+string off, and with one rapid glance at the papers put them into
+Monsieur's hand.
+
+"Take them, St. Quentin; they are yours."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_The two dukes._
+
+
+Mademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands, Gilles and I
+were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the saddler's shop.
+Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see the crack of light
+under the door at the back and hear, between Gilles's snores, the murmur
+of voices. The king and his gentlemen were planning to save my master; I
+went to sleep in perfect peace.
+
+At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur routed us
+out.
+
+"I'm off for Paris, lads. Félix comes with me. Gilles stays to guard
+mademoiselle."
+
+I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle knew
+best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the sting passed
+quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more exciting than St. Denis.
+
+The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway mounted the
+two nags that a sunburnt Béarn pikeman had brought to the door. As we
+walked them gently across the square, which at this rath hour we alone
+shared with the twittering birds, we saw coming down one of the empty
+streets the hurrying figure of M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.
+
+"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called. "I
+deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to wish
+you God-speed."
+
+"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his hand. "The
+more that you don't approve me."
+
+Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day. Another
+man's embrace would have meant less.
+
+"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly see you
+putting your head into the lion's jaws."
+
+"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no worse off
+than my son."
+
+"Your death makes your son's no easier."
+
+"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle the lady?
+Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"
+
+"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me better
+to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not ripe for us
+yet. You know my plan--to send to Villeroi. I believe he could manage
+this thing."
+
+"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration of M.
+de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what he can or
+will do, uncertain. Étienne de Mar is not Villeroi's son; he is mine."
+
+"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take your
+way."
+
+"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that once or
+twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness has served."
+
+Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.
+
+"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity you are a
+scamp of a heretic!"
+
+"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good fortune
+to be born in the Religion."
+
+Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As we turned
+the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as we had left him,
+gazing soberly after us.
+
+The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn over it.
+By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great danger, he
+contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden all his life
+with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now. As we cantered
+steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he already pictured M.
+Étienne released. However mad he acknowledged his errand to be, I think
+he was scarce visited by a doubt of its success. It was impossible to
+him that his son should not be saved.
+
+We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way without
+hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the guard spring on
+us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by gathered in knots, the
+tradesmen and artisans ran out of their shops to cheer St. Quentin, to
+cheer France, to cheer peace, to cheer to the echo the Catholic king.
+
+"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his hat to a
+big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving impudently in the eye
+of all the world the white flag of the king.
+
+We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in other
+streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out for men
+with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe, none stopped
+us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of the Hôtel de
+Lorraine.
+
+They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the house, while
+I led the horses to the stables, where three or four grooms at once
+volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump their guardian. But
+before the fellows had had time to get much out of me came Jean
+Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors. I followed him in
+delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it had seemed to me when
+the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might never see him more. Jean
+ushered me into the well-remembered council-room, where Monsieur stood
+alone, surprised at the sight of me.
+
+"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we shut up
+Lucas."
+
+I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.
+
+It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that Mayenne
+could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and smiling, whatever
+emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival not only buried, but with
+a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted his guest with all the
+courteous ease of an unruffled conscience and a kindly heart. Not till
+his glance fell on me did he show any sign of discomposure.
+
+"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.
+
+"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.
+
+"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I sent for
+him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M. de St.
+Quentin."
+
+"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
+appearance of truth. "You may go, Félix."
+
+"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves the
+purpose as well as another."
+
+He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he had
+kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play fair. I
+began to feel somewhat heartened.
+
+"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"
+
+"Certainly. You have come to join the League."
+
+Monsieur laughed out.
+
+"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to join the
+King."
+
+"That was a waste of horse-flesh."
+
+"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will come
+over."
+
+"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the League
+dead."
+
+"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de grâce o' Sunday, when the king
+goes to mass."
+
+"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such case that
+nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel to Henry, be
+assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my game."
+
+"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur. Be
+assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to his
+Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."
+
+"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will never go
+back to him if I choose to stop you!"
+
+Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the unsuavity.
+
+"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered the
+gate. I shall never leave this house if you will otherwise."
+
+"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I shall not
+treat you as your late master treated my brother."
+
+"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good sense."
+
+Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he broke
+into a laugh.
+
+"One permits the insolences of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick flush
+passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.
+
+Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke made a
+step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect seriousness.
+
+"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning.
+There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been
+offensive to you--your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do
+not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled.
+Whether you will change your method--but I venture to believe not. I am
+popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning
+than have met your ears for many a month. You have a great name for
+prudence, M. de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."
+
+I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence. But then,
+as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne returned, with
+chilling calm:
+
+"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."
+
+"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on his
+timidity, but on his judgment."
+
+"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted your
+death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."
+
+"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday. His party
+is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a blunder to kill
+me; on Friday it is three days worse a blunder."
+
+"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in mind ever
+since your master killed my brother."
+
+"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take a leaf
+from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained singularly little
+when he slew Guise to make you head of the League."
+
+Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the flattery. But
+I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the less because he
+knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:
+
+"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."
+
+"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a little.
+You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."
+
+"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him there."
+
+"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."
+
+"If he choose."
+
+Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an amiable
+discussion.
+
+"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of course he did
+not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real offence is making
+love to your ward."
+
+"Well, do you deny it?"
+
+"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much worse
+than dispose of the lady to my heir."
+
+"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is all you
+have to say."
+
+"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne--"
+
+"I have no wish to carry it further."
+
+"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my heir."
+
+"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."
+
+"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have come to
+see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne. It is for you
+to choose where among the king's forces you will marry mademoiselle."
+
+A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into
+Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge,
+and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:
+
+"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."
+
+"Why, to be sure."
+
+Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.
+
+"What mean you?"
+
+"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is your ward,
+M. de Mayenne?"
+
+"Mordieu! Have you found her?"
+
+"You speak sooth."
+
+"In your hôtel--"
+
+"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow her."
+
+Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of seeking a
+weapon, of summoning his soldiers.
+
+"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"
+
+"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."
+
+Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:
+
+"St. Denis! But how--"
+
+"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never walked
+two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But she tramped
+to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at one in the
+morning."
+
+Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.
+
+"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"
+
+"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."
+
+"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"
+
+"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who lets them.
+I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."
+
+"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming
+short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.
+
+"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
+Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
+heart."
+
+"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for
+her safe return."
+
+"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his
+best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager
+for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my
+venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me
+in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he
+would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"
+
+"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the
+way, there is Valère, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses
+little."
+
+"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"
+
+"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."
+
+I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.
+But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his
+arm-chair.
+
+"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"
+
+"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without
+a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army
+cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly,
+for that?"
+
+Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether
+the shot hit. Monsieur went on:
+
+"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must
+answer for it to the people of Paris."
+
+Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he
+said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:
+
+"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was
+not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him
+awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in
+heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked
+to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not
+see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."
+
+"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is
+to that generosity I appeal."
+
+"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."
+
+"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the
+same path!"
+
+It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's.
+Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to
+warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had
+greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:
+
+"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries.
+They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet
+cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."
+
+Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.
+
+"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she
+had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the
+streets myself till dawn."
+
+"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our
+torture did you torture Mar."
+
+"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.
+
+"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to
+what the maid was strung."
+
+"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
+slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
+befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was
+good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I
+drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your
+daughter, St. Quentin."
+
+Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added,
+with his cool smile:
+
+"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh
+at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to
+your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"
+
+"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."
+
+He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief
+delayed taking it.
+
+"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the
+Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little
+concessions for myself."
+
+"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."
+
+My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived
+with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask
+of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still,
+that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one
+side, I have thought of something for you to grant."
+
+"Name it, monsieur."
+
+"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his
+usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread
+them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I
+was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had
+vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle.
+de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."
+
+"Your shrewdness does you credit."
+
+"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of
+your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."
+
+"Even to half my fortune--"
+
+"No, not your gear. Save that for your Béarnais's itching palm."
+
+"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the
+League."
+
+"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on
+at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had
+certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I
+have changed my mind about beginning with yours."
+
+"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I
+let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy
+me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."
+
+"Oh, I don't like that!"
+
+The naïveté amazed while it amused Mayenne.
+
+"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my
+court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight
+to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no
+attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."
+
+Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
+condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers,
+his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be
+killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to
+inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually
+hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.
+
+"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den
+and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne,
+especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."
+
+"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of your
+days with me."
+
+"In the Bastille?"
+
+"Or in the League."
+
+"The former is preferable."
+
+"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third alternative
+is given you."
+
+"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince indeed. Be
+assured the St. Quentins will not forget."
+
+"Every one forgets."
+
+"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have had time
+to forget."
+
+"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my head my
+course is run!"
+
+"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne laughed
+too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length of the table
+to his host:
+
+"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept back but
+one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come over to us
+sooner or later. Come now!"
+
+The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly:
+
+"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."
+
+"Better his than Spain's."
+
+Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.
+
+"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."
+
+Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.
+
+"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French king, a
+Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends, friendly to old
+foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the looms humming, the mills
+clacking, wheat growing thick on the battle-fields."
+
+Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.
+
+"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My compliments to
+your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from me that when I
+submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender, from that hour forth am
+I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and obey him. Till then, let him
+beware of my teeth! While I have one pikeman to my back, one sou in my
+pouch, I fight my cause."
+
+"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry's
+court to pull you up out of the mire."
+
+"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices,"
+Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident,
+the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had
+seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that
+no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly,
+precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you
+know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.
+
+"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to windward."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_My young lord settles scores with two foes at once._
+
+
+Occupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our several
+stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I awaited in a
+shady corner of the court the conclusion of formalities. I had just
+declared that King Henry would be in Paris within a week, and was on the
+point of getting my crown cracked for it, when, as if for the very
+purpose--save the mark!--of rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas.
+He approached rapidly, eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no
+whit; but all the loungers turned to stare at him. Even then he paid no
+heed, passing us without a glance. But the tall d'Auvray bespoke him.
+
+"M. de Lorraine! Any news?"
+
+He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he had not
+known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now. He was both
+pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye all night.
+
+"Any news here?" he made Norman answer.
+
+"No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information. We have heard nothing."
+
+"And the woman?"
+
+"Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word."
+
+Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of us, as if
+he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he was not in the
+least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a full minute before
+he awoke to my identity.
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes, M. de Lorraine," I said, with all the respectfulness I could
+muster, which may not have been much. Considering our parting, I was
+ready for any violence. But after the first moment of startlement he
+regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way, while he inquired without
+apparent resentment how I came there.
+
+"With M. le Duc de St. Quentin," I grinned at him. "We and M. de Mayenne
+are friends now."
+
+I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed. But he turned
+abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet shown.
+
+"You've not told this fellow?"
+
+"We understand our orders, monsieur," d'Auvray answered, a bit huffed.
+
+Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but of course
+I could not.
+
+"They had no need to tell me, M. de Lorraine. I know quite well what the
+trouble is. I know rather more about it than you do yourself."
+
+He confronted me now with all the fire I could ask.
+
+"What mean you, whelp?"
+
+"I mean mademoiselle. What else should I mean?"
+
+"What do you know?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"Her whereabouts?"
+
+"Her whereabouts."
+
+He had his hand to his knife by this. I abated somewhat of my drawl to
+say, still airily:
+
+"Go ask M. de St. Quentin. He's here. He'll be so glad to see you."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Certes. He's closeted now with M. de Mayenne. They're thicker than
+brothers. Go see for yourself, M.--Lucas."
+
+"Where is mademoiselle?"
+
+"Safe. She's to marry the Comte de Mar to-morrow."
+
+He stared at me for one moment, weighing whether this could be true;
+then without further parley he shot into the house.
+
+"Is that true?" d'Auvray demanded.
+
+Their tongues loosened now, they flooded me with questions concerning
+mademoiselle, which I answered warily as I could, heartily repenting me
+by this of baiting Lucas. No good could come of it. He might even turn
+Mayenne from his bargain, upset all our triumph. I hardly heard what the
+soldiers said to me; I was almost nervous enough, wild enough, to dash
+up-stairs after him. But that was no help. I stayed where I was, fevered
+with anxiety.
+
+At the end of five minutes he came out of the house again, and, without
+a glance at us, went straight through the gate with the step and air of
+a man who knows what he is about. I was no easier in my mind though I
+saw him gone.
+
+Soon on his steps came a lackey to order M. de St. Quentin's horses and
+two musketeers to mount and ride with him. On reaching the door with the
+nags, I discovered I was not to be of the party; our second steed must
+carry gear of mademoiselle's and her handwoman, a hard-faced peasant,
+silent as a stone. Though the men quizzed her, asking if she were glad
+to get to her mistress again, whether she had known all this time the
+lady's whereabouts, she answered no single word, but busied herself
+seeing the horse loaded to her notion. Presently, in the guidance of
+Pierre, Monsieur appeared.
+
+"You stay, Félix, and go to the Bastille for your master. Then you will
+wait at the St. Denis gate for Vigo, with horses."
+
+"Is all right, Monsieur?" I had to ask, as I held his stirrup. "Is all
+right? Lucas--"
+
+His face had been a little clouded as he came down the stairs, and now
+it darkened more, but he answered:
+
+"Quite right, Achates. M. de Mayenne stands to his word. Lucas availed
+nothing."
+
+He stood a moment frowning, then his countenance cleared up.
+
+"My faith! I have enough to gladden me without fretting that Lucas is
+alive. Fare you well, Félix. You are like to reach St. Denis as soon as
+I. My son's horse will not lag."
+
+He sprang to the saddle with a smiling salute to his guardians, and the
+little train clattered off.
+
+Pierre came to my elbow with an open paper--the order signed and sealed
+for M. de Mar's release.
+
+"Here, my young cockerel, you and d'Auvray are to take this to the
+Bastille, and it will be strange if your master does not walk free
+again. His Grace bids you tell M. de Mar he remembers Wednesday night,
+underground."
+
+"And I remember Tuesday night in the council-room, Pierre," I was
+beginning, but he cut me short. Even now that I was in favour, he risked
+no mention of his disobedience. He packed me off with d'Auvray on the
+instant; I had no chance to ask him whether he suspected us yesterday.
+Sometimes I have thought he did, but I am bound to say he gave us no
+look to show it.
+
+D'Auvray and I walked straight across Paris to the many-towered
+Bastille. It seemed a little way. Before the potent name of Mayenne bars
+flew open; a sentry on guard in the court led us into a small room all
+stone, floor, walls, ceiling, where sat at the table some high official,
+perhaps the governor of the prison himself. He was an old campaigner,
+grizzled and weather-beaten, his right sleeve hanging empty. An
+interesting figure, no doubt, but I paid him scant attention, for at his
+side stood Lucas.
+
+"I come on M. de Mayenne's business," he was expostulating, vehement,
+yet civil. "I suppose he did not think it necessary to write the order,
+since you know me."
+
+"The regulations, M. de Lorraine--" The officer broke off to demand of
+our escort, "Well, what now?"
+
+I went straight up to him, not waiting permission, and held out my
+paper.
+
+"An order, if it please you, monsieur, for the Comte de Mar's release."
+
+Lucas's hand went out to snatch and crumple it; then his clenched fist
+dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would blacken the paper
+with their fire.
+
+"Just that--the requisition for M. de Mar's release," the officer told
+him, looking up from it. "All perfectly regular and in order. In five
+minutes, M. de Lorraine, the Comte de Mar shall be before you. You may
+have all the conversation you wish."
+
+Lucas's face was as blank as the wall.
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," the officer
+went on to explain, evidently not caring to offend the general's nephew.
+"Without the written order I could not admit your brother of Guise. But
+now you can have all the conversation you desire with M. de Mar."
+
+Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of his
+brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his Grace," and,
+barely bowing, went from the room.
+
+"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That
+Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the
+Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had
+come to stab M. Étienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had
+missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My
+master once released, Lucas could not hurt him.
+
+What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of Mayenne's
+good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room, where we caught
+sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk or two behind them,
+and in a moment appeared again with a key.
+
+"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office myself,"
+he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.
+
+This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his way to
+pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.
+
+"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go with you?"
+
+He looked at me a moment, surprised.
+
+"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you like."
+
+So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the Comte de
+Mar.
+
+We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of heavy-barred
+doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the fonder I grew of my
+friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of these doors would shut on
+me. We climbed at last a steep turret stair winding about a huge fir
+trunk, lighted by slits of windows in the four-foot wall, and at the
+top turned down a dark passage to a door at the end, the bolts of which,
+invisible to me in the gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.
+
+The cell was small, with one high window through which I could see
+naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a stool, a
+bench that might serve as table. M. Étienne stood at the window, his arm
+crooked around the iron bars, gazing out over the roofs of Paris.
+
+He wheeled about at the door's creaking.
+
+"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me behind the
+keeper.
+
+"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set you free."
+
+I dashed in past the officer, snatching my lord's hand to kiss.
+
+"It's true, monsieur! You're free! It's all settled with Mayenne.
+Monsieur's seen him; he sets you free. He said, 'In recognizance of
+Wednesday night.'"
+
+Incredulous joy flashed over his face, to give way to belief without
+joy.
+
+"Now I know she's married."
+
+"Nothing of the sort!" I fairly shouted at him, dancing up and down in
+my eagerness. "She's to marry M. le Comte. She's at St. Denis with
+Monsieur. She's to marry you. It's all arranged. Mayenne consents--the
+king--everybody. It's all settled. She marries you."
+
+Preposterous as it seemed, he could not discredit my fervour. He
+followed us out of the cell and through the fortress in a radiant daze.
+He half believed himself dreaming, I think, and feared to speak lest his
+happiness should melt. I fancied even that he walked lightly and
+gingerly, as if the slightest unwary movement might break the spell. Not
+till we were actually in the open door of the court, face to face with
+freedom, did he rouse himself to acknowledge the thing real. With a
+joyous laugh, he turned to the keeper:
+
+"M. de La Motte, you should employ your leisure in writing down your
+reflections, like the Chevalier de Montaigne. You could give us a
+trenchant essay on the Ingratitude of Man. Here are you host of the
+biggest inn in Paris--a pile more imposing than the Louvre itself. Your
+hospitality is so eager that you insist on entertaining me, so lavish
+that you lodge me for nothing, would keep me without a murmur till the
+end of my life. Yet I, ingrate that I am, depart without a thank you!"
+
+"They don't leave in such case that they can very well thank me, most of
+my guests," La Motte answered, with a dry smile. "You are a fortunate
+man, M. de Mar."
+
+"M. le Comte, will you come quietly with me to the St. Denis gate?"
+d'Auvray asked him. "Or must I borrow a guard from M. de La Motte?"
+
+M. Étienne's whole face was smiling; not his lips alone, but his eyes.
+Even his skin and hair seemed to have taken on a brighter look. He
+glanced at d'Auvray in surprise at the absurd question.
+
+"I will come like a lamb, M. le Mousquetaire."
+
+We saluted La Motte and walked merrily out into the Place Bastille. I
+think I never felt so grand as when I passed through the noble
+sally-port, the soldiers making no motion to hinder us, but all saluting
+as if we owned the place. It had its advantage, this making friends with
+Mayenne.
+
+The first thing my lord did, still in the shadow of the prison, was to
+come to terms with d'Auvray.
+
+"See here, my friend, why must you put yourself to the fatigue of
+escorting me to the gate?"
+
+"Orders, monsieur. The general-duke wants to know that you get into no
+mischief between here and the gate. You are banished, you understand,
+from Paris."
+
+"I pledge you my word I shall make no attempt to elude my fate. I go
+straight to the gate. But, with all politeness to you, Sir Musketeer, I
+could dispense with your company."
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," d'Auvray quoted
+the keeper's words, which seemed to have impressed him. "However, M. le
+Comte, if I had something to look at, I could walk ten paces behind you
+and look at it."
+
+"Oh, if it is a question of something to play with!" M. Étienne laughed.
+
+D'Auvray was provided with toys, and M. Étienne linked arms with me, the
+soldier out of ear-shot behind us. He followed till we were in the Rue
+St. Denis, when, waving his hand in farewell, he turned his steps with
+the pious consciousness of duty done. Only I looked back to see it;
+monsieur had forgotten his existence.
+
+"I am not proud; I don't mind being marched through the streets by a
+musketeer," M. Étienne explained as we started; "but I can't talk before
+him. Tell me, Félix, the story, if you would have me live."
+
+And I told him, till we almost ran blindly into the tower of the St.
+Denis gate.
+
+We learned of the warder that M. de St. Quentin had recently passed out,
+but that nothing had been seen of his equery. No steeds were here for
+us.
+
+"Well, then, we'll go have a glass. But if Vigo doesn't come soon, by my
+faith, I'll walk to St. Denis!"
+
+But that promised glass was never drunk, nor were we to set out at once
+for St. Denis; for in the door of the wine-shop we met Lucas.
+
+I had dismissed him from thought, as something out of the reckoning,
+dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken sword. I thought him
+gone out of our lives when he went out of prison--gone forever, like
+last year's snow. And here within the hour we encountered him, a naked
+sword in his hand, a smile on his lips. He said, in the flower of his
+easy insolence:
+
+"Tuesday I told you our hour would come. It is here."
+
+"At your service," quoth my lord.
+
+"Then it needs not to slap your face?"
+
+"You insult me safely, Lucas. You have but one life. That is forfeit, be
+you courteous."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+Lucas held out the bare sword, hilt toward us.
+
+"Monsieur had a box for weapon yesterday, but as I prefer to fight in
+the established way, I ventured to provide him with a sword."
+
+"Thoughtful of you, Lucas. Is this the make of sword you elect to be
+killed with?"
+
+He was bending the blade to try its temper. Lucas unsheathed his own.
+
+"M. de Mar may have his choice."
+
+M. de Mar professed himself satisfied with the blade given him.
+
+"Have you summoned your seconds, Lucas?"
+
+Lucas raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Is that necessary? I thought we might settle our affairs without delay.
+I confess myself impatient."
+
+"Your sentiments for once are mine."
+
+"It is understood you bring your spaniel with you. He will watch that I
+do not spring on you before you are ready," Lucas said, with a fine
+sneer.
+
+"And who is to watch me?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are unnecessary. It
+is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy spot."
+
+"The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting place
+for you to die."
+
+"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas amended.
+
+Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on our way
+to that of the Coupejarrets.
+
+Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul play. I had
+suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord, who knew, had
+accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I had felt sure of a
+trap. But his inviting my presence at the place of our choice smelt like
+honesty.
+
+M. Étienne remarked casually to me:
+
+"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you thought you
+saw there--Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What ails you, lad?
+Footsteps on your grave?"
+
+But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of his. For
+of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not Lucas, but M.
+Étienne. What if the vision were, after all, the thing I had at first
+believed it--a portent? An appearance not of those who had died by
+steel, but of those who must. One, two, and now the third.
+
+Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I had
+seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no omen, but a
+mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?
+
+And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress as a
+Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this house lay
+under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save to our tombs.
+
+We entered the well-remembered little passage, the well-remembered
+court, where shards of glass still strewed the pavement. Some one--the
+gendarmes, I fancy, when they took away Pontou--had put a heavy padlock
+on the door Lucas and Grammont left swinging.
+
+"We go in by your postern, Félix," my master said. "M. Lucas, I confess
+I prefer that you go first."
+
+Lucas put his back to the wall.
+
+"Why go farther, M. le Comte?"
+
+"Do you long for interruption'?"
+
+"We were not noticed coming in. The street was quiet."
+
+He crossed the court abruptly and went down the alley to look into the
+street.
+
+"Not a soul in sight," he said, coming back. "I think we shall not be
+interrupted. Still, it is wise to use every care. We will fight, if you
+like, in the house."
+
+He opened with his knife the fastened shutter, and leaped lightly in.
+Monsieur followed. I, the last, was for closing the shutter, but he
+stopped me.
+
+"No; leave it wide. I have no fancy for a walk in pitch-darkness with M.
+Lucas."
+
+"Do we fight here?" Lucas asked, facing us in the wide, square hall. "We
+can let in more light."
+
+"You seem anxious, my friend, to call attention to your whereabouts. As
+I am host, I designate the fighting-ground. Up-stairs, if you please."
+
+"I suppose you insist on my walking first," Lucas sneered.
+
+"I request it, monsieur."
+
+"With all the willingness in the world," his rogue-ship answered,
+setting foot straightway on the stair and mounting steadily, never
+turning to see how near we followed, or what we did with our hands. His
+trust made me ashamed of our lack of it. I almost believed we did him
+injustice. Yet at heart I could not bring myself to credit him with any
+fair dealing.
+
+We went up one flight, up two. We had left behind us the twilight of the
+lower story, had not reached dawn again at the top. We walked in
+blackness. Suddenly I halted.
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I heard a noise."
+
+"Of course you did. The place is full of rats."
+
+"It was no rat. It was footsteps."
+
+We all three held still.
+
+"There, monsieur. Don't you hear?"
+
+"Nothing, Félix; your teeth are chattering. Cross yourself and come on."
+
+But I could not stand it.
+
+"I'll go back and see, monsieur."
+
+"No," Lucas said, striding back from the foot of the next flight. "I
+will go."
+
+We saw a glint in the gloom, monsieur's bared sword.
+
+"You will go neither one of you. Hush! If we show ourselves, there'll be
+no duel to-day."
+
+We kept still, all three leaning over the banister, peering down to
+where the white tiles picked themselves out of the floor of the hall far
+beneath. We could see them better than we could see one another. All was
+silent. Not so much as a rustle came up from below. Suddenly Lucas made
+a step or two, as if to pass us. M. Étienne wheeled about, raising his
+sword toward the spot where from his footfalls we supposed Lucas to be.
+
+"You show an eagerness to get away from me, M. de Lorraine."
+
+"Not in the least, M. de Mar. This alarm is but Félix's poltroonery, yet
+it prompts me to go down and close the shutter."
+
+"On the contrary, you will go up with me. Félix will close the shutter."
+
+They confronted each other, vague shapes in the darkness, each with
+drawn sword. Then Lucas raised his in salute.
+
+"As you will; so be some one sees to it."
+
+"Go, Félix."
+
+Lucas first, they mounted the last flight of stairs, and their footsteps
+passed along the corridor to the room at the back. I, as I was ordered,
+set my face down the stairs.
+
+They might mock me as they liked, but I could not get it out of my head
+that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping heart, I stole
+from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the flight. I heard
+plainly the sound of moving above me, and of voices; but below not a
+whisper, not a creak. It must have been my silly fears. Resolved to
+choke them, I planted my feet boldly on the next flight, and descended
+humming, to prove my ease, the rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch.
+Suddenly, from not three feet off, came the soft singing:
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear_--
+
+My knees knocked together, and the breath fluttered in my throat. It
+seemed the darkness itself had given tongue. Then came a low laugh and
+the muttered words:
+
+"Here we are, M. de Lorraine. Are you ready?"
+
+There was a stir of feet on the landing before me, behind the voice. The
+house, then, was full of Lucas's cutthroats, the first of them Peyrot.
+In the height of my terror, I remembered that M. Étienne's life, too,
+depended on my wits, and I kept them. I whispered, for whispering voices
+are hard to tell apart:
+
+"Not yet. The two of them are up there. Keep quiet, and I'll send the
+boy down. When you've finished him, come up."
+
+"As you say, monsieur. It is your job."
+
+I turned, scarce able to believe my luck, and, not daring to run, walked
+up-stairs again. Prick my ears as I might, I heard no movement after me.
+Actually, I had fooled Peyrot. I had gone down to meet my death, and a
+tune had saved me.
+
+When I reached the uppermost landing, I rushed along the passage and
+into the room, flinging the door shut, locking and bolting it.
+
+They had not begun to fight, but had busied themselves clearing the
+space of all obstacles. The table was pushed against the wall in the
+corner by the door; the chairs were heaped one on another at the end of
+the room. Both shutters were wide open. M. Étienne, bareheaded, in his
+shirt, stood at guard. Lucas was kneeling on the floor, picking up with
+scrupulous care some bits of a broken plate. He sprang to his feet at
+sight of me.
+
+"What is it?" cried M. Étienne.
+
+"Cutthroats. They'll be here in a minute."
+
+Even as I spoke, I heard tramping on the stairs below. My slam of the
+door had warned them that something was wrong.
+
+"Was that your delay?" M. Étienne shouted, springing at his foe.
+
+"I play to win!" Lucas answered, smiling.
+
+The blades met; the men circled about and about. Lucas, though he
+preferred to murder, knew how to duel.
+
+We were doomed. With monsieur's sword for only weapon, we could never
+hope to pass the gang. In another minute they would be here to batter
+the door down and end us. Our consolation lay in killing Lucas first.
+Yet as I watched, I feared that M. Étienne, in the brief moments that
+remained to him, could not conquer him, so shrewd and strong was Lucas's
+fence. Must the scoundrel win? I started forward to play Pontou's trick.
+Lucas sought to murder us. Why not we him?
+
+One flash from my lord's eyes, and I retreated in despair. For I knew
+that did I touch Lucas, M. Étienne would let fall his sword, let Lucas
+kill him. And the bravos were on the last flight.
+
+Was there no escape? There were three doors in the room. One led to the
+passage, one to the closet, the third--I dashed through to find myself
+in a large empty chamber, a door wide open giving on the passage.
+Through it I could see the dusky figures of four men running up the
+stairs.
+
+I was across the room like an arrow, and got the door shut and bolted
+before they could reach the landing. The next moment some one flung
+against it. It stood firm. Delaying only a moment to shake it, three of
+the four I could hear run to the farther door, whence issued the noise
+of the swords.
+
+I, inside the wall, ran back too. The combat still raged. Neither, that
+I could see, had gained the least advantage. Outside, the murderers
+dashed themselves upon the door.
+
+I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed myself,
+pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the panels a little
+firmer.
+
+Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second chamber. Its
+shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no other door to the
+room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but spanned a foot above the
+fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest sweep that ever wielded broom
+could not have squeezed between them.
+
+In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it was, I
+thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I stuck my head
+out. It was the same window where I had stood when Grammont seized me.
+There, not ten feet away, eight at the most, but a little above me, was
+the casement of my garret in the Amour de Dieu. Would it be possible to
+jump and catch the sill? If I did, I could scarce pull myself in.
+
+I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu. And there
+beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me. There was no
+mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my lungs:
+
+"Maître Jacques!"
+
+He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his
+amazement, I saw that he knew me.
+
+"Maître Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out! Help us for the
+love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!"
+
+For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the inn.
+
+I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel.
+White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging,
+ungaining.
+
+Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending,
+blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were fighting out there,
+that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I learned better.
+Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of
+stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not long stand against that.
+
+I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost, lost!
+
+Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's victory,
+he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the back room. But it
+was Lucas who lay prone.
+
+"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would not till
+with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de grâce.
+
+Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great splinter six
+inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the opening. A hand came
+through to wrench it away.
+
+M. Étienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife through the hand,
+nailing it to the wood. On the instant he recognized its owner.
+
+"Good morning, Peyrot. We've recovered the packet."
+
+Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed him into
+the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the oaths of the
+bravos a good spur. And, St. Quentin be thanked, there in the garret
+window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a ladder to us.
+
+"Go, monsieur! There are four behind us. Go!"
+
+"You first!"
+
+But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran back to
+guard the door. He had the sense to see there was no good arguing.
+Crying, "Quick after me, Félix!" he crawled out on the ladder.
+
+Peyrot was released. Another blow from the ram, and the door fell to
+finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam. I
+darted to the window. M. Étienne was in the garret, helping hold the
+ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too eagerly. Like a lath it
+snapped.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+_"The very pattern of a king."_
+
+
+The next world appeared to be strangely like this. I found myself lying
+on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting comfortably on
+some one's shoulder, while some one else poured wine down my gullet.
+Presently I discovered that Maître Jacques's was the ministering hand,
+M. Étienne's the shoulder. After all, this was not heaven, but still
+Paris.
+
+I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's best
+Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he stopped, and I
+said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and quavery:
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"
+
+My lord's voice was as unsteady as mine.
+
+"But the ladder?" I murmured.
+
+"The ladder broke. But you had hold beyond the break. You hung on till
+we seized you. And then you swooned."
+
+"What a baby!" I said, getting to my feet. "But the men, monsieur?
+Peyrot?"
+
+"I think we've seen the last of those worthies. They took to their heels
+when you escaped them."
+
+"But, monsieur, they've gone to inform! You'll be taken for killing
+Lucas."
+
+"I doubt it. Themselves smell too strong of blood to dare bruit the
+matter. Natheless, if you can walk now, we'll make good time to the
+gate."
+
+But for all his haste, he would not start till I had had some bread and
+soup down in the kitchen.
+
+"We must take good care of you, boy Félix," he said. "For where the St.
+Quentins would be without you, I tremble to think."
+
+I set out a new man. In three steps, it seemed to me, we had reached the
+city gate, to find the way blocked by a company of twenty or thirty
+horse, the St. Quentin uniform flaunting gay in the sun. The nearest
+trooper set up a shout at sight of us, when Vigo, coming out suddenly
+from behind a nag, took M. le Comte in his big embrace. He released him
+immediately, looking immensely startled at his own demonstration.
+
+M. Étienne laughed out at him.
+
+"Be more careful, I beg you, Vigo! You will make me imagine myself of
+some importance."
+
+"I thought you swallowed up," Vigo growled. "You had been here--I
+couldn't get a trace of you."
+
+"I was killing Lucas."
+
+"Sacré! He's dead?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"That's the best morning's work ever you did, M. Étienne."
+
+"Have you horse for us, Vigo?"
+
+"Of course. Some of the men will walk. I suppose we're leaving Paris to
+buy you out of the Bastille?"
+
+"Not worth it, eh, Vigo?"
+
+"Yes," said Vigo, gravely--"yes, M. Étienne. You are worth it."
+
+Vigo's troop was but slow-moving, as some of the horses carried double,
+some were loaded with chattels. M. Étienne and I, on the duke's
+blood-chargers, soon left the cavalcade behind us. Before I knew it, we
+were halted at the outpost of the camp. My lord gave his name.
+
+"To be sure!" cried the sentry. "We've orders about you. You dine with
+the king, M. de Mar."
+
+"Mordieu! I do?"
+
+"You do. Orders are to take you to him out of hand. Captain!"
+
+The officer lounged out of the tavern door.
+
+"Captain, M. de Mar."
+
+"Oh, aye!" cried the captain, coming forward with brisk interest. "M. de
+Mar, you're the child of luck. You dine with the king."
+
+"I am the child of bewilderment, captain."
+
+"And you've not too much time to recover from it, M. le Comte. You are
+to go straight to the king."
+
+"I may go to M. de St. Quentin's lodgings first?"
+
+"No, monsieur; straight to the king."
+
+"What! in my shirt?"
+
+"I can't help it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the king
+did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order was to
+fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our king's no
+stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to lack for a coat."
+
+"I might wash my face, then."
+
+"Certainly. No harm in that."
+
+So M. Étienne went into the tournebride and washed his face. And that
+was all the toilet he made for audience with the greatest king in the
+world.
+
+"You'll ride to Monsieur's," he commanded me, when the captain answered:
+
+"No; he goes with you, monsieur, if he's the boy Choux, Troux, whatever
+it is."
+
+"Broux--Félix Broux!" I cried, a-quiver.
+
+"That's it. You go to the king, too. Another luck-child."
+
+I thought so indeed. We followed the sentry through the town in a waking
+dream, content to let him do with us as he would. He did the talking,
+explained to the grandees in the king's hall our names and errand. One
+of them led us up the stairs and knocked at a closed door.
+
+"Enter!"
+
+It was Henry's own voice. I pinched monsieur's hand to tell him. Our
+guide opened the door a crack.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, and his servant."
+
+"Good, La Force. Let them enter."
+
+M. La Force fairly pushed us over the sill, so abashed were we, and shut
+the door upon us.
+
+The king was alone. But before this simple gentleman in the rusty black,
+M. Étienne caught his breath as he had not done before a court in full
+pomp. He had seen courts, but he had never seen the first soldier of
+Europe. He advanced three steps into the room, and forgot to kneel,
+forgot to lower his gaze in the presence, but merely stared wide-eyed at
+majesty, as majesty stared at him. Thus they stood surveying each other
+from top to toe in the frankest curiosity, till at length the king
+spoke:
+
+"M. de Mar, you look less like a carpet-knight than I expected."
+
+M. Étienne came to himself, to kneel at once.
+
+"Sire, I blush for my looks. But your zealous soldiers would not let me
+from their clutches. I am just come from killing Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"What! the spy Lucas?"
+
+"Himself. And when I left the spot by way of the window in some haste, I
+was not expecting this honour, Sire."
+
+"Nor do I think you deserve it, ventre-saint-gris!" the king cried.
+"Though you come hatless and coat-less to-day, you have been a long time
+on the road, M. de Mar."
+
+"Aye, Sire."
+
+"You might as well have stayed away as come at this hour. Marry, all's
+over! Go hang yourself, my breathless follower! We have fought all our
+great battles, and you were not there!"
+
+Scarlet under the lash, M. Étienne, kneeling, bent his eyes on the
+ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he felt it incumbent
+to stammer something:
+
+"That is my life's misfortune, Sire."
+
+"Misfortune, sirrah? Misfortune you call it? Let me hear you say fault."
+
+"I dare not, Sire," M. Étienne murmured. "It was of course your
+Majesty's fault. We cannot serve heretics, we St. Quentins."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! You think well of yourself, young Mar."
+
+"I must, Sire, when your Majesty invites me to dinner."
+
+The king burst into laughter, and his temper, which I believe was all a
+play, vanished to the winds.
+
+"Pardieu! you're a glib fellow, Mar. But I didn't invite you to dinner
+for your own sake, little as you can imagine it. So you would have
+joined my flag four years ago, had I not been a stinking heretic?"
+
+"Aye, Sire, I needs must have. Therefore am I everlastingly beholden to
+your Majesty for remaining so long a Huguenot."
+
+"How now, cockerel?"
+
+M. Étienne faltered a moment. He was not burdened by shyness, but before
+the king's sharp glance he underwent a cold terror lest he had been too
+free with his tongue. However, there was naught to do but go on.
+
+"Sire, had I fought under your banner like a man, at Dieppe and Arques
+and Ivry, M. de Mayenne had never dreamed of marrying his ward to me. I
+had never known her."
+
+"The loveliest demoiselle I ever saw!" the king cried. "I shall marry
+her to one of my staunchest supporters."
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING.]
+
+The smile was washed from M. Étienne's lips. He turned as white as
+linen. In one moment his youth seemed to go from him. The king,
+unnoting, picked a parchment off the table.
+
+"To one of my bravest captains. Here's his commission, my lad."
+
+M. Étienne stared up from the writing into the king's laughing face.
+
+"I, Sire? I?"
+
+"You, Mar, you. You are my staunch supporter, perhaps?"
+
+"Your horse-boy, an you ask it, Sire!"
+
+He pressed his lips to the king's hand, great, helpless tears dripping
+down upon it.
+
+"If I ever desert you, I am a dog, Sire! But the fighting is not all
+done. I will capture you a flag yet."
+
+"Perhaps. I much fear me there's life in Mayenne still."
+
+M. Étienne, not venturing to rise, yet lifted beseeching eyes to the
+king's.
+
+"What! you want to get away from me, ventre-saint-gris!"
+
+My lord, who wanted precisely that, had no choice but to protest that
+nothing was farther from his thoughts.
+
+"Stuff!" the king exclaimed. "You're in a sweat to be gone, you
+unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with the
+king, and your one itch is to escape the tedium!"
+
+"Sire--"
+
+"Peace! You are guilty, sirrah. Take your punishment!"
+
+He darted across the room, and throwing open an inner door, called
+gently, "Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes, Sire," she answered, coming to the threshold.
+
+The peasant lass was gone forever. The great lady, regal in satins,
+stood before us. She bent on the king a little, eager, questioning
+glance; then she caught sight of her lover. Faith, had the sun gone out,
+the room would have been brilliant with the light of her face.
+
+M. Étienne sprang up and toward her. And she, pushing by the king as if
+he had been the door-post, went to him. They stood before each other,
+neither touching nor speaking, but only looking one at the other like
+two blind folk by a heavenly miracle restored to sight.
+
+"How now, children? Am I not a model monarch? Do you swear by me
+forever? Do you vouch me the very pattern of a king?"
+
+Answer he got none. They heard nothing, knew nothing, but each other.
+The slighted king chuckled and, beckoning me, withdrew to his cabinet.
+
+So here an end. For if Henry of France leave them, you and I may not
+stay.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14219 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14219 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/001.jpg" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="003.jpg"></a> <a href=
+"images/003.jpg"><img src="images/003.jpg" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" /></a><br />
+<b>THE FLORENTINES IN THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE MAYENNE</b>
+<br /></div>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/004.png" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<h1>THE HELMET OF NAVARRE</h1>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDR&Eacute; CASTAIGNE</h3>
+<h4>THE CENTURY CO.</h4>
+<h5>NEW YORK 1901</h5>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO MY MOTHER</h2>
+<div class="center">Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst
+the ranks of war,<br />
+And be your oriflamme to-day the Helmet of Navarre.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">LORD MACAULAY'S
+"IVRY."</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br /></div>
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td align="right">CHAPTER</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#I">I</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#I">A FLASH OF LIGHTNING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#I">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#II">II</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#II">AT THE AMOUR DE DIEU</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#II">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#III">III</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#III">M. LE DUC IS WELL GUARDED</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#III">16</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IV">THE THREE MEN IN THE WINDOW</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IV">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#V">V</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#V">RAPIERS AND A VOW</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#V">37</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VI">VI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VI">A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VI">51</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VII">VII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VII">A DIVIDED DUTY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VII">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VIII">VIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=
+"#VIII">CHARLES-ANDR&Eacute;-&Eacute;TIENNE-MARIE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VIII">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IX">IX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IX">THE HONOUR OF ST. QUENTIN</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IX">85</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#X">X</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#X">LUCAS AND "LE GAUCHER"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#X">96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XI">XI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XI">VIGO</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XI">107</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XII">XII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XII">THE COMTE DE MAR</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XII">120</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIII">XIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIII">MADEMOISELLE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIII">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIV">XIV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIV">IN THE ORATORY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIV">153</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XV">XV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XV">MY LORD MAYENNE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XV">167</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVI">XVI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVI">MAYENNE'S WARD</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVI">186</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVII">XVII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVII">"I'LL WIN MY LADY!"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVII">203</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVIII">TO THE BASTILLE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVIII">222</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIX">XIX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIX">TO THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE
+LORRAINE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIX">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XX">XX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XX">"ON GUARD, MONSIEUR"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XX">251</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXI">XXI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXI">A CHANCE ENCOUNTER</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXI">266</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXII">XXII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXII">THE SIGNET OF THE KING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXII">278</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIII">THE CHEVALIER OF THE
+TOURNELLES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIII">296</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIV">THE FLORENTINES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIV">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXV">XXV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXV">A DOUBLE MASQUERADE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXV">336</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVI">WITHIN THE SPIDER'S WEB</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVI">362</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVII">THE COUNTERSIGN</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVII">379</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVIII">ST. DENIS&mdash;AND
+NAVARRE!</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII">402</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIX">THE TWO DUKES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIX">423</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXX">XXX</a></td>
+<td><a href="#XXX">MY YOUNG LORD SETTLES SCORES WITH TWO FOES AT
+ONCE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXX">440</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXXI">"THE VERY PATTERN OF A
+KING"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXXI">461</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#003.jpg">THE FLORENTINES IN THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE
+MAYENNE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#003.jpg"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#098.jpg">"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD
+ME"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#098.jpg">87</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#128.jpg">"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP,
+FLYING DOWN THE ALLEY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#128.jpg">117</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#160.jpg">"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS
+HORSE-BOY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#160.jpg">149</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#180.jpg">MLLE. DE MONTLUC AND F&Eacute;LIX BROUX IN
+THE ORATORY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#180.jpg">169</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#216.jpg">"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES
+MUST BE FED"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#216.jpg">205</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#248.jpg">"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK
+COACH"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#248.jpg">237</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#272.jpg">"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S
+SHOP"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#272.jpg">261</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#324.jpg">AT THE "BONNE FEMME"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#324.jpg">313</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#408.jpg">"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER
+EXTREMITY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#408.jpg">397</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#422.jpg">ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#422.jpg">411</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#478.jpg">THE MEETING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#478.jpg">467</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<img src="images/014.png" width="60%" alt="" title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+<h3><i>A flash of lightning.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>t the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a
+candle. The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would
+not have you break your neck."</p>
+<p>"And give the house a bad name," I said.</p>
+<p>"No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer
+inn in all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you
+will have larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance."</p>
+<p>This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been
+bragging a bit of my prospects. I retorted:</p>
+<p>"When I am, Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, look out for a rise in your
+taxes."</p>
+<p>The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the
+honours of that encounter. And though the stairs were the steepest
+I ever climbed, I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the
+way up. What mattered it that already I ached in every bone, that
+the stair was long and my bed but a heap of straw in the garret of
+a mean inn in a poor quarter? I was in Paris, the city of my
+dreams!</p>
+<p>I am a Broux of St. Quentin. The great world has never heard of
+the Broux? No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years,
+Masters of the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St.
+Quentin. The great world has heard of the St. Quentins? I warrant
+you! As loudly as it has of Sully and Villeroi, Tr&eacute;mouille
+and Biron. That is enough for the Broux.</p>
+<p>I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I
+loved and revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court,
+seemed as far away from us as the saints in heaven. But the year
+after King Henry III was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his
+estate, to make high and low love him for himself.</p>
+<p>In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two
+Leagues were tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found
+himself between the devil and the deep sea. He was no friend to the
+League; for years he had stood between the king, his master, and
+the machinations of the Guises. On the other hand, he was no friend
+to the Huguenots. "To seat a heretic on the throne of France were
+to deny God," he said. Therefore he came home to St. Quentin, where
+he abode in quiet for some three years, to the great wonderment of
+all the world.</p>
+<p>Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead,
+his compeers would have understood readily enough that he was
+waiting to see how the cat would jump, taking no part in the
+quarrel lest he should mix with the losing side. But this theory
+jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst
+detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a
+hotspur&mdash;a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost.
+Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the
+emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to
+enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The
+puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur,
+honour was more than a pretty word. If he could not find his cause
+honest, he would not draw his sword, though all the curs in the
+land called him coward.</p>
+<p>Thus he stayed alone in the ch&acirc;teau for a long, irksome
+three years. Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to
+stand aside and watch while other men fought out great issues. It
+was a weary procession of days to him. His only son, a lad a few
+years older than I, shared none of his father's scruples and
+refused point-blank to follow him into exile. He remained in Paris,
+where they knew how to be gay in spite of sieges. Therefore I, the
+Forester's son, whom Monsieur took for a page, had a chance to come
+closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere servant, and I
+loved him as the dogs did. Aye, and admired him for a fortitude
+almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive here
+in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and &Icirc;le de France
+battles raged and towns fell and captains won glory.</p>
+<p>At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to
+have a frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for
+that he was accorded long interviews with Monsieur. After these
+visits my lord was always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs,
+like a stallion when he is led out of the stable. I looked for
+something to happen, and it was no surprise to me when M. le Duc
+announced one day, quite without warning, that he was done with St.
+Quentin and would be off in the morning for Mantes. I was in the
+seventh heaven of joy when he added that he should take me with
+him. I knew the King of Navarre was at Mantes&mdash;at last we were
+going to make history! There was no bound to my golden dreams, no
+limit to my future.</p>
+<p>But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but
+my father's. He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old
+servitor's privilege, begged him to leave me at home.</p>
+<p>"I have lost two sons in Monsieur's service," he said: "Jean,
+hunting in this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois. I have
+never grudged them to Monsieur. But F&eacute;lix is all I have
+left."</p>
+<p>Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the
+hay-loft, when my duke rode away. I could not watch his going.</p>
+<p>Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed. Time does
+pass, at length, even when one is young. It was July. The King of
+Navarre had moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most
+folk thought he would never win the city, the hotbed of the League.
+Of M. le Duc we heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller,
+putting up at the inn in the village, told a startling tale. The
+Duke of St. Quentin, though known to have been at Mantes and
+strongly suspected of espousing Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly
+into Paris and opened his h&ocirc;tel! It was madness&mdash;madness
+sheer and stark. Thus far his religion had saved him, yet any day
+he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.</p>
+<p>My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on
+the grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for
+keeping me at home and spoiling my chances in life. He gave me
+straightway the whole of the story. Long before it was over I had
+sprung to my feet.</p>
+<p>"Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?" he said.</p>
+<p>"Father!" was all I could gasp.</p>
+<p>"Then you shall go," he answered. That was not bad for an old
+man who had lost two sons for Monsieur!</p>
+<p>I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart. I
+can tell naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end
+of it lay Paris. I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered
+without a passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly
+so strict as Mayenne supposed. I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry,
+in no guise to present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no
+farther that night than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue
+des Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Far below my garret window lay the street&mdash;a trench between
+the high houses. Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the
+house opposite. To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it
+seemed the desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the
+rabbits in a warren. So ingenious were they at contriving to waste
+no inch of open space that the houses, standing at the base but a
+scant street's width apart, ever jutted out farther at each story
+till they looked to be fairly toppling together. I could see into
+the windows up and down the way; see the people move about within;
+hear opposite neighbours call to each other. But across from my
+aery were no lights and no people, for that house was shuttered
+tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as expressionless as a
+blind face. I marvelled how it came to stand empty in that teeming
+quarter.</p>
+<p>Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and
+was asleep before I could shut my eyes.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Crash! Crash! Crash!</p>
+<p>I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was
+bombarding Paris. Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the
+noise was thunder.</p>
+<p>From the window I peered into floods of rain. The peals died
+away. Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in
+astonishment. For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid
+vision of three men in the window.</p>
+<p>Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.</p>
+<p>I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next
+flash. When it came it showed me the window barred as before. Flash
+followed flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain.
+The shutter remained closed as if it had never been opened. Sleep
+rolled over me in a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+<h3><i>At the Amour de Dieu.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hen I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the
+room, glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared
+at them, sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the
+thunder-storm and the open shutter and the three men. I jumped up
+and ran to the window. The shutters opposite were closed; the house
+just as I had seen it first, save for the long streaks of wet down
+the wall. The street below was one vast puddle. At all events, the
+storm was no dream, as I half believed the vision to be.</p>
+<p>I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was
+deserted save for Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of
+me whether I took myself for a prince, that I lay in bed till all
+decent folk had been hours about their business, and then expected
+breakfast. However, he brought me a meal, and I made no complaint
+that it was a poor one.</p>
+<p>"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.</p>
+<p>He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed
+over on the table.</p>
+<p>"What neighbours?"</p>
+<p>"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep
+them open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said
+airily. "Last night I saw three men in the window opposite
+mine."</p>
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+<p>"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is
+how you came to see visions."</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for
+that, let me tell you, Ma&icirc;tre Jacques."</p>
+<p>"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no
+one has lived in that house these twenty years."</p>
+<p>Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head
+over night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So,
+with a fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:</p>
+<p>"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"</p>
+<p>He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see
+that no one was by, leaned across the table, up to me.</p>
+<p>"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell
+you first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is
+haunted."</p>
+<p>"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.</p>
+<p>"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre&mdash;you know
+naught of that: you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a
+country boy. But I was here, and I know. A man dared not stir out
+of doors that dark day. The gutters ran blood."</p>
+<p>"And that house&mdash;what happened in that house?"</p>
+<p>"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de
+B&eacute;thune," he answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in
+a low voice. "They were all put to the sword&mdash;the whole
+household. It was Guise's work. The Duc de Guise sat on his white
+horse, in this very street here, while it was going on. Parbleu!
+that was a day."</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu! yes."</p>
+<p>"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different
+tone. "One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen
+now. But the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near
+that house. No one will live there."</p>
+<p>"And have others seen as well as I?"</p>
+<p>"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises.
+Folk might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis
+another matter with you, though, since you have had the
+vision."</p>
+<p>"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre
+dress&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"M. de B&eacute;thune and his cousins. What further? Did you
+hear shrieks?"</p>
+<p>"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for
+the space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute
+the shutters were closed again."</p>
+<p>"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has
+disturbed them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have
+lost their leader."</p>
+<p>I stared at him blankly, and he added:</p>
+<p>"Their Henry of Navarre."</p>
+<p>"But he is not lost. There has been no battle."</p>
+<p>"Lost to them," said Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, "when he turns
+Catholic."</p>
+<p>"Oh!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know
+these things."</p>
+<p>"But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!"</p>
+<p>"Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do
+the learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?"</p>
+<p>"Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Ma&icirc;tre
+Jacques."</p>
+<p>"If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out,
+spit me on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he
+added:</p>
+<p>"It should be welcome news to you."</p>
+<p>Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of
+base. Yet it was my duty to be discreet.</p>
+<p>"I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I
+said.</p>
+<p>"Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open
+secret that your patron has gone over to Navarre."</p>
+<p>"I know naught of it."</p>
+<p>"Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to
+Paris M. de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his
+parleyings, he was a fool."</p>
+<p>"His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.</p>
+<p>"Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre. For,
+mark you, all France has been wondering these many months where St.
+Quentin was coming out. His movements do not go unnoted like a
+yokel's. But, i' faith, he is not dull; he understands that well
+enough. Nay, 'tis my belief he came into the city in pure
+effrontery to show them how much he dared. He is a bold blade, your
+duke. And, mon dieu! it had its effect. For the Leaguers have been
+so agape with astonishment ever since that they have not raised a
+finger against him."</p>
+<p>"Yet you do not think him safe?"</p>
+<p>"Safe, say you? Safe! Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of
+lions, and they did not in the first instant eat you, would you
+therefore feel safe? He was stark mad to come to Paris. There is no
+man the League hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no
+man they can afford so ill to spare to King Henry. A great Catholic
+noble, he would be meat and drink to the B&eacute;arnais. He was
+mad to come here."</p>
+<p>"And yet nothing has happened to him."</p>
+<p>"Verily, fortune favours the brave. No, nothing has
+happened&mdash;yet. But I tell you true, F&eacute;lix, I had rather
+be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de Dieu than stand in M. de St.
+Quentin's shoes."</p>
+<p>"I was talking with the men here last night," I said. "There was
+not one but had a good word for Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so they have. They like his pluck. And if the League kills
+him it is quite on the cards that the people will rise up and make
+the town lively. But that will not profit M. de St. Quentin if he
+is dead."</p>
+<p>I would not be dampened, though, by an old croaker.</p>
+<p>"Nay, ma&icirc;tre, if the people are with him, the League will
+not dare&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There you fool yourself, my springald. If there is one thing
+which the nobles of the League neither know nor care about it is
+what the people think. They sit wrangling over their French League
+and their Spanish League, their kings and their princesses, and
+what this lord does and that lord threatens, and they give no heed
+at all to us&mdash;us, the people. But they will find out their
+mistake. Some day they will be taught that the nobles are not all
+of France. There will come a reckoning when more blood will flow in
+Paris than ever flowed on St. Bartholomew's day. They think we are
+chained down, do they? Pardieu! there will come a day!"</p>
+<p>I scarcely knew the man; his face was flushed, his eyes
+sparkling as if they saw more than the common room and mean street.
+But as I stared the glow faded, and he said in a lower tone:</p>
+<p>"At least, it will happen unless Henry of Navarre comes to save
+us from it. He is a good fellow, this Navarre."</p>
+<p>"They say he can never enter Paris."</p>
+<p>"They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he
+can enter Paris to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne does not think so."</p>
+<p>"No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep
+an inn in the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.</p>
+<p>"Laugh if you like; but I tell you, F&eacute;lix Broux, my
+lord's council-chamber is not the only place where they make kings.
+We do it, too, we of the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>"Well," said I, "I leave you, then, to make kings. I must be off
+to my duke. What's the scot, ma&icirc;tre?"</p>
+<p>He dropped the politician, and was all innkeeper in a
+second.</p>
+<p>"A crown!" I cried in indignation. "Do you think I am made of
+crowns? Remember, I am not yet Minister of Finance."</p>
+<p>"No, but soon will be," he grinned. "Besides, what I ask is
+little enough, God knows. Do you think food is cheap in a
+siege?"</p>
+<p>"Then I pray Navarre may come soon and end it."</p>
+<p>"Amen to that," said old Jacques, quite gravely. "If he comes a
+Catholic it cannot be too soon."</p>
+<p>I counted out my pennies with a last grumble.</p>
+<p>"They ought to call this the Rue Coupebourses."</p>
+<p>He laughed; he could afford to, with my silver jingling in his
+pouch. He embraced me tenderly at parting, and hoped to see me
+again at his inn. I smiled to myself; I had not come to
+Paris&mdash;I&mdash;to stay in the Rue Coupejarrets!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+<h3><i>M. le Duc is well guarded.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to
+inquire my way to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew,
+in the Quartier Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had
+found the broad, straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to
+follow it over the hill down to the river-bank; my eyes were free,
+therefore, to stare at all the strange sights of the great
+city&mdash;markets and shops and churches and prisons. But most of
+all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had scarce realized
+there were so many people in the world as passed me that summer
+morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the place
+appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris was
+at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by
+the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.</p>
+<p>I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as
+not to see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I
+looked at the people I passed who were going about their business
+so tranquilly. Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or
+Navarre's. Before a week was out these peaceable citizens might be
+using pikes for tools and exchanging bullets for good mornings.
+Whatever happened, here was I in Paris in the thick of it! My feet
+fairly danced under me; I could not reach the h&ocirc;tel soon
+enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for it gave me chance
+to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die for
+him&mdash;whatever fate could offer I was ready for.</p>
+<p>The h&ocirc;tel, when at length I arrived before it, was no
+disappointment. Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun;
+the street was of decent width, and the houses held themselves back
+with reserve, like the proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did
+one here regret his possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in
+the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Of all the mansions in the place, the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin
+was, in my opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and
+stately, with gardens at the side. But there was about it none of
+that stir and liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the
+great. No visitors passed in or out, and the big iron gates were
+shut, as if none were looked for. Of a truth, the persons who
+visited Monsieur these days preferred to slip in by the postern
+after nightfall, as if there had never been a time when they were
+proud to be seen in his hall.</p>
+<p>Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of
+Monsieur's men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him
+boldly.</p>
+<p>He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce
+repaid him.</p>
+<p>"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M.
+le Duc."</p>
+<p>"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which,
+none of the newest, showed signs of my journey.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his
+men."</p>
+<p>He looked me up and down with a grin.</p>
+<p>"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is
+not receiving to-day."</p>
+<p>"I am F&eacute;lix Broux," I told him.</p>
+<p>"You may be F&eacute;lix anybody for all it avails; you cannot
+see Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the
+staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common
+fellow picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been
+at his side these twenty years.</p>
+<p>"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."</p>
+<p>"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You
+shall smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."</p>
+<p>"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to
+bother with you."</p>
+<p>"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and
+resumed his pacing up and down the court.</p>
+<p>"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he
+could hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by
+and by. I'll pay you off."</p>
+<p>It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal;
+it made a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an
+outcry that would bring forward some officer with more sense than
+the surly sentry, or whether to seek some other entrance, I became
+aware of a sudden bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which
+I could see through the gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair
+of flunkeys passed. There was some noise of voices and, finally, of
+hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen men-at-arms ran to the gates and
+swung them open, taking their stand on each side. Clearly, M. le
+Duc was about to drive out.</p>
+<p>A little knot of people had quickly collected&mdash;sprung from
+between the stones of the pavement, it would seem&mdash;to see
+Monsieur emerge.</p>
+<p>"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye,
+and a handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.</p>
+<p>I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in
+my throat now that the moment had come when I should see my
+Monsieur. At the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the
+coach-step, crying, all my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le
+Duc!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of
+recognition. The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang
+up-and struck me a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where
+the ponderous wheels would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick
+and kind, pulled me out of the way. Some one shouted,
+"Assassin!"</p>
+<p>"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with
+Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the
+sentry. "He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He
+was one of Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well,
+we have seen how Monsieur treats him!"</p>
+<p>"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young
+gentleman treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a
+common man so much as look at him."</p>
+<p>They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.</p>
+<p>"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because
+<i>he</i> knocked him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe
+there's harm in the boy. What meant you, lad?"</p>
+<p>"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the
+street. This, then, was what I had come to Paris for&mdash;to be
+denied entrance to the house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and
+threatened with a drubbing from the lackeys!</p>
+<p>For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From
+waking in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was
+Monsieur's. Never was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte
+more throw his soul into his service than I into mine. Never did
+lover hate to be parted from his mistress more than I from
+Monsieur. The journey to Paris had been a journey to Paradise. And
+now, this!</p>
+<p>Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me
+beseech him and not answered&mdash;not lifted a finger to save me
+from being mangled under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were
+two very different places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had
+been pleased to take me into the ch&acirc;teau and treat me to more
+intimacy than he accorded to the high-born lads, his other pages.
+So much the easier, then, to cast me off when he had tired of me.
+My heart seethed with rage and bitterness against Monsieur, against
+the sentry, and, more than all, against the young Comte de Mar, who
+had flung me under the wheels.</p>
+<p>I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son
+of M. le Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share
+his father's exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore
+him, which he so little repaid. I had never thought to like him,
+St. Quentin though he were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His
+handsome face looked ugly enough to me as he struck me that
+blow.</p>
+<p>I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own
+thoughts louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not
+remain in this trance forever, and at length I woke to two
+unpleasant facts: first, I had no idea where I was, and, second, I
+should be no better off if I knew.</p>
+<p>Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I
+go back to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it
+was equally obvious that never, so long as my father retained the
+spirit that was his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account
+of my morning's achievements. It was just here that, looking at the
+business with my father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I
+had behaved like an insolent young fool. But I was still too angry
+to acknowledge it.</p>
+<p>Remained, then, but one course&mdash;to stay in Paris, and keep
+from starvation as best I might.</p>
+<p>My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to
+throw away in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely
+what I should need to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for
+accidents; so that, after paying Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, I had hardly
+two pieces to jingle together.</p>
+<p>For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I
+could write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian,
+thanks to Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and
+handle a sword none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that
+it should not be hard to pick up a livelihood. But how to start
+about it I had no notion, and finally I made up my mind to go and
+consult him whom I now called my one friend in Paris, Jacques the
+innkeeper.</p>
+<p>'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly
+Rue St. Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might
+have been laid out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so
+did they twist and turn and double on themselves. I could make my
+way only at a snail's pace, asking new guidance at every corner.
+Noon was long past when at length I came on laggard feet around the
+corner by the Amour de Dieu.</p>
+<p>Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though
+I had resolved to seek out Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, still 'twas a
+hateful thing to enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I
+had paid for my breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for
+my dinner. I had bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have
+to tell how I had been flung under the coach-wheels. My pace
+slackened to a stop. I could not bring myself to enter the door. I
+tried to think how to better my story, so to tell it that it should
+redound to my credit. But my invention stuck in my pate.</p>
+<p>As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found
+myself gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my
+thoughts shifted back to my vision.</p>
+<p>Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had
+appeared to me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I
+had beheld them but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up
+their faces like those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was
+small, pale, with pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The
+second man was conspicuously big and burly, black-haired
+and-bearded. The third and youngest&mdash;all three were
+young&mdash;stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
+was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
+gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain;
+the next they had vanished like a dream.</p>
+<p>It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
+fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from
+their unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son
+of the Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen?
+Ma&icirc;tre Jacques had hinted at further terrors, and said no one
+dared enter the place. Well, grant me but the opportunity, and I
+would dare.</p>
+<p>Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance
+into that banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to
+do whatever mad mischief presented itself. Here was the house just
+across the street.</p>
+<p>Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in
+the row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over
+the door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it
+did, for there was no use in trying to batter down this door with
+the eye of the Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side
+street, and after exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one
+that led me into a small square court bounded on three sides by a
+tall house with shuttered windows.</p>
+<p>Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two
+doors were both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor
+were small, high, and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters
+swung half open, but I could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did
+not despair; I was not without experience of shutters. I selected
+one closed not quite tight, leaving a crack for my knife-blade. I
+found the hook inside, got my dagger under it, and at length drove
+it up. The shutter creaked shrilly open.</p>
+<p>A few good blows knocked in the casement. I followed.</p>
+<p>I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust. From
+this, once a porter's room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway
+dimly lighted from the open window behind me. The hall was large,
+paved with black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway
+mounted into mysterious gloom.</p>
+<p>My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a
+choked cry rasping my throat. For, as I crossed the hall, peering
+into the dimness, I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with
+upraised bludgeon, a man.</p>
+<p>For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless,
+motionless, waiting for him to brain me. Then my half-uttered
+scream changed to a quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to
+the gloom, discovered my bogy to be but a figure carved in wood,
+holding aloft a long since quenched flambeau.</p>
+<p>I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear.
+I thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled
+at the sword's point up these very stairs. The silence seemed to
+shriek at me, and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering
+out from the shadowed corners. Yet for all that&mdash;nay, because
+of that&mdash;I would not give up the adventure. I went back into
+the little room and carefully closed the shutter, lest some other
+meddler should spy my misdeed. Then I set my feet on the stair.</p>
+<p>If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was
+naught to the blackness now. My hand on the rail was damp. Yet I
+mounted steadily.</p>
+<p>Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of
+the next flight, and went on. Suddenly, above, I heard a noise. I
+came to an instant halt. All was as still as the tomb. I listened;
+not a breath broke the silence. It never occurred to me to imagine
+a rat in this house of the dead, and the noise shook me. With a
+sick feeling about my heart I went on again.</p>
+<p>On the next floor it was lighter. Faint outlines of doors and
+passages were visible. I could not stand the gloom a moment longer;
+I strode into the nearest doorway and across the room to where a
+gleam of brightness outlined the window. My shaking fingers found
+the hook of the shutter and flung it wide, letting in a burst of
+honest sunshine. I leaned out into the free air, and saw below me
+the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of the Amour de Dieu.</p>
+<p>The next instant a cloth fell over my face and was twisted
+tight; strong arms pulled me back, and a deep voice commanded:</p>
+<p>"Close the shutter."</p>
+<p>Some one pushed past me and shut it with a clang.</p>
+<p>"Devil take you! You'll rouse the quarter," cried my captor,
+fiercely, yet not loud. "Go join monsieur." With that he picked me
+up in his arms and walked across the room.</p>
+<p>The capture had been so quick I had no time for outcry. I fought
+my best with him, half strangled as I was by the cloth. I might as
+well have struggled against the grip of the Maiden. The man carried
+me the length of the house, it seemed; flung me down upon the
+floor, and banged a door on me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+<h3><i>The three men in the window</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in
+pitch-darkness. I dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the
+walls, I discovered myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all
+my force I flung myself once more upon the door. It stood firm.</p>
+<p>"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.</p>
+<p>They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced
+at that. I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil?
+These might be villains&mdash;doubtless were, skulking in this
+deserted house,&mdash;yet with readiness and pluck I could escape
+them.</p>
+<p>It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the
+grave. The men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had
+gone cautiously down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had
+given them a fine fright, clattering through the house as I had,
+and even now they were looking for my accomplices.</p>
+<p>It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness.
+If ever you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water
+from a rag, shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will
+thank you to take him out into the daylight and hang him. In token
+whereof, my heart welcomed like brothers the men returning.</p>
+<p>They came into the room, and I thought they were three in
+number. I heard the door shut, and then steps approached my
+closet.</p>
+<p>"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough
+voice of a man without breeding.</p>
+<p>"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the
+deep tones of my captor.</p>
+<p>Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do
+you look out for him, Gervais."</p>
+<p>I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for
+freedom. But the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for
+me&mdash;to the effect that my knife went one way and I another
+before I could wink. I reeled against the wall and stayed there,
+cursing myself for a fool that I had not trusted to fair words
+instead of to my dagger.</p>
+<p>"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid
+voice&mdash;a tall fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So
+had I seen the stalwart blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was
+older, a common-looking fellow whose face was new to me. All three
+were in their shirts on account of the heat; all were plain, even
+shabby, in their dress. But the two young men wore swords at their
+sides.</p>
+<p>The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of
+light into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few
+old chairs and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken
+food and wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs,
+two or three hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of
+dress littered the floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean
+quality except the bearing of the two young men. A gentleman is a
+gentleman even in the Rue Coupejarrets&mdash;all the more, maybe,
+in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two were gently born.</p>
+<p>The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name
+was Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris
+alone&mdash;for so I dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well
+open under dark brows&mdash;Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or
+angered; the only emotion to be read in his face was a gay interest
+as the blackavised Gervais put me questions.</p>
+<p>"How came you here? What are you about?"</p>
+<p>"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my
+stupidity with that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I
+thought the house was deserted."</p>
+<p>He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.</p>
+<p>"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the
+truth."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was
+the whole of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any
+one. They said the house was haunted."</p>
+<p>"Who said that?"</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."</p>
+<p>He stared at me in surprise.</p>
+<p>"What had you been asking about this house?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:</p>
+<p>"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the
+window last night. Did you not?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw
+you plain as day. But Ma&icirc;tre Jacques said it was a
+vision."</p>
+<p>"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed
+very neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I
+thought. So old Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de
+B&eacute;thune, who was a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.</p>
+<p>"He said my house belonged to the B&eacute;thunes! Well played,
+Jacques! You owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I
+took to make him think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for
+Henri Quatre. Did he say, perchance, that in this very courtyard
+Coligny fell?"</p>
+<p>"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my
+terrors for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I
+to know it was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but
+yesterday from St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be
+quiet, fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux."</p>
+<p>"Who sent you here?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, no one."</p>
+<p>"You lie."</p>
+<p>Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears
+stood in my eyes.</p>
+<p>"No one, monsieur; I swear it."</p>
+<p>"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."</p>
+<p>He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other,
+torture with strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the
+table.</p>
+<p>"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."</p>
+<p>"He is a spy."</p>
+<p>"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes,
+forsooth! No spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first
+seized him he was no spy. I say it again, now I have heard his
+story. He saw us by chance, and Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's bogy story
+spurred him on instead of keeping him off. You are a fool, my
+cousin."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You
+will bring us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a
+spy it means the whole crew are down upon us."</p>
+<p>"What of that?"</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! is it nothing?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:</p>
+<p>"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
+boisterously:</p>
+<p>"And do you want Monsieur here?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris flushed red.</p>
+<p>"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble
+himself to come."</p>
+<p>Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of
+several things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair
+of fools, you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us
+now. He shall not live to carry the tale of us."</p>
+<p>"Then you have me to kill as well!"</p>
+<p>Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his
+sword-hilt.</p>
+<p>"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a
+ruffian," he cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then
+Yeux-gris, with a sudden exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke
+into laughter.</p>
+<p>Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For
+Gervais was taking the situation with a seriousness that was as
+terrifying as it was stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I
+could not but think the end of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's
+laugh said the very notion was ridiculous; I was innocent of all
+harmful intent, and they were gentlemen, not cutthroats.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I
+told you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or
+what you do, I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no
+party and am no man's man. As for why you choose to live in this
+empty house, it is not my concern and I care no whit about it. Let
+me go, messieurs, and I will swear to keep silence about what I
+have seen."</p>
+<p>"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me
+he had yet assumed. He answered:</p>
+<p>"If he had not said the name&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more.
+If he were what you think, it is the very last name he would have
+said."</p>
+<p>This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Ma&icirc;tre
+Jacques's and my own. And he was their friend.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you,
+why, I can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at
+least it is an honest one and has ever been held so down where we
+live."</p>
+<p>"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest
+to the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>He started, and Gervais cried out:</p>
+<p>"Voil&agrave;! who is the fool now?"</p>
+<p>My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my
+rescue, quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St.
+Quentin, and the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he
+whom they had spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There
+was more in this than I had thought at first. It was no longer a
+mere question of my liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever
+information I could gather.</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:</p>
+<p>"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris.
+What brought you?"</p>
+<p>"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered,
+deeming the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in
+Paris, my father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night,
+and lay at the Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's
+h&ocirc;tel, but the guard would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur
+drove out I tried to get speech with him, but he would have none of
+me."</p>
+<p>The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice
+and face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:</p>
+<p>"And do you hate him for that?"</p>
+<p>"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he
+chooses. But I hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul
+blow."</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"His son."</p>
+<p>"He has no son."</p>
+<p>"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Why, we knew naught&mdash;" I was beginning, when Gervais broke
+in:</p>
+<p>"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this!
+He saw the Comte de Mar&mdash;!"</p>
+<p>"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by
+Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline
+face&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as
+who should say, "That is his scullion."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his
+shoulders and demanded of me:</p>
+<p>"What next?"</p>
+<p>"I came away angry."</p>
+<p>"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted
+house? Pardieu! too plain a lie."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in
+the daytime," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in
+two lies; first the B&eacute;thunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a
+clumsy spy; they might have found a better one. Not but what that
+touch about ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of.
+That was Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked
+like a dolt else."</p>
+<p>"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not
+tell me about the B&eacute;thunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did
+not know the Comte de Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is
+handsome enough for a count. I came here, as I told you, in
+curiosity concerning Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's story. I had no idea of
+seeing you or any living man. It is the truth, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face.
+You came into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite
+you to stay. You shall be my valet."</p>
+<p>"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.</p>
+<p>The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:</p>
+<p>"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand
+the services of M. F&eacute;lix are not engaged."</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy&mdash;this
+sneak&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris,
+with a cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this
+shabby room. He added lightly again:</p>
+<p>"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not
+blab of us. Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry,
+they need it."</p>
+<p>Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."</p>
+<p>"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in
+rebellion, "what! you will not."</p>
+<p>"No," said I.</p>
+<p>"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.</p>
+<p>"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.</p>
+<p>"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by
+chance; it is true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was
+born on his land and I am no traitor. I will not be valet or
+henchman for either of you, if I die for it."</p>
+<p>I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and
+sprang for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais
+struck me over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was
+darkness.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+<h3><i>Rapiers and a vow.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>came to my senses slowly, to hear loud, angry voices. As I
+opened my eyes and stirred, the room reeled from me and all was
+blank again. Awhile after, I grew aware of a clashing of steel. I
+lay wondering thickly what it was and why it had to be going on
+while my head ached so, till at length it dawned on my dull brain
+that swords were crossing. I opened my eyes again, then.</p>
+<p>They were fighting each other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter
+was almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to
+the wall. Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other
+round in a circle till the room seemed to spin once more.</p>
+<p>I crawled out of the way and watched them, bewildered, absorbed.
+I had more reason to thrill over the contest than the mere
+excellence of it,&mdash;which was great,&mdash;since I was the
+cause of the duel, and my very life, belike, hung on its issue.</p>
+<p>They were both admirable swordsmen, yet it was clear from the
+first where the palm lay. Anything nimbler, lighter, easier than
+the sword-play of Yeux-gris I never hope to see in this imperfect
+world. The heavier adversary was hot, angry, breathing hard. A
+smile hovered over Yeux-gris's lips; already a red disk on
+Gervais's shirt showed where his cousin's sword had been and would
+soon go again, and deeper. I had forgotten my bruise in my interest
+and delight, when, of a sudden, one whom we all had ignored took a
+hand in the game. Gervais's lackey started forward and knocked up
+Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and Gervais slashed his arm
+from wrist to elbow.</p>
+<p>With a smothered cry, Yeux-gris caught at his wound. Gervais,
+ablaze with rage, sprang past him on his creature. The man gaped
+with amazement; then, for there was no time for parley, leaped for
+the door. It was locked. He turned, and with a look of deathly
+terror fell on his knees, crouched up against the door-post.
+Gervais lunged. His blade passed clean through the man's shoulders
+and pinned him to the door. His head fell heavily forward.</p>
+<p>"Have you killed him?" cried Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"By my faith! I meant to," came the answer. Gervais was bending
+over the man. With an abrupt laugh he called out: "Killed him,
+pardieu! He has come off cheap."</p>
+<p>He raised the fellow's limp head, and we saw that the sword had
+passed just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh.
+He had swooned from sheer terror, being in truth not so much as
+scratched.</p>
+<p>Gervais turned to his cousin.</p>
+<p>"I never meant that foul trick. It was no thought of mine. I
+would have turned the blade if I could. I will kill Pontou now, if
+you say the word."</p>
+<p>"Nay," answered the other, faintly; "help me."</p>
+<p>The blood was pouring from his arm; he was half swooning.
+Gervais and I ran to him and, between us, bathed the cut, bandaged
+it with strips torn from a shirt, and made a sling of a scarf. The
+wound was long, but not deep, and when we had poured some wine down
+his throat he was himself again.</p>
+<p>"You will not bear me malice for that poltroon's work,
+&Eacute;tienne?" Gervais asked, more humbly than I ever thought to
+hear him speak. "That was a foul cut, but it was no fault of mine.
+I am no blackguard; I fight fair. I will kill the knave, if you
+like."</p>
+<p>"You are ungrateful, Gervais; he saved you when you needed
+saving," Yeux-gris laughed. "Faith! let him live. I forgive him.
+You will pay me for my hurt by yielding me F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked at me. While we had worked side by side over
+Yeux-gris he seemed to have forgotten that he was my enemy. But now
+all the old suspicion and dislike came into his face again.
+However, he answered:</p>
+<p>"Aye, you would have been the victor had it not been for Pontou.
+You shall do what you like with your boy. I promise you that."</p>
+<p>"Now that is well said, Gervais," returned Yeux-gris, rising,
+and picking up his sword, which he sheathed. "That is very well
+said. For if you did not feel like promising it, why, I should have
+to begin over again with my left hand."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I give you the boy," Gervais repeated rather sullenly,
+turning away to pour himself some wine.</p>
+<p>I could not but wonder at Yeux-gris, at his gaiety and his
+steadfastness. He had hardly looked grave through the whole affair;
+he had fought with a smile on his lips and had taken a cruel wound
+with a laugh. Withal, he had been the constant champion of my
+innocence, even to drawing his sword on his cousin for me. Now,
+with his bloody arm in its sling, he was as debonair and careless
+as ever. I had been stupid enough to imagine the big Gervais the
+leader of the two, and I found myself mistaken. I dropped on my
+knee and kissed my saviour's hand in all gratitude.</p>
+<p>"Aha," said Yeux-gris, "what think you now of being my
+valet?"</p>
+<p>Verily, I was hard pushed.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I owe you much more than I can ever pay. If
+you were any man's enemy but my duke's, I would serve you on my
+knees. But I was born on the duke's land and I cannot be disloyal.
+You may kill me yourself, if you like."</p>
+<p>"No," he answered gravely, "that is not my m&eacute;tier."</p>
+<p>Gervais laughed.</p>
+<p>"Make me that offer, and I accept."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris turned to him with that little hauteur he assumed
+occasionally.</p>
+<p>"You are helpless, my cousin. You have passed your word."</p>
+<p>"Aye. I leave him to you."</p>
+<p>His sullen eyes told me it was no new-born tenderness for me
+that prompted his surrender. Nor had I, truth to tell, any great
+faith in the sacredness of his word. Yet I believed he would let me
+be. For it was borne in upon me that, despite his passion and
+temper, he had no wish to quarrel with Yeux-gris. Whether at bottom
+he loved him or in some way dreaded him, I could not tell; but of
+this my fear-sharpened wits were sure: he had no desire to press an
+open breach. He was honestly ashamed of his henchman's low deed;
+yet even before that his judgment had disliked the quarrel. Else
+why had he struck me with the hilt of the sword?</p>
+<p>"I leave him to you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you
+deem his life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a
+taste for insolence, &Eacute;tienne? Time was when you were touchy
+on that score."</p>
+<p>"Time never was when I did not love courage."</p>
+<p>"Oh, it is courage!" With a sneer he turned away.</p>
+<p>"Gervais," said Yeux-gris, "have the kindness to unlock the
+door."</p>
+<p>Gervais wheeled around, his face an angry question.</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris answered it with cold politeness:</p>
+<p>"That F&eacute;lix Broux may pass out."</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, he shall not!"</p>
+<p>"You gave your word you would leave him to me. Did you lie?"</p>
+<p>"I do leave him to you!" Gervais thundered. "I would slit his
+impudent throat; but since you love him, you may have him to eat
+out of your plate and sleep in your bosom. I will put up with it.
+But go out of that door till the thing is done, sang dieu! he shall
+not!"</p>
+<p>"If he goes straight to the duke, what then? He will say he
+found us living in my house. What harm? We are no felons. Let him
+say it."</p>
+<p>"And put Lucas on his guard?" returned Gervais. He was angry,
+yet he spoke with evident attempt at restraint. "Put Lucas on the
+trail? He is wary as a cat. Let him get wind of us here, and he
+will never let us catch him."</p>
+<p>"Well," said Yeux-gris, reluctantly, "it is true. And though I
+will not have the boy harmed, he shall stay here. I will not put a
+spoke in the wheel. We will take no risks till Lucas is shent. The
+boy shall be held prisoner. And afterward&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I will come myself and let him out," said Gervais, and
+laughed.</p>
+<p>I glanced at my protector, not liking to think of that moment,
+whenever it might be, "afterward." He went up to Gervais.</p>
+<p>"My cousin, are we friends or foes? For, faith! you treat me
+strangely like a foe."</p>
+<p>"We are friends."</p>
+<p>"I am your friend, since it is in your cause that I am here. I
+have stood at your shoulder like a brother&mdash;you cannot deny
+it."</p>
+<p>"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,&mdash;my one
+friend in that house,&mdash;as I was yours. I stood at your
+shoulder in the Montluc affair&mdash;you cannot deny that. I have
+been your ally, your servant, your messenger to mademoiselle, your
+envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my power to win you your
+lady."</p>
+<p>A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face.</p>
+<p>"That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais."</p>
+<p>He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a
+sudden as far away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. He shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on
+Gervais's shoulder: "It's beyond you, cousin."</p>
+<p>Gervais brought him back to the point.</p>
+<p>"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me
+when you let loose a spy to warn Lucas."</p>
+<p>"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder
+than I when that knave is dead. But I will not have F&eacute;lix
+Broux suffer because he dared speak for the Duke of St.
+Quentin."</p>
+<p>"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you
+keep him from Lucas."</p>
+<p>Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so
+great that the words came out of themselves:</p>
+<p>"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to
+him:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"</p>
+<p>Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have
+told me nothing I might ask, exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Why, Lucas!"</p>
+<p>He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance
+that the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a
+dead-weight, and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the
+nearest chair.</p>
+<p>A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris
+standing wet-handed by me.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you
+love so much this Lucas who struck you?"</p>
+<p>"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the
+duke."</p>
+<p>"Did you take us for Leaguers?"</p>
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+<p>He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself
+right in my eyes.</p>
+<p>"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen
+with a grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we
+have the Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to
+me; I am not putting either on the throne. So if you have got it
+into your head that we are plotting for the League, why, get it out
+again."</p>
+<p>"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>He answered me slowly:</p>
+<p>"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his
+way unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."</p>
+<p>"And Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man,
+skulks behind the bars of the H&ocirc;tel st. Quentin and will not
+face my cousin's sword. So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do
+you believe me?"</p>
+<p>I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my
+defence, and I could not but believe him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur," I said.</p>
+<p>He regarded me curiously.</p>
+<p>"The duke's life seems much to you."</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I am a Broux."</p>
+<p>"And could not be disloyal to save your life?"</p>
+<p>"My life! Monsieur, the Broux would not seek to save their souls
+if M. le Duc preferred them damned."</p>
+<p>I expected he would rebuke me for the outburst, but he did not;
+he merely said:</p>
+<p>"And Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Lucas!" I said. "I know nothing of him. He is new with the
+duke since my time. I do not owe him anything, save a grudge for
+that blow this morning. Mon dieu, monsieur, I am thankful to you
+for befriending me. Dying for Monsieur is all in a day's work; we
+expect to do that. But, my faith, if I had died just now, it would
+have been for Lucas."</p>
+<p>At this moment a long groan came from the end of the room. We
+turned; the lackey was waking from his swoon, under the
+ministration of Gervais. He opened his eyes; their glance was dull
+till they fell upon his master. And then at once they looked
+venomous.</p>
+<p>Gervais kicked him into fuller consciousness.</p>
+<p>"Get up, hound. It is time to meet Martin."</p>
+<p>The wretch scrambled shakily to his feet, and stood clutching
+the door-jamb and eying Gervais, terror writ large on his chalky
+countenance. Yet there was more than terror in his face; there was
+the look you see in the eyes of a trapped animal that watches its
+chance to bite. Yeux-gris cried out:</p>
+<p>"You dare not send that man, Gervais."</p>
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+<p>"Because the moment he is clear of the house he will betray you.
+Look at his face."</p>
+<p>"He shall swear on the cross!"</p>
+<p>"Aye. But you cannot trust the oath of such as he."</p>
+<p>"What would you? We must send."</p>
+<p>"As you will. But you are mad if you send him."</p>
+<p>Gervais pondered a moment, his slower wits taking in the
+situation. Then he seized the man by the collar, fairly flung him
+across the room into the closet, and bolted the door upon him.</p>
+<p>"I will settle with him later. But you are right. We cannot send
+him."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"My faith! we could not have more trouble if we were heads of
+the League than this little duel of yours is giving us. Why, what
+if we are seen? I will go."</p>
+<p>Gervais started.</p>
+<p>"No; that will not do."</p>
+<p>"Eh, bien, then, what will you propose?"</p>
+<p>But it was some one else who proposed. I said to Yeux-gris:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if all your purpose is against Lucas and no other, I
+am your man. I will go."</p>
+<p>"What, my stubborn-neck, you?"</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I owe you a great debt. While I thought you
+meant ill to M. le Duc, I could not serve you. But this Lucas is
+another pair of sleeves. I owe him no allegiance. Moreover, he
+nearly killed me this morning. Therefore I am quite at your
+disposal."</p>
+<p>"Now, I wonder if you are lying," said Gervais.</p>
+<p>"I do not think he is lying," Yeux-gris said. "I trow, Gervais,
+we have got our messenger."</p>
+<p>"You tell me to beware of Pontou because he hates me, and then
+would have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some
+acumen.</p>
+<p>I said: "Monsieur, you do not seem to understand how I come to
+make this offer."</p>
+<p>"To get out of the house with a whole skin."</p>
+<p>I had a joy in daring him, being sure of Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I should be glad to leave this house with
+my skin whole or broken, so long as I left on my own feet. But you
+have mentioned the very reason why I shall not betray you. I do not
+love you and I do not love Lucas. Therefore, if you and M. Lucas
+are to fight, I ask nothing better than to help the quarrel
+on."</p>
+<p>He stared at me with an air more of bewilderment than aught
+else, but Yeux-gris's ready laughter rang out.</p>
+<p>"Bravo, F&eacute;lix! I am proud of you. That is an idea worthy
+of C&aelig;sar! You would set your enemies to exterminate each
+other. And I asked you to be my valet!"</p>
+<p>"Which do you wish to see slain?" demanded the black
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>I answered quite truthfully:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way."</p>
+<p>I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out
+at once:</p>
+<p>"Bravo, F&eacute;lix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough
+to know whether you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well,
+but I love you."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a
+well, truth lies at the bottom."</p>
+<p>"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.</p>
+<p>"Do you say, trust him?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest,
+nor honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve
+against the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no
+coward; he was no liar. I think he is not those now."</p>
+<p>Gervais was still doubtful.</p>
+<p>"It is a risk. If he betrays&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you
+too good a gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."</p>
+<p>"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you
+like."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris said at once to me:</p>
+<p>"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in
+open fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose
+out of doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him.
+Therefore we have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a
+man in the house to tell of his movements. He is to fare out
+secretly at night on a mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade
+only. M. Gervais and I will interrupt that little journey."</p>
+<p>"Very good, monsieur. And I?"</p>
+<p>"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition.
+Last night, when he told us of the plan, it had not been
+decided."</p>
+<p>"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know
+him."</p>
+<p>"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will
+not know you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little
+alley to the north of the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin. Do you know your
+way to the h&ocirc;tel? Well, then, you are to go down the
+passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's garden&mdash;you
+cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the street, on
+the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway. Half-way down
+the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our man, Louis
+Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"</p>
+<p>I repeated the directions.</p>
+<p>"You have learned your lesson. You will ask him the
+hour&mdash;only that."</p>
+<p>"And you will take oath not to betray us," commanded
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>I took out the cross that hung on my rosary. I was ready to
+swear. Gervais prompted:</p>
+<p>"I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but
+Martin."</p>
+<p>With all solemnity I swore it on my cross.</p>
+<p>"That oath will be kept," said Yeux-gris. He held out a sudden
+hand for the cross, which I gave him, wondering.</p>
+<p>"I swear that we mean no harm whatsoever to the Duke of St.
+Quentin." He kissed the cross and flung the chain back over my
+neck.</p>
+<p>At last I saw the door unlocked. Yeux-gris even returned to me
+my knife.</p>
+<p>"Au revoir, messieurs."</p>
+<p>Gervais, sullen to the last, vouchsafed no answer, but Yeux-gris
+called out cheerily, "Au revoir."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+<h3><i>A matter of life and death.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-n.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>othing in life can be so sweet as freedom after captivity,
+safety after danger. When I gained the open street once more and
+breathed the open air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could
+have sung with joy. I fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in
+getting out of my plight. As for the combat I was furthering, my
+only doubt about that was lest the skulking Lucas should not prove
+good sword enough to give trouble to M. Gervais. It was very far
+from my wish that he should come out of the attempt unscathed.</p>
+<p>But as I went along and had more time to ponder the matter,
+other doubts forced themselves into my reluctant mind. Put it as I
+pleased, the affair smacked too much of secrecy to be quite
+savoury. It was curious, to say the least, that an honest encounter
+should require so much plotting. Also, Lucas, coward and rascal
+though he might be, was Monsieur's man, doing Monsieur's errand,
+and for me to mix myself up in a plot against him was scarcely in
+keeping with my vaunted loyalty to the house of St. Quentin. My
+friend Gervais's quarrel might be just; his manner of procedure,
+even, might be just, and yet I have no right to take part in
+it.</p>
+<p>And yet Monsieur had signified plainly enough that he was no
+longer my patron. For my birth's sake I might never work against
+him, but I was free to do whatever else I chose. Monsieur himself
+had made it necessary for me to take another master, and assuredly
+I owed something to Yeux-gris. I had reason to feel confidence in
+his honour; surely I might reckon that he would not be in the
+affair unless it were honest. Lucas was like enough a scoundrel of
+whom Monsieur would be well rid. And lastly and finally and above
+all, I was sworn, so there was no use worrying about it. I had
+taken oath, and could not draw back.</p>
+<p>I hurried along to the rendezvous, only pausing one moment at
+the street-corner to buy sausages hot from the brazier, which I
+crammed into my mouth as I ran. But after all was there no need of
+haste; the little arch, when I panted up to it, was all
+deserted.</p>
+<p>No better place for a tryst could have been found in the heart
+of busy Paris. Only the one door opened into the alley; M. de
+Portreuse's high garden wall, forming the other side of the
+passage, was unbroken by a gate, and no curious eyes from the house
+could look into the deep arch and see the narrow nail-studded door
+at the back where I awaited the rat-faced Martin.</p>
+<p>I stood there long, first on one foot and then on the other,
+fearful every moment lest some one of Monsieur's true men should
+come along to demand my business. No one appeared, either foe or
+friend, for so long that I began to think Yeux-gris had tricked me
+and sent me here on a fool's errand, when, all at once, a low voice
+said close to my ear:</p>
+<p>"What seek you here?"</p>
+<p>I jumped on finding at my side a little, pale, sharp-faced
+man&mdash;the man of the vision. He had slipped through the door so
+suddenly and quietly that I was once more tempted to take him for a
+ghost. He eyed me for a bare second; then his eyes dropped before
+mine.</p>
+<p>"I am come to learn the hour," said I.</p>
+<p>"Did you not hear the chimes ring five?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no need for disguise. I am come from the two in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour."</p>
+<p>He favoured me with another of his shifty glances.</p>
+<p>"What hour meant they?"</p>
+<p>I said bluntly, in a louder tone:</p>
+<p>"The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission."</p>
+<p>"Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud&mdash;his or the
+other's."</p>
+<p>"Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more
+time than I care to lose. How much longer before you will tell me
+what I came to know?"</p>
+<p>He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his
+eyes slunk away from mine.</p>
+<p>"You should have a password."</p>
+<p>"They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the
+shuttered house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be
+enough."</p>
+<p>"How came you into this business?"</p>
+<p>"By a back window."</p>
+<p>He gave me another suspicious glance, but making nothing by it,
+he rejoined:</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, I trust you. I will tell you."</p>
+<p>He clutched my arm and drew me to the back of the arch, where
+the afternoon shadows were already gathered.</p>
+<p>"What have you for me?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Nothing. What should I have?"</p>
+<p>"No gold?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"He promised me ten pistoles to-day. He did not give them to
+you?"</p>
+<p>"I tell you, no."</p>
+<p>"You are a thief! You have them!"</p>
+<p>He stepped forward menacingly; so did I. He then fell back as
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Nay, it was a jest; I know you are honest. But he promised me
+ten pistoles."</p>
+<p>"He did not give them to me," I said. "Perhaps he was not so
+convinced of my honesty. He will doubtless pay you afterward."</p>
+<p>"Afterward!" he retorted in a high key. "By our Lady, he shall
+pay me afterward! The gutters will run gold then, will they?
+Pardieu! I will see that a good stream flows my way. But one cannot
+play to-day with to-morrow's coin. He said I should have ten
+pistoles when I let him know the hour."</p>
+<p>"I cannot mend that. It lies between you and him. I have not
+seen or heard of any money."</p>
+<p>Martin edged up close to the door of retreat and waxed
+defiant.</p>
+<p>"Then all I have to say is, he may go whistle for his news."</p>
+<p>Now, had I but thought of it, here was an easy road out of a bad
+business. If Martin would not tell the hour of rendezvous, Lucas
+was saved, Monsieur's interests not endangered, yet at the same
+time I was not forsworn. But touch pitch and be defiled. You cannot
+go hand and glove with villains and remain an honest man. I
+returned directly:</p>
+<p>"As you choose. But M. Gervais carries a long sword."</p>
+<p>He started at that and made no instant reply, seeming to be
+balancing considerations. Then he gave his decision.</p>
+<p>"I will tell you. But your M. Gervais is wrong if he thinks I
+can be slighted and robbed of my dues. I know enough to make
+trouble for him, and I know where to take my knowledge. He will not
+find it easy to shut my mouth afterward, except with good broad
+gold pieces."</p>
+<p>"Enfin, are you telling me the hour?" I said impatiently. I was
+ill at ease; my only wish was to get the errand done and be
+gone.</p>
+<p>He laid a hand on my shoulder and made me bend to him, and even
+then spoke so low I could scarce catch the words.</p>
+<p>"They have fixed positively on to-night. They will leave by this
+door and take the route I described last night to M. Gervais. They
+will start as soon as the streets are quiet, sometime between ten
+and eleven. They must allow an hour to reach the gate, and the man
+goes off at twelve. In all likelihood they will not set out before
+a quarter of eleven; M. le Duc does not care to be recognized."</p>
+<p>So they planned to kill Lucas at Monsieur's side? Yeux-gris had
+not dared to tell me that. But he had looked me straight in the
+face and sworn on the cross no harm was meant to M. le Duc.
+Natheless, the thing looked ugly. My heart leaped up at the next
+words:</p>
+<p>"Also Vigo will go."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!"</p>
+<p>"Not so loud! You will have the guard on us! Yes, he is to go.
+At first Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this
+visit to the king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his
+confidence, and nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches
+over Monsieur like a hen over a chick."</p>
+<p>"Then it will be three to three," I said. I thought of Gervais,
+Yeux-gris, and Pontou, for of course I would take no part in
+it.</p>
+<p>"Three to two; Lucas will not fight."</p>
+<p>Lucas must be a poltroon, indeed!</p>
+<p>"But Vigo and Monsieur&mdash;" I began.</p>
+<p>"Aye, they are quick enough with their swords. Your side must be
+quicker, that's all. If you are sudden enough you can easily kill
+the duke before he can draw."</p>
+<p>Talk of words like thunderbolts! All the thunder of heaven could
+not have whelmed me like those words. Yeux-gris and his oaths! It
+<i>was</i> the duke, after all!</p>
+<p>I could not speak. I looked I know not how. But it was dusky in
+the arch.</p>
+<p>"It sounds simple," he went on. "But, three of you as you are,
+you will have trouble with Vigo. That is all. I have told you all.
+I must get back before I am missed. Good luck to the
+enterprise."</p>
+<p>Still I stood like a block of wood.</p>
+<p>"Tell M. Gervais to remember me," he said, and opening the door,
+passed in. I heard him lock and bolt it after him, and his
+footsteps hurrying down the passageway.</p>
+<p>Then I came to myself and sprang to the door and beat upon it
+furiously. But if he heard he was afraid to respond. After a futile
+moment that seemed an hour I rushed out of the arch and around to
+the great gate.</p>
+<p>The grilles were closed as before, but the sentry's face,
+luckily, was strange to me.</p>
+<p>"Open! open!" I shouted, breathless. "I must see M. le Duc!"</p>
+<p>"Who are you?" he demanded, staring.</p>
+<p>"My name is Broux. I have news for M. le Duc. Let me in. It is a
+matter of life and death."</p>
+<p>"Why, I suppose, then, I must let you in," that good fellow
+answered, drawing back the bolts. "But you must wait here
+till&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The gate was open. I took base advantage of him by sliding under
+his arm and shooting across the court up the steps to the house.
+The door stood open, and a couple of lackeys lounged on a bench in
+the hall.</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc!" I cried. "I must see him."</p>
+<p>They jumped up, the picture of bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"Who are you? How came you here?" cried the quicker-tongued of
+the two.</p>
+<p>"The sentry opened for me. Where am I to find M. le Duc? I must
+see him! I have news!"</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc sees no one to-day," the second lackey announced
+pompously.</p>
+<p>"But I must see him, I tell you," I repeated. I had completely
+lost what little head I ever had; it seemed to me that if I could
+not see M. le Duc on the instant I should find him weltering in his
+gore. "I must see him," I cried, parrot-like. "It is a matter of
+life and death."</p>
+<p>"From whom do you come?"</p>
+<p>"That's my affair. Enough that I come with news of the highest
+moment. You will be sorry if I you do not get me quickly to M. le
+Duc."</p>
+<p>They looked at each other, somewhat impressed.</p>
+<p>"I will go for M. Constant," said the one who had spoken
+first.</p>
+<p>Constant was Master of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited
+him with the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake.
+He was old, fussy, and self-important, and withal no friend to
+me.</p>
+<p>"I had rather you fetched Vigo," I said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Vigo will not come. He is with Monsieur. If I bring M.
+Constant, it is the best I can do for you."</p>
+<p>I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the
+nature of lackeys, and gave the messenger the last silver piece I
+had in the world. He regarded it contemptuously, but pocketed it
+and departed in leisurely fashion up the stairs.</p>
+<p>The other was not too grand to cross-examine me.</p>
+<p>"What sort of news have you? Do you come from the king?" he
+asked in a lowered voice.</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"From M. de Val&egrave;re?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Then who the devil are you?"</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Ah, St. Quentin," he said, as if he found that rather tame.
+"You bring news from there?"</p>
+<p>"No, I do not. Think you I shall tell you? This news is for
+Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"It won't reach Monsieur unless you learn politeness toward the
+gentlemen of his household," he retorted.</p>
+<p>We were getting into a lively quarrel when Constant appeared on
+the stairway&mdash;Constant and the lackey who had fetched him, and
+two more lackeys, and a page, all of whom had somehow scented that
+something was in the wind. They came flocking about us as I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Ah, M. Constant! You know me, F&eacute;lix Broux of St.
+Quentin. I must see M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>Constant's face of surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down
+at St. Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow,
+peevish old dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I
+had not thought he would revenge himself at such time as this. He
+looked at me with a spiteful grin, and said to the men:</p>
+<p>"He lies. I do not know him. I never saw him."</p>
+<p>"Never saw me, F&eacute;lix Broux!" I cried, completely taken
+aback.</p>
+<p>"No," maintained Constant. "You are an impostor."</p>
+<p>"Impostor! Nonsense!" I cried out. "Constant, you know me as
+well as you know yourself. I say I must see the duke; his life is
+in danger!"</p>
+<p>Constant was paying off old scores with interest.</p>
+<p>"An impostor," he yelled shrilly, "or else a madman&mdash;or an
+assassin."</p>
+<p>"That is the truth," said some one, laying a heavy hand on my
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>I turned; two men of the guard had come up, my friend of just
+now and my foe of the morning. It was the latter who held me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"This is the very rascal who sprang on Monsieur's coach-step in
+the morning. M. Lucas threw him off, else he might have stabbed
+Monsieur. We were fools enough to let him go free. But this time he
+shall not get off so easy."</p>
+<p>"I am innocent of all thought of harm," I cried. "I am M. le
+Duc's loyal servant. I meant no harm this morning, and I mean none
+now. I am here to save Monsieur's life."</p>
+<p>"He is here to kill Monsieur; he is an assassin!" screamed
+Constant. "Flog him, men; he will own the truth then!"</p>
+<p>"I am no assassin!" I shouted, struggling in their grasp. "Let
+me go, villains, let me go! I tell you, Monsieur's life is at
+stake&mdash;Monsieur's very life, I tell you!"</p>
+<p>They paid me no heed. Not one of them&mdash;save hat lying knave
+Constant&mdash;knew me as other than the shabby fellow who had
+acted suspiciously in the morning. They were dragging me to the
+door in spite of my shouts and struggles, when suddenly a ringing
+voice spoke from above:</p>
+<p>"What is this rumpus? Who talks of Monsieur's life?"</p>
+<p>The guards halted dead, and I cried out joyfully:</p>
+<p>"Vigo!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am Vigo," the big man answered, striding down the
+stairs. "Who are you?"</p>
+<p>I wanted to shout, "F&eacute;lix Broux, Monsieur's page," but a
+sort of nightmare dread came over me lest Vigo, too, should
+disclaim me, and my voice stuck in my throat.</p>
+<p>"Whoever you are, you will be taught not to make a racket in M.
+le Duc's hall. By the saints! it's the boy F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>At the friendliness in his voice the guards dropped their hands
+from me.</p>
+<p>"M. Vigo," I said, "I have news for Monsieur of the gravest
+moment. I am come on a matter of life and death. And I am stopped
+in the hall by lackeys."</p>
+<p>He looked at me sternly.</p>
+<p>"This is not one of your fooleries, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"No, M. Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Come with me."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+<h3><i>A divided duty.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hat was Vigo's way. The toughest snarl untangled at his touch.
+He had more sense and fewer airs than any other, he saw at once
+that I was in earnest; and Constant's voluble protests were as so
+much wind. The title does not make the man. Though Constant was
+Master of the Household and Vigo only Equery, yet Vigo ruled every
+corner of the establishment and every man in it, save only
+Monsieur, who ruled him.</p>
+<p>He said no word to me as we climbed the broad stair; neither
+reproved me for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He
+would not pry into Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned
+Monsieur, he had no interest in me whatsoever. He led the way
+straight into an antechamber, where a page sprang up to bar our
+passage.</p>
+<p>"No one may enter, M. Vigo, not even you. M. le Duc has ordered
+it. Why, F&eacute;lix! You in Paris!"</p>
+<p>"I enter," said Vigo; and, sweeping Marcel aside, he knocked
+loudly.</p>
+<p>"I came last night," I found time to say under my breath to my
+old comrade before the door was opened.</p>
+<p>The handsome secretary whom I had taken for the count stood in
+the doorway looking askance at us. He knew me at once and
+wondered.</p>
+<p>"You cannot enter, Vigo. M. le Duc is occupied."</p>
+<p>He made to shut the door, but Vigo's foot was over the sill.</p>
+<p>"Natheless, I must enter," he answered unabashed and pushed his
+way into the room.</p>
+<p>"Then you must answer for it," returned the secretary, with a
+scowl that sat ill on his delicate face.</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> shall answer for it if it turns out a mare's nest,"
+said Vigo, in a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I
+passed him and Lucas, and flew down the long room to Monsieur.</p>
+<p>M. le Duc was seated before a table heaped with papers. He had
+been watching the scene at the door in surprise and anger. He
+looked at me with a sharp frown, while the deer-hound at his feet
+rose on its haunches growling.</p>
+<p>"Roland!" I said. The dog sprang up and came to me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux!" Monsieur exclaimed, with his quick, warm
+smile&mdash;a smile no man in France could match for radiance.</p>
+<p>I had no thought of kneeling, of making obeisance, of waiting
+permission to speak.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, half choked, "there is a plot&mdash;a vile
+plot to murder you!"</p>
+<p>"Where? At St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"No, Monsieur. Here in Paris. In the streets to-night, when you
+go to the king."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang to his feet, his hand on his sword. Lucas turned
+white. Vigo swore. Monsieur cried:</p>
+<p>"How, in God's name, know you that?"</p>
+<p>"You have been betrayed, Monsieur. Your plan is known. You leave
+the house to-night, near a quarter of eleven, to go in secret to
+the king. You leave by the little door in the alley&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Diable!" breathed Vigo.</p>
+<p>"They set on you on your way&mdash;three of them&mdash;to run
+you through before you can draw."</p>
+<p>"But, ventre bleu! Monsieur is not alone."</p>
+<p>"No; he walks between you and M. Lucas."</p>
+<p>Not one of them spoke. They stared at me as if I were something
+uncanny. I, a raw country boy, disclosing a perfect knowledge of
+their most intimate plans!</p>
+<p>"How know you this?" Monsieur demanded of me. But he was not
+looking at me. His keen glance went first to Lucas, then to Vigo,
+the two men who had shared his confidence. The secretary cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"You cannot think, Monsieur, that I betrayed you?"</p>
+<p>Vigo said nothing. His steady eyes never left Monsieur's
+face.</p>
+<p>"No," answered Monsieur to Lucas, "I cannot think it." And to
+Vigo he said: "I shall accuse you when I accuse myself.
+But&mdash;none knew this thing save our three selves." And his gaze
+went back to Lucas.</p>
+<p>"It is not likely to be he," I said, impelled to be just to him
+though I did not like him, "for they meant to kill him as
+well."</p>
+<p>Lucas started, then instantly recovered himself.</p>
+<p>"A comprehensive plot, Monsieur," he said, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Then who was it?" cried Monsieur to me. "You know. Speak."</p>
+<p>"There is a spy in the house&mdash;an eavesdropper," I said, and
+then paused.</p>
+<p>"Aye?" said Monsieur. "Who?"</p>
+<p>Now the answer to this was easy, yet I flinched before it; for I
+knew well enough what Monsieur would do. He feared no man, and
+waited on no man's advice. And if he was a good lover, he was a
+good hater. He would not inform the governor, and await the tardy
+course of justice, that would probably accomplish&mdash;nothing.
+Nor would he consider the troubled times and the danger of his
+position, and ignore the affair, as many would have deemed best. He
+would not stop to think what the Sixteen might have to say to it.
+No; he would call out his guards and slay the plotters in the Rue
+Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right he should,
+but&mdash;I owed my life to Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"His name, man, his name!" Monsieur was crying.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I returned, flushing hot, "Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Do you know his name?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur, I know his name, but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me in surprise and frowning, impatience.
+Quickly Lucas struck in:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I have grave doubts of the boy's honesty."</p>
+<p>"Doubts!" cried Monsieur, with a sudden laugh. "It is not a case
+for doubts. The boy states facts."</p>
+<p>He seated himself in his chair, his face growing stern again.
+The little action seemed to make him no longer merely my
+questioner, but my judge.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix Broux, let us get to the bottom of this."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I began, struggling to put the case clearly, "I
+learned of the plot by accident. I did not guess for a long time it
+was you who were the victim. When I found out that, I came straight
+here to you. Monsieur, there are four men in the plot, and one of
+them has stood my friend."</p>
+<p>"And my assassin!"</p>
+<p>"He is a black-hearted villain!" I acknowledged. "For he swore
+no harm was meant to you. He swore it was only a private grudge
+against M. Lucas. But when one of them let out the truth I came
+straight to you."</p>
+<p>"That is likely true," said Vigo, "for he was ready to kill the
+men who barred his way."</p>
+<p>"You were in a plot to kill my secretary!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;F&eacute;lix Broux!"</p>
+<p>I curled with shame.</p>
+<p>"M. Lucas had struck me," I muttered; "I thought the fight was
+fair enough. And they threatened my life."</p>
+<p>Monsieur's contemptuous eyes shrivelled me as flame shrivels a
+leaf.</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;a Broux of St. Quentin!"</p>
+<p>Lucas, who had watched me close all the while, as they all three
+did, said now:</p>
+<p>"I believe he is a cheat, Monsieur. There is no plot. He has
+learned of your plan through the eavesdropper he speaks of and
+thinks to make credit out of a trumped-up tale of murder."</p>
+<p>"No," answered Monsieur. "You may think that, Lucas, for he is a
+stranger to you. But I know him. He was a fool sometimes, but he
+was never dishonest. You used to be fond of me, F&eacute;lix. What
+has happened to make you consort with my enemies?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, I love you. I have always loved you," I cried. "I
+am not lying now, nor cheating you. There is a plot. I learned it
+and came straight to you, though I was under oath not to betray
+them."</p>
+<p>"Then, in Heaven's name, F&eacute;lix," burst out Vigo, "which
+side are you on?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur began to laugh.</p>
+<p>"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can
+make nothing of it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him
+a trickster now."</p>
+<p>Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.</p>
+<p>"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to
+get some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we
+have not yet fathomed."</p>
+<p>"Will Monsieur let me speak?"</p>
+<p>"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past,"
+he answered dryly.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin
+with you, three months back. But at length he said I should come,
+and I reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an
+inn. This morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let
+me enter. I was so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove
+out I sprang up on your coach-step&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was
+you, F&eacute;lix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other
+matters. And Lucas took you for a miscreant. Now I <i>am</i>
+sorry."</p>
+<p>If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology.
+But at once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you
+in all good faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save
+me, you turn traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill
+him! I had believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I was wrong&mdash;a thousand times wrong. I knew that
+as soon as I had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I
+came to you, oath or no oath."</p>
+<p>"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant
+smile. "Now you are F&eacute;lix. Who are my would-be
+murderers?"</p>
+<p>We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck
+before, and here we stuck again.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count
+ten&mdash;tell you their names, their whereabouts,
+everything&mdash;were it not for one man who stood my friend."</p>
+<p>The duke's eyes flashed.</p>
+<p>"You call him that&mdash;my assassin!"</p>
+<p>"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's
+assassin&mdash;and a perjurer. But&mdash;but, Monsieur, he saved my
+life from the other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back
+by betraying him?"</p>
+<p>"According to your own account, he betrayed you."</p>
+<p>"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were
+your own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the
+gutter, would you send him to his death?"</p>
+<p>"To whom do you owe your first duty?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, to you."</p>
+<p>"Then speak."</p>
+<p>But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain,
+yet he had saved my life.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I cannot."</p>
+<p>The duke cried out:</p>
+<p>"This to me!"</p>
+<p>There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a
+shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to
+meet Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater
+in Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover.
+Monsieur had been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the
+lightning to strike, he said with utmost gentleness:</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, let me understand you. In what manner did this
+man save your life?"</p>
+<p>Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness
+and ever strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the
+finer that it was not his nature. His leniency fired me with a
+sudden hope.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be
+as vile as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell
+you, will you let that one go?"</p>
+<p>"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke.
+"F&eacute;lix, will you speak?"</p>
+<p>"If Monsieur will promise to let him go&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."</p>
+<p>His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger,
+and for the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his
+sentence. And again he did what I could not guess. He cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what
+you do. I am in constant danger. The city is filled with my
+enemies. The Leagues hate me and are ever plotting mischief against
+me. Every day their mistrust and hatred grow. I did a bold thing in
+coming to Paris, but I had a great end to serve&mdash;to pave a way
+into the capital for the Catholic king and bring the land to peace.
+For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk my life to-night on
+foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my life is lost. The
+Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours be harried
+to a desert in the civil wars!"</p>
+<p>I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this
+unlooked-for appeal pierced me through and through. All the love
+and loyalty in me&mdash;and I had much, though it may not have
+seemed so&mdash;rose in answer to Monsieur's call. I fell on my
+knees before him, choked with sobs.</p>
+<p>Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix, speak."</p>
+<p>I answered huskily:</p>
+<p>"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"</p>
+<p>"Judas betrayed his <i>master</i>."</p>
+<p>It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my
+head to tell him all.</p>
+<p>Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le
+Duc, I saw&mdash;not him, but Yeux-gris&mdash;Yeux-gris looking at
+me with warm good will, as he had looked when he was saving me from
+Gervais. I saw him, I say, plain before my eyes. The next instant
+there was nothing but Monsieur's face of rising impatience.</p>
+<p>I rose to my feet, and said:</p>
+<p>"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.</p>
+<p>I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it
+were no more than my deserts.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"</p>
+<p>I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow
+knotted, his hands clenched as if to keep them off me.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever
+you please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not
+that I will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I
+<i>cannot</i>."</p>
+<p>He burst into an angry laugh.</p>
+<p>"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My
+faith! though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I
+seem to be getting the worst of it."</p>
+<p>"There is the boot, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.</p>
+<p>"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a
+Broux."</p>
+<p>"There Monsieur is wrong. The lad has been disloyal and
+insolent, if he is a Broux."</p>
+<p>"Granted, Vigo," said M. le Duc. But he did not add, "Fetch the
+boot."</p>
+<p>Vigo went on with steady persistence. "He has not been loyal to
+Monsieur and his interests in refusing to tell what he knows. And
+if he goes counter to Monsieur's interests he is a traitor, Broux
+or no Broux. He has no claim to be treated as other than an enemy.
+These are serious times. Monsieur does not well to play with his
+dangers. The boy must tell what he knows. Am I to go for the boot,
+Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>M. le Duc was silent for a moment, while the hot flush that had
+sprung to his face died away. Then he answered Vigo:</p>
+<p>"Nevertheless, it is owing to F&eacute;lix that I shall not walk
+out to meet my death to-night."</p>
+<p>The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering
+nervously the papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence,
+when now he stepped forward and said:</p>
+<p>"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a
+bad plan. No man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
+You are either my loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the
+other. Now I am loath to hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to
+hurt you. I give you one more chance to be honest. Go and think it
+over. If in half an hour you have decided that you are my true man,
+well and good. If not, by St. Quentin, we will see what a flogging
+can do!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+<h3><i>Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-u.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>npleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom.
+Those men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's
+iron ways, said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.</p>
+<p>The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned
+to the inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the
+page burst out:</p>
+<p>"What is it? What is the coil? What have you done,
+F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>Now you can guess I was too sick-hearted for chatter. I had
+defied and disobeyed my liege lord; I could never hope for pardon
+or any man's respect. They threatened me with flogging; well, let
+them flog. They could not make my back any sorer than my conscience
+was. For I had not the satisfaction in my trouble of thinking that
+I had done right. Monsieur's danger should have been my first
+consideration. What was Yeux-gris, perjured scoundrel, in
+comparison with M. le Duc? And yet I knew that at the end of the
+half-hour I should not tell; at the end of the flogging I should
+not tell. I had warned Monsieur; that I would have done had it been
+the breaking of a thousand oaths. But give up Yeux-gris? Not if
+they tore me limb from limb!</p>
+<p>"What is it all about?" cried Marcel, again. "You look as glum
+as a Jesuit in Lent. What is the matter with you,
+F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"I have cooked my goose," I said gloomily.</p>
+<p>"What have you done?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing that I can speak about. But I am out of Monsieur's
+books."</p>
+<p>"What was old Vigo after when he took you in to Monsieur? I
+never saw anything so bold. When Monsieur says he is not to be
+disturbed he means it."</p>
+<p>I had nothing to tell him, and was silent.</p>
+<p>"What is it? Can't you tell an old chum?"</p>
+<p>"No; it is Monsieur's private business."</p>
+<p>"Well, you are grumpy!" he cried out pettishly. "You must be out
+of grace." He seemed to decide that nothing was to be made out of
+me just now on this tack, and with unabated persistence tried
+another.</p>
+<p>"Is it true, F&eacute;lix, what one of the men said just now,
+that you tried to speak with Monsieur this morning when he drove
+out?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. But Monsieur did not recognize me."</p>
+<p>"Like enough," Marcel answered. "He has a way of late of falling
+into these absent fits. Monsieur is not the man he was."</p>
+<p>"He does look older," I said, "and worn. I trow the risk he is
+running&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pshaw!" cried Marcel, with scorn. "Is Monsieur a man to mind
+risks? No; it is M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>I started like a guilty thing, remembering what Yeux-gris had
+told me and I, wrapped in my petty troubles, had forgotten.
+Monsieur had lost his only son. And I had chosen this time to defy
+him!</p>
+<p>"How long ago was it?" I asked in a hushed voice.</p>
+<p>"Since M. le Comte left us? It will be three weeks next
+Friday."</p>
+<p>"How did he die?"</p>
+<p>"Die?" echoed Marcel. "You crazy fellow, he is not dead!"</p>
+<p>It was my turn to stare.</p>
+<p>"Then where is he?"</p>
+<p>"It would be money in my pouch if I knew. What made you think
+him dead, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"A man told me so."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu!" he cried in some excitement. "When? Who was it?"</p>
+<p>"To-day. I do not know the man's name."</p>
+<p>"It seems you know very little. Pardieu! I do not believe M. le
+Comte is dead. What else did your man say?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing. He only said the Comte de Mar was dead."</p>
+<p>"Pshaw! I don't believe it. You believe everything you hear
+because you are just from the country. No; if M. le Comte were dead
+we should hear of it. Oh, certainly, we should hear."</p>
+<p>"But where is he, then? You say he is lost."</p>
+<p>"Aye. He has not been seen or heard of since the day they had
+the quarrel."</p>
+<p>"Who quarrelled?"</p>
+<p>"Why, he and Monsieur," answered Marcel, in a lower voice,
+pointing to the door of the inner room. "M. le Comte has been his
+own master too long to take kindly to a hand over him; that is the
+whole of it. He has a quick temper. So has Monsieur."</p>
+<p>But I thought of Monsieur's wonderful patience, and I cried:</p>
+<p>"Shame!"</p>
+<p>"What now?"</p>
+<p>"To speak like that of Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Enfin, it is true. He is none the worse for that. But I suppose
+if Monsieur had a cloven hoof one must not mention it."</p>
+<p>"One would get his head broken."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you Broux!" he cried out. "I have not seen you for half a
+year. I had forgotten that with you the St. Quentins rank with the
+saints."</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;you are a hired servant. You come to Monsieur as you
+might come to anybody. With the Broux it is different," I retorted
+angrily. Yet I could not but know in my heart that any hired
+servant might have served Monsieur better than I. My boasted
+loyalty&mdash;what was it but lip-service? I said more humbly:
+"Pshaw! it is no great matter. Tell me about the quarrel."</p>
+<p>"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was
+the question of M. le Comte's marriage."</p>
+<p>"What! is he married?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see,
+F&eacute;lix," Marcel said in a tone deep with importance, "we're
+Navarre's men now."</p>
+<p>"Of course," said I.</p>
+<p>"I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne
+himself. You greenhorn! It is as much as our lives are worth to
+side openly with Navarre. The League may attack us any day."</p>
+<p>"I know," I said uneasily. Every chance word Marcel spoke seemed
+to dye my guilt the deeper. "But what has this to do with M. le
+Comte's marriage?" I asked him.</p>
+<p>"Why, he was more than half a Leaguer. Perhaps he is one now.
+Some say he and Monsieur were at daggers drawn about politics; but
+I warrant it was about Mlle. de Montluc. They call her the Rose of
+Lorraine. She's the Duke of Mayenne's own cousin and housemate. And
+we're king's men, so of course it was no match for Monsieur's son.
+They say Mayenne himself favoured the marriage, but our duke
+wouldn't hear of it. However, the backbone of the trouble was M. de
+Grammont."</p>
+<p>"And who may he be?"</p>
+<p>"He's a cousin of the house. He and M. le Comte are as thick as
+thieves. Before we came to Paris they lodged together. So when M.
+le Comte came here he brought M. de Grammont. Dare I speak ill of
+Monsieur's cousin, F&eacute;lix? For I would say, at the risk of a
+broken head, that he is a sour-faced churl. You cannot deny it. You
+never saw him."</p>
+<p>"No, nor M. le Comte, either."</p>
+<p>"Why, you have seen M. le Comte!"</p>
+<p>"Never. The only time he came to St. Quentin I was laid up in
+bed with a strained leg. I missed the chase. Don't you
+remember?"</p>
+<p>"Why, you are right; that was the time you fell out of the
+buttery window when you were stealing tarts, and Margot got after
+you with the broomstick. I remember very well."</p>
+<p>He was for calling up all our old pranks at the ch&acirc;teau,
+but it was little joy to me to think on those fortunate days when I
+was Monsieur's favourite. I said:</p>
+<p>"Nay, Marcel, you were telling me of M. le Comte and the
+quarrel."</p>
+<p>"Oh, as for that, it is easy told. You see M. le Comte and this
+Grammont took no interest in Monsieur's affairs, and they had very
+little to say to him, and he to them. They had plenty of friends in
+Paris, Leaguers or not, and they used to go about amusing
+themselves. But at last M. de Grammont had such a run of bad luck
+at the tables that he not only emptied his own pockets but M. le
+Comte's as well. I will say for M. le Comte that he would share his
+last sou with any one who asked."</p>
+<p>"And so would any St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are always piping up for the St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"He should have no need in this house."</p>
+<p>We jumped up to find Vigo standing behind us.</p>
+<p>"What have you been saying of Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing, M. Vigo," stammered the page. "I only said M. le
+Comte&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You are not to discuss M. le Comte. Do you hear?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Then obey. And you, F&eacute;lix, I shall have a little
+interview with you shortly."</p>
+<p>"As you will, M. Vigo," I said hopelessly.</p>
+<p>He went off down the corridor, and Marcel turned angrily on
+me.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu, F&eacute;lix, you have got me into a nice scrape with
+your eternal chanting of the praises of Monsieur. Like as not I
+shall get a beating for it. Vigo never forgets."</p>
+<p>"I am sorry," I said. "We should not have been talking of
+it."</p>
+<p>"No, we should not. Come over here where we can watch both
+doors, and I'll tell you the rest before the old lynx gets
+back."</p>
+<p>We sat down close together, and he proceeded in a low tone to
+disobey Vigo.</p>
+<p>"Enfin, as I said, the two young gentlemen were quite sans le
+sou, for things had come to a point where M. le Duc looked pretty
+black at any application for funds&mdash;he has other uses for his
+gold, you see. One day Monsieur was expecting some one to whom he
+was to pay a thousand pistoles, and to have the money handy he put
+it in a secret drawer in his cabinet in the room yonder. The man
+arrives and is taken to Monsieur's private room. Monsieur gives him
+his orders and goes to the cabinet for his pistoles. No pistoles
+there!"</p>
+<p>Marcel paused dramatically. "And what then?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Well, it appears he had once shown M. le Comte the trick of the
+drawer, so he sent for him&mdash;not to accuse him, mind you. For
+M. le Comte is wild enough, yet Monsieur did not think he would
+steal pistoles, nor would he, I will stake my oath. No, Monsieur
+merely asked him if he had ever shown any one the drawer, and M. le
+Comte answered, 'Only Grammont.'"</p>
+<p>And how have you learned all this?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, one hears."</p>
+<p>"One does, with one's ears to the keyhole."</p>
+<p>"It behooves you, F&eacute;lix, to be civil to your better!"</p>
+<p>I made pretence of looking about me.</p>
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+<p>"He sits here. I am page to the Duke of St. Quentin. And
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Touch&eacute;!" I admitted bitterly enough. Little Marcel, my
+junior, my unquestioning follower in the old days, was now indeed
+my better, quite in a position to patronize.</p>
+<p>"Continue, if you please, Marcel. Yet, in passing, I should like
+to ask you how much you heard our talk in there just now."</p>
+<p>"Nothing," he answered candidly. "When they are so far down the
+room one cannot hear a word. In the affair of the pistoles they
+stood near the cabinet at this end. One could not help but hear. As
+for listening at keyholes, I scorn it."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it is well to scorn it. People have an unpleasant trick of
+opening doors so suddenly."</p>
+<p>He laughed cheerfully.</p>
+<p>"Old Vigo caught us, certes. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes,
+then Monsieur put on his proud look and said, if it was a case of
+no one but his son and his cousin, he preferred to drop the matter.
+But M. le Comte got out of him what the trouble was and went off
+for Grammont, red as fire. The two together came back to Monsieur
+and denied up and down that either of them knew aught of his
+pistoles, or had told of the secret to any one. They say it was
+easy to see that Monsieur did not believe Grammont, but he did not
+give him the lie, and the matter came near dropping there, for M.
+le Duc would not accuse a kinsman. But then Lucas gave a new turn
+to the affair."</p>
+<p>"How long has Lucas been here, Marcel? Who is he?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, he's a rascal of a Huguenot. Monsieur picked him up at
+Mantes, just before we came to the city. And if he spies on
+Monsieur's enemies as well as he does on this household, he must be
+a useful man. He has that long nose of his in everything, let me
+tell you. Of course he was present when Monsieur missed the
+pistoles. So then, quite on his own account, without any orders, he
+took two of the men and searched M. de Grammont's room. And in a
+locked chest of his which they forced open they found five hundred
+of the pistoles in the very box Monsieur had kept them in."</p>
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+<p>Marcel made a fine gesture.</p>
+<p>"And then, pardieu! the storm broke. M. de Grammont raved like a
+madman. He said Lucas was the thief and had put half the sum in his
+chest to divert suspicion. He said it was a plot to ruin him
+contrived between Monsieur and his henchman, Lucas. It is true
+enough, certes, that Monsieur never liked him. He threatened
+Monsieur's life and Lucas's. He challenged Monsieur, and Monsieur
+declined to cross swords with a thief. He challenged Lucas, and
+Lucas took the cue from Monsieur. I was not there&mdash;on either
+side of the door. What I tell you has leaked out bit by bit from
+Lucas, for Monsieur keeps his mouth shut. The upshot of the matter
+was that Grammont goes at Lucas with a knife, and Monsieur has the
+guards pitch my gentleman into the street. Then M. le Comte swore a
+big oath that he would go with Grammont. Monsieur told him if he
+went in such company it would be forever. M. le Comte swore he
+would never come back under his father's roof if M. le Duc crawled
+to him on his knees to beg him."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" I cried; "and then?"</p>
+<p>"Marry, that's all. M. le Comte went straight out of this gate,
+without horse or squire. And we have not heard a word of either of
+them since."</p>
+<p>He paused, and when I made no comment, said, a trifle
+aggrieved:</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, you take it calmly, but you would not had you been
+here. It was an altogether lively affair. It wouldn't surprise me a
+whit if some day Monsieur should be attacked as he drives out. He's
+not one to forget an injury, this M. Gervais de Grammont."</p>
+<p>At the name, intelligence flashed over me, sudden and clear as
+last night's lightning-gleam. Yet this thing I seemed to see was so
+hideous, so horrible, that my mind recoiled from it.</p>
+<p>"Marcel," I stammered, shuddering, "Marcel&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! what ails you? Is some one walking on your grave?"</p>
+<p>"Marcel, how is M. le Comte named?"</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar? Oh, do you mean his names in baptism?
+Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie. They call him
+&Eacute;tienne. Why do you ask? What is it?"</p>
+<p>It was a certainty, then. Yet I could not bring myself to
+believe this horrible thing.</p>
+<p>"I have never seen him. How does he look?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, not at all like Monsieur. He has fair hair and gray
+eyes&mdash;que diable!"</p>
+<p>For I had flung open Monsieur's door and dashed in.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+<h3><i>The honour of St. Quentin.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>onsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and
+hurriedly to Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon
+them, and then Monsieur cried out to me:</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix! You have come to your senses."</p>
+<p>"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."</p>
+<p>He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at
+Marcel, standing agape in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and
+shut the door into the corridor."</p>
+<p>Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was
+disposed of.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I
+have found out. They&mdash;"</p>
+<p>My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the
+words died on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know
+that this was no story to tell Monsieur before another.</p>
+<p>"I will tell Monsieur alone."</p>
+<p>"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.</p>
+<p>"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."</p>
+<p>He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and
+said to the secretary:</p>
+<p>"You may go, Lucas."</p>
+<p>Lucas protested.</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be
+trusted. Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your
+life."</p>
+<p>The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:</p>
+<p>"You may go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Go!"</p>
+<p>Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that
+startled me. But I did not pay it much heed.</p>
+<p>"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.</p>
+<p>But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I
+had to tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two
+words. I stood silent, not knowing how to start.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! Beware how much longer you abuse my
+patience!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he
+knew&mdash;But go on. The others&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St.
+Denis gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of
+the Amour de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron
+from garret to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is
+here that they plot."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="098.jpg"></a> <a href="images/098.jpg"><img src=
+"images/098.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall
+something half remembered, half forgotten.</p>
+<p>"But the men," he cried, "the men!"</p>
+<p>"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."</p>
+<p>"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning
+forward eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking&mdash;the quickest
+way to reach the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young
+men&mdash;noble."</p>
+<p>I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon
+him.</p>
+<p>"Their names, lad!"</p>
+<p>Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up
+and covered every other feeling. I burst out:</p>
+<p>"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.
+Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling
+the truth.</p>
+<p>I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a
+brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that
+gray-eyed cheat.</p>
+<p>With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.</p>
+<p>"You lie, you cur!"</p>
+<p>"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."</p>
+<p>He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog,
+who had sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which
+the dumb beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed
+head, a man stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was,
+the tears came to my eyes for Monsieur.</p>
+<p>He recovered himself.</p>
+<p>"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"</p>
+<p>My rage blazed up again.</p>
+<p>"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not
+who they were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things
+fitted."</p>
+<p>"Then it is your guess! You dare to say&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember
+respect. "Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen
+M. le Comte nor M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and
+heavy, with a black beard and a black scowl, whom the other called
+Gervais. The younger was called &Eacute;tienne, tall and slender,
+with gray eyes and fair hair. And like Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly
+aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like, though he is light! In face,
+in voice, in manner! He speaks like Monsieur. He has Monsieur's
+laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe that was why I loved
+him so much."</p>
+<p>"It was he whom you would not betray?"</p>
+<p>"Aye. That was before I knew."</p>
+<p>Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.
+Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would
+look through me to the naked soul.</p>
+<p>"How do I know that you are not lying?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur does know it."</p>
+<p>"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."</p>
+<p>He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever
+saw&mdash;the face of a man whose son has sought to murder him.
+Looking back on it now, I wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with
+that story. I wonder why I did not bury the shame and disgrace of
+it in my own heart, at whatever cost keep it from Monsieur. But the
+thought never entered my head then. I was so full of black rage
+against Yeux-gris&mdash;him most of all, because he had won me
+so&mdash;that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied
+Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.</p>
+<p>"Tell me everything&mdash;how you met them&mdash;all. Else I
+shall not believe a word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur
+cried out.</p>
+<p>I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my
+lightning vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he
+listening in hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed
+hours since he had spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The
+grayness of his face drew the cry from me:</p>
+<p>"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"</p>
+<p>"Take care, F&eacute;lix, he is my son!"</p>
+<p>I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.</p>
+<p>"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was
+not against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I
+swore, too, never to betray them! Two perjuries!"</p>
+<p>I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering
+it.</p>
+<p>"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since
+he has touched it. He has made it vile&mdash;scoundrel, assassin,
+parricide!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur struck the words from my lips.</p>
+<p>"It is true," I muttered.</p>
+<p>"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."</p>
+<p>"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of
+a St. Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came
+uppermost again.</p>
+<p>"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a
+handful of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught
+amiss. They are only three&mdash;he and Grammont and the
+lackey."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur shook his head.</p>
+<p>"I cannot do that."</p>
+<p>"Why not, Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Can I take my own son prisoner?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would
+have gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and
+two more can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame
+him before the men." I guessed at what he was thinking.</p>
+<p>"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest
+my son like a common felon&mdash;shame him like that?"</p>
+<p>"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a
+right to say it. "He has forgotten his honour."</p>
+<p>"Aye. But I have remembered mine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"</p>
+<p>But his eyes told me that he did mean it.</p>
+<p>"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives
+him?"</p>
+<p>His face set sternly.</p>
+<p>"No," he answered. "No, F&eacute;lix. He has placed himself
+beyond my forgiveness."</p>
+<p>"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the
+three!"</p>
+<p>He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.</p>
+<p>"You would have me kill my son?"</p>
+<p>"He would have killed you."</p>
+<p>"That makes no difference."</p>
+<p>I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and
+catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud
+and honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry
+heart.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished
+for the sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back,
+but the case was changed now.</p>
+<p>"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur would spare him as well&mdash;him, the
+ringleader!"</p>
+<p>"He is my cousin."</p>
+<p>"He forgets it."</p>
+<p>"But I do not."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me.</p>
+<p>"When you are a man, F&eacute;lix Broux, you will know that
+there are other things in this world besides vengeance. You will
+know that some injuries cannot be avenged. You will know that a
+gentleman cannot use the same weapons that blackguards use to
+him."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I
+was furious with him for it.</p>
+<p>He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had
+been standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me
+with puzzled, troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was
+wrong, and vented his feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur
+spoke to him; Roland bounded up to him and licked his hand. They
+walked up and down together, comforting each other.</p>
+<p>"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."</p>
+<p>He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then
+as he did.</p>
+<p>"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat,
+F&eacute;lix? But does it seem to you fair that a tool should be
+punished when the leaders go free?"</p>
+<p>"No," said I; "but it is the common way."</p>
+<p>"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.</p>
+<p>I waited till he faced me once more.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"</p>
+<p>"No, F&eacute;lix. He shall be punished lest he betray
+again."</p>
+<p>He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by
+me, a broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take
+up his life once more. But I thought he would never get over the
+blow. A husband may forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will
+forgive her child's, but a father can neither forget nor forgive
+the crime of the son who bears his name.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the
+depths of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.</p>
+<p>Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.</p>
+<p>"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be
+looking to the country's business."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+<h3><i>Lucas and "Le Gaucher."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>cursed myself for a fool that I had carried the tale to
+Monsieur. It should have been my business to keep a still tongue
+and go kill Yeux-gris myself. For this last it was not yet too
+late.</p>
+<p>Marcel was hanging about in the corridor, and to him I gave the
+word for Vigo. I tore away from his eager questionings and hurried
+to the gate.</p>
+<p>In the morning I had not been able to get in, and now I could no
+more get out. By Vigo's orders, no man might leave the house.</p>
+<p>Vigo was after the spy, of course. Monsieur knew the traitor
+now; he would inform Vigo, and the gates would be open for honest
+men. But that might take time and I could not wait five minutes. I
+had the audacity to cry to the guards:</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc will let me pass out. I refer you to M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>The men were impressed. They had a respect for me, since I had
+been closeted with Monsieur. Yet they dared not disobey Vigo for
+their lives. In this dilemma the poor sentry, fearful of getting
+into trouble whatever he did, sent up an envoy to ask Monsieur. I
+was frightened then. I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and
+was very doubtful as to how he would answer my impudence. But he
+was utterly careless, I trow, what I did, for presently the word
+came down that I might pass out.</p>
+<p>The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must
+reach the Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for
+me. A man in his senses would have known there was no hope anyway.
+Who but a madman would think of venturing back, forsworn, to those
+three villains, for the killing of one? It would be a miracle if
+aught resulted but failure and death. Yet I felt no jot of fear as
+I plunged into the mesh of crooked streets in the Coupejarrets
+quarter&mdash;only ardour to reach my goal. When, on turning a
+corner, I came upon a group of idlers choking the narrow ruelle, I
+said to myself that a dozen Parisians in the way could no more stop
+me than they could stop a charge of horse. All heels and elbows, I
+pushed into them. But, to my abasement, promptly was I seized upon
+by a burly porter and bidden, with a cuff, to mind my manners. Then
+I discovered the occasion of the crowd to be a little procession of
+choristers out of a neighbouring church&mdash;St. Jean of the Spire
+it was, though I knew then no name for it. The boys were singing,
+the watchers quiet, bareheaded. They sang as if there were nothing
+in the world but piety and love. The last level rays of the sun
+crowned them with radiant aureoles, painted their white robes with
+glory. I shut my eyes, dazzled; it was as if I beheld a heavenly
+host. When I opened them again the folk at my side were kneeling as
+the cross came by. I knelt, too, but the holy sign spoke to me only
+of the crucifix I had trampled on, of Yeux-gris and his lies. I
+prayed to the good God to let me kill Yeux-gris, prayed, kneeling
+there on the cobbles, with a fervour I had never reached before.
+When I rose I ran on at redoubled speed, never doubting that a just
+God would strengthen my hand, would make my cause his.</p>
+<p>I entered the little court. The shutter was fastened, as before,
+but I had my dagger, and could again free the bolt. I could creep
+up-stairs and mayhap stab Yeux-gris before they were aware of my
+coming. But that was not my purpose. I was no bravo to strike in
+the back, but the instrument of a righteous vengeance. He must know
+why he died.</p>
+<p>One to three, I had no chance. But if I knocked openly it was
+likely that Yeux-gris, being my patron, would be the one to come
+down to me. Then there was the opportunity, man to man. If it were
+Grammont or the lackey, I would boldly declare that I would give my
+news to none but Yeux-gris. In pursuance of this plan I was
+pounding vigorously on the door when a voice behind me cried out
+blithely:</p>
+<p>"So you are back at last, F&eacute;lix Broux"</p>
+<p>At the first word I wheeled around. In the court entrance stood
+Yeux-gris, smiling and debonair. He had laid aside his sword, and
+held on his left arm a basket containing a loaf of bread, a roast
+capon, and some bottles, for all the world like an honest prentice
+doing his master's errand.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am back!" I shouted. "Back to kill you, parricide!"</p>
+<p>He had a knife in his belt; the fight was even. I was upon him,
+my dagger raised to strike. He made no motion to draw, and I
+remembered in a flash he could not: his right arm was powerless. He
+sprang back, flinging up his burdened left as a shield, and my
+blade buried itself in the side of the basket.</p>
+<p>As I stabbed I heard feet thundering down the stairs within. I
+jerked my knife from the wicker and turned to face this new enemy.
+"Grammont," I thought, and that my end had come.</p>
+<p>The door flew open and, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, out
+rushed Grammont and&mdash;Lucas!</p>
+<p>My fear was drowned in amaze. I forgot to run and stood staring
+in sheer, blank bewilderment. Crying "Damned traitor!" Gervais,
+with drawn sword, charged at me.</p>
+<p>I had only the little dagger. I owe my life to Yeux-gris's quick
+wits and no less quick fingers. Dropping the basket, he snatched a
+bottle from it and hurled it at Gervais.</p>
+<p>"Ware, Grammont!" shouted Lucas, springing forward. But the
+missile flew too quickly. It struck Grammont square on the
+forehead, and he went down like a slaughtered ox.</p>
+<p>We looked, not at him, but at Lucas&mdash;Lucas, the duke's
+deferential servant, the coward and skulker, Grammont's hatred,
+standing here by Grammont's side, glaring at us over his naked
+sword.</p>
+<p>I saw in one glance that Yeux-gris was no less astounded than I,
+and from that instant, though the inwardness of the matter was
+still a riddle to me, my heart acquitted him of all dishonesty, of
+all complicity. His was not the face of a parricide.</p>
+<p>"Lucas!" he cried, in a dearth of words. "<i>Lucas!</i>"</p>
+<p>I was staring at Lucas in thick bewilderment. The man was
+transformed from the one I knew. At M. le Duc's he had been pale,
+nervous, and shaken&mdash;senselessly and contemptibly scared, as I
+thought, since he was warned of the danger and need not face it.
+But now he was another man. I can think only of those lanterns I
+have seen, set with coloured glass. They look dull enough all day,
+but when the taper within is lighted shine like jewels. So Lucas
+now. His face, so keen and handsome of feature, was brilliant, his
+eyes sparkling, his figure instinct with defiance. A smile crossed
+his face.</p>
+<p>"Aye," he answered evenly, "it is Lucas."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte appeared to be in a state of stupor. He could not
+for a space find his tongue to demand:</p>
+<p>"How, in the name of Heaven, come you here?"</p>
+<p>"To fight Grammont," Lucas answered at once.</p>
+<p>"A lie!" I shouted. "You're Grammont's friend. You came here to
+warn him off. It's your plot!"</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! The plot?" Yeux-gris cried.</p>
+<p>"The plot's to murder Monsieur. Martin let it out. I thought it
+was you and Grammont. But it's Lucas and Grammont!"</p>
+<p>Lucas hesitated. Even now he debated whether he could not lie
+out of it. Then he burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"It seems the cat's out of the bag. Aye, M. le Comte de Mar, I
+came to warn Grammont off. The duke will be here straightway. How
+will you like to swing for parricide?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris stared at him, neither in fear nor in fury, but in
+utter stupefaction.</p>
+<p>"But Gervais? He plotted with you? But he hates you!"</p>
+<p>We gaped at Lucas like yokels at a conjurer. He made us no
+answer but looked from one to the other of us with the alertness of
+an angry viper. We were two, but without swords. I knew he was
+thinking how easiest to end us both.</p>
+<p>M. le Comte cried: "You! You come from Navarre's camp, from M.
+de Rosny!"</p>
+<p>"Aye. I have outwitted more than one man."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I was right to hate you!"</p>
+<p>Lucas laughed. Yeux-gris blazed out:</p>
+<p>"Traitor and thief! You stole the money. I said that from the
+first. You drove us from the house. How you and
+Grammont&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Came together? Very simple," Lucas answered with easy
+insolence. "Grammont did not love Monsieur, your honoured father.
+It was child's play to make an assignation with him and to lament
+the part forced on me by Monsieur. Grammont was ready enough to
+scent a scheme of M. le Duc's to ruin him. He had said as much to
+Monsieur, as you may deign to remember."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. le Comte, still like a puzzled child, "he was
+angry with my father. But afterward he changed his mind. He knew it
+was you, and only you."</p>
+<p>Lucas broke again into derisive laughter.</p>
+<p>"M. de Grammont is as dull a dolt as ever I met, yet clever
+enough to gull you. He thought you must suspect. I dreaded
+it&mdash;needlessly. You wise St. Quentins! You cannot see what
+goes on under your very nose."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte sprang forward, scarlet. Lucas flourished the
+sword.</p>
+<p>"The boy there caught at a glance what you had not found out in
+a fortnight. He gets to the duke and blocks my game&mdash;for
+to-day. But if they sent him ahead to hold us till their men came
+up, they were fools, too. I'll have the duke yet, and I'll have you
+now."</p>
+<p>He rushed at the unarmed Yeux-gris. The latter darted at
+Grammont's fallen sword, seized it, was on guard, all in the second
+before Lucas reached him. He might have been in a fortnight's
+trance, but he was awake at last.</p>
+<p>I trembled for him, then took heart again, as he parried thrust
+after thrust and pressed Lucas hard. I had never seen a man fight
+with his left arm before; I had not realized it could be done,
+being myself helpless with that hand. But as I watched this combat
+I speedily perceived how dangerous is a left-handed adversary. In
+later years I was to understand better, when M. le Comte had become
+known the length of the land by the title "Le Gaucher." But at this
+time he was in the habit, like the rest of the world, of fencing
+with his right hand; his dexterity with the other he rated only as
+a pretty accomplishment to surprise the crowd. He used his left
+hand scarcely as well as Lucas the right; yet, the thrust sinister
+being in itself a strength, they were not badly matched. I stood
+watching with all my eyes, when of a sudden I felt a grasp on my
+ankle and the next instant was thrown heavily to the pavement.</p>
+<p>Grammont had come to life and taken prompt part in the fray.</p>
+<p>I fell close to him, and instantly he let go my leg and wound
+his arms around me. I tried to rise and could not, and we rolled
+about together in the wine and blood and broken glass. All the
+while I heard the sword-blades clashing. Yeux-gris, God be thanked!
+seemed to be holding his own.</p>
+<p>Fighting Gervais was like fighting two men. Slowly but steadily
+he pressed me down and held me. I struggled for dear life&mdash;and
+could not push him back an inch.</p>
+<p>I still held my knife but my arms were pinned down. Gervais
+raised himself a little to get a better clutch, and his fingers
+closed on my throat. One grip, and life seemed flowing from me. My
+arm was free now if I could but lift it. If I could not, nevermore
+should I lift it on this sunny earth. I did lift it, and drove the
+dagger deep into him.</p>
+<p>I could not take aim; I could not tell where the knife struck. A
+gasp showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight
+went from me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then
+thought went, too.</p>
+<p>But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed,
+and I wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw
+Grammont clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all,
+the blow had gone home. I had struck him in the left side under the
+arm. Three good inches of steel were in him.</p>
+<p>He had turned over on his side, half off me. I scrambled out
+from under him. To my surprise, Yeux-gris and Lucas were still
+engaged. I had thought it hours since Grammont pulled me down.</p>
+<p>As I rose, Yeux-gris turned his head toward me. Only for a
+second, but in that second Lucas pinked his shoulder. I dashed
+between them; they lowered their points.</p>
+<p>"First blood for me!" cried Lucas. "That serves for to-day, M.
+le Comte. I regret that I cannot wait to kill you, but that will
+come. It is necessary that I go before M. le Duc arrives. Clear the
+way."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte stood his ground, barring the alley. They glared at
+each other motionless.</p>
+<p>Grammont had raised himself to his knees and was trying
+painfully to get on his feet.</p>
+<p>"A hand, Lucas," he gasped.</p>
+<p>Lucas gave him a startled glance but neither went nor spoke to
+him.</p>
+<p>"I am not much hurt," said Grammont, huskily. Holding by the
+wall, he clambered up on his feet. He swayed, reeled forward, and
+clutched Lucas's arm.</p>
+<p>"Lucas, Lucas, help me! Draw out the knife. I cannot. I shall be
+myself when the knife is out. Lucas, for God's sake!"</p>
+<p>"You will die when the knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching
+himself free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed
+as he saw the blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble
+in his hand.</p>
+<p>"Come on, then," he cried to Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>But I sprang forward and seized the sword from M. le Comte's
+hand.</p>
+<p>"On guard!" I shouted, and we went to work.</p>
+<p>I could handle a sword as well as the next one. M. le Duc had
+taught me in his idle days at St. Quentin. It served me well now,
+and him, too.</p>
+<p>The light was fading in the narrow court. Our blades shone white
+in the twilight as the weapons clashed in and out. I saw, without
+looking, Grammont leaning against the wall, his gory face ashen,
+and Yeux-gris watching me with all his soul, now and then shouting
+a word of advice.</p>
+<p>I had had good training, and I fought for all there was in me.
+Yet I was a boy not come to my full strength, and Lucas was more
+than my match. He drove me back farther and farther toward the
+house-wall. Of a sudden I slipped in a smear of blood ('tis no
+lying excuse, I did slip) and lost my guard. He ran his blade into
+my shoulder, as he had done with Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>He would likely have finished me had not a cry from Grammont
+shaken him.</p>
+<p>"The duke!"</p>
+<p>In truth, a deepening noise of hoofs and shouts came down the
+alley from the street.</p>
+<p>Lucas looked at me, who had regained my guard and stood, little
+hurt, between him and M. le Comte. He could not push past me into
+the house and so through to the other street. He made for the
+alley, crying out:</p>
+<p>"Au revoir, messieurs! We shall meet again."</p>
+<p>Grammont seized him.</p>
+<p>"Help me, Lucas, for the love of Christ! Don't leave me,
+Lucas!"</p>
+<p>Lucas beat him off with the sword.</p>
+<p>"Every man for himself!" he cried, and sprang down the
+alley.</p>
+<p>"It is not the duke," I said to Yeux-gris. "It is most likely
+the watch." I paled at the thought, for the watch was the League's,
+and Lucas by all signs the League's tool. It might go hard with us
+if captured. "Go through the house, M. le Comte," I cried. "Quick,
+if you love your life! I'll keep them at the alley's mouth as long
+as I can."</p>
+<p>Not waiting for his answer, I rushed down the passage. At the
+end of it I ran against Lucas, who, in his turn, had bowled into
+Vigo.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+<h3><i>Vigo.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>knew of old that it was easier to catch a weasel asleep than
+Vigo absent where he was needed; yet I did not expect to meet him
+in the alley. Monsieur, then, had changed his mind.</p>
+<p>"Well caught!" cried Vigo, winding his arms round Lucas, who was
+struggling furiously for liberty. "Here, Maurice, Jules, I have
+number one. Ah, you young sinner! with your crew again? I thought
+as much. Tie the knots hard, boys. Better be quiet, you snake; you
+can't get away."</p>
+<p>Lucas seemed to make up his mind to this, for he quieted down
+directly.</p>
+<p>"So the game is up," he said pleasantly. "I had hoped to be gone
+before you arrived, dear Vigo."</p>
+<p>We had both been deprived promptly of our swords and Lucas's
+wrists were roped together, but my only bond was Vigo's hand on my
+arm.</p>
+<p>"Where are the others?" he demanded. "No tricks, now."</p>
+<p>"Here," I said, and led the way down the passage. Maurice and
+Jules, with their prisoner, pressed after us, and half a dozen of
+the duke's guard after them. The rest stayed without to mind the
+horses and keep off the gathering crowd.</p>
+<p>One of the men had a torch which lighted the red pavement. Vigo
+saw this first.</p>
+<p>"Morbleu! is it a shambles?"</p>
+<p>"That is wine," I said.</p>
+<p>"They spilled wine for effect, they spilled so little blood!"
+Thus Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded
+the situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no
+questions; instead, bade Lucas hold his tongue.</p>
+<p>"I am dumb," Lucas rejoined, with a mock meekness more insolent
+than insolence. But we paid it no heed for M. le Comte came forward
+out of the shadows. He held his head well up but his face was white
+above his crimsoned doublet.</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne! Are you hurt?" shouted Vigo.</p>
+<p>"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont
+leaning against the wall.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my
+back," Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo,
+draw it out."</p>
+<p>With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.</p>
+<p>"Who did it?"</p>
+<p>"I."</p>
+<p>"You, F&eacute;lix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to
+demand again which side I was on.</p>
+<p>"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I
+could."</p>
+<p>"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless,
+here comes the knife."</p>
+<p>It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against
+Vigo's man, clapping his hand to his side.</p>
+<p>"I am done for," he gasped faintly.</p>
+<p>"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.</p>
+<p>"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.</p>
+<p>"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.</p>
+<p>Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage
+in his face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said
+fretfully:</p>
+<p>"Which&mdash;which is &Eacute;tienne?"</p>
+<p>He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward
+silently. Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I
+put my arm about him and helped the guardsman to hold him
+straighter. He reached out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's
+sleeve.</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne&mdash;&Eacute;tienne&mdash;pardon. It was wrong
+toward you&mdash;but I never had the pistoles. He called me
+thief&mdash;the duke. I beseech&mdash;your&mdash;pardon."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte was silent.</p>
+<p>"It was all Lucas&mdash;Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with
+stiffening lips. "I am sorry for&mdash;it. I am dying&mdash;I
+cannot die&mdash;without a chance. Say
+you&mdash;for&mdash;give&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less
+treachery though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were
+cousins, bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte
+said nothing.</p>
+<p>How Grammont found the strength only God knows, who haply in his
+goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened
+his sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his
+cousin, both hands outstretched in appeal.</p>
+<p>M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered
+forward. Then M. &Eacute;tienne, never changing his countenance,
+slowly, half reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his
+hand.</p>
+<p>But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp
+again. As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.</p>
+<p>"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up
+and added the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin.
+Otherwise he had no emotions.</p>
+<p>But I was not case-hardened. And I&mdash;I myself&mdash;had
+slain this man, who had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice
+sounded to me far off as he said bluntly:</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."</p>
+<p>"No, by Heaven!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, in a vibrating voice
+that brought me back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer.
+Things may look black against me but I am innocent. You have one
+villain at your feet and one a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am
+a St. Quentin; I do not plot against my father. I was to aid
+Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not answer a challenge. I have
+been tricked. Gervais asked my forgiveness&mdash;you heard him.
+Their dupe, yes&mdash;accomplice I was not. Never have I lifted my
+hand against my father, nor would I, whatever came. That I swear.
+Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left Monsieur's presence,
+till now when he came out of that door side by side with Grammont.
+Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St. Quentin&mdash;no
+parricide!"</p>
+<p>The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with
+haggard eyes on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment
+he could not have waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman
+and servant, never minced words to any man nor swerved from the
+stark truth.</p>
+<p>I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of
+course he believed M. &Eacute;tienne; how dared he make his master
+wait for the assurance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le
+Comte's pardon.</p>
+<p>But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he
+pronounce judgment, but merely said:</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his
+story to my master."</p>
+<p>"I will tell it before this hour is out!"</p>
+<p>"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M.
+&Eacute;tienne. Monsieur suspects nothing against you. F&eacute;lix
+kept your name from him. And by the time I had screwed it out of
+Martin, Monsieur was gone."</p>
+<p>"Gone out of Paris?" M. &Eacute;tienne echoed blankly. To his
+eagerness it was as if M. le Duc were out of France.</p>
+<p>"Aye. He meant to go to-night&mdash;Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But
+when Monsieur learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day.
+'If the League must kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight,
+with all Paris watching.' That's Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from
+that unhappy house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices,
+the equery, struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant
+hands on Martin the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the
+household, had had some intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that
+M. le Comte, if guilty, should be spared. At once he had sounded
+boots and saddles.</p>
+<p>"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the
+meanest lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet
+the charge. My father and I have differed but if we are no longer
+friends we are still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor
+could he for one moment believe it of me."</p>
+<p>I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than
+to confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went
+back a second time and told him."</p>
+<p>"And he?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him
+he gave no sign."</p>
+<p>"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said
+he could not move in the matter; he could not punish his own
+kin."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:</p>
+<p>"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I
+expected his faith."</p>
+<p>"You had no claim to it, M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!" cried the young noble, "you are insolent, sirrah!"</p>
+<p>"I cry monsieur's pardon."</p>
+<p>He was quite respectful and quite unabashed. He had meant no
+insolence. But M. &Eacute;tienne had dared criticise the duke and
+that Vigo did not allow.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne glared at him in speechless wrath. It would
+have liked him well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees.
+But how? It was a byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the
+duke's. The King of France could not dash him.</p>
+<p>Vigo went on:</p>
+<p>"It seems I have exceeded my duty, monsieur, in coming here. Yet
+it turns out for the best, since Lucas is caught and M. de Grammont
+dead and you cleared of suspicion."</p>
+<p>"What!" Yeux-gris cried. "What! you call me cleared!"</p>
+<p>Vigo looked at him in surprise.</p>
+<p>"You said you were innocent, M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte stared, without a word to answer. The equery, all
+unaware of having said anything unexpected, turned to the guardsman
+Maurice:</p>
+<p>"Well, is Lucas trussed? Have you searched him?"</p>
+<p>Maurice displayed a poniard and a handful of small coins for
+sole booty, but Jules made haste to announce: "He has something
+else, though&mdash;a paper sewed up in his doublet. Shall I rip it
+out, M. Vigo?"</p>
+<p>With Lucas's own knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet
+from throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your
+palm. Vigo pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home
+with the work of a quill, save those that winged arrows. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, coming forward, with a sharp exclamation snatched
+the packet.</p>
+<p>"How came you by my letter?" he demanded of Lucas.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte was pleased to consign it for delivery to
+Martin."</p>
+<p>"What purpose had you with it?"</p>
+<p>"Rest assured, dear monsieur, I had a purpose."</p>
+<p>The questions were stormily vehement, the answers so gentle as
+to be fairly caressing. It was waste of time and dignity to parley
+with the scoundrel till one could back one's queries with the boot.
+But M. &Eacute;tienne's passion knew no waiting. Thrusting the
+letter into his breast ere I, who had edged up to him, could catch
+a glimpse of its address, he cried upon Lucas:</p>
+<p>"Speak! You were ready enough to jeer at me for a dupe. Tell me
+what you would do with your dupe. You dared not open the plot to
+me&mdash;you did me the honour to know I would not kill my father.
+Then why use me blindfold? An awkward game, Lucas."</p>
+<p>Lucas disagreed as politely as if exchanging pleasantries in a
+salon.</p>
+<p>"A dexterous game, M. le Comte. Your best friends deemed you
+guilty. What would your enemies have said?"</p>
+<p>"Ah-h," breathed M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"It dawns on you, monsieur? You are marvellous thick-witted, yet
+surely you must perceive. We had a dozen fellows ready to swear
+that your hand killed Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"You would kill me for my father's murder?"</p>
+<p>"Ma foi, no!" cried Lucas, airily. "Never in the world! We
+should have let you live, in the knowledge that whenever you
+displeased us we could send you to the gallows."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte, silent, stared at him with wild eyes, like one who
+looks into the open roof of hell. Lucas fell to laughing.</p>
+<p>"What! hang you and let our cousin Val&egrave;re succeed? Mon
+dieu, no! M. de Val&egrave;re is a man!"</p>
+<p>With a blow the guardsman struck the words and the laughter from
+his lips. But I, who no more than Lucas knew how to hold my tongue,
+thought I saw a better way to punish this brazen knave. I cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"You are the dupe, Lucas! Aye, and coward to boot, fleeing here
+from&mdash;nothing. I knew naught against you&mdash;you saw that.
+To slip out and warn Martin before Vigo got a chance at
+him&mdash;that was all you had to do. Yet you never thought of that
+but rushed away here, leaving Martin to betray you. Had you stuck
+to your post you had been now on the road to St. Denis, instead of
+the road to the Gr&egrave;ve! Fool! fool! fool!"</p>
+<p>He winced. He had not been ashamed to betray his benefactor, to
+bite the hand that fed him, to desert a wounded comrade; but he was
+ashamed to confront his own blunder. I had the satisfaction of
+pricking, not his conscience, for he had none, but his pride.</p>
+<p>"I had to warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St.
+Quentin such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were
+his kin? You did better than you knew when you shut the door on me.
+You tracked me, you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the
+coil?"</p>
+<p>"By God's grace," M. le Comte answered. He laid a hand on my
+shoulder and leaned there heavily. Lucas grinned.</p>
+<p>"Ah, waxing pious, is he? The prodigal prepares to return."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's hand clinched on my shoulder. Vigo commanded
+a gag for Lucas, saying, with the only touch of anger I ever knew
+him to show:</p>
+<p>"He shall hang when the king comes in. And now to horse, lads,
+and out of the quarter; we have wasted too much time palavering.
+King Henry is not in Paris yet. We shall do well not to rouse
+Belin, though we can make him trouble if he troubles us. Come,
+monsieur. Men, guard your prisoner. I misjudge if he is not cropful
+of the devil still."</p>
+<p>He did not look it. His figure was drooping; his face purple and
+contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the
+man's mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a
+sudden frantic effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the
+gag to cry out wildly:</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. l'&Eacute;cuyer, have mercy! Have pity upon me! For
+Christ's sake, pity!"</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="128.jpg"></a> <a href="images/128.jpg"><img src=
+"images/128.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE
+ALLEY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>His bravado had broken down at last. He tried to fling himself
+at Vigo's feet. The guards relaxed their hold to see him
+grovel.</p>
+<p>That was what he had hoped for. In a flash he was out of their
+grasp, flying down the alley.</p>
+<p>"To Vigo! Vigo is attacked," we heard him shout.</p>
+<p>It was so quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after,
+pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley
+we ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We
+lost precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it
+was a ruse and our prisoner escaped. When they comprehended, we all
+rushed together out of the passage, emerging among frightened
+horses and a great press of excited men.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+<h3><i>The Comte de Mar.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hich way went he?"</p>
+<p>"The man who just came out?"</p>
+<p>"This way!"</p>
+<p>"No, yonder!"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I saw him not."</p>
+<p>"A man with bound hands, you say?"</p>
+<p>"Here!"</p>
+<p>"Down that way!"</p>
+<p>"A man in black, was he? Here he is!"</p>
+<p>"Fool, no; he went that way!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, Vigo, I, and the guardsmen rushed hither and
+thither into the ever-thickening crowd, shouting after Lucas and
+exchanging rapid questions with every one we passed. But from the
+very first the search was hopeless. It was dark by this time and a
+mass of people blocked the street, surging this way and that, some
+eagerly joining in the chase, others, from ready sympathy with any
+rogue, doing their best to hinder and confuse us. There was no way
+to tell how he had gone. A needle in a haystack is easy found
+compared with him who loses himself in a Paris crowd by night.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne plunged into the first opening he saw,
+elbowing his way manfully. I followed in his wake, his tall bright
+head making as good an oriflamme as the king's plume at Ivry, but
+when at length we came out far down the street we had seen no trace
+of Lucas.</p>
+<p>"He is gone," said M. le Comte.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. If it were day they might find him, but not
+now."</p>
+<p>"No. Even Vigo will not find him. He is worsted for once. He has
+let slip the shrewdest knave in France. Well, he is gone," he
+repeated after a minute. "It cannot be mended by me. He is off, and
+so am I."</p>
+<p>"Whither, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"That is my concern."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur will see M. le Duc?"</p>
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He broke in on me fiercely.</p>
+<p>"Think you that I&mdash;I, smirched and sullied, reeking with
+plots of murder&mdash;am likely to betake myself to the noblest
+gentleman in France?"</p>
+<p>"He will welcome M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Nay; he believed me guilty."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You may not say 'but' to me."</p>
+<p>"Pardon, monsieur. Am I to tell Vigo monsieur is gone?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, tell him." His lip quivered; he struggled hard for
+steadiness. "You will go to M. le Duc, F&eacute;lix, and rise in
+his favour, for it was you saved his life. Then tell him this from
+me&mdash;that some day, when I have made me worthy to enter his
+presence, then will I go to him and beg his forgiveness on my
+knees. And now farewell."</p>
+<p>He slipped away into the darkness.</p>
+<p>I stood hesitating for a moment. Then I followed my lord.</p>
+<p>He slackened his pace as he heard footsteps overtake him, and
+where a beam of light shone out from an open door he wheeled about,
+thinking me a footpad.</p>
+<p>"You, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur; I go with M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"I have not permitted you."</p>
+<p>"Then must I go in despite. Monsieur is wounded; I cannot leave
+him to go unsquired."</p>
+<p>"There are lackeys to hire. I bade you seek M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>"Is not monsieur a thought unreasonable? I cannot be in two
+places at once. Monsieur can send a letter. The duke has Vigo and a
+household. I go with M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Oh," he cried, "you are a faithful servant! We are ridden to
+death by our faithful servants, we St. Quentins. Myself, I prefer
+fleas!" He added, growing angrier, "Will you leave me?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur," said I.</p>
+<p>He glowered at me and I think he had some notion of chasing me
+away with his sword. But since his dignity could not so stoop, he
+growled:</p>
+<p>"Come, then, if you choose to come unasked and most
+unwelcome!"</p>
+<p>With this he walked on a yard ahead of me, never turning his
+head nor saying a word, I following meekly, wondering whither, and
+devoutly hoping it might be to supper. Presently I observed that we
+were in a better quarter of the town, and before long we came to a
+broad, well-lighted inn, whence proceeded a merry chatter and
+rattle of dice. M. &Eacute;tienne with accustomed feet turned into
+the court at the side, and seizing upon a drawer who was crossing
+from door to door despatched him for the landlord. Mine host came,
+fat and smiling, unworried by the hard times, greeted Yeux-gris
+with acclaim as "this dear M. le Comte," wondered at his long
+absence and bloody shirt, and granted with all alacrity his three
+demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood back, ill at
+ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering whether I were
+to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le Comte,
+without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my
+serving-man," I knew my stomach was safe.</p>
+<p>That was the most I thought of then, I do confess, for, except
+for my sausage, I had not tasted food since morning. The barber
+came and bandaged M. le Comte and put him straight to bed, and I
+was left free to fall on the ample victuals set before me, and was
+so comfortable and happy that the Rue Coupejarrets seemed like an
+evil dream. Since that day I have been an easy mark for beggars if
+they could but manage to look starved.</p>
+<p>Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le
+Comte's room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for
+I saw by this token that I was forgiven. Indeed, no sooner had I
+got fairly inside the door than my master raised himself on his
+sound elbow and called out:</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful
+churl?"</p>
+<p>"I bear malice?" I cried, flushing. "Monsieur is mocking me. I
+know monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life. Yet my
+wish is to be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget
+it."</p>
+<p>"Nay," he said; "I have forgotten it. And it was freely forgiven
+from the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin's side."</p>
+<p>"For the second time," I said, "monsieur saved my life." And I
+dropped on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand. But he
+snatched it away from me and flung his arm around my neck and
+kissed my cheek.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he cried, "but for you my hands would be red
+with my father's blood. You rescued him from death and me from
+worse. If I have any shreds of honour left 'tis you have saved them
+to me."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I
+die."</p>
+<p>"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's
+fool!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what
+he said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for
+some time what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin
+Val&egrave;re duke! He was a man. But I&mdash;nom de dieu, I was
+not worth the killing."</p>
+<p>"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot
+against dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind
+Lucas&mdash;I dare swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no
+secret now where Monsieur stands. Yet the king's party grows so
+strong and the mob so cheers Monsieur, the League dare not strike
+openly. So they put a spy in the house to choose time and way. And
+the spy would not stab, for he saw he could make me do his work for
+him. He saw I needed but a push to come to open breach with my
+father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull his chestnuts
+from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I could never
+strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their thrall
+forever!"</p>
+<p>"Never that, monsieur; never that!"</p>
+<p>"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of
+a stray boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose
+through. I was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais
+to be morose and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always
+stood his friend. I thought him shamefully used; I let myself be
+turned out of my father's house to champion him. I had no more
+notion he was plotting my ruin than a child playing with his dolls.
+I was their doll, mordieu! their toy, their crazy fool on a chain.
+But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to pledge my sword to
+Henry of Navarre."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he
+were better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and
+generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he
+will not starve us. He looks the other way, and the
+provision-trains come in. But the Leaguers, with all their
+regiments, dare not openly strike down one man,&mdash;one man who
+has come all alone into their country,&mdash;they put a spy into
+his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin
+to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they
+are most Catholic and noble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these
+pious plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and
+make me outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime
+with the League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"</p>
+<p>I caught his fire.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers
+yet!"</p>
+<p>He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, F&eacute;lix, you and I
+alone will overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are
+made of. They think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with
+my father. I lazed about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my
+pleasure, too shallow a fop even to take sides in the fight for a
+kingdom. What should they see in me but an empty-headed roisterer,
+frittering away his life in follies? But they will find I am
+something more. Well, enter there!"</p>
+<p>He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as
+Ma&icirc;tre Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood
+shuffling on the threshold.</p>
+<p>"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I
+think he could not but have heard M. &Eacute;tienne's tirading
+half-way down the passage.</p>
+<p>"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"</p>
+<p>"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it
+be sent in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had
+been wounded and was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him
+for a letter that would keep till morning. But he would have it
+'twas of instant import, and so&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the
+ma&icirc;tre in, my mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason
+save my ardent wish, that Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.</p>
+<p>"I dared not deny him further," added Ma&icirc;tre Menard. "He
+wore the liveries of M. de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. &Eacute;tienne had
+said. "Pardieu, it may be Lucas himself!" And snatching up my
+master's sword I dashed out of the door and was in the cabaret in
+three steps.</p>
+<p>The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by
+the uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise
+resembled Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my
+sudden entrance had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his
+outraged dignity to cross swords with me. On any other day I had
+deemed it impossible to say him nay, but now with a real vengeance,
+a quarrel &agrave; outrance on my hands, he seemed of no
+consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I demanded M. de
+Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the dark court
+and the darker street.</p>
+<p>A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pass out,
+and he opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I
+ran a hundred yards up street and a hundred yards down street,
+shouting on the name of Lucas, calling him coward and skulker,
+bidding him come forth and fight me. The whole neighbourhood became
+aware than I wanted one Lucas to fight: lights twinkled in windows;
+men, women, and children poured out of doors. But Lucas, if it were
+he, had for the second time vanished soft-footed into the
+night.</p>
+<p>I returned with drooping tail to M. &Eacute;tienne. He was
+alone, sitting up in bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes
+blazing.</p>
+<p>"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone.
+Oh, if I caught Lucas&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you
+waited long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This
+is no errand of Lucas but a very different matter."</p>
+<p>He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement
+in his eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and
+started to rise.</p>
+<p>"Get my clothes, F&eacute;lix. I must go to the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and
+dragging the cover over him by main force.</p>
+<p>"You can go nowhere, M. &Eacute;tienne; it is madness. The
+surgeon said you must lie here for three days. You will get a fever
+in your wounds; you shall not go."</p>
+<p>"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped.
+Cautiously I relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed:
+"F&eacute;lix, I must go. So long as there is a spark of life left
+in me, I have no choice but to go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers&mdash;with
+M. de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this&mdash;but this is
+Lorance."</p>
+<p>Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand
+and tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.</p>
+<p>I read:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little
+consequence, or of very great, since he is absent a whole month
+from the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed?
+Or is he so sure of his standing that he fears no supplanting? In
+either case he is wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed
+forever. He may, if he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be
+forgotten. If he would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at
+the eleventh hour, to lay his apologies at the feet of</i></p>
+<p>LORANCE DE MONTLUC.</p>
+</div>
+<p>"And she&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's
+desire."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see
+why I have stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow
+my father into exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused
+the breach with Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de
+Grammont. That was the spark kindled the powder, but the train was
+laid."</p>
+<p>"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,&mdash;or my shame, as
+you choose,&mdash;I was not. I was neither one nor the other,
+neither fish nor flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was
+not. I was not disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore
+me. Monsieur reviled me for a skulker, a fain&eacute;ant; nom de
+diable, he might have remembered his own three years of
+idleness!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur held out for his religion&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not
+merrily.</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked
+and evaded and temporized&mdash;for nothing. I would not join the
+League and break my father's heart; would not stand out against it
+and lose Lorance. I have been trying these three years to please
+both the goat and the cabbage&mdash;with the usual ending. I have
+pleased nobody. I am out of Mayenne's books: he made me overtures
+and I refused him. I am out of my father's books: he thinks me a
+traitor and parricide. And I am out of mademoiselle's: she despises
+me for a laggard. Had I gone in with Mayenne I had won her. Had I
+gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command in King Henry's army.
+But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two stools, I fall
+miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a do-nothing, the butt
+and laughing-stock of all brave men.</p>
+<p>"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his
+breath. "For once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given
+me a last chance. She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on
+her threshold, I at least die looking at her."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die
+looking at her, for you will die out here in the street, and that
+will profit neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."</p>
+<p>"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I
+sent her a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She
+thinks me careless of her. I must go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself
+Mayenne is likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk
+into the enemies' very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with
+quick-blazing ire. "I do not permit such words to be spoken in
+connection with Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of
+pistolet. The St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in
+those they loved. I remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of
+resentment had forbidden me to speak ill of his son. And I
+remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith had been justified and that
+my accusations were lies. Natheless, I liked not the look of this
+affair, and I attempted further warnings.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, in my opinion&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You are not here to hold opinions, F&eacute;lix, but your
+tongue."</p>
+<p>I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it
+liked him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes
+lay, only to drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and
+dashed half the water in it into his face.</p>
+<p>"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it
+was but a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was
+forced to seize my shoulder to keep from falling.</p>
+<p>"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I
+am all well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about
+like a ship at sea."</p>
+<p>I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue
+about it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the
+white bed-linen I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could
+drench him again he raised his lids.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that
+I shall reach Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you
+cannot walk across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M.
+&Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you
+say to her&mdash;pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her
+myself."</p>
+<p>"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt&mdash;how you would
+come, but cannot."</p>
+<p>"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her
+think it a flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you,"
+he added, with half a laugh. "There is something very
+trust-compelling about you, F&eacute;lix. And assure her of my
+lifelong, never-failing service."</p>
+<p>"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of
+Navarre."</p>
+<p>"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, F&eacute;lix, was ever a poor
+wight so harried and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would
+destroy he first makes mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I
+have done with it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I
+go now, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"And good luck to you! F&eacute;lix, I offer you no reward for
+this midnight journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense
+you will see her."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+<h3><i>Mademoiselle.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>went to find Ma&icirc;tre Menard, to urge upon him that some one
+should stay with M. &Eacute;tienne while I was gone, lest he
+swooned or became light-headed. But the surgeon himself was
+present, having returned from bandaging up some common skull to see
+how his noble patient rested. He promised that he would stay the
+night with M. le Comte; so, eased of that care, I set out for the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants with a flambeau
+coming along to guide and guard me. M. &Eacute;tienne was a
+favourite in this inn of Ma&icirc;tre Menard's; they did not stop
+to ask whether he had money in his purse before falling over one
+another in their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one
+gets more out of the world by dint of fair words than by a long
+purse or a long sword.</p>
+<p>We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the
+right-about, to the impatience of my escort.</p>
+<p>"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a
+moment, but see Ma&icirc;tre Menard I must."</p>
+<p>He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.</p>
+<p>"Now what brings you back?"</p>
+<p>"This, ma&icirc;tre," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le
+Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have
+divined. His arch-enemy gave us the slip. And I am not easy for
+monsieur while this Lucas is at large. He has the devil's own
+cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns.
+Therefore, ma&icirc;tre, I beg you to admit no one to M. le
+Comte&mdash;no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from
+the Duke of Mayenne himself."</p>
+<p>"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the ma&icirc;tre
+declared.</p>
+<p>"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St.
+Quentin's equery. You will know him for the biggest man in
+France."</p>
+<p>"Good. And this other; what is he like?"</p>
+<p>"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall
+and slim,&mdash;oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown
+hair and thin, aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."</p>
+<p>"His tongue shall not get around me," Ma&icirc;tre Menard
+promised. "The host of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday
+let me tell you."</p>
+<p>With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my
+expedition with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the
+business. It was all very well for M. &Eacute;tienne to declare
+grandly that as recompense for my trouble I should see Mlle. de
+Montluc. But I was not her lover and I thought I could get along
+very comfortably without seeing her. I knew not how to bear myself
+before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had dashed across Paris
+to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid;
+but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared.</p>
+<p>And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me
+pause. I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de
+Mayenne's cousin. What mocking devil had driven &Eacute;tienne de
+Mar, out of a whole France full of lovely women, to fix his
+unturnable desire on this Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his
+father's friends no daughters, that he must seek a mistress from
+the black duke's household? Were there no families of clean hands
+and honest speech, that he must ally himself with the treacherous
+blood of Lorraine?</p>
+<p>I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it
+not. If Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I
+marvelled that my master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that
+he cared to send his servant there. Yet I went none the less
+readily for that; I was here to do his bidding. Nor was I greatly
+alarmed for my own skin; I thought myself too small to be worth my
+Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do confess, a lively curiosity
+to behold the interior of the greatest house in Paris, the very
+core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not been for terror
+of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully enough.</p>
+<p>Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the
+streets, the clear summer night, and all of them were talking
+politics. As Jean and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the
+wine-shop lanterns, we caught always the names of Mayenne and
+Navarre. Everywhere they asked the same two questions: Was it true
+that Henry was coming into the Church? And if so, what would
+Mayenne do next? I perceived that old Ma&icirc;tre Jacques of the
+Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the people of Paris
+were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery, galled to
+desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.</p>
+<p>Mayenne's fine new h&ocirc;tel in the Rue St. Antoine was
+lighted as for a f&ecirc;te. From its open windows came sounds of
+gay laughter and rattling dice. You might have thought them keeping
+carnival in the midst of a happy and loyal city. If the
+Lieutenant-General found anything to vex him in the present
+situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.</p>
+<p>The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by
+men-at-arms; but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers
+lounged on the stone benches in the archway. Some of them were
+talking to a little knot of street idlers who had gathered about
+the entrance, while others, with the aid of a torch and a greasy
+pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.</p>
+<p>I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc,
+declaring that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.</p>
+<p>"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard
+replied at once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay,
+no need to ask," he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would
+make."</p>
+<p>"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may
+go in. If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny
+her the consolation of a message."</p>
+<p>A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:</p>
+<p>"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the
+Comte de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and
+M. Paul for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the
+earth. It seemed as if she must take the little cheese or nothing.
+But now things are looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly
+in, and here is a messenger at least from the other."</p>
+<p>"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took
+up the tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's
+graces."</p>
+<p>"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in
+his ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le
+Balafr&eacute;'s own."</p>
+<p>"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came
+the retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him
+into the house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole
+history, false and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down
+before the lofty of the earth, we underlings, but behind their
+backs there is none with whose names we make so free. And there we
+have the advantage of our masters; for they know little of our
+private matters while we know everything of theirs.</p>
+<p>In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted
+me through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence
+issued a merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while
+I remained to undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose
+repose we had invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again,
+lifting the curtain for me to enter.</p>
+<p>The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces
+along the walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There
+was a crowd of people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my
+dazzled eyes; grouped, most of them, about the tables set up and
+down, either taking hands themselves at cards or dice or betting on
+those who did. Bluff soldiers in breastplate and jack-boots were
+not wanting in the throng, but the larger number of the gallants
+were brave in silken doublets and spotless ruffs, as became a
+noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what am I to say of
+them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun, agleam with
+jewels&mdash;eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had thought
+so fine, were but serving-maids to these.</p>
+<p>I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the
+chatter, unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the
+congregation of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me
+if I could, for here close about were a dozen fair women, any one
+of whom might be Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat.
+I knew not whom to address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in
+a suit of pink, took the burden on himself.</p>
+<p>"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."</p>
+<p>He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In
+truth, I must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned
+out of a bag in the midst of that gorgeous company.</p>
+<p>"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"I have wondered what has become of &Eacute;tienne de Mar this
+last month," spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his
+place behind a fair one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so
+fine as the other, but in his short, stocky figure and square face
+there was a force which his comrade lacked. He regarded me with a
+far keener glance as he asked:</p>
+<p>"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do
+for a lackey."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de
+Montluc," suggested the pink youth.</p>
+<p>"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying
+down her hand at cards, rose and came toward me.</p>
+<p>She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried
+herself with stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as
+purely white and pink as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl,
+while her eyes, under their sooty lashes, shone blue as
+corn-flowers.</p>
+<p>I began to understand M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me
+stood regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me
+to explain myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in
+pink answered her with his soft drawl:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
+extraordinary&mdash;most extraordinary&mdash;from the court of his
+Highness the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I
+think, at my uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.</p>
+<p>"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"It appears not, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in
+doleful tones:</p>
+<p>"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
+triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I
+could not produce M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not
+M. de Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he
+could not come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk
+across his room. He tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet
+his lifelong services."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
+"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
+messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."</p>
+<p>"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de
+Montluc replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I
+am punished for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to
+produce my recreant squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up
+her white hands before her face with a pretty imitation of despair,
+save that her eyes sparkled from between her fingers.</p>
+<p>By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a
+general interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with
+an air of authority demanded:</p>
+<p>"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"</p>
+<p>"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered
+with instant gravity and respect.</p>
+<p>"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I
+thought.</p>
+<p>"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He
+is out of the house again now."</p>
+<p>"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour,
+"though he did not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la
+Duchesse, he had the leisure for considerable conversation with
+Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
+herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.</p>
+<p>"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the
+introduction of a stable-boy into my salon."</p>
+<p>"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
+protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning
+M. de Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection
+and they were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could
+get him back if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a
+letter which my cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's
+old lodgings. This is the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave
+of her hand toward me. "But I did not expect it in this guise,
+madame. Blame your lackeys who know not their duties, not me."</p>
+<p>"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her,
+tartly. "I consider my salon no place for intrigues with
+horse-boys. If you must hold colloquy with this fellow, take him
+whither he belongs&mdash;to the stables."</p>
+<p>A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess
+says.</p>
+<p>"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the
+ladies who had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in
+lofty disdain on Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some
+of the company obeyed her, a curious circle still surrounded
+us.</p>
+<p>"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
+mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
+vanished Mar."</p>
+<p>"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
+messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
+demoiselle.</p>
+<p>I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to
+be out in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me
+to the stables&mdash;anywhere out of this laughing company. But she
+had no such intent.</p>
+<p>"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I
+would not for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor
+yours, M. de Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master,
+Sir Courier."</p>
+<p>"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Whom was he fighting?"</p>
+<p>"And for what lady's favour?"</p>
+<p>"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"</p>
+<p>"Does she make him read his Bible?"</p>
+<p>"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"</p>
+<p>The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
+mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:</p>
+<p>"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over
+other matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most
+heartily that his wound prevents his coming, and to assure
+mademoiselle that he is too weak and faint to walk across the
+floor."</p>
+<p>"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur
+has been about these four weeks that he could not take time to
+visit us."</p>
+<p>I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. &Eacute;tienne's chosen
+lady and therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same
+time I could not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment
+and no intent of rudeness that caused my short answer:</p>
+<p>"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set
+soldierly fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had
+never left my face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this
+insolence."</p>
+<p>"M. de Brie&mdash;" she began at the same moment that I cried
+out to her:</p>
+<p>"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added,
+in my haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees
+for herself that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this
+house."</p>
+<p>Brie had me by the collar.</p>
+<p>"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I
+thought as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this
+house, then, nom de dieu, they are no secret."</p>
+<p>He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me,
+till my teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would.
+But he cried on, his voice rising with excitement:</p>
+<p>"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has
+been about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
+forsooth&mdash;neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was
+Henry's, fast and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so.
+I told Mayenne last month we ought to settle with M. de St.
+Quentin; I asked nothing better than to attend to him. But the
+general would not, but let him alone, free and unmolested in his
+work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
+pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
+entered the room.</p>
+<p>M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the
+passage. I turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.</p>
+<p>He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked,
+heavy-jowled. His wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was
+lightest brown, while his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark.
+His eyes were dark also, his full lips red and smiling. He had the
+beauty and presence of all the Guises; it needed not the star on
+his breast to tell me that this was Mayenne himself.</p>
+<p>He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company,
+but his glance travelling straight to me and my captor.</p>
+<p>"What have we here, Fran&ccedil;ois?"</p>
+<p>"This is a fellow of &Eacute;tienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie
+answered. "He came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am
+getting out of him what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a
+month back."</p>
+<p>"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear Fran&ccedil;ois; I
+already know Mar's whereabouts and doings rather better than he
+knows them himself."</p>
+<p>Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at
+ease. I perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what
+he said but you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy
+face varied little; what went on in his mind behind the smiling
+mask was matter for anxiety. If he asked pleasantly after your
+health, you fancied he might be thinking how well you would grace
+the gallows.</p>
+<p>M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late,
+Fran&ccedil;ois. You little boys are fools; you think because you
+do not know a thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my
+information from you, ma belle Lorance?"</p>
+<p>The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe
+her. Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was
+neither loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.</p>
+<p>"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>She met his look unflinching.</p>
+<p>"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar,
+monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since
+May&mdash;until to-night."</p>
+<p>"And what has happened to-night?"</p>
+<p>"To-night&mdash;Paul appeared."</p>
+<p>"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his
+phlegm. "Paul here?"</p>
+<p>"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I
+know not whither or for what."</p>
+<p>Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.</p>
+<p>"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"</p>
+<p>She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure,
+but to go through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was
+moistening her dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide
+with apprehension. But he answered amiably, half absently, as if
+the whole affair were a triviality:</p>
+<p>"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."</p>
+<p>He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over
+our childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made
+him a curtsey, laughing lightly.</p>
+<p>"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is
+the best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I
+confess I am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might
+remember me still after a month of absence. I should have known it
+too much to ask of mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will
+you keep our memories green for more than a week, messieurs."</p>
+<p>"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue,
+Mlle. Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be
+awake the night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."</p>
+<p>"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It
+is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The
+Comte de Mar&mdash;behold him!"</p>
+<p>She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft
+for us all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the
+pictured face with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a
+suggestion of M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Behold M. de Mar&mdash;behold his fate!" With a twinkling of
+her white fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen
+pieces and sent them whirling over her head to fall far and wide
+among the company.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="160.jpg"></a> <a href="images/160.jpg"><img src=
+"images/160.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with
+a laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise
+with the flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for
+conspiring against the Holy League?"</p>
+<p>But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his
+answer.</p>
+<p>"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not
+come himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.</p>
+<p>"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could
+forgive&mdash;and forget&mdash;his absence; but I do not forgive
+his despatching me his horse-boy."</p>
+<p>Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her
+faithlessness, her vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my
+master's plight. I knew it was sheer madness for me to attempt his
+defence before this hostile company; nay, there was no object in
+defending him; there was not one here who cared to hear good of
+him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled so hot that I
+lost all command of myself, and I burst out:</p>
+<p>"If I were a horse-boy,&mdash;which I am not,&mdash;I were
+twenty times too good to be carrying messages hither. You need not
+rail at his poverty, mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It
+was for you he was turned out of his father's house. But for you he
+would not now be lying in a garret, penniless and dishonoured.
+Whatever ills he suffers, it is you and your false house have
+brought them."</p>
+<p>Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"Don't strangle him, Fran&ccedil;ois; I may need him later. Let
+him be flogged and locked in the oratory."</p>
+<p>He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the
+lackeys dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of
+diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+<h3><i>In the oratory.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-h.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ere, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a
+candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He
+reckoned wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay
+on well, boys; make him howl."</p>
+<p>Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and
+see the fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon.
+Pierre, the same who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led
+the way into a long oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was
+a huge chimney carved with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door
+led into a little oratory where tapers burned before the image of
+the Virgin; at the other, before the two narrow windows, stood a
+long table with writing-materials. Chests and cupboards nearly
+filled the walls. I took this to be a sort of council-room of my
+Lord Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested
+that he should quench the Virgin's candles.</p>
+<p>"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a
+light in there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind;
+she has a million others to see by."</p>
+<p>I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one
+good blow at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it.
+But as I gathered myself for the rush he spoke to me low and
+cautiously:</p>
+<p>"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."</p>
+<p>My clinched fist dropped to my side.</p>
+<p>"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think
+you half killed, and I'll manage."</p>
+<p>I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the
+way of the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much
+kindness, too.</p>
+<p>"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed
+boisterously. "Give it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left
+when I get through."</p>
+<p>"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the
+oratory.</p>
+<p>"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants
+him," Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my
+wrists in front of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre
+laid on. And he, good fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull
+my loose jerkin away from my back, so that he dusted it down
+without greatly incommoding me. Some hard whacks I did get, but
+they were nothing to what a strong man could have given in grim
+earnest.</p>
+<p>I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as
+anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should
+have. I yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight
+of Jean and his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning
+varlets to the door before my performance was over. But at length,
+when I thought I had done enough for their pleasure and that of the
+nobles in the salon, I dropped down on the floor and lay quiet,
+with shut eyes.</p>
+<p>"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the
+master," Pierre said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you
+have not even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back,
+whereat I groaned my hollowest.</p>
+<p>"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back
+touched," laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I
+wonder what Our Lady thinks of some of the devotees we bring
+her."</p>
+<p>As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and
+I squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on
+the oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.</p>
+<p>I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my
+handcuff with my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in
+two. I was minded as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered
+whether he had managed to rid himself of their inconvenience. He
+went straightway, doubtless, to some confederate who cut them for
+him, and even now was planning fresh evil against the St. Quentins.
+I remembered his face as he cried to M. le Comte that they should
+meet again; and I thought that M. &Eacute;tienne was likely to have
+his hands full with Lucas, without this unlucky tanglement with
+Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I called down a
+murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl alone? There
+were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on humanity
+if there were none kindlier.</p>
+<p>He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this
+girl's fair face had stood between him and his home, between him
+and action, between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly;
+yet, in my opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains.
+If she had loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl
+spurned and flouted him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not
+put the jade out of his mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the
+road to glory? When I got back to him and told him how she had
+mocked him, hang me but he should, though!</p>
+<p>Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me
+but with my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General,
+dark-minded Mayenne. What he wanted with me he had not revealed;
+nor was it a pleasant subject for speculation. He meant me, of
+course, to tell him all I knew of the St. Quentins; well, that was
+soon done; belike he understood more than I of the day's work. But
+after he had questioned me, what?</p>
+<p>Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never
+done him any harm? Or would he&mdash;I wondered, if they flung me
+out stark into some alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would
+search for me and claim my carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen
+by the blades of the League?</p>
+<p>I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not
+even this morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been
+in such mortal dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M.
+&Eacute;tienne; but I was not likely to happen on succour here.
+Pierre, for all his kind heart, could not save me from the Duke of
+Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with
+me in the little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and
+prayed her to save me, and if she might not, then to stand by me
+during the hard moment of dying and receive my seeking soul.
+Comforted now and deeming I could pass, if it came to that, with a
+steady face, I laid me down, my head on the prie-dieu cushion, and
+presently went to sleep.</p>
+<p>I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up
+to meet my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings
+who bent over me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not
+save you the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have
+availed you nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."</p>
+<p>With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over
+her lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too
+confused for speech, while she, putting down the shaking
+candlestick on the altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face
+with her hands, sobbing.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's
+tears! The man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think
+he was half flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard.
+He did not hurt so much."</p>
+<p>She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and
+presently dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her
+shining wet eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make
+sure, she laid her hand delicately on my back.</p>
+<p>"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St.
+G&eacute;n&eacute;vi&egrave;ve, they have not brought the blood. I
+saw a man flogged once&mdash;" she shut her eyes, shuddering, and
+her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt, mademoiselle," I
+answered her.</p>
+<p>She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks,
+her hand still trembling. I could think of nothing but to
+repeat:</p>
+<p>"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your
+life!" she breathed.</p>
+<p>It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly
+I found myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this
+noblewoman for my death.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can
+die happily."</p>
+<p>She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some
+menacing thrust.</p>
+<p>"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue
+fire. "They shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a
+thing that she cannot save a serving-boy?"</p>
+<p>She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to
+stifle their throbbing.</p>
+<p>"It was my fault," she cried&mdash;"it was all my fault. It was
+my vanity and silliness brought you to this. I should never have
+written that letter&mdash;a three years' child would have known
+better. But I had not seen M. de Mar for five weeks&mdash;I did not
+know, what I readily guess now, that he had taken sides against us.
+M. de Lorraine played on my pique."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M.
+&Eacute;tienne did not come himself."</p>
+<p>"You are glad for that?"</p>
+<p>"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"</p>
+<p>She caught her breath as if in pain.</p>
+<p>"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not
+angry. When I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I
+should have my gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop
+beating. I saw what I had accomplished&mdash;mon dieu, I was sick
+with repentance of it!"</p>
+<p>I had to tell her I had not thought it.</p>
+<p>"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness;
+I must needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took
+you by the throat&mdash;there has been bad blood between him and
+your lord this twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him
+through the wrist. Had I interfered for you," she said, colouring a
+little, "M. de Brie would have inferred interest in the master from
+that in the man, and he had seen to your beating himself."</p>
+<p>It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little
+cheese" of guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman
+would hardly display so much venom against M. &Eacute;tienne unless
+he were a serious obstacle to his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be
+here at midnight, weeping over a serving-lad, if she cared nothing
+for the master. If she had not worn her heart on her sleeve before
+the laughing salon, mayhap she would show it to me.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M.
+&Eacute;tienne rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint
+from fatigue and loss of blood; he could not walk across the room.
+But he bade me try to make mademoiselle believe his absence was no
+fault of his. He wrote her a month ago; he found to-day the letter
+was never delivered."</p>
+<p>"Is he hurt dangerously?"</p>
+<p>"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded
+in the right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will
+recover."</p>
+<p>"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that
+he was penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely
+his."</p>
+<p>She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had
+taken from her bosom; but I retreated.</p>
+<p>"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we
+are not penniless&mdash;or if we are, we get on very well sans le
+sou. They do everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he
+has only to return to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin to get all the
+gold pieces he can spend. Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle.
+I was angry when I said it; I did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's
+pardon."</p>
+<p>She looked at me a little hesitatingly.</p>
+<p>"You are telling me true?"</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed,
+indeed, I would not refuse it."</p>
+<p>"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for
+yourself. It will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find
+something you like as a token from me." With her own white fingers
+she slipped some tinkling coins into my pouch, and cut short my
+thanks with the little wailing cry:</p>
+<p>"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I
+could free them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with
+you they never will let you go."</p>
+<p>"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her
+to go back to bed. M. &Eacute;tienne did not send me hither to
+bring her grief and trouble."</p>
+<p>"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here
+before on monsieur's errands?"</p>
+<p>"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I
+belong on the St. Quentin estate. My name is F&eacute;lix
+Broux."</p>
+<p>"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"</p>
+<p>"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing
+it."</p>
+<p>"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered
+soberly.</p>
+<p>She stood looking at me helplessly.</p>
+<p>"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to
+herself; "but I might weep Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie's rough heart to
+softness. Then it is a question whether he could turn Mayenne. I
+wish I knew whether the duke himself or only Paul de Lorraine has
+planned this move to-night. That is," she added, blushing, but
+speaking out candidly, "whether they attack M. de Mar as the
+League's enemy or as my lover."</p>
+<p>"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as
+I knew how, but eager to find out all I could for M.
+&Eacute;tienne&mdash;"this M. de Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover,
+too?"</p>
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We
+are all pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he
+chooses. For a time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my
+cousin Paul came back after a two years' disappearance, and
+straightway he was up and M. de Mar was down. And then Paul
+vanished again as suddenly as he had come, and it became the turn
+of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as suddenly as he had
+left and at once played on me to write that unlucky letter. And
+what it bodes for <i>him</i> I know not."</p>
+<p>She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me,
+the fact of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as
+lonely in this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would
+have talked delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has
+been happening to my M. &Eacute;tienne this last month, if you are
+not afraid to stay long enough to hear it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes,
+you may tell me if you wish."</p>
+<p>She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other,
+and I began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of
+languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really
+did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five
+weeks. But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she
+forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks,
+hanging on my words with eager questions. And when I told her how
+Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:</p>
+<p>"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this
+Lucas, without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne
+himself."</p>
+<p>I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked
+reluctantly:</p>
+<p>"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de
+Mayenne's?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against
+dukedoms for their own pleasure."</p>
+<p>"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she
+said with an accent of confidence that rang as false as a
+counterfeit coin. I saw well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at
+least, Mayenne's guilt. I thought I might tell her a little
+more.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M.
+de Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them.
+So then M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St.
+Quentin, invented this."</p>
+<p>"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave
+Paris. He will&mdash;he must!"</p>
+<p>"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered;
+"but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But what?"</p>
+<p>"But then the letter came."</p>
+<p>"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time
+is over for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am
+a Ligueuse born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is
+his father's side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another
+day."</p>
+<p>"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for
+him. If he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him
+a letter myself to tell him he must."</p>
+<p>"Then he will never go."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix!"</p>
+<p>"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted
+him; when he finds she does not&mdash;well, if he budges a step out
+of Paris, I do not know him. When he thought himself
+despised&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did
+not mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I
+made a mock of him, that he might hate me and keep away from
+me."</p>
+<p>"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with
+her."</p>
+<p>"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring
+out with impudent speech."</p>
+<p>"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But
+she played too well."</p>
+<p>"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I
+do&mdash;well, I will not say despise him&mdash;but care nothing
+for him? Will he then go to St. Denis? Then tell him from me that
+he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my esteem as a one-time
+servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I would willingly save
+him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore me. But as for any
+answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark. Tell him to go
+find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry for the moon
+as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
+mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to
+marry Brie and Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a
+sudden rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she
+said woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love
+me."</p>
+<p>I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her
+dress.</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you
+would get him out of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her
+heart would break.</p>
+<p>I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her,
+silent. At length she sobbed out:</p>
+<p>"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M.
+de Mar, when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And
+it was all my fault."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."</p>
+<p>But she shook her head.</p>
+<p>"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had
+something in his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear
+and lives so cheap. But I will do my utmost, F&eacute;lix, lad. It
+is not long to daylight now. I will go to Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie
+and we'll believe I shall prevail."</p>
+<p>She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
+quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the
+door,&mdash;with my fettered wrists I could not do the office for
+her,&mdash;and on the threshold turned to smile on me, wistfully,
+hopefully. In the next second, with a gasp that was half a cry, she
+blew out the light and pushed the door shut again.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+<h3><i>My Lord Mayenne.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the
+next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of
+it. "What&mdash;" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my
+mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite
+closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried
+again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered
+breathing and I heard something else&mdash;a rapid, heavy tread in
+the corridor without. Into the council-room came a man carrying a
+lighted taper. It was Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at
+my feet.</p>
+<p>I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my
+hand in a sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.</p>
+<p>Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like
+one just roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted
+the three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself
+with his back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared
+glance at him, for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our
+door seemed to call aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light
+scarcely pierced the shadows of the long room.</p>
+<p>More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair
+about, sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A
+tall man in black entered, saluting the general from the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It
+was impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a
+sentence.</p>
+<p>"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as
+Mayenne's own. He shut the door after him and walked over to the
+table.</p>
+<p>"And how goes it?"</p>
+<p>"Badly."</p>
+<p>The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting
+for an invitation.</p>
+<p>"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to
+me with that report?"</p>
+<p>"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence,
+leaning back in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and
+proved to me what I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night
+visitor was Lucas. "Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone
+badly. In fact, your game is up."</p>
+<p>Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the
+table.</p>
+<p>"You tell me this?"</p>
+<p>Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="180.jpg"></a> <a href="images/180.jpg"><img src=
+"images/180.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>MLLE. De MONTLUC AND F&Eacute;LIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a
+cat sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.</p>
+<p>"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"When you put up yours, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"I have drawn none!"</p>
+<p>"In your sleeve, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Liar!" cried Mayenne.</p>
+<p>I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade
+that flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from
+his belt. But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and
+rushed at Lucas. He dodged and they circled round each other, wary
+as two matched cocks. Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne,
+the less agile by reason of his weight, could make no chance to
+strike. He drew off presently.</p>
+<p>"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.</p>
+<p>"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending
+myself?"</p>
+<p>Mayenne let the charge go by default.</p>
+<p>"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu,
+do I employ you to fail?"</p>
+<p>"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."</p>
+<p>Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his
+knife on the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good
+humour&mdash;no mean tribute to his power of self-control. For the
+written words can convey no notion of the maddening insolence of
+Lucas's bearing&mdash;an insolence so studied that it almost seemed
+unconscious and was thereby well-nigh impossible to silence.</p>
+<p>"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."</p>
+<p>Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:</p>
+<p>"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was
+unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much
+further you dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"</p>
+<p>He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it
+into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or
+summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how
+infuriating was Lucas. He carried himself with an air of easy
+equality insufferable to the first noble in the land. Mayenne's
+chosen r&ocirc;le was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat
+him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and
+violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived&mdash;unless,
+indeed, he were a prince in disguise.</p>
+<p>"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had
+called me that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in
+the family."</p>
+<p>"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night,"
+Mayenne went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew
+something was wrong&mdash;unless the thing were done."</p>
+<p>"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch
+of heat he had shown. "It was fate&mdash;and that fool
+Grammont."</p>
+<p>"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for
+you."</p>
+<p>Lucas sat down, the table between them.</p>
+<p>"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board.
+"Have you Mar's boy?"</p>
+<p>"What boy?"</p>
+<p>"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil
+prompted to come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with
+a love-message to Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of
+mademoiselle's love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It
+is plain to the very lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at
+present we are discussing l'affaire St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be
+the reward of my success."</p>
+<p>"I thought you told me you had failed."</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought
+better of it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.</p>
+<p>"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is
+immortal."</p>
+<p>"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke
+observed. "I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered
+flincher."</p>
+<p>"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I
+have missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."</p>
+<p>"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne,
+reflectively. "Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie is agitating himself about
+that young mistress. And he has not made any failures&mdash;as
+yet."</p>
+<p>Lucas sprang to his feet.</p>
+<p>"You swore to me I should have her."</p>
+<p>"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the
+price."</p>
+<p>"I will bring you the price."</p>
+<p>"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing
+over the mouse&mdash;"e'en then I might change my mind."</p>
+<p>"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead
+duke in France."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the
+power of mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to
+draw dagger, Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I
+somehow thought that the man who had shown hot anger was the real
+man; the man who sat there quiet was the party leader.</p>
+<p>He said now, evenly:</p>
+<p>"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."</p>
+<p>"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.</p>
+<p>So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an
+air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience
+and himself began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice
+rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out
+violently:</p>
+<p>"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for?
+For love of my affectionate uncle?"</p>
+<p>"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle,
+as you say."</p>
+<p>"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
+Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father
+cast off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League
+or the Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made
+prisoner at Ivry."</p>
+<p>"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught
+you. You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not
+recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the
+rope from you and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode
+forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the
+gallows."</p>
+<p>"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.</p>
+<p>"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear
+the name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and
+ward, Lorance de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put
+me off with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the
+faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin
+and the Comte de Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed
+into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the
+Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it
+would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you
+certain information from the royalist army. I returned in the guise
+of an escaped prisoner to Henry's camp to steal you secrets; and
+the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar
+again."</p>
+<p>"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of
+your brother Charles, either."</p>
+<p>"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant
+name in your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King
+Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is
+not Charles of Guise you mean."</p>
+<p>"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began
+angrily.</p>
+<p>"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown
+on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish
+hammer and the B&eacute;arnais anvil; there will soon be nothing
+left of you but powder."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu, Paul&mdash;" Mayenne cried, half rising; but
+Lucas, leaning forward on the table, riveting him with his keen
+eyes, went on:</p>
+<p>"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but
+I am ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance
+is in your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not
+hesitated to risk the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my
+way here, disguised, to tell you of the king's coming change of
+faith and of St. Quentin's certain defection. I demanded then my
+price, my marriage with mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You
+sent me back to Mantes to kill you St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have
+not killed him."</p>
+<p>Lucas reddened with ire.</p>
+<p>"I am no Jacques Cl&eacute;ment to stab and be massacred. You
+cannot buy such a service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's
+work for you I choose my own time and way. I brought the duke to
+Paris, delivered him up to you to deal with as it liked you. But
+you with your army at your back were afraid to kill him. You
+flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the onus of his death.
+Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to make his own
+son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke and ruin
+his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
+way&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my
+way; he was of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your
+way."</p>
+<p>"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he
+was a hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his
+ruin."</p>
+<p>"Something&mdash;not as much. I did not want him killed&mdash;I
+preferred him to Val&egrave;re."</p>
+<p>"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."</p>
+<p>"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some
+other who might appear?"</p>
+<p>"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas
+answered.</p>
+<p>Mayenne broke into laughter.</p>
+<p>"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille?
+Lorance and no lovers! Ho, ho!"</p>
+<p>"I mean none whom she favours."</p>
+<p>"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow,"
+Mayenne said. I had no idea whether he really thought it or only
+said it to annoy Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's
+brows were knotted; he spoke with an effort, like a man under
+stress of physical pain.</p>
+<p>"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she
+would not love him a parricide."</p>
+<p>"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker
+the villain the more they adore him."</p>
+<p>"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you
+have had successes."</p>
+<p>Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of
+Lorance; you must also have her love?"</p>
+<p>"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."</p>
+<p>"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how
+long would it last? <i>Souvent femme varie</i>&mdash;that is the
+only fixed fact about her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will
+love some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after
+to-morrow. It is not worth while disturbing yourself about it."</p>
+<p>"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.</p>
+<p>Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"You are very young, Paul."</p>
+<p>"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she
+shall not!"</p>
+<p>Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him
+out of his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a
+hundredfold. Lucas's face was seared with his passions as with the
+torture-iron; he clinched his hands together, breathing hard. On my
+side of the door I heard a sharp little sound in the darkness;
+mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.</p>
+<p>"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said,
+"since mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become
+so."</p>
+<p>"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would
+leap over the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the
+duke to take up his dagger.</p>
+<p>"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have
+not killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the
+scheme&mdash;my scheme&mdash;is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my
+scheme. I never advocated stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses
+and angered nephews and deceived sons and the rest of your cumbrous
+machinery. I would have had you stab him as he bent over his
+papers, and walk out of the house before they discovered him. But
+you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot and replot to
+make some one else do your work. Now, after months of intriguing
+and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed. Morbleu! is
+there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the gutter,
+as no true son of the valourous Le Balafr&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to
+come around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did
+not move; and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an
+effort, he said:</p>
+<p>"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured
+harder or planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been
+clever. I have made my worst enemy my willing tool&mdash;I have
+made Monsieur's own son my cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no
+contingency unprovided for&mdash;and I am ruined by a freak of
+fate."</p>
+<p>"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's,"
+Mayenne returned.</p>
+<p>"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you
+like!" Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen,
+monsieur."</p>
+<p>He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to
+reconquer something of his old coolness.</p>
+<p>"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I
+spoke of. You said he had not been here?"</p>
+<p>"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I
+have something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's
+maids."</p>
+<p>"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to
+keep him. Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw
+him."</p>
+<p>He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought
+had travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of
+mademoiselle's affections.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"</p>
+<p>It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low
+and hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it
+was no fear of listeners that kept his voice down&mdash;they had
+shouted at each other as if there was no one within a mile. I
+guessed that Lucas, for all his bravado, took little pride in his
+tale, nor felt happy about its reception. I could catch names now
+and then, Monsieur's, M. &Eacute;tienne's, Grammont's, but the hero
+of the tale was myself.</p>
+<p>"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.</p>
+<p>At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old
+defiance:</p>
+<p>"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the
+acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your
+lansquenets couldn't keep him out."</p>
+<p>"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with
+shut fingers over the table and then opening them.</p>
+<p>"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own
+h&ocirc;tel stuffed with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to
+do, alone in my enemy's house, when at the least suspicion of me
+they had broken me on the wheel."</p>
+<p>"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble
+with all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins
+than of accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be
+to-day&mdash;where would the Cause be&mdash;if my first care was my
+own peril?"</p>
+<p>"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a
+cold sneer. "You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the
+Church and the King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare
+of Charles of Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine,
+your humble nephew, lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I
+am toiling for no one but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should
+find it most inconvenient to get on without a head on my shoulders,
+and I shall do my best to keep it there."</p>
+<p>"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne
+answered. "You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time,
+Paul, you will do well to remember that your interest is to forward
+my interest."</p>
+<p>"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet.
+You need not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than
+any man in your ranks."</p>
+<p>"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."</p>
+<p>Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word
+of blame. He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M.
+le Duc's departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with
+a sharp oath.</p>
+<p>"What! by daylight?"</p>
+<p>"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at
+night."</p>
+<p>"He went out in broad day?"</p>
+<p>"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of
+his old nonchalance.</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true,
+if he got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that
+let him. I'll nail it over his own gate."</p>
+<p>"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If
+you did, how long would it avail? <i>Souvent homme trahie</i>; that
+is the only fixed fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day,
+they will pass some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the
+day after."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some
+deeper emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Souvent homme trahie,<br />
+Mal habile qui s'y fie,"</p>
+</div>
+<p>he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto
+of the house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good
+faith, as no man believed in theirs.</p>
+<p>"<i>Souvent homme trahie</i>," Mayenne said again, as if in the
+words he recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King
+Francis's version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."</p>
+<p>"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.</p>
+<p>I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne,
+because, for all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's
+and ability second to none, he dared trust no man&mdash;not the son
+of his body, not his brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in
+it, and there was no need to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured
+traitor, was farther from the goal of his desire than if we had
+slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne
+went on in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him
+once more as the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France,
+and feared and hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear
+lord &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Trust me for that."</p>
+<p>"Then came you here?"</p>
+<p>"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings
+at the Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came
+here and worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his
+presence. For I thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow
+he might be out of my reach. Well, it appears he had not the
+courage to come but he sent the boy. I was not sorry. I thought I
+could settle him more quietly at the inn. The boy went back once
+and almost ran into me in the court, but he did not see me. I
+entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool of a host put
+me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally declared
+the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no use.
+Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in
+front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But
+instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the
+cabaret."</p>
+<p>Mayenne burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"It was not your night, Paul."</p>
+<p>"No," said Lucas, shortly.</p>
+<p>"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put
+out of the inn."</p>
+<p>"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with
+whom Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all
+went our ways, forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was
+afraid some one else might find him and he might tell tales."</p>
+<p>"And will he tell tales?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."</p>
+<p>"How about your spy in the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas
+said easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And
+Grammont, you see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the
+thing but the boy Broux."</p>
+<p>"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for
+I have the boy."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+<h3><i>Mayenne's ward.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-l.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ucas sprang up.</p>
+<p>"You have him? Where?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing
+slowness.</p>
+<p>"Alive?"</p>
+<p>"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not
+done with him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the
+oratory there."</p>
+<p>"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of
+Mayenne's good faith to him struck his mind.</p>
+<p>"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might
+be in the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for
+that."</p>
+<p>"What will you do with him, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second
+bidding, hastened down the room.</p>
+<p>All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had
+neither stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin
+herself. But now she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my
+shoulder with an encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide
+just as Lucas reached the threshold.</p>
+<p>He recoiled as from a ghost.</p>
+<p>"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room.
+"What! Lorance!"</p>
+<p>He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back
+on the other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she
+lifted her head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no
+fear, but she had the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on
+the oratory floor she had been in a panic lest they find her. But
+in the moment of discovery she faced them unflinching.</p>
+<p>"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.</p>
+<p>"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was
+here first, as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as
+mine by you."</p>
+<p>His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her
+pale cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her
+indignant eyes.</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said.
+"You defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool
+of me in your cowardly schemes."</p>
+<p>"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I
+shall kill M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would
+pleasure you to have a word with him first."</p>
+<p>I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret
+the speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness
+and recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and
+vinegar in a sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an
+end, with skill and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern
+his own gusty tempers.</p>
+<p>"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer
+tone.</p>
+<p>"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved
+most bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into
+danger. Since Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand,
+and since this is not the man you wanted but only his servant, will
+you not let him go free?"</p>
+<p>"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne
+protested, smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I
+thought you would thank me for it."</p>
+<p>"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."</p>
+<p>She flushed red for very shame.</p>
+<p>"I was afraid&mdash;I knew you vexed with me," she faltered.
+"Oh, I have done ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring
+forgiveness. There was no need to ask.</p>
+<p>"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak
+before! Thank you, my cousin!"</p>
+<p>"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of
+impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."</p>
+<p>My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a
+craven that I had been overcome by groundless terror.</p>
+<p>"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle
+laughed out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall
+never meddle in your affairs again."</p>
+<p>"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to
+let the boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear
+what he should not, I have no choice but to silence him."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.</p>
+<p>"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have
+made it impossible."</p>
+<p>Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had
+my hands been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in
+his heart.</p>
+<p>"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept
+over me, and that is worth dying for."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first
+instant of consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in
+the land! You, the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the
+League, the commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in
+stooping to take vengeance on a stable-boy."</p>
+<p>"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he
+answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all,
+since absolute power is not obliged to give an account of
+itself.</p>
+<p>"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn
+it? In that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while
+there is yet time."</p>
+<p>He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no
+justification. He advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the
+damsels of my household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room.
+Permit me then to conduct you to the staircase."</p>
+<p>She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering
+me as with a shield.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."</p>
+<p>"Your hand, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in
+appeal.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always
+tried to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy
+because he was a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St.
+Quentin, at least, had gone over to the other side. I did not know
+what you would do with him, and I could not rest in my bed because
+it was through me he came here. Monsieur, if I was foolish and
+frightened and indiscreet, do not punish the lad for my
+wrong-doing."</p>
+<p>Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.</p>
+<p>"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the
+door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"</p>
+<p>"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile,
+"if you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"</p>
+<p>"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my
+white cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my
+little cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have
+made her cry her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying,
+gave her to me to guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable.
+I am sorry. I wish I had not done it.'"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your
+bed?"</p>
+<p>She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went
+on as if thinking aloud.</p>
+<p>"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and
+your brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You
+would ask my father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I
+would run in to kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I
+thought you the handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as
+indeed you were."</p>
+<p>"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of
+you," she returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for
+my cousin Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them
+one night in all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of
+Henri de Guise; God guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you
+make it hard for me to ask it for my cousin Charles."</p>
+<p>"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said
+curtly.</p>
+<p>"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With
+the door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and
+let him go. But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's
+business, mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him
+listen to my concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble
+for the tales of boys&mdash;you, the lord of half France. But if
+you must needs fear his tongue, why, even then you should set him
+free. He is but a serving-boy sent here with a message. It is
+wanton murder to take his life; it is like killing a child."</p>
+<p>"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose,
+mademoiselle," the duke retorted. "Since you have been
+eavesdropping, you have heard how he upset your cousin Paul's
+arrangements."</p>
+<p>"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved
+you the stain of a cowardly crime."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my
+brother?"</p>
+<p>"The Valois."</p>
+<p>"And his henchman, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He
+was revolted at the deed."</p>
+<p>"Did they teach you that at the convent?"</p>
+<p>"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri
+not to go to Blois."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin
+Charles."</p>
+<p>"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain
+and murderer," Mayenne returned.</p>
+<p>"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved
+from the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be
+glad."</p>
+<p>He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she
+went on:</p>
+<p>"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and
+turmoil that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I
+think you are more harassed and troubled than any man in France.
+You have Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces
+to fight in the field, and your own League to combat at home. You
+must make favour with each of a dozen quarrelling factions, must
+strive and strive to placate and loyalize them all. The leaders
+work each for his own end, each against the others and against you;
+and the truth is not in one of them, and their pledges are ropes of
+straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray till you know not which
+way to turn, and you curse the day that made you head of the
+League."</p>
+<p>"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly.
+"And that is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must
+do my all to lead it to success."</p>
+<p>"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success
+never yet lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how
+God dealt with him!"</p>
+<p>He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than
+her shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:</p>
+<p>"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur!"</p>
+<p>With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she
+dropped on her knees before him, kissing his hand.</p>
+<p>Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but
+stood looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the
+cockles of my heart to see.</p>
+<p>Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul.
+His mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the
+St. Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of
+it. Out of his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery,
+and cowardly murder. And in the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, as in the
+H&ocirc;tel de St. Quentin, his betrayal had come about through me.
+I was unwitting agent in both cases; but that did not make him love
+me the more. Could eyes slay, I had fallen of the glance he shot me
+over mademoiselle's bowed head; but when she rose he said to
+her:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's,
+since I got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."</p>
+<p>She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He
+made an eager pace nearer her.</p>
+<p>"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of
+your graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will
+not take me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de
+Mar. Is that any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March,
+when I was hiding here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar
+come airily in, day after day, to see and make love to you, was it
+any marvel that I swore to bring his proud head to the dust?"</p>
+<p>Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.</p>
+<p>"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did
+not approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been
+ready to defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed
+him your face; of course, had you, you could not have become his
+father's housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same
+blood runs in your veins and mine!"</p>
+<p>"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping
+his temper with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France
+in war-time, and not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for
+more than my own revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's
+commands, to aid our holy cause, for the preservation of the
+Catholic Church and the Catholic kingdom of France."</p>
+<p>"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were
+working for nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting
+him ever on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest
+of us. He hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against
+them to the best of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen,
+we are Leaguers; they fight for their side, and we fight for ours.
+If we plot against them, they plot against us; we murder lest we be
+murdered. We cannot scruple over our means. Nom de dieu,
+mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war is not a
+dancing-school."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any
+defence. "We have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of
+Christian gentlemen. And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's
+excuse that I was blinded in my zeal for the Cause. For I know and
+you know there is but one cause with me. I went to kill St. Quentin
+because I was promised you for it, as I would have gone to kill the
+Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did it to win you. There is no
+crime in God's calendar I would not commit for that."</p>
+<p>He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her,
+burning her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this
+last sentence I knew he spoke the truth.</p>
+<p>She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered
+pride in his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead,
+she eyed him with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape
+from his rampant desire.</p>
+<p>"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me,"
+she said.</p>
+<p>"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I
+love you so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain
+you; there is no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame
+so bitter, no danger so awful, that I would not face it for you.
+Nor is there any sacrifice I will not make to gain your good will.
+I hate M. de Mar above any living man because you have smiled on
+him; but I will let him go for your sake. I swear to you before the
+figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will drop all enmity to
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither move
+against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or
+manner, so help me God!"</p>
+<p>He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She
+retreated from him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.</p>
+<p>"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the
+truth," she said.</p>
+<p>"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May
+my tongue rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again
+curtsied to him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added.
+"I have no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more
+trouble for me than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to
+settle with St. Quentin. But I have no quarrel with the son. I will
+not molest him."</p>
+<p>"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her
+graceful obeisances.</p>
+<p>"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him,
+but not that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St.
+Quentins are Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I
+will let Mar alone; but if he come near you again, I will crush him
+as I would a buzzing fly."</p>
+<p>"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone.
+"While I live under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I
+am a Ligueuse and he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing
+between us. There shall be nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as
+Paul needs, because I have never lied to you."</p>
+<p>She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince
+under her stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de
+Montluc loved her enemies.</p>
+<p>"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.</p>
+<p>"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this
+for you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."</p>
+<p>"You have called me a good girl, cousin."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so
+Friday-faced about it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give
+you another just as good."</p>
+<p>"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my
+looks belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to
+have ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."</p>
+<p>"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter
+whether your husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri
+was for getting himself into a monastery because he could not have
+his Margot. Yet in less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler
+with the Duchesse Katharine."</p>
+<p>"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she
+answered gently, if not merrily.</p>
+<p>"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But
+it is for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the
+credit."</p>
+<p>"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.</p>
+<p>"What use? He would not keep silence."</p>
+<p>"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of
+bright confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But
+Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will
+not so flatter yourself, Lorance."</p>
+<p>Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what
+I had seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.</p>
+<p>Mayenne took out his dagger.</p>
+<p>"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you
+shall be."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.</p>
+<p>"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."</p>
+<p>He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him
+against the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of
+the suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife
+and she cut my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a
+glance earnest, beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all
+she meant by it. The next moment she was making her deep curtsey
+before the duke.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I
+thank you for your long patience, and bid you good night."</p>
+<p>With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go.
+But Mayenne bade her pause.</p>
+<p>"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks,
+Lorance?"</p>
+<p>He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her
+cheeks.</p>
+<p>"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said,
+and taking her hand with stately politeness led her from the room.
+The light seemed to go from it with the gleam of her yellow
+gown.</p>
+<p>"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He
+stood glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue
+finding for once no way to better his sorry case. He was the
+picture of trickery rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him.
+Marking which, he burst out at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone,
+for Mayenne had not closed the door:</p>
+<p>"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh
+that wins; I shall have her yet."</p>
+<p>"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence
+I could muster.</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will
+never see daylight again."</p>
+<p>"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw
+dagger. I deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best
+of soldiers must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory,
+flinging the door to after me. He was upon it before I could get it
+shut, and the heavy oak was swung this way and that between us,
+till it seemed as if we must tear it off the hinges. I contrived
+not to let him push it open wide enough to enter; meantime, as I
+was unarmed, I thought it no shame to shriek for succour. I heard
+an answering cry and hurrying footsteps. Then Lucas took his weight
+from the door so suddenly that mine banged it shut. The next minute
+it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and panting, on the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side
+Lucas lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light.
+His right hand he held behind his back, while with his left he
+poked his dagger into the candle-flame.</p>
+<p>Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.</p>
+<p>"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now,
+Paul?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle's prot&eacute;g&eacute; is nervous," Lucas
+answered with a fine sneer. "When I drew out my knife to get the
+thief from the candle he screamed to wake the dead and took
+sanctuary in the oratory."</p>
+<p>I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from
+the darkness Mayenne commanded:</p>
+<p>"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."</p>
+<p>The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a
+moment I hesitated, burning to defend my valour before
+mademoiselle. Then, reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had
+previously done me, and that the path to freedom was now open
+before me, I said nothing. Nor had I need. For as I turned she
+flashed over to Lucas and said straight in his face:</p>
+<p>"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead
+wife."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+<h3><i>"I'll win my lady!"</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-l.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making.
+For when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first
+thing I saw was the morning sun.</p>
+<p>My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on
+Easter day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought
+but that it was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed
+from the gloomy house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean
+day. I ran along as joyously as if I had left the last of my
+troubles behind me, forgotten in some dark corner of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts when, after hours
+within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am afraid in
+houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man or any
+thing.</p>
+<p>Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should
+all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still
+snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed
+of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and
+there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked
+through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that
+here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the
+knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a
+strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois
+Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had
+pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a
+bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping
+on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into
+dreamless slumber.</p>
+<p>When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from
+near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in
+time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of
+my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.</p>
+<p>"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go
+up to M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were
+not to be disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a
+sabot."</p>
+<p>It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face
+at the trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed
+and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him
+with dinner.</p>
+<p>"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.</p>
+<p>"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I
+was. F&eacute;lix, what has happened to you?"</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="216.jpg"></a> <a href="images/216.jpg"><img src=
+"images/216.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
+FED."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>I glanced at the serving-man; M. &Eacute;tienne ordered him at
+once from the room.</p>
+<p>"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from
+very richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is&mdash;" I
+paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.</p>
+<p>"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little
+slow-poke! You saw her? And she said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.</p>
+<p>"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I
+told him. "And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves
+you."</p>
+<p>"She does!" he cried, flushing. "F&eacute;lix, does she? You
+cannot know."</p>
+<p>"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she
+wouldn't have wept so much, just over me."</p>
+<p>"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she
+came down in the night with a candle and cried over me."</p>
+<p>"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that?
+Mayenne? What said she, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden
+remembrance of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And
+here is something you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de
+Lorraine, Henri de Guise's son."</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a
+Rochelais!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafr&eacute;. His mother was
+Rochelaise, I think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry.
+They were going to hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized
+him for a nephew. Since then he has been spying for them. Because
+Mayenne promised him Mlle. de Montluc in marriage."</p>
+<p>He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to
+swear.</p>
+<p>"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should
+have her when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is
+alive."</p>
+<p>"Great God!" said M. &Eacute;tienne, only half aloud, dropping
+down on the arm of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that
+had hung on a paltry handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself
+a little, he cried:</p>
+<p>"But she&mdash;mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said.
+"Mademoiselle hates him."</p>
+<p>"Does she know&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made
+answer. "Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from
+the beginning, or I shall never make it clear to you."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.</p>
+<p>He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his
+dinner as I talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every
+word I spoke he got deeper into the interest of my tale. I never
+talked so much in my life, me, as I did those few days. I was
+always relating a history, to Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M.
+&Eacute;tienne, to&mdash;well, you shall know.</p>
+<p>I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:</p>
+<p>"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a
+boy! Well do they call you F&eacute;lix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped
+in bed like a baby, while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie
+here with old Galen for all company, while you bandy words with the
+Generalissimo himself! And make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands
+of mademoiselle! But I'll stand it no longer. I'm done with lying
+abed and letting you have all the fun. No; to-day I shall take part
+myself."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur's arm&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch&mdash;it is
+nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out
+of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;" I began, but he broke in on me:</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu, F&eacute;lix, are we to sit idle while
+mademoiselle is carried off by that beast Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur
+meant to do."</p>
+<p>"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, but how?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, if I knew!"</p>
+<p>He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but
+he found it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn
+down the room, and came back to seize me by the arm.</p>
+<p>"How are we to do it, F&eacute;lix?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:</p>
+<p>"Sais pas."</p>
+<p>He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with
+the declaration:</p>
+<p>"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."</p>
+<p>"He will only have her own dead body," I said.</p>
+<p>He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out
+with unseeing eyes. "Lorance&mdash;Lorance," he murmured to
+himself. I think he did not know he spoke aloud.</p>
+<p>"If I could get word to her&mdash;" he went on presently. "But I
+can't send you again. Should I write a letter&mdash;But letters are
+mischievous. They fall into the wrong hands, and then where are
+we?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands
+of Pierre, that lackey who befriended me&mdash;" But he shook his
+head.</p>
+<p>"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of
+these inn-men&mdash;if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang
+me if I don't think I'll go myself!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he
+would never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out
+of his way."</p>
+<p>"My faith, F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "you take a black view of
+mankind."</p>
+<p>"Not of mankind, M. &Eacute;tienne. Only of Lucas. Not of
+Monsieur, or you, or Vigo."</p>
+<p>"And of Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the
+worst of the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he
+did."</p>
+<p>"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"</p>
+<p>"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But
+Mayenne&mdash;sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and
+then again he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"He does not mean you shall," M. &Eacute;tienne returned. "Yet
+the key is not buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of
+good and bad."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I,
+for one, do not know it."</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix," he cried, "you may believe that till
+doomsday&mdash;you will&mdash;of Monsieur."</p>
+<p>His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that,
+besides his thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his
+father. He sat gravely silent. But of last night's bitter distress
+he showed no trace. Last night he had not been able to take his
+eyes from the miserable past; but to-day he saw the future. A
+future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but one which, however it
+turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and shames.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to
+eat my pride."</p>
+<p>I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I
+longed to; he went on:</p>
+<p>"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was
+mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went
+forever."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."</p>
+<p>"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were
+churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still
+maintain them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No,
+whatever Monsieur replies, I must go tell him I repent."</p>
+<p>I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like
+sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"</p>
+<p>"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped
+hound."</p>
+<p>"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the
+same thing."</p>
+<p>"I have heard M. l'Abb&eacute; read the story of the prodigal
+son," I said. "And he was a vaurien, if you like&mdash;no more
+monsieur's sort than Lucas himself. But it says that when his
+father saw him coming a long way off, he ran out to meet him and
+fell on his neck."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne looked not altogether convinced.</p>
+<p>"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is
+only decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should
+not go if it were not for mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry
+off mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand&mdash;well, I confess for the
+nonce that beats me."</p>
+<p>"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.</p>
+<p>"Aye, and we will! Come, F&eacute;lix, you may put your knife in
+my dish. We must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the
+wine warm, but never mind."</p>
+<p>I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at
+all. Once resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was
+not long before we were in the streets, bound for the H&ocirc;tel
+St. Quentin. He said no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me
+with questions about Mlle. de Montluc&mdash;not only as to every
+word she said, but as to every turn of her head and flicker of her
+eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf when I could not answer. But
+as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell silent, more Friday-faced
+than ever his lady looked. He had his fair allowance of pride, this
+M. &Eacute;tienne; he found his own words no palatable meal.</p>
+<p>However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he
+dropped, as one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure,
+and approached the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young
+gallant who had lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll
+he called to the sentry:</p>
+<p>"Hol&agrave;, squinting Charlot! Open now!"</p>
+<p>"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw
+the bolts. "Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into
+him, I could see, that his first greeting should be thus
+friendly.</p>
+<p>"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot
+volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night,
+after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us
+all blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time,
+nom d'un chien!"</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, I am found," M. &Eacute;tienne returned. "In time
+we'll get Lucas, too. Is Monsieur back?"</p>
+<p>"No, M. &Eacute;tienne, not yet."</p>
+<p>I think he was half sorry, half glad.</p>
+<p>"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."</p>
+<p>He went straight across the court and in at the door he had
+sworn never again to darken. Humility and repentance might have
+brought him there, but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him
+over the threshold without a falter.</p>
+<p>Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice
+against himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of
+us, agleam with excitement.</p>
+<p>"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M.
+l'&Eacute;cuyer?"</p>
+<p>"I think in the stables, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."</p>
+<p>He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the
+hall where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my
+duty to keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel
+came flying back to say Vigo was on his way. M. &Eacute;tienne
+thanked him, and he hung about, longing to pump me, and, in my
+lord's presence, not quite daring, till I took him by the shoulders
+and turned him out. I hate curiosity.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood behind the table, looking his
+haughtiest. He was unsure of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo;
+I read in his eyes a stern determination to set this insolent
+servant in his place.</p>
+<p>The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young
+lord's side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there
+had never been a hard word between them:</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the
+king himself."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He
+had been prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de
+haut en bas, shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the
+wind out of his sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then
+laughed. And then he held out his hand, saying simply:</p>
+<p>"Thank you, Vigo."</p>
+<p>Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand
+had itched to box his ears.</p>
+<p>"What became of you last night, M. &Eacute;tienne?" he
+inquired.</p>
+<p>"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."</p>
+<p>"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.</p>
+<p>"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on
+the cards that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I
+want every man I have if they do."</p>
+<p>"I understand that," M. &Eacute;tienne said, "but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo
+pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he
+will not return till the king comes in. But since you are
+impatient, M. le Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If
+<i>he</i> can get through the gates <i>you</i> can."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry,
+Vigo. There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would
+like me well to bear away my share. But&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He broke off, to begin again abruptly:</p>
+<p>"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that
+there was more cause of trouble between my father and me than the
+pistoles?"</p>
+<p>"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur.
+But you are cured of that."</p>
+<p>"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of
+it. If I hung around the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, it was not for
+politics; it was for petticoats."</p>
+<p>Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth
+twitched.</p>
+<p>"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you
+may as well know more. Step up, F&eacute;lix, and tell your
+tale."</p>
+<p>I did as I was bid, M. &Eacute;tienne now and then taking the
+words out of my mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both
+with grave attention. I had for the second time in my career the
+pleasure of startling him out of his iron composure when I told him
+the true name and condition of Lucas. But at the end of the
+adventure all the comment he made was:</p>
+<p>"A fool for luck."</p>
+<p>"Well," said M. &Eacute;tienne, impatiently, "is that all you
+have to say? What are we to do about it?"</p>
+<p>"Do? Why, nothing."</p>
+<p>"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And
+let that scoundrel have her?"</p>
+<p>"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help
+it."</p>
+<p>"I will help it!" M. &Eacute;tienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to
+let that traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de
+Montluc?"</p>
+<p>"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will
+surely get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"</p>
+<p>"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we
+storm the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the
+sea."</p>
+<p>"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my
+lord declared.</p>
+<p>But Vigo shook his head.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance.
+You have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a
+man ask in the world than that? Your father has been without it
+these three years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out.
+You have been without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts
+of mischief. But now all that is coming straight. King Henry is
+turning Catholic, so that a man may follow him without offence to
+God. He is a good fellow and a first-rate general. He's just out
+there, at St. Denis. There's your place, M. &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"Not to-day, Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. &Eacute;tienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo
+said with his steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by
+staying here to drink up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your
+lady to you now than he would give her to F&eacute;lix. And you can
+no more carry her off than could F&eacute;lix. Mayenne will have
+you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat breakfast."</p>
+<p>"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you,
+Vigo."</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to
+die afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell
+fighting for Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve
+deep. But we should say it was well; we grudged not your life to
+the country and the king. While, if you fall in this fool
+affair&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I fall for my lady," M. &Eacute;tienne finished. "The bravest
+captain of them all does no better than that."</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her.
+And if you could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now
+on are a staunch Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this
+maggot in your brain this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go
+to St. Denis; take your troop among Biron's horse. That is the
+place for you. You will marry a maid of honour and die a marshal of
+France."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a
+smile.</p>
+<p>"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton
+waiting you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were
+alone and in peril, would you go off after glory?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would
+go."</p>
+<p>"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. &Eacute;tienne cried. "You would
+do nothing of the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years
+in that hole, St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."</p>
+<p>"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know
+what I shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change
+me."</p>
+<p>"What is your purpose, M. &Eacute;tienne?" Vigo asked.</p>
+<p>Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to
+us.</p>
+<p>"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle
+if I can contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her
+out of the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine&mdash;such feats have been
+accomplished before and may be again. Then I shall bring her here
+and hold her against all comers."</p>
+<p>"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.</p>
+<p>"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army
+after her."</p>
+<p>"Coward!" shouted M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and
+throw us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:</p>
+<p>"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to
+hold this house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it
+till the last man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to
+guard his h&ocirc;tel, his moneys, and his papers. I don't call it
+guarding to throw a firebrand among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece
+here would be worse than that."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!"
+M. &Eacute;tienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend
+the lady if every stone in this house is pulled from its
+fellow!'"</p>
+<p>A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.</p>
+<p>"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the
+marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne
+forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of
+sleeves."</p>
+<p>"Well, then," cried M. &Eacute;tienne, all good humour in a
+moment, "what more do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring
+pitch out of the windows on Mayenne's ruffians."</p>
+<p>"No, M. &Eacute;tienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here
+and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No
+one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I
+have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been
+in the business before now."</p>
+<p>"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you
+know, Monsieur would approve."</p>
+<p>"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I
+cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till
+Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I
+interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you
+please."</p>
+<p>"I should think not, forsooth!" M. &Eacute;tienne blazed out
+furiously.</p>
+<p>"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I
+could order the guard&mdash;and they would obey&mdash;to lock you
+up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I
+don't do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you."</p>
+<p>My lord was white with ire.</p>
+<p>"Who is master here, you or I?"</p>
+<p>"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys
+in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are
+very angry, M. &Eacute;tienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to
+bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me."</p>
+<p>"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. &Eacute;tienne cried.</p>
+<p>Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught
+to add or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was
+no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the
+flow of the Seine.</p>
+<p>"Very well." M. &Eacute;tienne swallowed his wrath. "It is
+understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the
+world with me save F&eacute;lix here. But for all that I'll win my
+lady!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+<h3><i>To the Bastille.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-b.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ut Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no
+countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself
+suggested M. &Eacute;tienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the
+least embarrassed or offended because he knew M. le Comte to be
+angry with him. He was no feather ruffled, serene in the
+consciousness that he was absolutely in the right. His position was
+impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule, nor abuse moved him one
+whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he was born to forward
+the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would forward them, if
+need were, over our bleeding corpses.</p>
+<p>On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most
+amiable to M. &Eacute;tienne, treating him with a calm assumption
+of friendliness that would have maddened a saint. Yet it was not
+hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did. He would not let
+him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good
+fortune in the world.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over
+Vigo's attitude, but he said little. He accepted the advance of
+money&mdash;"Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is
+yours," Vigo explained&mdash;and despatched me to settle his score
+at the Three Lanterns.</p>
+<p>I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had
+accomplished nothing by our return to the h&ocirc;tel. Nay, rather
+had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the
+cold water flung on our ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting
+whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and
+disobeying his heir. It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil
+Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo
+never disobeyed <i>him</i>, but stood by him in all things. But I
+imagined that, were M. &Eacute;tienne master, Vigo, for all his
+years of service, would be packed off the premises in short
+order.</p>
+<p>I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. &Eacute;tienne
+did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as
+vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had
+more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity
+not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no
+particular liking for H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine hospitality, I had
+very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a
+letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.</p>
+<p>"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better,
+F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the
+Trois Lanternes.</p>
+<p>The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few
+cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a
+stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black
+coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It
+aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare
+sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not
+a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the
+owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be
+an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.</p>
+<p>I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the
+horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether
+it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I
+was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his
+journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the
+little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly
+chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter
+off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his
+lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I
+was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with
+business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys
+might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.</p>
+<p>The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all
+about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace
+in the tale. "This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought.
+"Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused
+murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went
+through into the passage where the staircase was.</p>
+<p>Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen
+of the serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in
+tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed
+on the closed door of Ma&icirc;tre Menard's little counting-room,
+whence issued the shrill cry:</p>
+<p>"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I
+know nothing of his whereabouts."</p>
+<p>As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round
+to look at me in fresh dread.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next
+second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out
+of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that
+made me think a panther had got me.</p>
+<p>"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was
+going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here
+and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to
+the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your
+throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"</p>
+<p>She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the
+door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect
+my senses.</p>
+<p>The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a
+strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and
+myself.</p>
+<p>The bureau stood by the window, with Ma&icirc;tre Menard's
+account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of
+dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room,
+amusing himself with the windpipe of Ma&icirc;tre Menard; the other
+was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into
+his, and I found his the gentler of the two.</p>
+<p>"I say I know not where he went," Ma&icirc;tre Menard was
+gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did
+not tell&mdash;I have no notion. Ah&mdash;" The breath failed him
+utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.</p>
+<p>"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are
+you?"</p>
+<p>He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of
+the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the
+night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois
+appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.</p>
+<p>"My name is F&eacute;lix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a
+bill&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"His servant," Ma&icirc;tre Menard contrived to murmur, the
+dragoon allowing him a breath.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you
+left your master?"</p>
+<p>"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.</p>
+<p>"Never you mind. I want him."</p>
+<p>"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke
+of Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly
+than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne.
+If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind
+bars very long. But I have the governor's warrant for his
+arrest."</p>
+<p>"On what charge?"</p>
+<p>"A trifle. Merely murder."</p>
+<p>"<i>Murder?</i>"</p>
+<p>"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."</p>
+<p>"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did
+not&mdash;"</p>
+<p>I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas&mdash;Paul de
+Lorraine killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it
+down. To fling wild accusations against a great man's man were no
+wisdom. By accident I had given the officer the impression that we
+were friends of Mayenne. I should do ill to imperil the delusion.
+"M. le Comte&mdash;" I began again, and again stopped. I meant to
+say that monsieur had never left the inn last night; he could have
+had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me that I had better not
+know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a very grand
+gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.</p>
+<p>"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.</p>
+<p>At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a
+witness was the last thing I desired.</p>
+<p>"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a
+very fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles.
+The Comte de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he
+engaged me as lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on
+him. I know not what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to
+carry a message for him to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin. I came into
+Paris but night before last, and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the
+Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he employed me to run his errands, and
+last night brought me here with him. But I had never seen him till
+this time yesterday. I know nothing about him save that he seemed a
+very free-handed, easy master."</p>
+<p>To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the
+captain only laughed at my patent fright.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your
+arrest. I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order
+says nothing about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."</p>
+<p>I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the
+insult, and merely answered:</p>
+<p>"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday
+I would have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my
+experiences were teaching me something.</p>
+<p>"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said
+impatiently. "Tell me where that precious master of yours is now.
+And be quicker about it than this old mule."</p>
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Menard, then, had told them nothing&mdash;staunch
+old loyalist. He knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and
+they had throttled him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should
+not lose by it.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not
+where. But I know he will be back here to supper."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken
+your memory."</p>
+<p>At the word the soldier who had attended to Ma&icirc;tre Menard
+came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to
+myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every
+time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black
+to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had
+done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was in the
+H&ocirc;tel St Quentin, still those fellows would have found it no
+easy job to take him. Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de
+Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet
+I would not yield before the choking Ma&icirc;tre Menard had
+withstood, and I stuck to my lie.</p>
+<p>Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head
+seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a
+captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see
+what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and
+resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed
+me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I
+struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall
+young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I
+saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the
+noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of triumph.</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. &Eacute;tienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had
+been for nothing. Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my
+amazed eyes beheld not my master, but&mdash;Lucas!</p>
+<p>"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me,
+knaves!" For the second soldier had seized his other arm.</p>
+<p>"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but
+he is wanted at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.</p>
+<p>He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed
+him. Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for
+another man.</p>
+<p>"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man,
+Pontou."</p>
+<p>He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I
+had been at three o'clock this morning.</p>
+<p>"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never
+seen him since."</p>
+<p>"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to
+me. "I am not trying you. The handcuffs, men."</p>
+<p>One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his
+captors' grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the
+other, calling down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they
+snapped the handcuffs on for all that.</p>
+<p>"If this is Mayenne's work&mdash;" he panted.</p>
+<p>The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but
+orders are orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de
+Belin."</p>
+<p>"At whose instigation?"</p>
+<p>"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught
+to do with it but to arrest you."</p>
+<p>"Let me see the warrant."</p>
+<p>"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your
+bluster."</p>
+<p>He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before
+Lucas's eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it
+sooner."</p>
+<p>"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to
+my Lord Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de
+Guise?"</p>
+<p>"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He
+must have been cursing himself that he had not given his name
+sooner. "But I am his brother."</p>
+<p>"You take me for a fool."</p>
+<p>"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"</p>
+<p>"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of
+Guise's eldest brother is but seventeen&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I did not say I was legitimate."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could
+reel off the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I
+am not so simple as you think. You will come along with me to the
+Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas
+stormed. "I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak
+up, you old turnspit," he shouted to Ma&icirc;tre Menard. "Am I
+he?"</p>
+<p>Poor Ma&icirc;tre Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too
+limp and sick to know what was going on. He only stared
+helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"No," the ma&icirc;tre answered in low, faltering tones. He was
+at the last point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as
+he says. He is not the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Who is he, then?"</p>
+<p>"I know not," the ma&icirc;tre stammered. "He came here last
+night. But it is as he says&mdash;he is not the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're
+lying."</p>
+<p>I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to
+know otherwise, I had thought myself the ma&icirc;tre was
+lying.</p>
+<p>"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the
+captain said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass,
+before I cram your lie down your throat. And clear your people away
+from this door. I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack
+about his business, or it will be the worse for him. And every
+woman Jill, too."</p>
+<p>"M. le Capitaine," Ma&icirc;tre Menard quavered, rising
+unsteadily to his feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you
+mistake; this is not&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot.
+Ma&icirc;tre Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.</p>
+<p>A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given
+way to fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now
+alarm was born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake?
+This obstinate disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of
+all who could swear to his identity&mdash;was it not rather a plot
+for his ruin? He swallowed hard once or twice, fear gripping his
+throat harder than ever the dragoon's fingers had gripped mine.
+Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but then he was the man who
+had killed Pontou.</p>
+<p>"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have
+orders to arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de
+Lorraine, not of &Eacute;tienne de Mar."</p>
+<p>"The name of &Eacute;tienne de Mar will do," the captain
+returned; "we have no fancy for aliases at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.</p>
+<p>"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"</p>
+<p>"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.</p>
+<p>His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a
+plot he had done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled
+himself together; error or intention, he would act as if he knew it
+must be error.</p>
+<p>"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your
+shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows
+him well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask
+these inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask
+that boy there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."</p>
+<p>His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of
+challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie.
+But the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his
+sword-belt, spared me the necessity.</p>
+<p>"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the
+Comte right enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen
+this gentleman a score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that
+the captain burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's
+nephew&mdash;you are a nephew, are you not?&mdash;to explain how he
+comes to ride with the Duc de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no
+future for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out
+angrily:</p>
+<p>"He lies! I never rode out with M. de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come now. Really you waste a great deal of breath," the
+captain said. "I regret the cruel necessity of arresting you, M. de
+Mar; but there is nothing gained by blustering about it. I usually
+know what I am about."</p>
+<p>"You do not know! Nom de dieu, you do not know. F&eacute;lix
+Broux, speak up there. If you have told him behind my back that I
+am &Eacute;tienne de Mar, I defy you to say it to my face."</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about it, messieurs." I repeated my little
+refrain. "Monsieur captain, remember, if you please, I never saw
+him till yesterday; he may be Paul de Lorraine for all I know. But
+he did not call himself that yesterday."</p>
+<p>"You hell-hound!" Lucas cried.</p>
+<p>"Go tell Louis to drive up to the cabaret door, Gaspard," bade
+the captain.</p>
+<p>Lucas gazed at him as if to tear out of him the truth of the
+matter. I think he was still a prey to suspicion of a plot in this,
+and it paralyzed his tongue. He so reeked with intrigue that he
+smelled one wherever he went. He was much too clever to believe
+that this arresting officer was simply thick-witted.</p>
+<p>"I say no more," he cried. "You may spare yourself your lies,
+the whole crew of you. I go as your prisoner, but I go as Paul of
+Lorraine, son of Henry, Duke of Guise."</p>
+<p>He said it with a certain superbness; but the young captain,
+bourgeois of the bourgeois, did not mean to let himself be put down
+by any sprig of the noblesse.</p>
+<p>"Certainly, if it is any comfort to you," he retorted. "But you
+are very dull, monsieur, not to be aware that your identity is
+known perfectly to others besides your lackey here and my man. I
+did not come to arrest you without a minute description of you from
+M. de Belin himself."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" Lucas shouted. "I wrote the description. I myself
+lodged information against Mar. I came here to make sure you took
+him. Carry me before Belin; he will know me."</p>
+<p>I trembled lest the officer could not but see that the man spoke
+truth. But I had no need to fear; there is a combination of
+stupidity and vanity which nothing can move.</p>
+<p>"I have no orders to take you to M. de Belin," he returned
+calmly. "So you wrote the description, did you? Perhaps you will
+deny that it fits you?"</p>
+<p>He read from the paper:</p>
+<p>"'Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie de St. Quentin,
+Comte de Mar. Age, three-and-twenty; figure, tall and slender; was
+dressed yesterday in black with a plain falling-band; carries his
+right arm in a sling&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Is my arm in a sling?" Lucas demanded.</p>
+<p>"No, in a handcuff," the captain laughed, at the same moment
+that his dragoon exclaimed, "His right wrist is bandaged,
+though."</p>
+<p>"That is nothing! It is a mere scratch. I did it myself last
+night by accident," Lucas shouted, striving with his hampered left
+hand to pull the folds apart to show it. But he could not, and fell
+silent, wide-eyed, like one who sees the net of fate drawing in
+about him. The captain went on reading from his little paper:</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="248.jpg"></a> <a href="images/248.jpg"><img src=
+"images/248.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"'Fair hair, gray eyes, aquiline nose'&mdash;I suppose you will
+still tell us, monsieur, that you are not the man?"</p>
+<p>"I am not he. The Comte de Mar and I are nothing alike. We are
+both young, tall, yes; but that is all. He is slashed all up the
+forearm; my wrist is but scratched with a knife-edge. He has yellow
+hair; mine is brown. His eyes&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It is plain to me, monsieur," the officer interrupted, "that
+the description fits you in every particular." And so it did.</p>
+<p>I, who had heard M. &Eacute;tienne described twenty times, had
+yesterday mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both.
+It was the more remarkable because they actually looked no more
+alike than chalk and cheese. Lucas had set down his catalogue
+without a thought that he was drawing his own picture. If ever
+hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas was!</p>
+<p>"You lie!" he cried furiously. "You know I am not Mar. You lie,
+the whole pack of you!"</p>
+<p>"Gag him, Ravelle," the captain commanded with an angry
+flush.</p>
+<p>"I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!" Lucas shouted.</p>
+<p>The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his
+mouth.</p>
+<p>"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in
+time to aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."</p>
+<p>He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their
+prisoner. And this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not
+slip from his captors' fingers between the room and the street. He
+was deposited in the big black coach that had aroused my wonder.
+Louis cracked his whip and off they rumbled.</p>
+<p>I laughed all the way back to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+<h3><i>To the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>found M. &Eacute;tienne sitting on the steps before the house.
+He had doffed his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his
+sword and poniard were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat,
+its white plume pinned in a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside
+him. He had discarded his sling and was engaged in tuning a
+lute.</p>
+<p>Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he
+asked at once:</p>
+<p>"What has happened, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Such a lark!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your
+trouble?"</p>
+<p>"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."</p>
+<p>I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain
+what was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed
+interest, which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to
+distress.</p>
+<p>"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I
+resemble that dirt&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could
+possibly mistake you for two of the same race. But there was
+nothing in his catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be
+sure, the right arm in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist
+bandaged. I think he cut himself last night when he was after me
+and I flung the door in his face, for afterward he held his hand
+behind his back. At any rate, there was the bandage; that was
+enough to satisfy the captain."</p>
+<p>"And they took him off?"</p>
+<p>"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged
+him off."</p>
+<p>"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize
+the event.</p>
+<p>"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer
+and his men. He may be there by this time."</p>
+<p>He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe
+the thing.</p>
+<p>"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent
+anything better; but it is true."</p>
+<p>"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half
+so good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit&mdash;" he broke
+off, laughing.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen
+their faces&mdash;the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the
+more the officer was sure he was."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you
+should go about no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid
+errand, and see what you get into!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas
+have been arrested for Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"He won't stay arrested long&mdash;more's the pity."</p>
+<p>"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."</p>
+<p>"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say
+that my face is not known at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that
+he had never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he
+lay perdu. At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence
+of a Paul de Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his
+word already, if they are arresting you on this trumped-up charge,
+you must get out of the gates to-night."</p>
+<p>"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in
+Paris."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I must go nowhere but to the H&ocirc;tel Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Why, look you, F&eacute;lix; it is the safest spot for me in
+all Paris; it is the last place where they will look for me.
+Besides, now that they think me behind bars, they will not be
+looking for me at all. I shall be as safe as the hottest Leaguer in
+the camp."</p>
+<p>"But in the h&ocirc;tel-"</p>
+<p>"Be comforted; I shall not enter the h&ocirc;tel. There is a
+limit to my madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in
+the side street under which I have often stood in the old days. She
+used to contrive to be in her chamber after supper."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"</p>
+<p>"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after
+my father&mdash;So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me
+to-night."</p>
+<p>"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.</p>
+<p>"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her
+to-night. And I think she will be at the window."</p>
+<p>The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet
+blanket in the house was enough.</p>
+<p>"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."</p>
+<p>"Then I propose supper."</p>
+<p>Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles
+mademoiselle had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed
+to what he was about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to
+see if it was dark enough to start. At length, when it was still
+between dog and wolf, he announced that he would delay no
+longer.</p>
+<p>"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.</p>
+<p>"But you are not to come!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, you will need me. You will need some one to
+watch the street while you speak with mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"I can have no listener to-night," he replied immovably.</p>
+<p>"But I will not listen, monsieur! I shall stand out of ear-shot.
+But you must have some one to give you warning should the guard set
+on you."</p>
+<p>"I can manage my own affairs," he retorted haughtily; "I desire
+neither your advice nor your company."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!" I cried, almost in tears.</p>
+<p>"Enough!" he bade sharply. "Go send me Vigo."</p>
+<p>I went like one in whose face the doors of heaven had shut.</p>
+<p>Vigo came at once from the guard-room at my summons. It was on
+my tongue to tell him of M. le Comte's mad resolve to fare forth
+alone; to beg him to stop it. But I remembered how blameworthy I
+myself had held the equery for interfering with M. &Eacute;tienne,
+and I made up my mind that no word of cavil at my lord should ever
+pass my lips. I lagged across the court at Vigo's heels,
+silent.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was standing in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"Vigo," he said, without a change of countenance, "get
+F&eacute;lix a rapier, which he can use prettily enough. I cannot
+take him out to-night unarmed."</p>
+<p>Vigo hesitated a moment, saluted, and went.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried out, "you meant all the time to take
+me!"</p>
+<p>He gazed down on my heated visage and laughed and laughed.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he gasped, "you had your sport over there at the
+inn. But I have seen nothing this summer as funny as <i>your</i>
+face."</p>
+<p>Vigo came back with a sword and baldric for me, and a
+horse-pistol besides, but M. &Eacute;tienne would not let me have
+it.</p>
+<p>"Circumstances are such, Vigo, that I want no noisy
+weapons."</p>
+<p>The equery regarded him with a troubled countenance.</p>
+<p>"I wish I knew, monsieur, whether I do right to let you go."</p>
+<p>"We will not discuss that, an it please you."</p>
+<p>"I do not, monsieur. I have no right to curtail M. le Comte's
+liberties. But I let you go with a heavy heart."</p>
+<p>He looked after us with foreboding eyes as we went out of the
+great gate, alone, with not so much as a linkboy. But if his heart
+was heavy, our hearts were light. We paced along as merrily as
+though to a feast. M. &Eacute;tienne hung his lute over his neck
+and strummed it; and whenever we passed under a window whence
+leaned a pretty head, he sang snatches of love-songs. We were alone
+in the dark streets of a hostile city, bound for the house of a
+mighty foe; and one of us was wounded and one a tyro. Yet we
+laughed as we went; for there was Lucas languishing in prison, and
+here were we, free as air, steering our course for mademoiselle's
+window. One of us was in love, and the other wore a sword for the
+first time, and all the power of Mayenne daunted us not.</p>
+<p>We came at length within bow-shot of the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine, where M. &Eacute;tienne was willing to abate somewhat his
+swagger. We left the Rue St. Antoine, creeping around behind the
+house through a narrow and twisting alley&mdash;it was pitch-black,
+but he knew the way well&mdash;into a little street dim-lighted
+from the windows of the houses upon it. It was only a few rods
+long, running from the open square in front of the h&ocirc;tel to
+the network of unpaved alleys behind. On the farther side stood a
+row of high-gabled houses, their doors opening directly on the
+pavement; on this side was but one big pile, the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine. The wall was broken by few windows, most of them dark;
+this was not the gay side of the house. The overhanging turret on
+the low second story, under which M. &Eacute;tienne halted, was as
+dark as the rest, nor, though the casement was open wide, could we
+tell whether any one was in the room. We could hear nothing but the
+breeze crackling in the silken curtains.</p>
+<p>"Take your station at the corner there," he bade, "and shout if
+they seem to be coming for us. But I think we shall not be
+molested. My fingers are so stiff they will hardly recognize my
+hand on the strings."</p>
+<p>I went to my post, and he began singing, scarce loud enough for
+any but his lady above to mark him:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Fairest blossom ever grew<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Once she loosened from her
+breast.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.<br />
+<br />
+From her breast the rose she drew,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dole for me, her servant
+blest,</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>The music paused, and I turned from my watch of the shadowy
+figures crossing the square, in instant alarm lest something was
+wrong. But whatever startled him ceased, for in a moment he went on
+again, and as he sang his voice rang fuller:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Of my love the guerdon true,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Tis my bosom's only
+guest.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.<br />
+<br />
+Still to me 'tis bright of hue<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As when first my kisses
+prest</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew.<br />
+<br />
+Sweeter than when gathered new<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Twas the sign her love
+confest.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>He stopped again and stood gazing up into the window, but
+whether he saw something or heard something I could not tell.
+Apparently he was not sure himself, for presently, a little
+tremulous, he added the four verses:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Askest thou of me a clue<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To that lady I love
+best?</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew!<br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and
+waited, eager, hopeful. There was a little stir in the room that
+one thought was not the wind.</p>
+<p>I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the
+ardour of my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by
+the sound of men running round the corner behind me. One glance was
+enough; two abreast, swords in hand, they were charging us. I ran
+before them, drawing blade as I went and shouting to M.
+&Eacute;tienne. But even as I called an answering shout came from
+the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the darkness
+and at us.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the
+lute off his neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung
+it at the head of his nearest assailant, who received it full in
+the face, stopped, hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had
+come. But three foes remained, with the whole H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine behind them.</p>
+<p>We put our backs to the wall and set to. The remaining Spaniard
+engaged me; M. &Eacute;tienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure
+of a doorway, held at bay with his good left arm a pair of
+attackers. These were in the dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as
+if their cheeks blushed (well they might) for the deeds of their
+hands.</p>
+<p>A broad window in the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine was flung open; a
+man leaned far out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces
+bewildered our gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was
+about, and rammed my point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my
+blade.</p>
+<p>The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M.
+&Eacute;tienne, who, with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw
+everything, cried to me, "Here!"</p>
+<p>I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants
+finding that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather
+hampered each other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the
+cleverer swordsman. This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was
+shorter in the arm than my master and had the disadvantage of
+standing on the ground, whereas M. &Eacute;tienne was up one step.
+He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor
+could he drive M. &Eacute;tienne out of his coign to where in the
+open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers clashed and
+parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then
+before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees,
+with M. &Eacute;tienne's sword in his breast.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank
+backward, his mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had
+thought him&mdash;Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was ready for the second gentleman, but
+neither he nor the soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the
+window, with a shout, waved his arm toward the square. A mob of
+armed men hurled itself around the corner, a pikeman with lowered
+point in the van.</p>
+<p>This was not combat; it was butchery. M. &Eacute;tienne, with a
+little moan, lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant
+to the turret window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us
+give. Throwing my whole weight upon it, I seized M. &Eacute;tienne
+and pulled him over the threshold. Some one inside slammed the door
+to, just as the Spaniard hurled himself against it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+<h3><i>"On guard, monsieur."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>e found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a
+flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our
+preserver&mdash;a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in
+chuckling triumph against the shot bolts.</p>
+<p>She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and
+shrunken, a pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair
+was as white as her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment,
+furrowed with a thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like
+a girl's.</p>
+<p>"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she
+cried in a shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have
+listened to your singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad
+to-night to find the nightingale back again. When I saw that crew
+rush at you, I said I would save you if only you would put your
+back to my door. Monsieur, you are a young man of
+intelligence."</p>
+<p>"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M.
+&Eacute;tienne replied, with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet
+blade. "I owe you a debt of gratitude which is ill repaid in the
+base coin of bringing trouble to this house."</p>
+<p>"Not at all&mdash;not at all!" she protested with animation. "No
+one is likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M.
+Ferou."</p>
+<p>"Of the Sixteen?"</p>
+<p>"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with
+mischief. "In truth, if my son were within, you were little likely
+to find harbourage here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping
+with his Grace of Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to
+mass, leaving madame grand'm&egrave;re to shift for herself. No,
+no, my good friends; you may knock till you drop, but you won't get
+in."</p>
+<p>The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the
+door, shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes
+of the old lady glittered with new delight at every rap.</p>
+<p>"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M.
+Ferou's door! Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at
+finding you sanctuaried in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's
+jackal, Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; and Marc Latour."</p>
+<p>"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her
+sharpness. "It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old,
+but I knew them! And which of the ladies is it?"</p>
+<p>He could do no less than answer his saviour.</p>
+<p>"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once&mdash;but
+that is a long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she
+was not much given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she
+repeated briskly, "and now they think I am too old to do aught but
+tell my beads and wait for death. But I like to have a hand in the
+game."</p>
+<p>"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M.
+&Eacute;tienne assured her. "I like the way you play."</p>
+<p>She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by
+halves. No; I shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as
+to lift the lantern from the hook."</p>
+<p>I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like
+spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made
+no protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she
+paused, opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the
+left, but, passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot,
+suddenly she flung it wide.</p>
+<p>"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can
+make shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go
+first."</p>
+<p>I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady,
+gathering her petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty,
+but M. &Eacute;tienne was put to some trouble to bow his tall head
+low enough. We stood at the top of a flight of stone steps
+descending into blackness. The old lady unhesitatingly tripped down
+before us.</p>
+<p>At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway,
+slippery with lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall.
+Turning two corners, we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded
+door.</p>
+<p>"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have
+only to walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the
+rope once and wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and
+draw a crown with your finger in the air."</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, "I hope the day may come when
+I shall make you suitable acknowledgements. My name&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him.
+"I will call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for
+acknowledgments&mdash;pooh! I am overpaid in the sport it has
+been."</p>
+<p>"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's
+son!" she cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was
+not.</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne said, "I trust we shall meet again
+when I shall have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped
+on his knees before her, kissing both her hands.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored
+apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to
+die at your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and
+you too, you fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you
+well."</p>
+<p>"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."</p>
+<p>"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you,
+that I cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries,
+but get on your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber
+working my altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."</p>
+<p>Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly
+hustled us through.</p>
+<p>"Good-by&mdash;you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon
+us. We were in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of
+the dank, foul air, we heard bolts snap into place.</p>
+<p>"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M.
+&Eacute;tienne, cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it
+is to throw them off the scent should they track us."</p>
+<p>I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same
+thought which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam,
+with her beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our
+childhood days; she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.</p>
+<p>I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard,
+using it as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the
+fetid gloom, the passage being only wide enough to let us walk
+shoulder to shoulder. There was a whirring of wings about us, and a
+squeaking; once something swooped square into my face, knocking a
+cry of terror from me, and a laugh from him.</p>
+<p>"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, F&eacute;lix; they don't bite."
+But I would not go on till I had made sure, as well as I could
+without seeing, that the cursed thing was not clinging on me
+somewhere.</p>
+<p>We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our
+tread. We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of
+Paris; and I wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming
+and loving over our heads. M. &Eacute;tienne said at length:</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the
+Seine." But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere,
+I should not greatly mind the Seine.</p>
+<p>At this very moment M. &Eacute;tienne clutched my arm, jerking
+me to a halt. I bounded backward, trying in the blackness to
+discern a precipice yawning at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low,
+tense voice. I perceived, far before us in the gloom, a point of
+light, which, as we watched it, grew bigger and bigger, till it
+became an approaching lantern.</p>
+<p>"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread;
+naturally he did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him
+alone, but it was hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.</p>
+<p>He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing
+without becoming aware of me, but M. &Eacute;tienne's azure and
+white caught the lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped
+short, holding up the light between us and his face. We could make
+nothing of him, save that he was a large man, soberly clad.</p>
+<p>"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady.
+"Is it you, Ferou?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward
+into the clear circle of light.</p>
+<p>"No, M. de Mayenne; it is &Eacute;tienne de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with
+comical alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My
+master's came bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in
+silence, till Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry
+from him:</p>
+<p>"How the devil come you here?"</p>
+<p>"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. &Eacute;tienne
+answered. Mayenne still stared in thick amazement; after a moment
+my master added: "I must in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware
+that I am using this passage; he is, with madame his wife, supping
+with the Archbishop of Lyons."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling
+pleasantly, and waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne
+kept a nonplussed silence. The situation was indeed somewhat
+awkward. He could not come forward without encountering an agile
+opponent, whose exceeding skill with the sword was probably known
+to him. He could not turn tail, had his dignity allowed the course,
+without exposing himself to be spitted. He was in the predicament
+of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping at us less in fear, I
+think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I learned later, was
+one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter. Mayenne had as
+soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a foe. He
+cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a great
+prince's question must be answered:</p>
+<p>"How came you here?"</p>
+<p>"I don't ask," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "how it happens that M.
+le Duc is walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to
+make any explanation to him."</p>
+<p>"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready,
+will make adequate explanation."</p>
+<p>"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. &Eacute;tienne, "as
+it is evident that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience
+your Grace more than it will me."</p>
+<p>The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his
+lantern on a projecting stone.</p>
+<p>"On guard, sir," he answered.</p>
+<p>The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following
+him. He was alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state,
+but only a man with a sword, standing opposite another man with a
+sword. Nor was he in the pink of form. Though he gave the effect,
+from his clear colour and proud bearing, perhaps also from his
+masterful energy, of tremendous force and strength, his body was in
+truth but a poor machine, his great corpulence making him clumsy
+and scant of breath. He must have known, as he eyed his supple
+antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely said:</p>
+<p>"On guard, monsieur."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace,
+that I might not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring
+on him. M. &Eacute;tienne said slowly:</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor
+have I any wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be
+deprecated. Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must
+respectfully beg to be released from the obligation of fighting
+you."</p>
+<p>A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may,
+even as Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But
+if he insists on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must
+be a hothead indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant,
+feeling that he was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and
+should be still more ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his
+sword, only to lower it again, till at last his good sense came to
+his relief in a laugh.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are
+necessary. You think that in declining to fight you put me in your
+debt. Possibly you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I
+shall hand over Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken.
+Never, while I live, shall she marry into the king's camp. Now,
+monsieur, that we understand each other, I abide by your decision
+whether we fight or not."</p>
+<p>For answer, M. &Eacute;tienne put up his blade. The Duke of
+Mayenne, saluting with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you
+stood off from us, like a coquetting girl, for three years. At
+length, last May, you refused point-blank to join us. I do not
+often ask a man twice, but I ask you. Will you join the League
+to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"</p>
+<p>No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I
+believe now, he meant it. M. &Eacute;tienne believed he meant
+it.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am
+planted squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put
+your interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall
+not sign myself with the League."</p>
+<p>"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each
+continue on his way."</p>
+<p>"With all my heart, monsieur."</p>
+<p>Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a
+wary eye for daggers. Then M. &Eacute;tienne, laughing a little,
+but watching Mayenne like a lynx, started to go by. The duke,
+seeing the look, suddenly raised his hands over his head, holding
+them there while both of us squeezed past him.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Charles," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "I see that when I
+have married Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then,
+God have you ever in guard."</p>
+<p>"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."</p>
+<p>"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have
+submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have
+as delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will
+yet drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your
+good enemy. Fare you well, monsieur."</p>
+<p>He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire,
+returned the obeisance with all pomp. M. &Eacute;tienne took me by
+the arm and departed. Mayenne stood still for a space; then we
+heard his retreating footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly
+faded away.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="272.jpg"></a> <a href="images/272.jpg"><img src=
+"images/272.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M.
+&Eacute;tienne muttered.</p>
+<p>We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor
+which had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was
+that we stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force
+like to break our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran
+headlong up the stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel
+back on M. &Eacute;tienne, sweeping him off his feet, so that we
+rolled in a struggling heap on the stones of the passage. And for
+the minute the place was no longer dark; I saw more lightning than
+even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"Are you hurt, F&eacute;lix?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, the first
+to disentangle himself.</p>
+<p>"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say
+it was a trap-door."</p>
+<p>We ascended the stairs a second time&mdash;this time most
+cautiously on our hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could
+feel, with upleaping of spirit, a wooden ceiling.</p>
+<p>"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle
+somewhere above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked
+it but us, we heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being
+pulled about, and then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a
+silk-mercer's shop.</p>
+<p>"Faith, my man," said M. &Eacute;tienne to the little bourgeois
+who had opened to us, "I am glad to see you appear so
+promptly."</p>
+<p>He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.</p>
+<p>"You must have met&mdash;" he suggested with hesitancy.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said M. &Eacute;tienne; "but he did not object. We are,
+of course, of the initiated."</p>
+<p>"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny
+assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret
+of the passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty
+few mercers have a duke in their shop as often as I."</p>
+<p>We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with
+piles of stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying
+loose on the counter before us, as if the man had just been
+measuring them&mdash;gorgeous brocades and satins. Above us, a bell
+on the rafter still quivered.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said,
+following our glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from.
+And if I am not at liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on
+the floor&mdash;But they told you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he
+added, regarding M. &Eacute;tienne again a little uneasily.</p>
+<p>"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered, and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the
+password, "For the Cause."</p>
+<p>"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing
+in the air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the
+shopkeeper had felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who
+wore no hat, they vanished in its radiance.</p>
+<p>"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our
+faces."</p>
+<p>The man took up his candle to light us to the door.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over
+there?" he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M.
+le Duc has every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if
+monsieur should mention how quickly I let him out."</p>
+<p>"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. &Eacute;tienne
+promised him. "Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There
+is another man to come."</p>
+<p>Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked
+out into the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we
+took to our heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen
+streets between us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked
+along in breathless silence.</p>
+<p>Presently M. &Eacute;tienne cried out:</p>
+<p>"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should
+have changed the history of France!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+<h3><i>A chance encounter.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>he street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame.
+Few way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as
+placidly as if love-trysts and m&ecirc;l&eacute;es existed not, and
+tunnels and countersigns were but the smoke of a dream. It was a
+street of shops, all shuttered, while, above, the burghers'
+families went respectably to bed.</p>
+<p>"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a
+moment to take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of
+the Pierced Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We
+are close by the Halles&mdash;we must have come half a mile
+underground. Well, we'll swing about in a circle to get home. For
+this night I've had enough of the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.</p>
+<p>"They were wider awake than I thought&mdash;those Lorrainers.
+Pardieu! F&eacute;ix, you and I came closer quarters with death
+than is entirely amusing."</p>
+<p>"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.</p>
+<p>"A new saint in the calendar&mdash;la Sainte Ferou! But what a
+madcap of a saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance
+when Francis I was king!</p>
+<p>"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know
+that I was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated
+the enemy&mdash;worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near
+flinging away two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a
+lady's window."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."</p>
+<p>"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in
+the morning and find out."</p>
+<p>"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."</p>
+<p>"Not to-night, F&eacute;lix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home
+without passing near the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, if we go outside
+the walls to do it. To-night I draw my sword no more."</p>
+<p>To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange
+city at night&mdash;Paris of all cities&mdash;is a labyrinth. I
+know that after a time we came out in some meadows along the
+river-bank, traversed them, and plunged once more into narrow,
+high-walled streets. It was very late, and lights were few. We had
+started in clear starlight, but now a rack of clouds hid even their
+pale shine.</p>
+<p>"The snake-hole over again," said M. &Eacute;tienne. "But we are
+almost at our own gates."</p>
+<p>But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner,
+we ran straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging
+along at as smart a pace as we.</p>
+<p>"A thousand pardons," M. &Eacute;tienne cried to his
+encounterer, the possessor of years and gravity but of no great
+size, whom he had almost knocked down. "I heard you, but knew not
+you were so close. We were speeding to get home."</p>
+<p>The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had
+knocked the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As
+he scanned M. &Eacute;tienne's open countenance and princely dress
+his alarm vanished.</p>
+<p>"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a
+lantern," he said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid
+it. I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. &Eacute;tienne
+asked with immense respect.</p>
+<p>"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied,
+delighted to impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense
+of his importance.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said M. &Eacute;tienne, with increasing solemnity,
+"perhaps monsieur had a hand in a certain decree of the 28th
+June?"</p>
+<p>The little man began to look uneasy.</p>
+<p>"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he
+stammered.</p>
+<p>"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. &Eacute;tienne
+rejoined, "most offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he
+fingered his sword.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his
+Grace, or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all
+these years of blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry;
+yet we believed that even he will come to see the matter in a
+different light&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne,"
+M. &Eacute;tienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street
+and down the street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched
+little deputy's teeth chattered.</p>
+<p>The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he
+seemed on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I
+thought it would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble
+home in the dark, so I growled out to the fellow:</p>
+<p>"Stir one step at your peril!"</p>
+<p>I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not;
+he only sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding
+deference. He knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the
+scabbard.</p>
+<p>The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M.
+&Eacute;tienne's example, but there was no help to be seen or
+heard. He turned to his tormentor with the valour of a mouse at
+bay.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain
+how he happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy
+hour?"</p>
+<p>"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I&mdash;we had a
+little con&mdash;that is, not to say a conference, but merely a
+little discussion on matters of no importance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. &Eacute;tienne, sternly,
+"of knowing where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this
+direction is not accounted for."</p>
+<p>"But I was going home&mdash;on my sacred honour I was! Ask
+Jacques, else. But as we went down the Rue de l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que
+we saw two men in front of us. As they reached the wall by M. de
+Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell on them. The two drew
+blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians were a
+dozen&mdash;a score. We ran for our lives."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne wheeled round to me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau,
+your decree is most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore,
+since he is my particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful
+night, is it not, sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."</p>
+<p>He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.</p>
+<p>At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to
+our ears. M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the
+direction of the sound.</p>
+<p>"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a
+mob! We know how it feels."</p>
+<p>The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled
+around a jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.</p>
+<p>"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne. "Shout,
+F&eacute;lix! Montjoie St. Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"</p>
+<p>We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at
+the top of our lungs.</p>
+<p>It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures,
+with every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light
+flashing out, to fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm.
+We could scarce tell which were the attackers, which the two
+comrades we had come to save.</p>
+<p>But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We
+shouted as boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter
+of their heels on the stones they could not count our feet. They
+knew not how many followers the darkness held. The group parted.
+Two men remained in hot combat close under the left wall. Across
+the way one sturdy fighter held off two, while a sixth man, crying
+on his mates to follow, fled down the lane.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne knew now what he was about, and at once took
+sides with the solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I
+started in pursuit of the flying figure. I had run but a few yards,
+however, when I tripped and fell prostrate over the body of a man.
+I was up in a moment, feeling him to find out if he were dead; my
+hands over his heart dipped into a pool of something wet and warm
+like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve as best I could, and
+hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need it now, and I
+did.</p>
+<p>When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows.
+M. &Eacute;tienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot
+in the gloom, had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven
+him, some rods up the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed,
+not knowing where to busy myself. M. &Eacute;tienne's side I could
+not reach past the two duels; and of the four men near me, I could
+by no means tell, as they circled about and about, which were my
+chosen allies. They were all sombrely clad, their faces blurred in
+the darkness. When one made a clever pass, I knew not whether to
+rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one who fenced,
+though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the rest; and
+I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and must
+certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of
+succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as
+his foe ran him through the arm.</p>
+<p>The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the
+wall to face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell
+from his loose fingers.</p>
+<p>"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late
+combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off,
+stumbling where I had.</p>
+<p>There had been little light toward the last in the court of the
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my
+sword solely by the feel of his against it, and I underwent
+chilling qualms lest presently, without in the least knowing how it
+got there, I should find his point sticking out of my back. I could
+hardly believe he was not hitting me; I began to prickle in half a
+dozen places, and knew not whether the stings were real or
+imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which Lucas had
+pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I fancied
+that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I was
+bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I
+had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment
+one of the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his
+weapon square through his vis-&agrave;-vis's breast.</p>
+<p>"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword
+snapped in two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay
+still, his face in the dirt.</p>
+<p>My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade,
+made off down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him
+depart in peace.</p>
+<p>The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's
+cry, and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and
+fainter. I deemed that the battle was over.</p>
+<p>The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his
+face and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He
+held a sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me
+hesitatingly, not sure whether friend or foe remained to him. I
+felt that an explanation was due from me, but in my ignorance as to
+who he was and who his foes were, and why they had been fighting
+him and why we had been fighting them, I stood for a moment
+confused. It is hard to open conversation with a shadow.</p>
+<p>He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:</p>
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+<p>"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting
+four&mdash;we came to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt,
+but he got away safe to fetch aid."</p>
+<p>The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying,
+"What&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But at the word M. &Eacute;tienne emerged from the shadows.</p>
+<p>"Who lives?" he called out. "You, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"</p>
+<p>"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to
+congratulate you, monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we
+did."</p>
+<p>The unknown said one word:</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne!"</p>
+<p>I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in
+the pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we
+had rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been
+content to mind our own business, had sheered away like the
+deputy&mdash;it turned me faint to think how long we had delayed
+with old Marceau, we were so nearly too late. I wanted to seize
+Monsieur, to convince myself that he was all safe, to feel him
+quick and warm.</p>
+<p>I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape
+stood between me and Monsieur&mdash;that horrible lying story.</p>
+<p>"Dieu!" gasped M. &Eacute;tienne, "Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur
+flung his sword over the wall.</p>
+<p>"Do your will, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>His son darted forward with a cry.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid
+not dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a
+hundred times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the
+honour of a St. Quentin I swear it."</p>
+<p>Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not
+know whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, catching at his breath, went on:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to
+you, unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter
+words. But I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me
+whipped from the house, still would I never have raised hand
+against you. I knew nothing of the plot. F&eacute;lix told you I
+was in it&mdash;small blame to him. But he was wrong. I knew naught
+of it."</p>
+<p>Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur
+could not but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The
+stones in the pavement must have known that he was uttering truth.
+But he in his eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun
+Monsieur with statements new and amazing to his ear.</p>
+<p>"My cousin Grammont&mdash;who is dead&mdash;was in the plot, and
+his lackey Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was
+Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Lucas," continued M. &Eacute;tienne. "Or, to give him his true
+title, Paul de Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."</p>
+<p>"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.</p>
+<p>"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a
+Lorraine&mdash;Mayenne's nephew, and for years Mayenne's spy. He
+came to you to kill you&mdash;for that object pure and simple. Last
+spring, before he came to you, he was here in Paris with Mayenne,
+making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot, no Kingsman. He is
+Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."</p>
+<p>"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck
+him, he fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that,
+I have no more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I
+was sure Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of
+bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the
+truth. Indeed it is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas <i>is</i>
+a Guise. Monsieur, you must listen to me. M. &Eacute;tienne, you
+must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble with my story to you,
+Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was telling the truth. I
+was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to the Rue
+Coupejarrets to kill your son&mdash;your murderer, I thought. And
+there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them
+sworn foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me
+because I had told, and M. &Eacute;tienne saved me. Lucas mocked
+him to his face because he had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it
+was his own scheme&mdash;that M. &Eacute;tienne was his dupe. Vigo
+will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme was to saddle M.
+&Eacute;tienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed what
+he told me&mdash;that the thing was a duel between Lucas and
+Grammont. You must believe it, Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, who had actually obeyed me,&mdash;me, his
+lackey,&mdash;turned to his father once again.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe F&eacute;lix. You
+believed him when he took away my good name. Believe him now when
+he restores it."</p>
+<p>"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>And he took his son in his arms.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+<h3><i>The signet of the king.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>lready a wan light was revealing the round tops of the
+plum-trees in M. de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the
+narrow alleyway beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no
+longer vague shapes, but were turning moment by moment, as if
+coming out of an enchantment, into their true forms. It really was
+Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet glint in his eyes as he kissed
+his boy.</p>
+<p>Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they
+said to each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a
+curve in the wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the
+eastern sky, in utter content. Never before had the world seemed to
+me so good a place. Since this misery had come right, I knew all
+the rest would; I should yet dance at M. &Eacute;tienne's
+wedding.</p>
+<p>I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to
+consider the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! F&eacute;lix! Where is the boy got to?"</p>
+<p>The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and
+wondered how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs
+came hand in hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering
+on Monsieur's burnished breastplate, on M. &Eacute;tienne's bright
+head, and on both their shining faces. Now that for the first time
+I saw them together, I found them, despite the dark hair and the
+yellow, the brown eyes and the gray, wonderfully alike. There was
+the same carriage, the same cock of the head, the same smile. If I
+had not known before, I knew now, the instant I looked at them,
+that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a deeper love of
+each other, it might never have been.</p>
+<p>I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.</p>
+<p>"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, F&eacute;lix?" M.
+&Eacute;tienne said. "But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what
+madness sent you traversing this back passage at two in the
+morning."</p>
+<p>"I might ask you that, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:</p>
+<p>"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M.
+&Eacute;tienne cried out:</p>
+<p>"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle
+if I would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he
+would kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was
+why I tried."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the
+window?"</p>
+<p>He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that
+Mlle. de Montluc is not for you?"</p>
+<p>"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed
+says she is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"</p>
+<p>"You! You'll help me?"</p>
+<p>"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think
+of you in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a
+Spaniard to the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it
+is a question of stealing the lady&mdash;well, I never prosed about
+prudence yet, thank God!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage
+while I thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you
+sacrifice your honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your
+life&mdash;that is different."</p>
+<p>"My life is a little thing."</p>
+<p>"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal&mdash;one's life. But
+one is not to guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life
+sweet."</p>
+<p>"Ah, you know how I love her!"</p>
+<p>"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I
+risk my life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For
+they who think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to
+procure it, why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when
+all is done, they have never really lived. And that is why they
+hate death so, these worthies. While I, who have never cringed to
+fear, I live like a king. I go my ways without any man's leave; and
+if death comes to me a little sooner for that, I am a poor creature
+if I do not meet him smiling. If I may live as I please, I am
+content to die when I must."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "and if we live as we do not
+please, still we must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never
+to give over striving after my lady."</p>
+<p>"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's
+F&eacute;lix yawning his head off. Come, come."</p>
+<p>We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at
+their heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden
+anxiety.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I
+answered, remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.</p>
+<p>"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to
+get in," M. &Eacute;tienne said easily.</p>
+<p>But Monsieur asked of me:</p>
+<p>"Was he much hurt, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am
+sure he was not hurt otherwise."</p>
+<p>We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M.
+&Eacute;tienne exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur!
+How many of the rascals were there?"</p>
+<p>"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."</p>
+<p>"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the
+dark?"</p>
+<p>"Why, what to do, &Eacute;tienne? I came in at the gate just
+after midnight. I could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is
+my time to enter Paris. The inns were shut&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered
+you."</p>
+<p>"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the
+Sixteen."</p>
+<p>"Tarigny is no craven."</p>
+<p>"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save
+you next time."</p>
+<p>"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed and said no more.</p>
+<p>"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If
+these fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a
+finger-tip of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here,
+when we were almost home."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne bent over and turned face up the man whom
+Monsieur had run through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow,
+one eye entirely closed by a great scar that ran from his forehead
+nearly to his grizzled mustache.</p>
+<p>"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him
+before, Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but
+he has done naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year.
+We used to wonder how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty
+work. Clisson employed him once, so I know something of him. With
+his one eye he could fence better than most folks with two. My
+congratulations to you, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.</p>
+<p>"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this
+one?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne shook his head over this other man, who lay
+face up, staring with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled
+in little rings about his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he
+looked no older than I.</p>
+<p>"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low
+voice. "I ran him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am
+glad it was dark. A boy like that!"</p>
+<p>"He had good mettle to run up first," M. &Eacute;tienne said.
+"And it is no disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let
+us go."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his
+son and at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.</p>
+<p>On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.</p>
+<p>"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to
+M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by
+this red track."</p>
+<p>But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into
+the little street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin,
+as we turned the familiar corner under the walls of the house
+itself, we came suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward
+with a cry, for it was the squire Huguet.</p>
+<p>He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout
+as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat
+without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his
+defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had
+rained blows enough on this man of ours to kill twenty.</p>
+<p>Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite
+cold.</p>
+<p>"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about,"
+I said. "Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend
+himself."</p>
+<p>"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered. "And one of those who fled last came upon
+him helpless and did this."</p>
+<p>"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John
+o'dreams?" I cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I
+forgot Huguet."</p>
+<p>"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would
+not have forgotten me."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You
+could have saved him only by following when he ran. And that was
+impossible."</p>
+<p>"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his
+own door."</p>
+<p>We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.</p>
+<p>"I never lost a better man."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say
+that of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."</p>
+<p>He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only
+smile, I was content it should be at me.</p>
+<p>"Nay, F&eacute;lix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who
+compose your epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after
+poor Huguet."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix and I will carry him," M. &Eacute;tienne said, and
+we lifted him between us&mdash;no easy task, for he was a heavy
+fellow. But it was little enough to do for him.</p>
+<p>We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a
+sudden he turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn
+breast.</p>
+<p>"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.</p>
+<p>"My papers."</p>
+<p>We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to
+toe, stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted
+linen, prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed
+themselves.</p>
+<p>"What were they, Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.</p>
+<p>"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor,
+have lost."</p>
+<p>I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his
+hat on the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to
+its beginning, looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass;
+but no papers. In my desperation I even pulled about the dead man,
+lest the packet had been covered, falling from Huguet in the fray.
+The two gentlemen joined me in the search, and we went over every
+inch of the ground, but to no purpose.</p>
+<p>"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur
+groaned. "I knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the
+object of attack; I bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the
+papers."</p>
+<p>"And of course he would not."</p>
+<p>"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life
+perhaps, and lost me what is dearer than life&mdash;my honour."</p>
+<p>"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking
+the impossible."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur
+cried. "The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's
+officers pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had
+them for Lema&icirc;tre. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they
+spell the men's destruction. Huguet should have known that if I
+told him to desert me, I meant it."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne ventured no word, understanding well enough
+that in such bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc
+added after a moment:</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied
+than in blaming the dead&mdash;the brave and faithful dead. Belike
+he could not run, they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did
+go, and he went to his death. They were my charge, the papers. I
+had no right to put the responsibility on any other. I should have
+kept them myself. I should have gone to Tarigny. I should never
+have ventured myself through these black lanes. Fool! traitorous
+fool!"</p>
+<p>"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."</p>
+<p>"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen
+Rosny!" Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a
+lack-wit who rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can
+handle a sword, but I have no business to meddle in
+statecraft."</p>
+<p>"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to
+employ you," M. &Eacute;tienne said. "He is not unknown to fame,
+this Duke of St. Quentin; everybody knows how he goes about things.
+Monsieur, they gave you the papers because no one else would carry
+them into Paris. They knew you had no fear in you; and it is
+because of that that the papers are lacking. But take heart,
+Monsieur. We'll get them back."</p>
+<p>"When? How?"</p>
+<p>"Soon," M. &Eacute;tienne answered, "and easily, if you will
+tell me what they are like. Are they open?"</p>
+<p>"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and
+a fourth sheet, a letter&mdash;all in cipher."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but in that case&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Of course&mdash;I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"</p>
+<p>"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."</p>
+<p>"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne,
+and all is saved," M. &Eacute;tienne declared cheerfully. "These
+fellows can't read a cipher. If the packet be not open,
+Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the
+letters <i>St. Q.</i> in the corner. It was tied with red cord and
+bore the seal of a flying falcon, and the motto, <i>Je
+reviendrai</i>."</p>
+<p>"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur,
+to see the papers in an hour's time."</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur cried, "are you
+mad?"</p>
+<p>"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough.
+I told you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who
+lodged at an inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake
+ourselves thither, we may easily fall in with some comrades of his
+bosom who have not the misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane,
+who will know something of your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots;
+while they work for the League, they will lend a kindly ear to the
+chink of Kingsmen's florins."</p>
+<p>"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. &Eacute;tienne
+laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully
+as in the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."</p>
+<p>He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to
+prove his devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.</p>
+<p>"But," M. &Eacute;tienne added generously, "you may have the
+honour of paying the piper."</p>
+<p>"I give you carte blanche, my son. &Eacute;tienne, if you put
+that packet into my hand, it is more than if you brought the
+sceptre of France."</p>
+<p>"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."</p>
+<p>He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.</p>
+<p>The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the
+labours of the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour,
+for we ran no risk now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it
+behooves not a man supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself
+too liberally to the broad eye of the streets. Every time&mdash;and
+it was often&mdash;that we approached a person who to my nervous
+imagination looked official, I shook in my shoes. The way seemed
+fairly to bristle with soldiers, officers, judges; for aught I
+knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor Belin himself. It was a
+great surprise to me when at length we arrived without let or
+hindrance before the door of a mean little drinking-place, our
+goal.</p>
+<p>We went in, and M. &Eacute;tienne ordered wine, much to my
+satisfaction. My stomach was beginning to remind me that I had
+given it nothing for twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs
+hard.</p>
+<p>"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the
+landlord. We were his only patrons at the moment.</p>
+<p>"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"</p>
+<p>"The same."</p>
+<p>"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not
+mine. I but rent the ground floor for my purposes."</p>
+<p>"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"</p>
+<p>"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off
+the Rue Clichet."</p>
+<p>"But he comes here often?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings,
+too."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid down the drink-money, and something
+more.</p>
+<p>"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"</p>
+<p>The man laughed.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll
+standing in my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he
+never chances to see me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good
+morning, Jean. Anything in the casks to-day?' He can no more get by
+my door than he'll get by Death's when the time comes."</p>
+<p>"No," agreed M. &Eacute;tienne; "we all stop there, soon or
+late. Those friends of M. Bernet, then&mdash;there is none you
+could put a name to?"</p>
+<p>"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this
+quarter. M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he
+lives here, it is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere
+for his friends."</p>
+<p>"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind
+the bar, eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed
+gallant. "Just round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court.
+The first house on the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur,
+only I cannot leave the shop alone, and the wife not back from
+market. But monsieur cannot miss it. The first house in the court.
+Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir, monsieur."</p>
+<p>In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little
+court stood an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse
+out of the passage.</p>
+<p>"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M.
+&Eacute;tienne murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can
+you tell me, friend, where I may find M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means
+ceasing his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.</p>
+<p>"Third story back," he said.</p>
+<p>"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"</p>
+<p>"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his
+dirty broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, coughing, pursued his inquiries:</p>
+<p>"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has
+a friend, then, in the building?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks
+in."</p>
+<p>"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M.
+&Eacute;tienne persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes
+often to see M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself,
+instead of chattering here all day."</p>
+<p>"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. &Eacute;tienne, lightly
+setting foot on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and
+come back to break your head, mon vieillard."</p>
+<p>We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door
+at the back, whereon M. &Eacute;tienne pounded loudly. I could not
+see his reason, and heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me
+a creepy thing to be knocking on a man's door when we knew very
+well he would never open it again. We knocked as if we fully
+thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone
+on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this
+time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried
+lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had
+come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank
+to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we
+innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
+suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show
+him pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the
+real creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.</p>
+<p>It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which
+opened, letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the
+doorway stood a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her
+skirts.</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne addressed her, with the courtesy due
+to a duchess, "I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without
+result. Perhaps you could give me some hint as to his
+whereabouts?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
+regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look
+and manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do
+not believe he has been in since. He went out about nine&mdash;or
+it may have been later than that. Because I did not put the
+children to bed till after dark; they enjoy running about in the
+cool of the evening as much as anybody else, the little dears. And
+they were cross last night, the day was so hot, and I was a long
+time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it must have been after ten,
+because they were asleep, and the man stumbling on the stairs woke
+Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't you, my angel?"</p>
+<p>She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us.
+M. &Eacute;tienne asked:</p>
+<p>"What man?"</p>
+<p>"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."</p>
+<p>"And what sort of person was this?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common
+passage with a child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."</p>
+<p>"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M.
+Bernet but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only
+been here a week."</p>
+<p>"I thank you, madame," M. &Eacute;tienne said, turning to the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>She ran out to the rail, babies and all.</p>
+<p>"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a
+point of seeing him when he comes in."</p>
+<p>"I will not burden you, madame," M. &Eacute;tienne answered from
+the story below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over
+the railing to call:</p>
+<p>"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are
+not so tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their
+rubbish out in the public way."</p>
+<p>The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and
+a big, brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:</p>
+<p>"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you
+slut?"</p>
+<p>We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives
+down the stair.</p>
+<p>The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom
+on the outer step.</p>
+<p>"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as
+much had you been civil enough to ask."</p>
+<p>I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. &Eacute;tienne
+drew two gold pieces from his pouch.</p>
+<p>"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M.
+Bernet went out last night?"</p>
+<p>"Who says he went out with anybody?"</p>
+<p>"I do," and M. &Eacute;tienne made a motion to return the coins
+to their place.</p>
+<p>"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little
+more," the old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his,
+but he goes by the name of Peyrot."</p>
+<p>"And where does he lodge?"</p>
+<p>"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my
+own lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."</p>
+<p>"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M.
+&Eacute;tienne said patiently, with a persuasive chink of his
+pouch. "Recollect now; you have been sent to this monsieur with a
+message."</p>
+<p>"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old
+carl spat out at last.</p>
+<p>"You are sure?"</p>
+<p>"Hang me else."</p>
+<p>"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a
+jelly with your own broom."</p>
+<p>"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of
+respect at last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles.
+You may beat me to a jelly if I lie."</p>
+<p>"It would do you good in any event," M. &Eacute;tienne told him,
+but flinging him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped
+upon them, gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in
+one movement. But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in
+the upper panel, and stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:</p>
+<p>"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be.
+I've told you what will profit you none."</p>
+<p>"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. &Eacute;tienne called over his
+shoulder. "Your information is entirely to my needs."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+<h3><i>The Chevalier of the Tournelles.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>t was a long walk to the Rue des Tournelles, which lay in our
+own quarter, not a dozen streets from the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin
+itself. We found the Gilded Shears hung before a tailor's shop in
+the cellar of a tall, cramped structure, only one window wide. Its
+narrow door was inhospitably shut, but at our summons the concierge
+appeared to inform us that M. Peyrot did truly live here and,
+moreover, was at home, having arrived but half an hour earlier than
+we. He would go up and find out whether monsieur could see us.</p>
+<p>But M. &Eacute;tienne thought that formality unnecessary, and
+was able, at small expense, to convince the concierge of it. We
+went alone up the stairs and crept very quietly along the passage
+toward the door of M. Peyrot. But our shoes made some noise on the
+flags; had he been listening, he might have heard us as easily as
+we heard him. Peyrot had not yet gone to bed after the night's
+exertion; a certain clatter and gurgle convinced us that he was
+refreshing himself with supper, or breakfast, before reposing.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood still, his hand on the door-knob, eager,
+hesitating. Here was the man; were the papers here? If they were,
+should we secure them? A single false step, a single wrong word,
+might foil us.</p>
+<p>The sound of a chair pushed back came from within, and a young
+man's quick, firm step passed across to the far side of the room.
+We heard a box shut and locked. M. &Eacute;tienne nipped my arm; we
+thought we knew what went in. Then came steps again and a loud
+yawn, and presently two whacks on the floor. We knew as well as if
+we could see that Peyrot had thrown his boots across the room. Next
+a clash and jangle of metal, that meant his sword-belt with its
+accoutrements flung on the table. M. &Eacute;tienne, with the rapid
+murmur, "If I look at you, nab him," turned the door-handle.</p>
+<p>But M. Peyrot had prepared against surprise by the simple
+expedient of locking his door. He heard us, too, for he stopped in
+the very middle of a prolonged yawn and held himself absolutely
+still. M. &Eacute;tienne called out softly:</p>
+<p>"Peyrot!"</p>
+<p>"Who is it?"</p>
+<p>"I want to speak with you about something important."</p>
+<p>"Who are you, then?"</p>
+<p>"I'll tell you when you let me in."</p>
+<p>"I'll let you in when you tell me."</p>
+<p>"My name's Martin. I'm a friend of Bernet. I want to speak to
+you quietly about a matter of importance."</p>
+<p>"A friend of Bernet. Hmm! Well, friend of Bernet, it appears to
+me you speak very well through the door."</p>
+<p>"I want to speak with you about the affair of to-night."</p>
+<p>"What affair?"</p>
+<p>"To-night's affair."</p>
+<p>"To-night? I go to a supper-party at St. Germain. What have you
+to say about that?"</p>
+<p>"Last night, then," M. &Eacute;tienne amended, with rising
+temper. "If you want me to shout it out on your stairs, the St.
+Quentin affair."</p>
+<p>"Now, what may you mean by that?" called the voice from within.
+If Peyrot was startled by the name, he carried it off well.</p>
+<p>"You know what I mean. Shall I take the house into our
+confidence?"</p>
+<p>"The house knows as much of your meaning as I. See here, friend
+of Bernet, if you are that gentleman's mate, perhaps you have a
+password about you."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. &Eacute;tienne, readily. "This is it: twenty
+pistoles."</p>
+<p>No answer came immediately; I could guess Peyrot puzzled.
+Presently he called to us:</p>
+<p>"By the bones of St. Anne, I don't believe a word you've been
+saying. But I'll have you in and see what you look like."</p>
+<p>We heard him getting into his boots again and buckling on his
+baldric. Then we listened to the turning of a key; a lid was raised
+and banged down again, and the lock refastened. It was the box once
+more. M. &Eacute;tienne and I looked at each other.</p>
+<p>At length Peyrot opened the door and surveyed us.</p>
+<p>"What, two friends of Bernet, ventre bleu!" But he allowed us to
+enter.</p>
+<p>He drew back before us with a flourishing bow, his hand resting
+lightly on his belt, in which was stuck a brace of pistols. Any
+idea of doing violence on the person of M. Peyrot we dismissed for
+the present.</p>
+<p>Our eyes travelled from his pistols over the rest of him. He was
+small, lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling
+eyes. One moment's glance gave us to know that Peyrot was no
+fool.</p>
+<p>My lord closed the door after him and went straight to the
+point.</p>
+<p>"M. Peyrot, you were engaged last night in an attack on the Duke
+of St. Quentin. You did not succeed in slaying him, but you did
+kill his man, and you took from him a packet. I come to buy
+it."</p>
+<p>He looked at us a little dazed, not understanding, I deem, how
+we knew this. Certes, it had been too dark in the lane for his face
+to be seen, and he had doubtless made sure that he was not followed
+home. He said directly:</p>
+<p>"You are the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Even so, M. Peyrot. I did not care to have the whole stair know
+it, but to you I have no hesitation in confiding that I am M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>M. Peyrot swept a bow till his head almost touched the
+floor.</p>
+<p>"My poor apartment is honoured."</p>
+<p>As he louted low, I made a spring forward; I thought to pin him
+before he could rise. But he was up with the lightness of a bird
+from the bough and standing three yards away from me, where I
+crouched on the spring like a foiled cat. He grinned at me in open
+enjoyment.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur desired?" he asked sympathetically.</p>
+<p>"No, it is I who desire," said M. &Eacute;tienne, clearing
+himself a place to sit on the corner of the table. "I desire that
+packet, monsieur. You know this little expedition of yours to-night
+was something of a failure. When you report to the general-duke, he
+will not be in the best of humours. He does not like failures, the
+general; he will not incline to reward you dear. While I am in the
+very best humour in the world."</p>
+<p>He smiled to prove it. Nor do I think his complaisance
+altogether feigned. The temper of our host amused him.</p>
+<p>As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed. I thought it was
+because he had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had
+I viewed him with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his
+bewilderment genuine.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what
+monsieur is driving at?" he suggested. "Monsieur's remarks about
+his noble father and the general-duke are interesting, but humble
+Jean Peyrot, who does not move in court circles, is at a loss to
+translate them. In other words, I have no notion what you are
+talking about."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, "no shuffling, Peyrot. We
+know as well as you where you were before dawn."</p>
+<p>"Before dawn? Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the
+virtuous."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's
+self might have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an
+alcove, and disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow
+undisturbed. He turned with a triumphant grin on the owner, who
+showed all his teeth pleasantly in answer, no whit abashed.</p>
+<p>"For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners
+ever came inside these walls."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour
+about the room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture,
+even to the dishes and tankards on the table. Peyrot, leaning
+against the wall by the window, regarded him steadily, with
+impassive face. At length M. &Eacute;tienne walked over to the
+chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately put his hand on the
+key.</p>
+<p>Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. &Eacute;tienne,
+turning, looked into his pistol-barrel.</p>
+<p>My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his
+fingers on the key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with
+raised, protesting eyebrows and laughing mouth. But though he
+laughed, he stood still.</p>
+<p>"If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot
+you as I would a rat. Your side is down and mine is up; I have no
+fear to kill you. It will be painful to me, but if necessary I
+shall do it."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably
+than ever.</p>
+<p>"Why&mdash;have I never known you before, Peyrot?"</p>
+<p>"One moment, monsieur." The nose of the pistol pointed around to
+me. "Go over there to the door, you."</p>
+<p>I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that
+pleased him.</p>
+<p>"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair
+over against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee.
+"Monsieur was saying?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he
+liked his present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of
+the noble into this business, realizing shrewdly that they would
+but hamper him, as lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless
+adventurer, living by his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a
+count no more than a hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference
+was more insulting than outright rudeness; but M. &Eacute;tienne
+bore it unruffled. Possibly he schooled himself so to bear it, but
+I think rather that he felt so easily secure on the height of his
+gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence merely tickled him.</p>
+<p>"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have
+dwelt in this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne,
+methinks."</p>
+<p>"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory
+bringing a deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you,
+monsieur? I was left a week-old babe on the monastery step; was
+reared up in holiness within its sacred walls; chorister at ten,
+novice at eighteen, full-fledged friar, fasting, praying, and
+singing misereres, exhorting dying saints and living sinners, at
+twenty."</p>
+<p>"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."</p>
+<p>"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
+leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
+Paris. And never regretted it, neither."</p>
+<p>He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the
+ceiling, and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a
+lark's:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Piety and Grace and Gloom,<br />
+For such like guests I have no room!<br />
+Piety and Gloom and Grace,<br />
+I bang my door shut in your face!<br />
+Gloom and Grace and Piety,<br />
+I set my dog on such as ye!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on
+the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not
+have twitched a finger without his noting it. M. &Eacute;tienne
+rose and leaned across the table toward him.</p>
+<p>"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in
+wealth, of course?"</p>
+<p>Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and
+making a mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own
+rusty clothing.</p>
+<p>"Do I look it?" he answered.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said M. &Eacute;tienne, slowly, as one who digests an
+entirely new idea, "I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a
+Lombard, he is so cold on the subject of turning an honest
+penny."</p>
+<p>Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.</p>
+<p>"Say on," he permitted lazily.</p>
+<p>"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at
+dawn from the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."</p>
+<p>"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M.
+&Eacute;tienne had been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and
+demands a fair answer. Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves
+success. I will look about a bit this morning among my friends and
+see if I can get wind of your packet. I will meet you at
+dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."</p>
+<p>"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are
+risen earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for
+five minutes while you consult your friends."</p>
+<p>Peyrot grinned cheerfully.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I
+know nothing whatever of this affair."</p>
+<p>"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."</p>
+<p>Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such
+as he might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could
+not be convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so
+misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do
+solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this
+affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that
+Monsieur, your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I
+pained to hear it. These be evil days when such things can happen.
+As for your packet, I learn of it only through your word, having no
+more to do with this deplorable business than a babe unborn."</p>
+<p>I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged
+him. But M. &Eacute;tienne gauged him otherwise.</p>
+<p>"Your words please me," he began.</p>
+<p>"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn
+lips, in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."</p>
+<p>"You have boasted," M. &Eacute;tienne went on, "that your side
+was up and mine down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be
+up and yours down, you would hardly be at such pains to deny that
+you ever bared blade against the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses,
+far too honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on
+the duke," Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of
+course it is possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the
+scent of your packet. Twenty pistoles, though. That is not
+much."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table,
+not pleased with the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better
+it. Had we been sure of our suspicions, we would have charged him,
+pistol or no pistol, trusting that our quickness would prevent his
+shooting, or that the powder would miss fire, or that the ball
+would fly wide, or that we should be hit in no vital part;
+trusting, in short, that God was with us and would in some fashion
+save us. But we could not be sure that the packet was with Peyrot.
+What we had heard him lock in the chest might have been these very
+pistols that he had afterward taken out again. Three men had fled
+from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of knowing whether
+this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had
+encountered, or he who had engaged M. &Eacute;tienne. And did we
+know, that would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and
+plundered Huguet. Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know
+who had it, or he might be in honest ignorance of its existence. If
+he had it, it were a crying shame to pay out honest money for what
+we might take by force; to buy your own goods from a thief were a
+sin. But supposing he had it not? If we could seize upon him,
+disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him, rack him, would
+he&mdash;granted he knew&mdash;reveal its whereabouts? Writ large
+in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of
+cowardice. He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while
+the papers went to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the
+business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other
+knave mayhap worse than this.</p>
+<p>Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to
+his lead.</p>
+<p>"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this
+day at eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M.
+&Eacute;tienne said.</p>
+<p>"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur
+forgets the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must
+be reimbursed for that."</p>
+<p>"Conscience, quotha!"</p>
+<p>"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in
+yours. I have never been false to the hand that fed me. If,
+therefore, I divert to you a certain packet which of rights goes
+elsewhere, my sin must be made worth my while. My conscience will
+sting me sorely, but with the aid of a glass and a lass I may
+contrive to forget the pain.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth, my love, and Folly dear,<br />
+Baggages, you're welcome here!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le
+Comte. Fifty in all will bring the packet to your hand."</p>
+<p>It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the
+fellow's face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers
+for Monsieur, and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld
+him.</p>
+<p>"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven.
+You may do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my
+fifty pistoles."</p>
+<p>"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"</p>
+<p>"The word of a St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Sufficient, of course."</p>
+<p>The scamp rose with a bow.</p>
+<p>"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I
+give you the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius,
+that he and the packet will be there. This has been a delightful
+call, monsieur, and I am loath to let you go. But it is time I was
+free to look for that packet."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's eyes went over to the chest.</p>
+<p>"I wish you all success in your arduous search."</p>
+<p>"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot
+sighed. "My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my
+task difficult indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall
+question every man in Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone
+unturned."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne still pensively regarded the chest.</p>
+<p>"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the
+purpose."</p>
+<p>"You appear yet to nurse the belief that I have the packet. But
+as a matter of fact, monsieur, I have not."</p>
+<p>I studied his grave face, and could not for the life of me make
+out whether he were lying. M. &Eacute;tienne said merely:</p>
+<p>"Come, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"You'll drink a glass before you go?" Peyrot cried hospitably,
+running to fill a goblet muddy with his last pouring. But M.
+&Eacute;tienne drew back.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't blame you. I wouldn't drink it myself if I were a
+count," Peyrot said, setting the draught to his own lips. "After
+this noon I shall drink it no more all summer. I shall live like a
+king.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Kiss me, Folly; hug me, Mirth:<br />
+Life without you's nothing worth!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>Monsieur, can I lend you a hat?"</p>
+<p>I had already opened the door and was holding it for my master
+to pass, when Peyrot picked up from the floor and held out to him a
+battered and dirty toque, with its draggled feather hanging
+forlornly over the side. Chafed as he was, M. &Eacute;tienne could
+not deny a laugh to the rascal's impudence.</p>
+<p>"I cannot rob monsieur," he said.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte need have no scruple. I shall buy me better out of
+his fifty pistoles."</p>
+<p>But M. &Eacute;tienne was out in the passage, I following,
+banging the door after me. We went down the stair in time to
+Peyrot's lusty carolling:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly,<br />
+While Folly's sure to linger by!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>"Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling
+to let this dog set the terms."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "perhaps he'll not stir out at once. I'll
+run home for Vigo and his men, and we'll make the rascal
+disgorge."</p>
+<p>"Now are you more zealous than honest, boy."</p>
+<p>I was silent, abashed, and he added:</p>
+<p>"I had not been afraid to try conclusions with him, pistols or
+not, were I sure that he had the packet. I believe he has, yet
+there is the chance that, after all, in this one particular he
+speaks truth. I cannot take any chances; I must get those papers
+for Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Yes, we could not have done otherwise, M. &Eacute;tienne. But,
+monsieur, will you dare go to this inn? M. le Comte is a man in
+jeopardy; he may not keep rendezvous of the enemy's choosing."</p>
+<p>"I might not keep one of Lucas's choosing. Though," he added,
+with a smile, "natheless, I think I should. But it is not likely
+this fellow knows of the warrant against me. Paris is a big place;
+news does not travel all over town as quickly as at St. Quentin. I
+think friend Peyrot has more to gain by playing fair than playing
+false, and appointing the cabaret of the Bonne Femme has a very
+open, pleasing sound. Did he mean to brain me he would scarce have
+set that place."</p>
+<p>"It was not Peyrot alone I meant. But monsieur is so well known.
+In the streets, or at the dinner-hour, some one may see you who
+knows Mayenne is after you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, of that I must take my chance," he made answer, no whit
+troubled by the warning. "I go home now for the ransom, and I will
+e'en be at the pains to doff this gear for something darker."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I pleaded, "why not stay at home to get your dues of
+sleep? Vigo will bring the gold; he and I will put the matter
+through."</p>
+<p>"I ask not your advice," he cried haughtily; then with instant
+softening: "Nay, this is my affair, F&eacute;lix. I have taken it
+upon myself to recover Monsieur his papers. I must carry it through
+myself to the very omega."</p>
+<p>I said no more, partly because it would have done no good,
+partly because, in spite of the strange word, I understood how he
+felt.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you should go home and sleep," he suggested
+tenderly.</p>
+<p>"Nay," cried I. "I had a cat-nap in the lane; I'm game to see it
+through."</p>
+<p>"Then," he commanded, "you may stay here-abouts and watch that
+door. For I have some curiosity to know whether he will need to
+fare forth after the treasure. If he do as I guess, he will spend
+the next hours as you counsel me, making up arrears of sleep, and
+you'll not see him till a quarter or so before eleven. But whenever
+he comes out, follow him. Keep your safe distance and dog him if
+you can."</p>
+<p>"And if I lose him?"</p>
+<p>"Come back home. Station yourself now where he won't notice you.
+That arch there should serve."</p>
+<p>We had been standing at the street corner, sheltered by a
+balcony over our heads from the view of Peyrot's window.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I do wish you would bring Vigo back with
+you."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "you are the worst courtier I ever
+saw."</p>
+<p>I crossed the street as he told me, glancing up at the third
+story of the house of the Gilded Shears. No watcher was visible.
+From the archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I
+could well command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M.
+&Eacute;tienne nodded to me and walked off whistling, staring full
+in the face every one he met.</p>
+<p>I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot
+to be doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep. But I was sternly
+determined to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater
+comfort&mdash;cold enough comfort it was&mdash;I sat me down on the
+paving-stones, yet I kept my eyelids propped open, my eyes on
+Peyrot's door. I was helped in carrying out my virtuous resolve by
+the fact that the court was populous and my carcass in the entrance
+much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that full half of them
+swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The hard part was
+that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on Peyrot's
+door.</p>
+<p>He delayed so long and so long that I feared with shamed
+misgiving I must have let him slip, when at length, on the very
+stroke of eleven, he sauntered forth. He was yawning prodigiously,
+but set off past my lair at a smart pace. I followed at goodly
+distance, but never once did he glance around. He led the way
+straight to the sign of the Bonne Femme.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="324.jpg"></a> <a href="images/324.jpg"><img src=
+"images/324.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>AT THE "BONNE FEMME."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>I entered two minutes after him, passing from the cabaret, where
+my men were not, to the dining-hall, where, to my relief, they
+were. At two huge fireplaces savoury soups bubbled, juicy rabbits
+simmered, fat capons roasted; the smell brought the tears to my
+eyes. A concourse of people was about: gentles and burghers seated
+at table, or passing in and out; waiters running back and forth
+from the fires, drawers from the cabaret. I paused to scan the
+throng, jostled by one and another, before I descried my master and
+my knave. M. &Eacute;tienne, the prompter at the rendezvous, had,
+like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had deserted it now and
+stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their elbows on the
+deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up suddenly
+to Peyrot's side, making him jump.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's you, my little gentleman!" he exclaimed, smiling to
+show all his firm teeth, as white and even as a court beauty's. He
+looked in the best of humours, as was not wonderful, considering
+that he was engaged in fastening up in the breast of his doublet
+something hard and lumpy. M. &Eacute;tienne held up a packet for me
+to see, before Peyrot's shielding body; it was tied with red cord
+and sealed with a spread falcon over the tiny letters, <i>Je
+reviendrai</i>. In the corner was written very small, <i>St. Q.</i>
+Smiling, he put it into the breast of his doublet.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," my scamp said to him with close lips that the room
+might not hear, "you are a gentleman. If there ever comes a day
+when You-know-who is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to
+serve you as well as I have served him."</p>
+<p>"I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than
+ever.</p>
+<p>"I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have
+served him. Bear me in mind, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Come, F&eacute;lix," was all my lord's answer.</p>
+<p>Peyrot sprang forward to detain us.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, will you not dine with me? Both of you, I beg. I will
+have every wine the cellar affords."</p>
+<p>"No," said M. &Eacute;tienne, carelessly, not deigning to anger;
+"but there is my dinner for you, an you like. I have paid for it,
+but I have other business than to eat it."</p>
+<p>Bidding a waiter serve M. Peyrot, he walked from the room
+without other glance at him. A slight shade fell over the reckless,
+scampish face; he was a moment vexed that we scorned him. Merely
+vexed, I think; shamed not at all; he knew not the feel of it. Even
+in the brief space I watched him, as I passed to the door, his
+visage cleared, and he sat him down contentedly to finish M.
+&Eacute;tienne's veal broth.</p>
+<p>My lord paced along rapidly and gladly, on fire to be before
+Monsieur with the packet. But one little cloud, transient as
+Peyrot's, passed across his lightsome countenance.</p>
+<p>"I would that knave were of my rank," he said. "I had not left
+him without slapping a glove in his face."</p>
+<p>That Peyrot had come off scot-free put me out of patience, too,
+but I regretted the gold we had given him more than the wounds we
+had not. The money, on the contrary, troubled M. &Eacute;tienne no
+whit; what he had never toiled for he parted with lightly.</p>
+<p>We came to our gates and went straightway up the stairs to
+Monsieur's cabinet. He sprang to meet us at the door, snatching the
+packet from his son's eager hand.</p>
+<p>"Well done, &Eacute;tienne, my champion! An you brought me the
+crown of France I were not so pleased!"</p>
+<p>The flush of joy at generous praise of good work kindled on M.
+&Eacute;tienne's cheek; it were hard to say which of the two
+messieurs beamed the more delightedly on the other.</p>
+<p>"My son, you have brought me back my honour," spoke Monsieur,
+more quietly, the exuberance of his delight abating, but leaving
+him none the less happy. "If you had sinned against me&mdash;which
+I do not admit, dear lad&mdash;it were more than made up for
+now."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born
+for. Now I know it was for this morning."</p>
+<p>"For this and many more mornings, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur made
+gay answer, laying a hand on his son's shoulder. "Courage, comrade.
+We'll have our lady yet."</p>
+<p>He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his
+writing-table. For all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more
+interested in his papers than in Mlle. de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"I'll get this off my hands at once," he went on, with the
+effect of talking to himself rather than to us. "It shall go
+straight off to Lema&icirc;tre. You'd better go to bed, both of
+you. My faith, you've made a night of it!"</p>
+<p>"Won't you take me for your messenger, Monsieur? You need a
+trusty one."</p>
+<p>"A kindly offer, &Eacute;tienne. But you have earned your rest.
+And you, true as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I
+have, God be thanked. Gilles will take this straight from my hand
+to Lema&icirc;tre's."</p>
+<p>He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a
+thought striking him, he took it out again.</p>
+<p>"I'd best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the
+president's papers. I'll scratch out my initial, too. The cipher
+tells nothing."</p>
+<p>"He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No, but this time we'll provide for every chance. We'll take
+all the precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute."</p>
+<p>He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to
+scrape the wax away. It slipped and severed the cords. Of its own
+accord the stiff paper of the flap unfolded.</p>
+<p>"The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if
+I were in danger of forgetting it," Monsieur said idly. "The truth
+is&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet,
+slapping it wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet. Each was
+absolutely blank!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+<h3><i>The Florentines.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>. &Eacute;tienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers
+from his father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to
+believe his senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one
+moment from flowery lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he
+did.</p>
+<p>"But the seal!" he stammered.</p>
+<p>"The seal was genuine," Monsieur answered, startled as he. "How
+your fellow could have the king's signet&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, scratching at the fragments.
+"This is it. Dunce that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is
+a layer of paper embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out,
+smeared hot wax on the false packet, pressed in the seal, and
+curled the new wax over the edge. It was cleverly done; the seal is
+but little thicker, little larger than before. It did not look
+tampered with. Would you have suspected it, Monsieur?" he demanded
+piteously.</p>
+<p>"I had no thought of it. But this Peyrot&mdash;it may not yet be
+too late&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I will go back," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, darting to the door.
+But Monsieur laid forcible hands on him.</p>
+<p>"Not you, &Eacute;tienne. You were hurt yesterday; you have not
+closed your eyes for twenty-four hours. I don't want a dead son. I
+blame you not for the failure; not another man of us all would have
+come so near success."</p>
+<p>"Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M.
+&Eacute;tienne cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I
+did not think to doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in
+the inn, but it was Lema&icirc;tre's sealed packet. However, Peyrot
+sat down to my dinner: I can be back before he has finished his
+three kinds of wine."</p>
+<p>"Stop, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur commanded. "I forbid you. You
+are gray with fatigue. Vigo shall go."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze
+in his eyes flickered out, and he made obedient salute.</p>
+<p>"So be it. Let him go. I am no use; I bungle everything I touch.
+But he may accomplish something."</p>
+<p>He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his
+face in his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened. A statue-maker
+might have copied him for a figure of Defeat.</p>
+<p>"Go find Vigo," Monsieur bade me, "and then get you to bed."</p>
+<p>I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.</p>
+<p>I too smarted, but mine was the private's disappointment, not
+the general's who had planned the campaign. The credit of the
+rescue was none of mine; no more was the blame of failure. I need
+not rack myself with questioning, Had I in this or that done
+differently, should I not have triumphed? I had done only what I
+was told. Yet I was part of the expedition; I could not but share
+the grief. If I did not wet my pillow with my tears, it was because
+I could not keep awake long enough. Whatever my sorrows, speedily
+they slipped from me.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then
+wondered whether, after all, I had waked. Here, to be sure, was
+Marcel's bed, on which I had lain down; there was the high
+gable-window, through which the westering sun now poured. There was
+the wardrobe open, with Marcel's Sunday suit hanging on the peg;
+here were the two stools, the little image of the Virgin on the
+wall. But here was also something else, so out of place in the
+chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure it was real.
+At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign wood,
+beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man. It was
+about as large as my lord's despatch-box, bound at the edges with
+shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of
+leaves and flowers. Beside the box were set three shallow trays,
+lined with blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith's
+work-glittering chains, linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of
+yellow snakes with green eyes, buckles with ivory teeth,
+glove-clasps thick with pearls, ear-rings and finger-rings with
+precious stones.</p>
+<p>I stared bedazzled from the display to him who stood as showman.
+This was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller,
+with a shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face,
+very boyish and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois
+fashion; yet there was about him and his apparel something, I could
+not tell what, unfamiliar, different from us others.</p>
+<p>He, meeting my eye, smiled in the friendliest way, like a child,
+and said, in Italian:</p>
+<p>"Good day to you, my little gentleman."</p>
+<p>I had still the uncertain feeling that I must be in a dream, for
+why should an Italian jeweller be displaying his treasures to me, a
+penniless page? But the dream was amusing; I was in no haste to
+wake.</p>
+<p>I knew my Italian well enough, for Monsieur's confessor, the
+Father Francesco, who had followed him into exile, was Florentine;
+and as he always spoke his own tongue to Monsieur, and I was always
+at the duke's heels, I picked up a deal of it. After Monsieur's
+going, the father, already a victim, poor man, to the
+falling-sickness, of which he died, stayed behind with us, and I
+found a pricking pleasure in talking with him in the speech he
+loved, of Monsieur's Roman journey, of his exploits in the war of
+the Three Henrys. Therefore the words came easily to my lips to
+answer this lad from over the Alps:</p>
+<p>"I give you good day, friend."</p>
+<p>He looked somewhat surprised and more than pleased, breaking at
+once into voluble speech:</p>
+<p>"The best of greetings to you, young sir. Now, what can I sell
+you this fine day? I have not been half a week in this big city of
+yours, yet already I have but one boxful of trinkets left. They are
+noble, open-handed customers, these gallants of Paris. I have not
+to show them my wares twice, I can tell you. They know what key
+will unlock their fair mistresses' hearts. And now, what can I sell
+you, my little gentleman, to buy your sweetheart's kisses?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I have no sweetheart," I said, "and if I had, she would
+not wear these gauds."</p>
+<p>"She would if she could get them, then," he retorted. "Now, let
+me give you a bit of advice, my friend, for I see you are but
+young: buy this gold chain of me, or this ring with this little
+dove on it,&mdash;see, how cunningly wrought,&mdash;and you'll not
+lack long for a sweetheart."</p>
+<p>His words huffed me a bit, for he spoke as if he were vastly my
+senior.</p>
+<p>"I want no sweetheart," I returned with dignity, "to be bought
+with gold."</p>
+<p>"Nay," he cried quickly, "but when your own valour and prowess
+have inflamed her with passion, you should be willing to reward her
+devotion and set at rest her suspense by a suitable gift."</p>
+<p>I looked at him uneasily, for I had a suspicion that he might be
+making fun of me. But his countenance was as guileless as a
+kitten's.</p>
+<p>"Well, I tell you again I have no sweetheart and I want no
+sweetheart," I said; "I have no time to bother with girls."</p>
+<p>At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making
+naught by it.</p>
+<p>"The messer is very much occupied?" he asked with exceeding
+deference. "The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he
+is occupied with great matters? Oh, that can I well believe, and I
+cry the messer's pardon. For when the mind is taken up with affairs
+of state, it is distasteful to listen even for a moment to light
+talk of maids and jewels."</p>
+<p>Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly
+unconscious, was sorting over his treasures. I made up my mind his
+queer talk was but the outlandish way of a foreigner. He looked at
+me again, serious and respectful.</p>
+<p>"The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous
+encounters. Is it not so? Then he will do well to carry ever over
+his heart the sacred image of our Lord."</p>
+<p>He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended
+a crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon
+it. Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin,
+was nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in
+the palm of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it,
+and I crossed myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had
+trampled on my crucifix; the stranger all unwittingly had struck a
+bull's-eye. I had committed grave offence against God, but perhaps
+if, putting gewgaws aside, I should give my all for this cross, he
+would call the account even. I knew nothing of the value of a
+carving such as this, but I remembered I was not moneyless, and I
+said, albeit somewhat shyly:</p>
+<p>"I cannot take the rosary. But I should like well the crucifix.
+But then, I have only ten pistoles."</p>
+<p>"Ten pistoles!" he repeated contemptuously. "Corpo di Bacco! The
+workmanship alone is worth twenty." Then, viewing my fallen visage,
+he added: "However, I have received fair treatment in this house,
+beshrew me but I have! I have made good sales to your young count.
+What sort of master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, there's nobody like him," I answered, "except, of course,
+M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>"Ah, then you have two masters?" he inquired curiously, yet with
+a certain careless air. It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that
+he was a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman. But
+he should gain nothing from me.</p>
+<p>"This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin," I said. "Surely
+you could not come in at the gate without discovering that?"</p>
+<p>"He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?"</p>
+<p>"Assuredly," I replied cautiously.</p>
+<p>"More of a man than the Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been
+for my hopes of the crucifix. If he planned to sell it to me cheap,
+thereby hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I
+should not buy it at his price&mdash;and withhold the information.
+So I made civil answer:</p>
+<p>"They are both as gallant gentlemen as any living. About this
+cross, now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes," he answered at once, accepting with
+willingness&mdash;well feigned, I thought&mdash;the change of
+topic. "You can give me ten pistoles, say you? 'Tis making you a
+present of the treasure. Yet, since I have received good treatment
+at the hands of your master, I will e'en give it to you. You shall
+have your cross."</p>
+<p>With suspicions now at point of certainty, I drew out my pouch
+from under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces
+which were my store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it
+when I shattered the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it
+together for me with a thread, and it served very well. The Italian
+unhooked the delicate carving from the silver chain and hung it on
+my wooden one, which I threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my
+new possession. Marcel's Virgin was a botch compared with it. I
+remembered that mademoiselle, who had given me half my wealth, the
+half that won me the rest, had bidden me buy something in the marts
+of Paris; and I told myself with pride that she could not fail to
+hold me high did she know how, passing by all vanities, I had spent
+my whole store for a holy image. Few boys of my age would be
+capable of the like. Certes, I had done piously, and should now
+take a further pious joy, my purchase safe on my neck, in thwarting
+the wiles of this serpent. I would play with him awhile, tease and
+baffle him, before handing him over in triumph to Vigo.</p>
+<p>Sure enough, he began as I had expected:</p>
+<p>"This M. de Mar down-stairs, he is a very good master, I
+suppose?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," I said, without enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>"He has always treated you well?"</p>
+<p>I bethought myself of the trick I had played successfully with
+the officer of the burgess guard.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, I suppose so. I have only known him two days."</p>
+<p>"But you have known him well? You have seen much of him?" he
+demanded with ill-concealed eagerness.</p>
+<p>"But not so very much," I made tepid answer. "I have not been
+with him all the time of these two days. I have seen really very
+little of him."</p>
+<p>"And you know not whether or no he be a good master?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, pretty good. So-so."</p>
+<p>He sprang forward to deal me a stinging box on the ear.</p>
+<p>I was out of bed at one bound, scattering the trinkets in a
+golden rain and rushing for him. He retreated before me. It was to
+save his jewels, but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of
+me. I dashed at him, all headlong confidence; the next I knew he
+had somehow twisted his foot between mine, and tripped me before I
+could grapple. Never was wight more confounded to find himself on
+the floor.</p>
+<p>I was starting up again unhurt when I saw something that made me
+to forget my purpose. I sat still where I was, with dropped jaw and
+bulging eyes. For his hair, that had been black, was golden.</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" I said.</p>
+<p>"And so you know not you little villain, whether you have a good
+master or not?"</p>
+<p>"But how was I to dream it was monsieur?" I cried, confounded.
+"I knew there was something queer about him&mdash;about you, I
+mean&mdash;about the person I took you for, that is. I knew there
+was something wrong about you&mdash;that is to say, I mean, I
+thought there was; I mean I knew he wasn't what he seemed&mdash;you
+were not. And Peyrot fooled us, and I didn't want to be fooled
+again."</p>
+<p>"Then I am a good master?" he demanded truculently, advancing
+upon me.</p>
+<p>I put up my hands to my ears.</p>
+<p>"The best, monsieur. And monsieur wrestled well, too."</p>
+<p>"I can't prove that by you, F&eacute;lix," he retorted, and
+laughed in my nettled face. "Well, if you've not trampled on my
+jewels, I forgive your contumacy."</p>
+<p>If I had, my bare toes had done them no harm. I crawled about
+the floor, gathering them all up and putting them on the bed, where
+I presently sat down myself to stare at him, trying to realize him
+for M. le Comte. He had seated himself, too, and was dusting his
+trampled wig and clapping it on again.</p>
+<p>He had shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and
+the whole look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke
+of the razor; he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He
+had stained his face so well that it looked for all the world as
+though the Southern sun had done it for him; his eyebrows and,
+lashes were dark by nature. His wig came much lower over his
+forehead than did his own hair, and altered the upper part of his
+face as much as the shaving of the lower. Only his eyes were the
+same. He had had his back to the window at first, and I had not
+noted them; but now that he had turned, his eyes gleamed so light
+as to be fairly startling in his dark face&mdash;like stars in a
+stormy sky.</p>
+<p>"Well, then, how do you like me?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur confounds me. It's witchery. I cannot get used to
+him."</p>
+<p>"That's as I would have it," he returned, coming over to the
+bedside to arrange his treasures. "For if I look new to you, I
+think I may look so to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur goes to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine as a jeweller?" I
+cried, enlightened.</p>
+<p>"Aye. And if the ladies do not crowd about me&mdash;" he broke
+off with a gesture, and put his trays back in his box.</p>
+<p>"Well, I wondered, monsieur. I wondered if we were going to sell
+ornaments to Peyrot."</p>
+<p>He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn
+Peyrot. He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him
+eating, cursed him drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting;
+cursed him summer, cursed him winter; cursed him young, cursed him
+old; living, dying, and dead. I inferred that the packet had not
+been recovered.</p>
+<p>"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne
+Femme, but Peyrot had vanished. So he galloped round to the Rue
+Tournelles, whither he had sent two of our men before him, but the
+bird was flown. He had been home half an hour before,&mdash;he left
+the inn just after us,&mdash;had paid his arrears of rent,
+surrendered his key, and taken away his chest, with all his worldly
+goods in it, on the shoulders of two porters, bound for parts
+unknown. Gilles is scouring Paris for him. Mordieu, I wish him
+luck!"</p>
+<p>His face betokened little hope of Gilles. We both kept chagrined
+silence.</p>
+<p>"And we thought him sleeping!" presently cried he.</p>
+<p>"Well," he added, rising, "that milk's spilt; no use crying over
+it. Plan a better venture; that's the only course. Monsieur is gone
+back to St. Denis to report to the king. Marry, he makes as little
+of these gates as if he were a tennis-ball and they the net. Time
+was when he thought he must plan and prepare, and know the captain
+of the watch, and go masked at midnight. He has got bravely over
+that now; he bounces in and out as easily as kiss my hand. I pray
+he may not try it once too often."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne dare not touch him."</p>
+<p>"What Mayenne may dare is not good betting. Monsieur thinks he
+dares not. Monsieur has come through so many perils of late, he is
+happily convinced he bears a charmed life. F&eacute;lix, do you
+come with me to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur!" I cried, bethinking myself that I had forgotten
+to dress.</p>
+<p>"Nay, you need not don these clothes," he interposed, with a
+look of wickedness which I could not interpret. "Wait; I'm back
+anon."</p>
+<p>He darted out of the room, to return speedily with an armful of
+apparel, which he threw on the bed.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I gasped in horror, "it's woman's gear!"</p>
+<p>"Verily."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! you cannot mean me to wear this!"</p>
+<p>"I mean it precisely."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Why, look you, F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "how else am I to
+take you? You were at pains to make yourself conspicuous in M. de
+Mayenne's salon; they will recognize you as quickly as me."</p>
+<p>"Oh, monsieur, put me in a wig, in cap and bells, an you like! I
+will be monsieur's clown, anything, only not this!"</p>
+<p>"I never heard of a jeweller accompanied by his clown. Nor have
+I any party-colour in my armoires. But since I have exerted myself
+to borrow this toggery,&mdash;and a fine, big lass is the owner, so
+I think it will fit,&mdash;you must wear it."</p>
+<p>I was like to burst with mortification; I stood there in dumb,
+agonized appeal.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, then you need not go at all. If you go, you go as
+F&eacute;licie. But you may stay at home, if it likes you
+better."</p>
+<p>That settled me. I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner
+than not go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself
+sullenly and clumsily in the murrain petticoats.</p>
+<p>There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and
+a white apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back
+collar, and a scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green
+tongue. I was soon in such a desperate tangle over these divers
+garments, so utterly muddled as to which to put on first, and which
+side forward, and which end up, and where and how by the grace of
+God to fasten them, that M. &Eacute;tienne, with roars of laughter,
+came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted on stuffing the whole of my
+jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the proper curves, and to
+make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I was like to
+suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so that
+every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces
+from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and
+again, and the more it happened the more we laughed and the less he
+could dress me. I ached in every rib, and the tears were running
+down his cheeks, washing little clean channels in the stain.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, this will never do," he gasped when at length he
+could speak. "Never after a carouse have I been so maudlin. Compose
+yourself, for the love of Heaven. Think of something serious; think
+of me! Think of Peyrot, think of Mayenne, think of Lucas. Think of
+what will happen to us now if Mayenne know us for ourselves."</p>
+<p>"Enough, monsieur," I said. "I am sobered."</p>
+<p>But even now that I held still we could not draw the last holes
+in the bodice-point nearly together.</p>
+<p>"Nay, monsieur, I can never wear it like this," I panted, when
+he had tied it as tight as he could. "I shall die, or I shall burst
+the seams." He had perforce to give me more room; he pulled the
+apron higher to cover gaps, and fastened a bunch of keys and a
+pocket at my waist. He set a brown wig on my head, nearly covered
+by a black mortier, with its wide scarf hanging down my back.</p>
+<p>"Hang me, but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried,
+proud of me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "F&eacute;lix,
+you've no notion how handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the
+world when you contrived to be born a boy."</p>
+<p>"I thank my stars I was born a boy," I declared. "I wouldn't get
+into this toggery for any one else on earth. I tell monsieur that,
+flat."</p>
+<p>"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails
+spoil all."</p>
+<p>I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot.</p>
+<p>"Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?"</p>
+<p>"Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned.</p>
+<p>"No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make
+him writhe to lend them.</p>
+<p>"Constant's best," he promised, disappearing. It was as good as
+a play to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot,
+after a month in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages
+existed; or, more likely, he did not care to take the household
+into his confidence. He was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose,
+and shoes of red morocco, the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he
+brought a hand-mirror, for me to look on my beauty.</p>
+<p>"Nay, monsieur," I said with a sulk that started anew his
+laughter. "I'll not take it; I want not to see myself. But monsieur
+will do well to examine his own countenance."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! I should say so," he cried. "I must e'en go repair
+myself; and you, F&eacute;lix,&mdash;F&eacute;licie,&mdash;must be
+fed."</p>
+<p>I was in truth as hollow as a drum, yet I cried out that I had
+rather starve than venture into the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"You flatter yourself," he retorted. "You'd not be known. Old
+Jumel will give you the pick of the larder for a kiss," he roared
+in my sullen face, and added, relenting: "Well, then, I will send
+one of the lackeys up with a salver. The lazy beggars have naught
+else to do."</p>
+<p>I bolted the door after him, and when the man brought my tray,
+bade him set it down outside. He informed me through the panels
+that he would go drown himself before he would be content to lie
+slugabed the livelong day while his betters waited on him. I
+trembled for fear in his virtuous scorn he should take his fardel
+away again. But he had had his orders. When, after listening to his
+footsteps descending the stairs, I reached out a cautious arm, the
+tray was on the floor. The generous meat and wine put new heart
+into me; by the time my lord returned I was eager for the
+enterprise.</p>
+<p>"Have you finished?" he demanded. "Faith, I see you have. Then
+let us start; it grows late. The shadows, like good Mussulmans, are
+stretching to the east. I must catch the ladies in their chambers
+before supper. Come, we'll take the box between us."</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I carry that on my shoulders."</p>
+<p>"What, my lass, on your dainty shoulders? Nay, 'twould make the
+townsfolk stare."</p>
+<p>I gnawed my lip in silence; he exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Now, never have I seen a maid fresh from the convent blush so
+prettily. I'd give my right hand to walk you out past the
+guard-room."</p>
+<p>I shrank as a snail when you touch its horns. He cried:</p>
+<p>"Marry, but I will, though!"</p>
+<p>Now I, unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take
+refuge in; I might writhe, but I could not defend myself.</p>
+<p>"As you will, monsieur," I said, setting my teeth hard.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I dare not. Those fellows would follow us laughing to the
+doors of Lorraine House itself. I've told none of this prank; I
+have even contrived to send all the lackeys out of doors on fools'
+errands. We'll sneak out like thieves by the postern. Come, tread
+your wariest."</p>
+<p>On tiptoe, with the caution of malefactors, we crept from stair
+to stair, giggling under our breath like the callow lad and saucy
+lass we looked to be. We won in safety to the postern, and came out
+to face the terrible eye of the world.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+<h3><i>A double masquerade.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-f.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>&eacute;lix, we are speaking in our own tongue. It is such
+lapses as these bring men to the gallows. Italian from this word,
+my girl."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I have no notion how to bear myself, what to say," I
+answered uneasily.</p>
+<p>"Say as little as you can. For, I confess, your voice and your
+hands give me pause; otherwise I would take you anywhere for a
+lass. Your part must be the shy maiden. My faith, you look the
+r&ocirc;le; your cheeks are poppies! You will follow docile at my
+heels while I tell lies for two. I have the hope that the ladies
+will heed me and my jewels more than you."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, could we not go safelier at night?"</p>
+<p>"I have thought of that. But at night the household gathers in
+the salon; we should run the gantlet of a hundred looks and
+tongues. While now, if we have luck, we may win to mademoiselle's
+own chamber&mdash;" He broke off abruptly, and walked along in a
+day-dream.</p>
+<p>"Well," he resumed presently, coming back to the needs of the
+moment, "let us know our names and station. I am Giovanni Rossini,
+son of the famous goldsmith of Florence; you, Giulietta, my sister.
+We came to Paris in the legate's train, trade being dull at home,
+the gentry having fled to the hills for the hot month. Of course
+you've never set foot out of France,
+F&eacute;&mdash;Giulietta?"</p>
+<p>"Never out of St. Quentin till I came hither. But Father
+Francesco has talked to me much of his city of Florence."</p>
+<p>"Good; you can then make shift to answer a question or two if
+put to it. Your Italian, I swear, is of excellent quality. You
+speak French like the Picard you are, but Italian like a
+gentleman&mdash;that is to say, like a lady."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I bemoaned miserably, "I shall never come through it
+alive, never in the world. They will know me in the flick of an eye
+for a boy; I know they will. Why, the folk we are passing can see
+something wrong; they all are staring at me."</p>
+<p>"Of course they stare," he answered tranquilly. "I should think
+some wrong if they did not. Can your modesty never understand, my
+Giulietta, what a pretty lass you are?"</p>
+<p>He fell to laughing at my discomfort, and thus, he full of gay
+confidence, I full of misgiving, we came before the doors of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</p>
+<p>"Courage," he whispered to me. "Courage will conquer the devil
+himself. Put a good face on it and take the plunge." The next
+moment he was in the archway, deluging the sentry with his rapid
+Italian.</p>
+<p>"Nom d'un chien! What's all this? What are you after?" the man
+shouted at us, to make us understand the better. "Haven't you a
+word of honest French in your head?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, tapping his box, very brokenly, very
+laboriously stammered forth something about jewels for the
+ladies.</p>
+<p>"Get in with you, then."</p>
+<p>We were not slow to obey.</p>
+<p>The courtyard was deserted, nor did we see any one in the
+windows of the house, against which the afternoon sun struck hotly.
+To keep out his unwelcome rays, the house door was pushed almost
+shut. We paused a moment on the step, to listen to the voices of
+gossiping lackeys within, and then M. &Eacute;tienne boldly
+knocked.</p>
+<p>There was a scurrying in the hall, as if half a dozen idlers
+were plunging into their doublets and running to their places. Then
+my good friend Pierre opened the door. In the row of underlings at
+his back I recognized the two who had taken part in my flogging.
+The cold sweat broke out upon me lest they in their turn should
+know me.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne looked from one to another with the childlike
+smile of his bare lips, demanding if any here spoke Italian.</p>
+<p>"I," answered Pierre himself. "Now, what may your errand
+be?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's soon told," M. &Eacute;tienne cried volubly, as one
+delighted to find himself understood. "I am a jeweller from
+Florence; I am selling my wares in your great houses. I have but
+just sold a necklace to the Duchesse de Joyeuse; I crave permission
+to show my trinkets to the fair ladies here. But take me up to
+them, and they'll not make you repent it."</p>
+<p>"Go tell madame," Pierre bade one of his men, and turning again
+to us gave us kindly permission to set down our burden and
+wait.</p>
+<p>For incredible good luck, the heavy hangings were drawn over the
+sunny windows, making a soft twilight in the room. I sidled over to
+a bench in the far corner and was feeling almost safe, when
+Pierre&mdash;beshrew him!&mdash;called attention to me.</p>
+<p>"Now, that is a heavy box for a maid to help lug. Do you make
+the lasses do porters' work, you Florentines?"</p>
+<p>"But I am a stranger here," M. &Eacute;tienne explained. "Did I
+hire a porter, how am I to tell an honest one? Belike he might run
+off with all my treasures, and where is poor Giovanni then?
+Besides, it were cruel to leave my little sister in our lodging,
+not a soul to speak to, the long day through. There is none where
+we lodge knows Italian, as you do so like an angel, Sir Master of
+the Household."</p>
+<p>Now, Pierre was no more ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel than I was,
+but that did not dampen his pleasure to be called so. He sat down
+on the bench by M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"How came you two to be in Paris?" he asked.</p>
+<p>My lord proceeded to tell him I know not what glib and
+convincing farrago, with every excellence, I made no doubt, of
+accent and gesture. But I could not listen; I had affairs of my own
+by this time. The lackeys had come up close round me, more
+interested in me than in my brother, and the same Jean who had held
+me for my beating, who had wanted my coat stripped off me that I
+might be whacked to bleed, now said:</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant you're hot and tired and thirsty, mademoiselle,
+for all you look as fresh as cress. Will you drink a cup of wine if
+I fetch it?"</p>
+<p>I had kept my eyes on the ground from the first moment of
+encounter, in mortal dread to look these men in the face; but now,
+gaining courage, I raised my glance and smiled at him bashfully,
+and faltered that I did not understand.</p>
+<p>He understood the sense, if not the words, of my answer, and
+repeated his offer, slowly, loudly. I strove to look as blank as
+the wall, and shook my head gently and helplessly, and turned an
+inquiring gaze to the others, as if beseeching them to interpret.
+One of the fellows clapped Jean on the shoulder with a roar of
+laughter.</p>
+<p>"A fall, a fall!" he shouted. "Here's the all-conquering Jean
+Marchand tripped up for once. He thinks nothing that wears
+petticoats can withstand him, but here's a maid that hasn't a word
+to throw at him."</p>
+<p>"Pshaw! she doesn't understand me," Jean returned, undaunted,
+and promptly pointed a finger at my mouth and then raised his fist
+to his own, with sucks and gulps. I allowed myself to comprehend
+then. I smiled in as coquettish a fashion as I could contrive, and
+glanced on the ground, and slowly looked up again and nodded.</p>
+<p>The men burst into loud applause.</p>
+<p>"Good old Jean! Jean wins. Well played, Jean! Vive Jean!"</p>
+<p>Jean, flushed with triumph, ran off on his errand, while I
+thought of Margot, the steward's daughter, at home, and tried to
+recollect every air and grace I had ever seen her flaunt before us
+lads. It was not bad fun, this. I hid my hands under my apron and
+spoke not at all, but sighed and smiled and blushed under their
+stares like any fine lady. Once in one's life, for one hour, it is
+rather amusing to be a girl. But that is quite long enough, say
+I.</p>
+<p>Jean came again directly with a great silver tankard.</p>
+<p>"Burgundy, pardieu!" cried one of his mates, sticking his nose
+into the pot as it passed him, "and full! Ciel, you must think your
+lass has a head."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I shall drink with her," Jean answered.</p>
+<p>I put out my hand for the tankard, running the risk of my big
+paw's betraying me, resolved that he should not drink with me of
+that draught, when of a sudden he leaned over to snatch a kiss. I
+dodged him, more frightened than the shyest maid. Though in this
+half-light I might perfectly look a girl, I could not believe I
+should kiss like one. In a panic, I fled from Jean to my master's
+side.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, wheeling about, came near to laughing out in
+my face, when he remembered his part and played it with a zeal that
+was like to undo us. He sprang to his feet, drawing his dagger.</p>
+<p>"Who insults my sister?" he shouted. "Who is the dog does
+this!"</p>
+<p>They were on him, wrenching the knife from his hand, wrenching
+his lame arm at the same time so painfully that he gasped. I was
+scared chill; I knew if they mishandled him they would brush the
+wig off.</p>
+<p>"Mind your manners, sirrah!" Jean cried.</p>
+<p>Monsieur's ardour vanished; a gentle, appealing smile spread
+over his face.</p>
+<p>"I cry your pardon, sir," he said to Jean; then turning to
+Pierre, "This messer does not understand me. But tell him, I beg
+you, I crave his good pardon. I was but angered for a moment that
+any should think to touch my little sister. I meant no harm."</p>
+<p>"Nor he," Pierre retorted. "A kiss, forsooth! What do you expect
+with a handsome lass like that? If you will take her
+about&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Madame says the jeweller fellow is to come up," our messenger
+announced, returning.</p>
+<p>My lord besought Pierre:</p>
+<p>"My knife? I may have my knife? By the beard of St. Peter, I
+swear to you, I meant no harm with it. I drew it in jest."</p>
+<p>Now, this, which was the sole true statement he had made since
+our arrival, was the only one Pierre did not quite believe. He took
+the knife from Jean, but he hesitated to hand it over to its
+owner.</p>
+<p>"No," he said; "you were angry enough. I know your Italian
+temper. I'm thinking I'll keep this little toy of yours till you
+come down."</p>
+<p>"Very well, Sir Majordomo," M. &Eacute;tienne rejoined
+indifferently, "so be it you give it to me when I go." He grasped
+the handle of the box, and we followed our guide up the stair, my
+master offering me the comforting assurance:</p>
+<p>"It really matters not in the least, for if we be caught the
+dagger's not yet forged can save us."</p>
+<p>We were ushered into a large, fair chamber hung with arras, the
+carpet under our feet deep and soft as moss. At one side stood the
+bed, raised on its dais; opposite were the windows, the
+dressing-table between them, covered with scent-bottles and boxes,
+brushes and combs, very glittering and grand. Fluttering about the
+room were some half-dozen fine dames and demoiselles, brave in
+silks and jewels. Among them I was quick to recognize Mme. de
+Mayenne, and I thought I knew vaguely one or two other faces as
+those I had seen before about her. I started presently to discover
+the little Mlle. de Tavanne: that night she had worn sky-colour and
+now she wore rose, but there was no mistaking her saucy face.</p>
+<p>We set our box on a table, as the duchess bade us, and I helped
+M. &Eacute;tienne to lay out its contents, which done, I retired to
+the background, well content to leave the brunt of the business to
+him. It was as he prophesied: they paid me no heed whatever. He was
+smoothly launched on the third relating of his tale; I trow by this
+time he almost believed it himself. Certes, he never faltered, but
+rattled on as if he had two tongues, telling in confidential tone
+of our father and mother, our little brothers and sisters at home
+in Florence; our journey with the legate, his kindness and care of
+us (I hoped that dignitary would not walk in just now to pay his
+respects to madame la g&eacute;n&eacute;rale); of our arrival in
+Paris, and our wonder and delight at the city's grandeur, the like
+of which was not to be found in Italy; and, last, but not least, he
+had much to say, with an innocent, wide-eyed gravity, in praise of
+the ladies of Paris, so beautiful, so witty, so generous! They were
+all crowding around him, calling him pretty boy, laughing at his
+compliments, handling and exclaiming over his trinkets, trying the
+effect of a buckle or a bracelet, preening and cooing like
+bright-breasted pigeons about the corn-thrower. It was as pretty a
+sight as ever I beheld, but it was not to smile at such that we had
+risked our heads. Of Mlle. de Montluc there was no sign.</p>
+<p>No one was marking me, and I wondered if I might not slip out
+unseen and make my way to mademoiselle's chamber. I knew she lodged
+on this story, near the back of the house, in a room overlooking
+the little street and having a turret-window. But I was somewhat
+doubtful of my skill to find it through the winding corridors of a
+great palace. I was more than likely to meet some one who would
+question my purpose, and what answer could I make? I scarce dared
+say I was seeking mademoiselle. I am not ready at explanations,
+like M. le Comte.</p>
+<p>Yet here were the golden moments flying and our cause no further
+advanced. Should I leave it all to M. &Eacute;tienne, trusting that
+when he had made his sales here he would be permitted to seek out
+the other ladies of the house? Or should I strive to aid him? Could
+I win in safety to mademoiselle's chamber, what a feat!</p>
+<p>It so irked me to be doing nothing that I was on the very point
+of gingerly disappearing when one of the ladies, she with the
+yellow curls, the prettiest of them all, turned suddenly from the
+group, calling clearly:</p>
+<p>"Lorance!"</p>
+<p>Our hearts stood still&mdash;mine did, and I can vouch for
+his&mdash;as the heavy window-curtain swayed aside and she came
+forth.</p>
+<p>She came listlessly. Her hair sweeping against her cheek was
+ebony on snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were
+dark rings, like the smears of an inky finger. M. &Eacute;tienne
+let fall the bracelet he was holding, staring at her oblivious of
+aught else, his brows knotted in distress, his face afire with love
+and sympathy. He made a step forward; I thought him about to catch
+her in his arms, when he recollected himself and dropped on his
+knees to grope for the fallen trinket.</p>
+<p>"You wanted me, madame?" she asked Mme. de Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"No," said the duchess, with a tartness of voice she seemed to
+reserve for Mlle. de Montluc; "'twas Mme. de Montpensier."</p>
+<p>"It was I," the fair-haired beauty answered in the same breath.
+"I want you to stop moping over there in the corner. Come look at
+these baubles and see if they cannot bring a sparkle to your eye.
+Fie, Lorance! The having too many lovers is nothing to cry about.
+It is an affliction many and many a lady would give her ears to
+undergo."</p>
+<p>"Take heart o' grace, Lorance!" cried Mlle. de Tavanne. "If you
+go on looking as you look to-day, you'll not long be troubled by
+lovers."</p>
+<p>She made no answer to either, but stood there passively till it
+might be their pleasure to have done with her, with a patient
+weariness that it wrung the heart to see.</p>
+<p>"Here's a chain would become you vastly, Lorance," Mme. de
+Montpensier went on, friendlily enough, in her brisk and careless
+voice. "Let me try it on your neck. You can easily coax Paul or
+some one to buy it for you."</p>
+<p>She fumbled over the clasp. M. &Eacute;tienne, with a "Permit
+me, madame," took it boldly from her hand and hooked it himself
+about mademoiselle's neck. He delayed longer than he need over the
+fastening of it, looking with burning intentness straight into her
+face. She lifted her eyes to his with a quick frown of displeasure,
+drawing herself back; then all at once the colour waved across her
+face like the dawn flush over a gray sky. She blushed to her very
+hair, to her very ruff. Then the red vanished as quickly as it had
+come; she clutched at her bosom, on the verge of a swoon.</p>
+<p>He threw out his arms to catch her. Instantly she stepped aside,
+and, turning with a little unsteady laugh to the lady at whose
+elbow she found herself, asked:</p>
+<p>"Does it become me, madame?"</p>
+<p>The little scene had passed so quickly that it seemed none had
+marked it. Mademoiselle had stood a little out of the group,
+monsieur with his back to it, and the ladies were busy over the
+jewels. She whom mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed,
+loud-voiced lady, older than any of the others, answered her
+bluntly:</p>
+<p>"You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for
+anything to become you."</p>
+<p>"What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly
+demanded. "Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at
+your son's bedside."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest,
+a sort of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne
+bade sharply, "Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger,
+flamed out on her and Mlle. de Montluc equally:</p>
+<p>"You impudent minxes! 'Tis enough that one of you should bring
+my son to his death, without the other making a mock of it."</p>
+<p>"He's not dying," began the irrepressible Blanche de Tavanne,
+her eyes twinkling with mischief; but whatever naughty answer was
+on her tongue, our mademoiselle's deeper voice overbore her:</p>
+<p>"I am guiltless of the charge, madame. It was through no wish of
+mine that your son, with half the guard at his back, set on one
+wounded man."</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant it was not," muttered Mlle. Blanche.</p>
+<p>"Mar has turned traitor, and deserves nothing so well as to be
+spitted in the dark," Mme. de Brie cried out.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle waited an instant, with flashing eyes meeting
+madame's. She had spoken hotly before, but now, in the face of the
+other's passion, she held herself steady.</p>
+<p>"Your charge is as false, madame, as your wish is cruel. Do you
+go to vespers and come home to say such things? M. de Mar is no
+traitor; he was never pledged to us, and may go over to Navarre
+when he will."</p>
+<p>It was quietly spoken, but the blue lightning of her eyes was
+too much for Mme. de Brie. She opened her mouth to retort,
+faltered, dropped her eyes, and finally turned away, yet seething,
+to feign interest in the trinkets. It was a rout.</p>
+<p>"Then you are the traitor, Lorance," chimed the silvery tones of
+Mme. de Montpensier. "It is not denied that M. de Mar has gone over
+to the enemy; therefore are you the traitor to have intercourse
+with him."</p>
+<p>She spoke without heat, without any appearance of ill feeling.
+Hers was merely the desire, for the fun of it, to keep the flurry
+going. But mademoiselle answered seriously, with the fleetingest
+glance at M. le Comte, where he, forgetting he knew no French,
+feasted his eyes recklessly on her, pitying, applauding, adoring
+her. I went softly around the group to pull his sleeve; we were
+lost if any turned to see him.</p>
+<p>"Madame," mademoiselle addressed her cousin of Montpensier,
+speaking particularly clearly and distinctly, "I mean ever to be
+loyal to my house. I came here a penniless orphan to the care of my
+kinsman Mayenne; and he has always been to me generous and
+loving&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"If not madame," murmured Mile. Blanche to herself.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;as I in my turn have been loving and obedient. It was
+only two nights ago he told me M. de Mar must be as dead to me.
+Since then I have held no intercourse with him. Last night he came
+under my window; I was not in my chamber, as you know. I knew
+naught of the affair till M. de Brie was brought in bleeding. It
+was not by my will M. de Mar came here&mdash;it was a misery to me.
+I sent him word by his boy that other night to leave Paris; I
+implored him to leave Paris. If, instead, he comes here, he racks
+my heart. It is no joy to me, no triumph to me, but a bitter
+distress, that any honest gentleman should risk his life in a vain
+and empty quest. M. de Mar must go his ways, as I must go mine.
+Should he ever make attempt to reach me again, and could I speak to
+him, I should tell him just what I have said now to you."</p>
+<p>I pressed monsieur's hand in the endeavour to bring him back to
+sense; he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's
+earnestness had drawn all eyes.</p>
+<p>"Pshaw, Lorance! banish these tragedy airs!" Mme. de Montpensier
+rejoined, her lightness little touched. A wounded bird falls by the
+rippling water, but the ripples tinkle on. "M. de Mar is not likely
+ever to venture here again; he had too warm a welcome last night.
+My faith, he may be dead by this time&mdash;dead to all as well as
+to you. After he vanished into Ferou's house, no one seems to know
+what happened. Has Charles told you, my sister?"</p>
+<p>"Ferou gave him up, of course," Mme. de Mayenne answered.
+"Monsieur has done what seemed to him proper."</p>
+<p>"You are darkly mysterious, sister."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Mayenne raised her eyebrows and smiled, as one solemnly
+pledged to say no more. She could not, indeed, say more, knowing
+nothing whatever about it. Our mademoiselle spoke in a low voice,
+looking straight before her:</p>
+<p>"If Heaven willed that he escaped last night, I pray he may
+leave the city. I pray he may never try to see me more. I pray he
+may depart instantly&mdash;at once."</p>
+<p>"I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more
+of him," Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she
+herself had started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but
+all this solemn prating about him is duller than a sermon." She
+raised a dainty hand behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames,
+let us get back to our purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these jeweller
+folk know no French."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was himself again, all smiles and quick
+pleasantries. I slipped off to my post in the background, trying to
+get out of the eye of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me
+the last five minutes in a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so
+suspicious, so probing, was it. On my retreat she did indeed move
+her gaze from me, but only to watch M. le Comte as a hound watches
+a thicket. It was a miracle that none had pounced on him before, so
+reckless had he been. I perceived with sickening certainty that
+Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss. She fairly bristled
+with suspicion, with knowledge. I waited from breathless moment to
+moment for announcement. There was nothing to be done; she held us
+in the hollow of her hand. We could not flee, we could not fight.
+We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then
+submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.</p>
+<p>Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak. Hope flowed
+back to me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape. I wondered
+how high were the windows from the ground.</p>
+<p>As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached
+herself from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.</p>
+<p>It was thirty feet to the stones below&mdash;sure death that
+way. But she had given us a respite; something might yet be done. I
+seized M. &Eacute;tienne's arm in a grip that should tell him how
+serious was our pass. Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue,
+I bespoke him:</p>
+<p>"Brother, it grows late. We must go. It will soon be dark. We
+must go now&mdash;now!"</p>
+<p>He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could
+answer, Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh:</p>
+<p>"And do you fear the dark, wench? Marry, you look as if you
+could take care of yourself."</p>
+<p>"Nay, madame," I protested, "but the box. Come, Giovanni. If we
+linger, we may be robbed in the dark streets."</p>
+<p>"Why, my sister, where are your manners?" he retorted, striving
+to shake me off. "The ladies have not yet dismissed me."</p>
+<p>"We shall be robbed of the box," I persisted; "and the night air
+is bad for your health, my Nino. If you stay longer you will have
+trouble in the throat."</p>
+<p>He looked at me hard. I tried to make my eyes tell him that my
+fear was no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril
+here and now. He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme.
+de Montpensier:</p>
+<p>"Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves
+the maid. I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells
+also a beautiful young captain&mdash;beautiful as the day. It's
+little of his time he spends at home, but we have observed that he
+comes every evening to array himself grandly for supper at some
+one's palace. We count our day lost an we cannot meet him, by
+accident, on the stairs."</p>
+<p>They all laughed. I, with my cheeks burning like any silly
+maid's, set to work to put up our scattered wares. But despair
+weighed me down; if we had to remember ceremony we were lost. The
+ladies were protesting, declaring they had not made their bargains,
+and monsieur was smirking and bowing, as if he had the whole night
+before him. Our one chance was to bolt; to charge past the sentry
+and flee as from the devil. I pulled monsieur's arm again, and
+muttered in his ear:</p>
+<p>"She knows us; she's gone to tell. We must run for it."</p>
+<p>At this moment there arose from down the corridor piercing
+shriek on shriek, the howls of a young child frantic with rage and
+terror. At the same time sounded other different cries, wild,
+outlandish chattering.</p>
+<p>"The baby! It's Toto! Oh, ciel!" Mme. de Mayenne gasped. "Help,
+mesdames!" She rushed from the room, Mme. de Montpensier at her
+heels, all the rest following after.</p>
+<p>All, that is, but one. Mlle. de Montluc started as the rest, but
+at the threshold paused to let them pass. She flung the door to
+behind them, and ran back to monsieur, her face drawn with terror,
+her hand outstretched.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, monsieur!" she panted. "Go! you must go!"</p>
+<p>He seized her hand in both of his.</p>
+<p>"O Lorance! Lorance!"</p>
+<p>She laid her left hand on his for emphasis.</p>
+<p>"Go! go! An you love me, go!"</p>
+<p>For answer he fell on his knees before her, covering those sweet
+hands with kisses.</p>
+<p>The door was flung open; Mlle. de Tavanne stood on the
+threshold. They started apart, monsieur leaping to his feet,
+mademoiselle springing back with choking cry. But it was too late;
+she had seen us.</p>
+<p>She was rosy with running, her little face brimming over with
+mischief. She flitted into the room, crying:</p>
+<p>"I knew it! I knew it was M. de Mar! The gray eyes! M. le Duc
+has done with him as he thought proper, forsooth! Well, I have done
+as I thought proper. I unchained Mme. de Montpensier's monkey and
+threw him into the nursery, where he's scared the baby nearly into
+spasms. Toto carried the cloth-of-gold coverlet up on top of the
+tester, where he's picking it to pieces, the darling! They won't be
+back&mdash;you're safe for a while, my children. I'll keep watch
+for you. Make good use of your time. Kiss her well, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you are an angel."</p>
+<p>"No, she is the angel," Mlle. Blanche laughed back at him. "I'm
+but your warder. Have no fear; I'll keep good watch. Here, you in
+the petticoats, that were a boy the other night, go to the farther
+door. Mme. de Nemours takes her nap in the second room beyond. You
+watch that door; I'll watch the corridor. Farewell, my children!
+Peste! think you Blanche de Tavanne is so badly off for lovers that
+she need grudge you yours, Lorance?"</p>
+<p>She danced out of the door, while I ran across to my station,
+Mlle. de Montluc standing bewildered, ardent, grateful, half
+laughing, half in tears.</p>
+<p>"Lorance, Lorance!" M. &Eacute;tienne murmured tremulously. "She
+said I should kiss you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>I put my fingers in my ears and then took them out again, for if
+my ears were sealed, how was I to hear Mme. de Nemours approaching?
+But I admit I should have kept my eyes glued to the crack of the
+door; that I ever turned them is my shame. I have no business to
+know that mademoiselle bowed her face upon her lover's shoulder,
+her hand clasping his neck, silent, motionless. He pressed his
+cheek against her hair, holding her close; neither had any will to
+move or speak. It seemed they were well content to stand so the
+rest of their lives.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle was the first to stir; she raised her head and
+strove to break away from his locked arms.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! monsieur! This is madness! You must go!"</p>
+<p>"Are you sorry I came?" he demanded vibrantly. "Are you sorry,
+Lorance?"</p>
+<p>His eyes held hers; she threw pretence to the winds.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; I am glad. For if we never meet again, we have
+had this."</p>
+<p>"Aye. If I die to-night, I have had to-day."</p>
+<p>Their voices were like the rune of the heart of the forest, like
+the music of deep streams. I turned away my head ashamed, and
+strove to think of nothing but the waking of Mme. de Nemours.</p>
+<p>"I thought you dead," she moaned, her voice muffled against his
+cheek. "No one would tell me what happened last night. I could not
+devise any way of escape for you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There is a tunnel from Ferou's house to the Rue de la Soierie.
+His mother&mdash;merciful angel&mdash;let me through."</p>
+<p>"And you were not hurt?"</p>
+<p>"Not a scratch, ma mie."</p>
+<p>"But the wound before? F&eacute;lix said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I was put out of combat the night I got it," he explained
+earnestly, troubled even now because he had not obeyed her summons.
+"I was dizzy; I could not walk."</p>
+<p>"But now, monsieur? Does it heal?"</p>
+<p>"It is well&mdash;almost. 'Twas but a slash on the arm."</p>
+<p>"Oh, then have I no anxiety," she murmured, with a smile that
+twinkled across her lips and was gone. "I cannot perceive you to be
+disabled, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"My sweeting!" he laughed out. "If I cannot hold a sword yet, I
+can hold my love."</p>
+<p>"But you must not, monsieur," she cried, fear, that had slept a
+moment, springing on her again. "You must go, and this instant,
+while the others are yet away. I knew you, Blanche knew you; some
+other will. Oh, go, go, I implore you!"</p>
+<p>"If you will come with me."</p>
+<p>She made no answer, save to look at him as at a madman.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I mean not now, past the sentry. I am not so crazy as
+that. But you will slip out, you will find a way, and come to
+me."</p>
+<p>Silently, sadly, she shook her head. His arms loosened, and she
+freed herself from him. But instantly he was close on her
+again.</p>
+<p>"But you must! you will, you must! Ah, Lorance, my father is won
+over. He bids me win you. He has sworn to welcome you; when he sees
+you he will be your slave."</p>
+<p>"But my cousin Mayenne is not won over."</p>
+<p>"Devil fly away with your cousin Mayenne!" M. &Eacute;tienne
+retorted with a vehemence that made me shudder, lest the walls have
+ears.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you are free to say that, monsieur, but I am not. I am of
+his blood, and dwell in his house, and eat at his board."</p>
+<p>He was looking at her with a passionate ardour, grasping her
+actual words less than their import of refusal.</p>
+<p>"Are you afraid?" he cried. "Are you frightened, heart-root of
+mine? You need not be, mignonne. You can contrive to slip from the
+house&mdash;Mlle. de Tavanne will help you. Once in the street, I
+will meet you; I will carry you home to hold you against all the
+world."</p>
+<p>"It is not that," she answered.</p>
+<p>"Am I your fear?" he cried quickly. "Ah, Lorance, my Lorance,
+you need not. I love you as I love the Queen of Heaven."</p>
+<p>"Ah, hush!"</p>
+<p>"As I love the Queen of Heaven. I will as soon do sacrilege
+toward her as ill to you."</p>
+<p>He dropped on his knees before her, kissing the hem of her gown.
+She stood looking down on his bowed head with a tenderness that
+seemed to infold him as with a mantle.</p>
+<p>He raised his eyes to hers, still kneeling at her feet.</p>
+<p>"Lorance, will you come with me?"</p>
+<p>She was silent a moment, with heaving breast and face
+a-quiver.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I am sworn. That night when F&eacute;lix came, when I
+was in deadly terror for him and for you, &Eacute;tienne, I
+promised my lord, an he would lift his hand from you, to obey him
+in all things. He bade me never again to hold intercourse with
+you&mdash;alack, I am already forsworn! But I cannot&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He leaped to his feet, crying out:</p>
+<p>"Lorance, he was the first forsworn! For he did move against
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He told you&mdash;the warning went through
+F&eacute;lix&mdash;that if you tried to reach me he would crush you
+as a buzzing fly. Oh, monsieur, I implored you to leave Paris! You
+are not kind to me, you are cruel, when you venture here."</p>
+<p>"You are cruel to me, Lorance."</p>
+<p>Sighing, she turned from him, hiding her face in her hands.</p>
+<p>"Mayenne has not kept faith with you!" monsieur went on
+vehemently. "He has broken his oath. I mean not last night. I had
+my warning; the attack was provoked. But yesterday in the
+afternoon, before I made the attempt to see you, he sent to arrest
+me for the murder of the lackey Pontou."</p>
+<p>"Paul's deed!" she cried in white surprise. "He spoke of
+it&mdash;we heard, F&eacute;lix and I. What, monsieur! sent to
+arrest you? But you are here."</p>
+<p>"They missed me. They took by mistake Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"He was not here last night!" she cried. "Mayenne was demanding
+him of me."</p>
+<p>"Then he slept pleasantly in the Bastille. May he never look on
+the outside of its walls again!"</p>
+<p>"But he will, he does. He must be free by this time; they cannot
+keep Mayenne's nephew in the Bastille. And oh, if he hated you
+before, how he will hate you now! Oh, &Eacute;tienne, if you love
+me, go! Go to your own camp, your own side, at St. Denis. There are
+you safe. Here in Paris you may not draw a tranquil breath."</p>
+<p>"And shall I flee my dangers? Shall I run, in the face of my
+peril?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is
+more to me than tongue can tell."</p>
+<p>"My love, my love!" He snatched her into his arms; she held away
+from him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching
+hands on his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you will go! you will go!"</p>
+<p>"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way!
+Only to meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates
+together&mdash;leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at
+St. Denis keep our honeymoon."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne
+offered a month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster
+of the League. Is that true?"</p>
+<p>"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack
+of love for you. I swear to you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."</p>
+<p>"Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take
+me. Your house stands against us; you would not desert your house.
+Am I then to be false to mine?"</p>
+<p>"A woman belongs to her husband's house."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you
+are full of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father
+before me, in the shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine
+princes our kinsmen, our masters, our friends. When I was orphaned
+young, and penniless because King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched
+our lands away, I came here to my cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in
+kindness and love as a daughter of the house. Am I to turn traitor
+now?"</p>
+<p>"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne
+bounded in.</p>
+<p>"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"</p>
+<p>She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her
+lips to monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his
+arms. I was at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets,
+he with shaking fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.</p>
+<p>The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de
+Montpensier alone conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's
+face was hot and angry, and bore marks of tears. Not in this room
+only had a combat raged.</p>
+<p>"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying
+vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she
+had not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither
+again."</p>
+<p>"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the
+ladies. "You have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too
+forbearing, too patient under many presumptions. One would suppose
+the mistress here to be Mme. de Montpensier."</p>
+<p>"I will show who is mistress here," the Duchesse de Mayenne
+retorted. Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way
+softly to the door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon
+her:</p>
+<p>"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to
+the rescue of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be
+eaten by the beasts for aught you care, while you prink over
+trinkets."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the
+whirl of her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little
+Tavanne came gallantly to the rescue:</p>
+<p>"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely
+safe; Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's
+rich accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her
+belongings.</p>
+<p>"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said
+with relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite
+right, Lorance."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2>
+<h3><i>Within the spider's web.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts
+with her. Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier
+wished than accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of
+bargaining. Mme. de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet,
+Mme. de Brie wanted a vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of
+shoe-buckles. M. &Eacute;tienne developed a recklessness about
+prices that would have whitened the hair of a goldsmith father; I
+thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious of such
+prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the quick
+settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with
+longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme.
+de Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that
+no one was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine
+enough for a coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking
+madame for her reminder, with the gratitude of victims snatched
+from an awful fate. We were commanded to bundle out, which with all
+alacrity we did.</p>
+<p>Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I
+had been coming in. As we passed, lackey-led, through the long
+corridors, I had ease enough of mind to enable me to take my
+bearings, and to whisper to my master, "That door yonder is the
+door of the council-room, where I was." Even as I spoke the door
+opened, two gentlemen appearing at the threshold. One was a
+stranger; the other was Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood
+a moment or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his
+farewells, and went off down the staircase.</p>
+<p>Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up
+the passage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of
+merchandise:</p>
+<p>"What have you there, Louis?"</p>
+<p>"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just
+dismissed him."</p>
+<p>He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at
+length said to M. le Comte:</p>
+<p>"I will look at your wares."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing
+his Highness that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.</p>
+<p>"How came you in Paris, then?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne for the fourth time went through with his
+tale. I think this time he must have trembled over it. My Lord
+Mayenne had not the reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we
+knew, he might be informed of the name and condition of every
+person who had entered Paris this year. He might, as he listened
+stolid-faced, be checking off to himself the number of monsieur's
+lies. But if M. &Eacute;tienne trembled in his soul, his words
+never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At its finish
+Mayenne said:</p>
+<p>"Come in here."</p>
+<p>The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his
+Grace of Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the
+window where he had sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my
+teeth to keep them from chattering together. Not Grammont's
+brutality, not Lucas's venom, not Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant
+suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly as did Mayenne's
+amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I entered the
+tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I could
+not see. Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a
+way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over
+the edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look
+through iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see
+clearly that Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as
+placid as a summer day, turning over the contents of the box,
+showing little interest in us, much in our wares, every now and
+then speaking a generous word of praise or asking a friendly
+question. He was the very model of the gracious prince; the humble
+tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have worshipfully loved
+him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew us; that he
+was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he would
+walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab
+us.</p>
+<p>Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I
+should have braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would
+have been bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the
+uncertainty that was so heart-shaking&mdash;like crossing a morass
+in the dark. We might be on the safe path; we might with every step
+be wandering away farther and farther into the treacherous bog;
+there was no way to tell. Mayenne was quite the man to be kindly
+patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich present for a friend. He
+was also the man to sit in the presence of his enemy, unbetraying,
+tranquil, assured, waiting. It seemed to me that in a few minutes
+more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I am
+F&eacute;lix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"</p>
+<p>But before I had verily come to this, something happened to
+change the situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the
+door after him, Lucas.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into
+the embrasure of the window, where we stood in plain sight but with
+our faces blotted out against the light. Mayenne looked up from two
+rings he was comparing, one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came
+rapidly across the room.</p>
+<p>"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost
+believe myself back in night before last."</p>
+<p>"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting
+half from hurry, half from wrath.</p>
+<p>"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on
+indifferently, his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you
+have used your time profitably."</p>
+<p>"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly,
+arming himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a
+moment he had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily
+into the room. He was once more the Lucas who had entered that
+other night, nonchalant, mocking.</p>
+<p>"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a
+bracelet from the tray.</p>
+<p>The close kinship of these men betrayed itself in nothing so
+sharply as in their unerring instinct for annoying each other. Had
+Lucas volunteered explanation for his absence, Mayenne would not
+have listened to it; but as he withheld it, the duke demanded
+brusquely:</p>
+<p>"Well, do you give an account of yourself? You had better."</p>
+<p>Lucas repeated the tactics which he had found such good
+entertainment before. He looked with raised eyebrows toward us.</p>
+<p>"You would not have me speak before these vermin, uncle?"</p>
+<p>"These vermin understand no French," Mayenne made answer. "But
+do as it likes you. It is nothing to me."</p>
+<p>My master pinched my hand. Mayenne did not know us! After all,
+he was what M. &Eacute;tienne had called him&mdash;a man, neither
+god nor devil. He could make mistakes like the rest of us. For once
+he had been caught napping.</p>
+<p>Lucas leaned back in his chair with a meditative air, as if idly
+wondering whether to speak or not. In his place I should not have
+wondered one moment. Had Mayenne assured me in that quiet tone that
+he cared nothing whether I spoke, I should scarce have been able to
+utter my words fast enough. But there was so strange a twist in
+Lucas's nature that he must sometimes thwart his own interests,
+value his caprice above his prosperity. Also, in this case his
+story was no triumphant one. But at length he did begin it:</p>
+<p>"I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house
+in the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>"Was that your errand?" Mayenne said, looking up in slow
+surprise. "My faith! your oaths to Lorance trouble you little."</p>
+<p>Lucas started forward sharply. "Do you tell me you did not know
+my purpose?"</p>
+<p>"I knew, of course, that you were up to some warlockry," Mayenne
+answered; "I did not concern myself to discover what."</p>
+<p>"There speaks the general! There speaks the gentleman!" Lucas
+cried out. "A general hangs a spy, yet he profits by spying. The
+spy runs the risks, incurs the shames; the general sits in his
+tent, his honour untarnished, pocketing all the glory. Faugh, you
+gentlemen! You will not do dirty work, but you will have it done
+for you. You sit at home with clean hands and eyes that see not,
+while we go forth to serve you. You are the Duke of Mayenne. I am
+your bastard nephew, living on your favour. But you go too far when
+you sneer at my smirches."</p>
+<p>He was on his feet, standing over Mayenne, his face blazing. M.
+&Eacute;tienne made an instinctive step forward, thinking him about
+to knife the duke. But Mayenne, as we well knew, was no craven.</p>
+<p>"Be a little quieter, Paul," he said, unmoved. "You will have
+the guard in, in a moment."</p>
+<p>Lucas held absolutely still for a second. So did Mayenne. He
+knew that Lucas, standing, could stab quicker than he defend. He
+sat there with both hands on the table, looking composedly up at
+his nephew. Lucas flung away across the room.</p>
+<p>"I shall have dismissed these people directly," Mayenne
+continued. "Then you can tell me your tale."</p>
+<p>"I can tell it now in two words," Lucas answered, coming
+abruptly back. "Belin signed the warrant, and sent a young ass of
+the burgher guard after Mar. I attended to some affairs of my own.
+Then after a time I went round to the Trois Lanternes to see if
+they had got him. He was not there&mdash;only that cub of a boy of
+his. When I came in, he swore, the innkeeper swore, the whole crew
+swore, I was Mar. The fool of an officer arrested me."</p>
+<p>I expected Mayenne to burst out laughing in Lucas's chagrined
+face. But instead he seemed less struck with his nephew's
+misfortunes than with some other aspect of the affair. He said
+slowly:</p>
+<p>"You told Belin this arrest was my desire?"</p>
+<p>"I may have implied something of the sort."</p>
+<p>"You repeated it to the arresting officer before Mar's boy!"</p>
+<p>"I had no time to say anything before they hustled me off,"
+Lucas exclaimed. "Mille tonnerres! Never had any man such luck as
+I. It's enough to make me sign papers with the devil."</p>
+<p>"Mar would believe I had broken faith with him?"</p>
+<p>"I dare say. One isn't responsible for what Mar believes," Lucas
+answered carelessly.</p>
+<p>Mayenne was silent, with knit brows, drumming his hand on the
+table. Lucas went on with the tale of his woes:</p>
+<p>"At the Bastille, I ordered the commissary to send to you. He
+did not; he sent to Belin. Belin was busy, didn't understand the
+message, wouldn't be bothered. I lay in my cell like a mouse in a
+trap till an hour agone, when at last he saw fit to
+appear&mdash;damn him!"</p>
+<p>Mayenne fell to laughing. Lucas cried out:</p>
+<p>"When they arrested me my first thought was that this was your
+work."</p>
+<p>"In that case, how should you be free now?"</p>
+<p>"You found you needed me."</p>
+<p>"You are twice wrong, Paul. For I knew nothing of your arrest.
+Nor do I think I need you. Pardieu! you succeed too badly to give
+me confidence."</p>
+<p>Lucas stood glowering, gnawing his lip, picturing the chagrin,
+the angry reproaches, the justifications he did not utter. I am
+certain he pitied himself as the sport of fate and of tyrants, the
+most shamefully used of mortal men. And so long as he aspired to
+the hand of Mayenne's ward, so long was he helpless under Mayenne's
+will.</p>
+<p>"'Twas pity," Mayenne said reflectively, "that you thought best
+to be absent last night. Had you been here, you had had sport. Your
+young friend Mar came to sing under his lady's window."</p>
+<p>"Saw she him?" Lucas cried sharply.</p>
+<p>"How should I know? She does not confide in me."</p>
+<p>"You took care to find out!" Lucas cried, knowing he was being
+badgered, yet powerless to keep himself from writhing.</p>
+<p>"I may have."</p>
+<p>"Did she see him?" Lucas demanded again, the heavy lines of
+hatred and jealousy searing his face.</p>
+<p>"No credit to you if she did not. You accomplish singularly
+little to harass M. de Mar in his love-making. You deserve that she
+should have seen him. But, as a matter of fact, she did not. She
+was in the chapel with madame."</p>
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+<p>"Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie&mdash;now there is a youngster, Paul,"
+Mayenne interrupted himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of
+your cleverness; but he has the advantage of being on the spot when
+needed. Desiring a word with mademoiselle, he betook himself to her
+chamber. She was not there, but Mar was warbling under the
+window."</p>
+<p>"Brie?"</p>
+<p>"Brie bestirred himself. He sent two of the guard round behind
+the house to cut off the retreat, while he and Latour attacked from
+the front."</p>
+<p>"Mar's killed?" Lucas cried. "He's killed!"</p>
+<p>"By no means," answered Mayenne. "He got away."</p>
+<p>Before he could explain further,&mdash;if he meant to,&mdash;the
+door opened, and Mlle. de Montluc came in.</p>
+<p>Her eyes travelled first to us, in anxiety; then with relief to
+Mayenne, sitting over the jewels; last, to Lucas, with startlement.
+She advanced without hesitation to the duke.</p>
+<p>"I am come, monsieur, to fetch you to supper."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, Lorance!" Mayenne exclaimed, "you show me a different
+face from that of dinner-time." Indeed, so she did, for her eyes
+were shining with excitement, while the colour that M.
+&Eacute;tienne had kissed into them still flushed her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"If I do," she made quick answer, "it is because, the more I
+think on it, the surer I grow that my loving cousin will not break
+my heart."</p>
+<p>"I want a word with you, Lorance," Mayenne said quietly.</p>
+<p>"As many as you like, monsieur," she replied promptly. "But will
+you not send these creatures from the room first?"</p>
+<p>"Do you include your cousin Paul in that term?"</p>
+<p>"I meant these jewellers. But since you suggest it, perhaps it
+would be as well for Paul to go."</p>
+<p>"You hear your orders, Paul."</p>
+<p>"Aye, I hear and I disobey," Lucas retorted. "Mademoiselle, I
+take too much joy in your presence to be willing to leave it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said to the duke, ignoring her cousin Paul with
+a coolness that must have maddened him, "will you not dismiss your
+tradespeople? Then can we talk comfortably."</p>
+<p>"Aye," answered Mayenne, "I will. I am more gallant than Paul.
+If you command it, out they go, though I have not half had time to
+look their wares over. Here, master jeweller," he addressed M.
+&Eacute;tienne, slipping easily into Italian, "pack up your wares
+and depart."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, bursting into rapid thanks to his Highness
+for his condescension in noticing the dirt of the way, set about
+his packing. Mayenne turned to his lovely cousin.</p>
+<p>"Now for my word to you, mademoiselle. You wept so last night,
+it was impossible to discuss the subject properly. But now I
+rejoice to see you more tranquil. Here is the beginning and the
+middle and the end of the matter: your marriage is my affair, and I
+shall do as I like about it."</p>
+<p>She searched his face; before his steady look her colour slowly
+died. M. &Eacute;tienne, whether by accident or design, knocked his
+tray of jewels off the table. Murmuring profuse apologies, he
+dropped on his knees to grope for them. Neither of the men heeded
+him, but kept their eyes steadily on the lady.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," Mayenne deliberately went on, "I have been
+over-fond with you. Had I followed my own interests instead of
+bowing to your whims, you had been a wife these two years. I have
+indulged you, mademoiselle, because you were my ally Montluc's
+daughter, because you came to me a lonely orphan, because you were
+my little cousin whose baby mouth I kissed. I have let you cavil at
+this suitor and that, pout that one was too tall and one too short,
+and a third too bold and a fourth not bold enough. I have been
+pleased to let you cajole me. But now, mademoiselle, I am at the
+end of my patience."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, "I never meant to abuse your kindness.
+You let me cajole you, as you say, else I could not have done it.
+You treated my whims as a jest. You let me air them. But when you
+frowned, I have put them by. I have always done your will."</p>
+<p>"Then do it now, mademoiselle. Be faithful to me and to your
+birth. Cease sighing for the enemy of our house."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said, "when you first brought him to me, he was
+not the enemy of our house. When he came here, day after day,
+season after season, he was not our enemy. When I wrote that
+letter, at Paul's dictation, I did not know he was our enemy. You
+told me that night that I was not for him. I promised you
+obedience. Did he come here to me and implore me to wed with him, I
+would send him away."</p>
+<p>Mayenne little imagined how truly she spoke; but he could not
+look in her eyes and doubt her honesty.</p>
+<p>"You are a good child, Lorance," he said. "I could wish your
+lover as docile."</p>
+<p>"He will not come here again," she cried. "He knows I am not for
+him. He gives it up, monsieur&mdash;he takes himself out of Paris.
+I promise you it is over. He gives me up."</p>
+<p>"I have not his promise for that," Mayenne said dryly; "but the
+next time he comes after you, he may settle with your husband."</p>
+<p>She uttered a little gasp, but scarce of surprise&mdash;almost
+of relief that the blow, so long expected, had at last been
+dealt.</p>
+<p>"You will marry me, monsieur?" she murmured. "To M. de
+Brie?"</p>
+<p>"You are shrewd, mademoiselle. You know that it will be a good
+three months before Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie can stand up to be wed.
+You say to yourself that much may happen in three months. So it
+may. Therefore will your bridegroom be at hand to-morrow
+morning."</p>
+<p>She made no rejoinder, but her eyes, wide like a hunted
+animal's, moved fearsomely, loathingly, to Lucas. Mayenne uttered
+an abrupt laugh.</p>
+<p>"No; Paul is not the happy man. Besides bungling the St. Quentin
+affair, he has seen fit to make free with my name in an enterprise
+of his own. Therefore, Paul, you will dance at Lorance's wedding a
+bachelor. Mademoiselle, you marry in the morning Se&ntilde;or el
+Conde del Rondelar y Saragossa of his Majesty King Philip's court.
+After dinner you will depart with your husband for Spain."</p>
+<p>Lucas sprang forward, hand on sword, face ablaze with furious
+protest. Mayenne, heeding him no more than if he had not been
+there, rose and went to Mlle de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"Have I your obedience, cousin?"</p>
+<p>"You know it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>She was curtseying to him when he folded her in his arms,
+kissing both her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"You are as good as you are lovely, and that says much, ma mie.
+We will talk a little more about this after supper. Permit me,
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>He took her hand and led her in leisurely fashion out of the
+room.</p>
+<p>It wondered me that Lucas had not killed him. He looked murder.
+Haply had the duke disclosed by so much as a quivering eyelid a
+consciousness of Lucas's rage, of danger to himself, Lucas had
+struck him down. But he walked straight past, clad in his composure
+as in armour, and Lucas made no move. I think to stab was the
+impulse of a moment, gone in a moment. Instantly he was glad he had
+not killed the Duke of Mayenne, to be cut himself into dice by the
+guard. After the duke was gone, Lucas stood still a long time, no
+less furious, but cogitating deeply.</p>
+<p>We had gathered up our jewels and locked our box, and stood
+holding it between us, waiting our chance to depart. We might have
+gone a dozen times during the talking, for none marked us; but M.
+&Eacute;tienne, despite my tuggings, refused to budge so long as
+mademoiselle was in the room. Now was he ready enough to go, but
+hesitated to see if Lucas would not leave first. That worthy,
+however, showed no intention of stirring, but remained in his pose,
+buried in thought, unaware of our presence. To get out, we had to
+walk round one end or the other of the table, passing either before
+or behind him. M. le Comte was for marching carelessly before his
+face, but I pulled so violently in the other direction that he gave
+way to me. I think now that had we passed in front of him, Lucas
+would have let us go by without a look. As it was, hearing steps at
+his back, he wheeled about to confront us. If the eye of love is
+quick, so is the eye of hate. He cried out instantly:</p>
+<p>"Mar!"</p>
+<p>We dropped the box, and sprang at him. But he was too quick for
+us. He leaped back, whipping out his sword.</p>
+<p>"I have you now, Mar!" he cried.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne grabbed up the heavy box in both hands to
+brain him. Lucas retreated. He might run through M. &Eacute;tienne,
+but only at the risk of having his head split. After all, it suited
+his book as well to take us alive. Shouting for the guards, he
+retreated toward the door.</p>
+<p>But I was there before him. As he ran at M. &Eacute;tienne, I
+had dashed by, slammed the door shut, and bolted it. If we were
+caught, we would make a fight for it. I snatched up a stool for
+weapon.</p>
+<p>He halted. Then he darted over to the chimney, and pulled
+violently the bell-rope hanging near. We heard through the closed
+door two loud peals somewhere in the corridor.</p>
+<p>We both ran for him. Even as he pulled the rope, M.
+&Eacute;tienne struck the box over his sword, snapping it. I
+dropped my stool, as he his box, and we pinned Lucas in our
+arms.</p>
+<p>"The oratory!" I gasped. With a strength born of our
+desperation, we dragged him kicking and cursing across the room,
+heaved him with all our force into the oratory, and bolted the door
+on him.</p>
+<p>"Your wig!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, running to recover his box.
+While I picked it up and endeavoured with clumsy fingers to put it
+on properly, he set on its legs the stool I had flung down, threw
+the pieces of Lucas's sword into the fireplace, seized his box,
+dashed to me and set my wig straight, dashed to the outer door, and
+opened it just as Pierre came up the corridor.</p>
+<p>"Well, what do you want?" the lackey demanded. "You ring as if
+it was a question of life and death."</p>
+<p>"I want to be shown out, if the messer will be so kind. His
+Highness the duke, when he went to supper, left me here to put up
+my wares, but I know not my way to the door."</p>
+<p>It was after sunset, and the room, back from the windows, was
+dusky. The lackey seemed not to mark our flushed and rumpled looks,
+and to be quite satisfied with M. &Eacute;tienne's explanation,
+when of a sudden Lucas, who had been stunned for the moment by the
+violent meeting of his head and the tiles, began to pound and kick
+on the oratory door.</p>
+<p>He was shouting as well. But the door closed with absolute
+tightness; it had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us muffled
+and inarticulate.</p>
+<p>"Corpo di Bacco!" M. &Eacute;tienne exclaimed, with a face of
+childlike surprise. "Some one is in a fine hurry to enter! Do you
+not let him in, Sir Master of the Household?"</p>
+<p>"I wonder who he's got there now," Pierre muttered to himself in
+French, staring in puzzled wise at the door. Then he answered M.
+&Eacute;tienne with a laugh:</p>
+<p>"No, my innocent; I do not let him in. It might cost me my neck
+to open that door. Come along now. I must see you out and get back
+to my trenchers."</p>
+<p>We met not a soul on the stairs, every one, served or servants,
+being in the supper-room. We passed the sentry without question,
+and round the corner without hindrance. M. &Eacute;tienne stopped
+to heave a sigh of thanksgiving.</p>
+<p>"I thought we were done for that time!" he panted. "Mordieu!
+another scored off Lucas! Come, let us make good time home! 'Twere
+wise to be inside our gates when he gets out of that closet."</p>
+<p>We made good time, ever listening for the haro after us. But we
+heard it not. We came unmolested up the street at the back, of the
+H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin, on our way to the postern. Monsieur took
+the key out of his doublet, saying as we walked around the corner
+tower:</p>
+<p>"Well, it appears we are safe at home."</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>Even as I uttered the words, three men from the shadow of the
+wall sprang out and seized us.</p>
+<p>"This is he!" one cried. "M. le Comte de Mar, I have the
+pleasure of taking you to the Bastille."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2>
+<h3><i>The countersign.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>nstantly two more men came running from the postern arch. The
+five were upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while
+another gagged me. Two held M. &Eacute;tienne, a third stopping his
+mouth.</p>
+<p>"Prettily done," quoth the leader. "Not a squeal! Morbleu! I
+wasn't anxious to have old Vigo out disputing my rights."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's wrists were neatly trussed by this time. At
+a word from the leader, our captors turned us about and marched us
+up the lane by Mirabeau's garden, where Bernet's blood lay rusty on
+the stones. We offered no resistance whatever; we should only have
+been prodded with a sword-point for our pains. I made out, despite
+the thickening twilight, the familiar uniform of the burgher guard;
+M. de Belin, having bagged the wrong bird once, had now caught the
+right one.</p>
+<p>The captain bade one of the fellows go call the others off; I
+could guess that the job had been done thoroughly, every approach
+to the house guarded. I gnashed my teeth over the gag, that I had
+not suspected the danger. The truth was, both of us had our heads
+so full of mademoiselle, of Mayenne, and of Lucas, that we had
+forgotten the governor and his preposterous warrant.</p>
+<p>They led us into the Rue de l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que, where was
+waiting the same black coach that had stood before the Oie d'Or,
+the same Louis on the box. Its lamps were lighted; by their glimmer
+our captors for the first time saw us fairly.</p>
+<p>"Why, captain," cried the man at M. &Eacute;tienne's elbow,
+"this is no Comte de Mar! The Comte de Mar is fair-haired; I've
+seen him scores of times."</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar answers to the name of &Eacute;tienne, and so
+does this fellow," the captain answered. He took the candle from
+one of the lamps and held it in M. &Eacute;tienne's face. Then he
+put out a sudden hand, and pulled the wig off.</p>
+<p>"Good for you, captain!" cried the men. We were indeed
+unfortunate to encounter an officer with brains.</p>
+<p>"We'll take your gag off too, M. le Comte, in the coach," the
+captain told him.</p>
+<p>"Will you bring the lass along, captain?"</p>
+<p>"Not exactly," the leader laughed. "A fine prison it would be,
+could a felon have his bonnibel at his side. No, I'll leave the
+maid; but she needn't give the alarm yet. Do you stay awhile with
+her, L'Estrange; you'll not mind the job. Keep her a quarter of an
+hour, and then let her go her ways."</p>
+<p>They bundled my lord into the coach, box and all, the captain
+and two men with him. The fourth clambered up beside Louis as he
+cracked his whip and rattled smartly down the street.</p>
+<p>My guardian stole a loving arm around my waist and marched me
+down the quiet lane between the garden walls. He was clutching my
+right wrist, but my left hand was free, and I fumbled at my gag. In
+the middle of the deserted lane he halted.</p>
+<p>"Now, my beauty, if you'll be good I'll take that stopper off.
+But if you make a scream, by Heaven, it'll be your last!"</p>
+<p>I shook my head and squeezed his hand imploringly, while he,
+holding me tight in one sinewy arm, plucked left-handedly at the
+knot. I waited, meek as Griselda, till the gag was off, and then I
+let him have it. Volleying curses, I hammered him square in the
+eye.</p>
+<p>It was a mad course, for he was armed, I not. But instead of
+stabbing, he dropped me like a hot coal, gasping in the blankest
+consternation:</p>
+<p>"Thousand devils! It's a boy!"</p>
+<p>A second later, when he recollected himself, I was tearing down
+the lane.</p>
+<p>I am a good runner, and then, any one can run well when he runs
+for his life. Despite the wretched kirtle tying up my legs, I
+gained on him, and when I had reached the corner of our house, he
+dropped the pursuit and made off in the darkness. I ran full tilt
+round to the great gate, bellowing for the sentry to open. He came
+at once, with a dripping torch, to burst into roars of laughter at
+the sight of me. My wig was somewhere in the lane behind me; he
+knew me perfectly in my silly toggery. He leaned against the wall,
+helpless with laughing, shouting feebly to his comrades to come
+share the jest. I, you may well imagine, saw nothing funny about
+it, but kicked and shook the grilles in my rage and impatience. He
+did open to me at length, and in I dashed, clamouring for Vigo. He
+had appeared in the court by this, as also half a dozen of the
+guard, who surrounded me with shouts of astonished mockery; but I,
+little heeding, cried to the equery:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, M. le Comte is arrested! He's in the Bastille!"</p>
+<p>Vigo grasped my arm, and lifted rather than led me in at the
+guard-room door, slamming it in the soldiers' faces.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne!" I gasped&mdash;"M. &Eacute;tienne is
+arrested! They were lying in wait for him at the back of the house,
+by the tower. They've taken him off in a coach to the
+Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Who have?"</p>
+<p>"The governor's guard. You'll saddle and pursue? You'll rescue
+him?"</p>
+<p>"How long ago?"</p>
+<p>"About ten minutes. The coach was standing in the Rue de
+l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que. They left a man guarding me, but I broke
+away."</p>
+<p>"It can't be done," Vigo said. "They'll be out of the quarter by
+now. If I could catch them at all, it would be close by the
+Bastille. No good in that; no use fighting four regiments. What the
+devil are they arresting him for, F&eacute;lix? I understand
+Mayenne wants his blood, but what has the city guard to do with
+it?"</p>
+<p>"It's Lucas's game," I said. Then I remembered that we had not
+confided to him the tale of the first arrest. I went on to tell of
+the adventure of the Trois Lanternes, and, reflecting that he might
+better know just how the land lay with us, I made a clean breast of
+everything&mdash;the fight before Ferou's house, the rescue, the
+rencounter in the tunnel, to-day's excursion, and all that befell
+in the council-room. I wound up with a second full account of our
+capture under the very walls of the house, our garroting before we
+could cry on the guards to save us. Vigo said nothing for some
+time; at length he delivered himself:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur wouldn't have a patrol about the house. He wouldn't
+publish to the mob that he feared any danger whatever. Of course no
+one foresaw this. However, the arrest is the best thing could have
+happened."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!" I gasped in horror. Was Vigo turned traitor? The solid
+earth reeled beneath my feet.</p>
+<p>"He'd never rest till he got himself killed," Vigo went on.
+"Monsieur's hot enough, but M. &Eacute;tienne's mad to bind. If
+they hadn't caught him to-night he'd have been in some worse pickle
+to-morrow; while, as it is, he's safe from swords at least."</p>
+<p>"But they can murder as well in the Bastille as elsewhere!" I
+cried.</p>
+<p>Vigo shook his head.</p>
+<p>"No; had they meant murder, they'd have settled him here in the
+alley. Since they lugged him off unhurt, they don't mean it. I know
+not what the devil they are up to, but it isn't that."</p>
+<p>"It was Lucas's game in the first place," I repeated. "He's too
+prudent to come out in the open and fight M. &Eacute;tienne. He
+never strikes with his own hand; his way is to make some one else
+strike for him. So he gets M. &Eacute;tienne into the Bastille.
+That's the first step. I suppose he thinks Mayenne will attend to
+the second."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne dares not take the boy's life," Vigo answered. "He
+could have killed him, an he chose, in the streets, and nobody the
+wiser. But now that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille,
+Mayenne dares not kill him there, by foul play or by law&mdash;the
+Duke of St. Quentin's son. No; all Mayenne can do is to confine him
+at his good pleasure. Whence presently we will pluck him out at
+King Henry's good pleasure."</p>
+<p>"And meantime is he to rot behind bars?"</p>
+<p>"Unless Monsieur can get him out. But then," Vigo went on, "a
+month or two in a cell won't be a bad thing for him, neither. His
+head will have a chance to cool. After a dose of Mayenne's purge he
+may recover of his fever for Mayenne's ward."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! You will send to Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. You will go. And Gilles with you to keep you out of
+mischief."</p>
+<p>"When? Now?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Vigo. "You will go clothe yourself in breeches first,
+else are you not likely to arrive anywhere but at the mad-house.
+And then eat your supper. It's a long road to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>I ran at once, through a fusillade of jeers from soldiers,
+grooms, and house-men, across the court, through the hall, and up
+the stairs to Marcel's chamber. Never was I gladder of anything in
+my life than to doff those swaddling petticoats. Two minutes, and I
+was a man again. I found it in my heart to pity the poor things who
+must wear the trappings their lives long.</p>
+<p>But for all my joy in my freedom, I choked over my supper and
+pushed it away half tasted, in misery over M. &Eacute;tienne. Vigo
+might say comfortably that Mayenne dared not kill him, but I
+thought there were few things that gentleman dared not do. Then
+there was Lucas to be reckoned with. He had caught his fly in the
+web; he was not likely to let him go long undevoured. At best, if
+M. &Eacute;tienne's life were safe, yet was he helpless, while
+to-morrow our mademoiselle was to marry. Vigo seemed to think that
+a blessing, but I was nigh to weeping into my soup. The one ray of
+light was that she was not to marry Lucas. That was something.
+Still, when M. &Eacute;tienne came out of prison, if ever he
+did,&mdash;I could scarce bring myself to believe it,&mdash;he
+would find his dear vanished over the rocky Pyrenees.</p>
+<p>Vigo would not even let me start when I was ready. Since we were
+too late to find the gates open, we must wait till ten of the
+clock, at which hour the St. Denis gate would be in the hands of a
+certain Brissac, who would pass us with a wink at the word St.
+Quentin.</p>
+<p>I was so wroth with Vigo that I would not stay with him, but
+went up-stairs into M. &Eacute;tienne's silent chamber, and flung
+myself down on the window-bench his head might never touch again,
+and wondered how he was faring in prison. I wished I were there
+with him. I cared not much what the place was, so long as we were
+together. I had gone down the mouth of hell smiling, so be it I
+went at his heels. Mayhap if I had struggled harder with my
+captors, shown my sex earlier, they had taken me too. Heartily I
+wished they had; I trow I am the only wight ever did wish himself
+behind bars. And promptly I repented me, for if Vigo had proved but
+a broken reed, there was Monsieur. Monsieur was not likely to sit
+smug and declare prison the best place for his son.</p>
+<p>The slow twilight faded altogether, and the dark came. The city
+was very still. Once in a while a shout or a sound of bell was
+borne over the roofs, or infrequent voices and footsteps sounded in
+the street beyond our gate. The men in the court under my window
+were quiet too, talking among themselves without much raillery or
+laughter; I knew they discussed the unhappy plight of the heir of
+St. Quentin. The chimes had rung some time ago the half-hour after
+nine, and I was fidgeting to be off, but huffed as I was with him,
+I could not lower myself to go ask Vigo's leave to start. He might
+come after me when he wanted me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! F&eacute;lix!" Marcel shouted down the corridor.
+I sprang up; then, remembering my dignity, moved no further, but
+bade him come in to me.</p>
+<p>"Where are you mooning in the dark?" he demanded, stumbling over
+the threshold. "Oh, there you are. Dame! you'd come down-stairs
+mighty quick if you knew what was there for you?"</p>
+<p>"What?" I cried, divided between the wild hope that it was
+Monsieur and the wilder one that it was M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Don't you wish I'd tell you? Well, you're a good boy, and I
+will. It's the prettiest lass I've seen in a month of
+Sundays&mdash;you in your petticoats don't come near her."</p>
+<p>"For me?" I stuttered.</p>
+<p>"Aye; she asked for M. le Duc, and when he wasn't here, for you.
+I suppose it's some friend of M. &Eacute;tienne's."</p>
+<p>I supposed so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my
+borrowed plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had
+not returned it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my
+eyes out because I had lost the cap&mdash;whether I could find it
+if I went to look with a light. None too eagerly I descended to
+her.</p>
+<p>She was standing against the wall in the archway. Two or three
+of the guardsmen were about her, one with a flambeau, by which they
+were all surveying her. She wore the coif and blouse, the black
+bodice and short striped skirt, of the country peasant girl, and,
+like a country girl, she showed a face flushed and downcast under
+the soldiers' bold scrutiny. She looked up at me as at a rescuing
+angel. It was Mlle. de Montluc!</p>
+<p>I dashed past the torch-bearer, nearly upsetting him in my
+haste, and snatched her hand.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle! Come into the house!"</p>
+<p>She clutched me with fingers as cold as marble, which trembled
+on mine.</p>
+<p>"Where is M. de St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"At St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"You must take me there to-night."</p>
+<p>"I was going," I stammered, bewildered; "but you,
+mademoiselle&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You knew of M. de Mar's arrest?"</p>
+<p>"Aye."</p>
+<p>"What coil is this, F&eacute;lix?" demanded Vigo, coming up. He
+took the torch from his man, and held it in mademoiselle's face,
+whereupon an amazing change came over his own. He lowered the
+light, shielding it with his hand, as if it were an impertinent
+eye.</p>
+<p>"You are Vigo," she said at once.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and I know not what noble lady mademoiselle can be,
+save&mdash;will it please her to come into the house?"</p>
+<p>He led the way with his torch, not suffering himself to look at
+her again. He had his foot on the staircase, when she called to
+him, as if she had been accustomed to addressing him all her
+life:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, this will do. I will speak to you here."</p>
+<p>"As mademoiselle wishes. I thought the salon fitter. My cabinet
+here will be quieter than the hall, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>He opened the door, and she entered. He pushed me in next,
+giving me the torch and saying:</p>
+<p>"Ask mademoiselle, F&eacute;lix, whether she wants me." He
+amazed me&mdash;he who always ordered.</p>
+<p>"I want you, Vigo," mademoiselle answered him herself. "I want
+you to send two men with me to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"To-morrow?"</p>
+<p>"No; to-night."</p>
+<p>"But mademoiselle cannot go to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I can, and I must."</p>
+<p>"They will not let a horse-party through the gate at night,"
+Vigo began.</p>
+<p>"We will go on foot."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," Vigo answered, as if she had proposed flying to
+the moon, "you cannot walk to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I must!" she cried.</p>
+<p>I had put the flambeau in a socket on the wall. Now that the
+light shone on her steadily, I saw for the first time, though I
+might have known it from her presence here, how rent with emotion
+she was, white to the lips, with gleaming eyes and stormy breast.
+She had spoken low and quietly, but it was a main-force composure,
+liable to snap like glass. I thought her on the very verge of
+passionate tears. Vigo looked at her, puzzled, troubled, pitying,
+as on some beautiful, mad creature. She cried out on him suddenly,
+her rich voice going up a key:</p>
+<p>"You need not say 'cannot' to me, Vigo! You know not how I came
+here. I was locked in my chamber. I changed clothes with my Norman
+maid. There was a sentry at each end of the street. I slid down a
+rope of my bedclothes; it was dark&mdash;they did not see me. I
+knocked at Ferou's door&mdash;thank the saints, it opened to me
+quickly! I told M. Ferou&mdash;God forgive me!&mdash;I had business
+for the duke at the other end of the tunnel. He took me through,
+and I came here."</p>
+<p>"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my
+hands on the ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn
+cruelly from her delicate palms and the inside of her fingers.
+Little threads of blood marked the scores. "Then I came here," she
+repeated. "In all my life I have never been in the streets
+alone&mdash;not even for one step at noonday. Now will you tell me,
+M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it is yours to say what you can do."</p>
+<p>As for me, I dropped on my knees and laid my lips to her
+fingers, softly, for fear even their pressure might hurt her
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle!" I cried in pure delight. "Mademoiselle, that you
+are here!"</p>
+<p>She flushed under my words.</p>
+<p>"Ah, it is no little thing brought me. You knew M. de Mar was
+arrested?"</p>
+<p>We assented; she went on, more to me than to Vigo, as if in
+telling me she was telling M. &Eacute;tienne. She spoke low, as if
+in pain.</p>
+<p>"After supper M. de Mayenne went back to his cabinet and let out
+Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"I wish we had killed him," I muttered. "We had no time or
+weapons."</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne sent for me then," she went on, wetting her lips.
+"I have never seen him so angry. He was furious because M. de Mar
+had been before his face and he had not known it. He felt he had
+been made a mock of. He raged against me&mdash;I never knew he
+could be so angry. He said the Spanish envoy was too good for me; I
+should marry Paul de Lorraine to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>"That was not it. I had borne that!" she cried. "Mayhap I
+deserved it. But while my lord thundered at me, word came that M.
+de Mar was taken. My lord swore he should die. He swore no man ever
+set him at naught and lived to boast of it."</p>
+<p>"Will&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She swept on unheeding:</p>
+<p>"He said he should be tried for the murder of Pontou&mdash;he
+should be tortured to make him confess it."</p>
+<p>She dropped down on her knees, hiding her face in her arms on
+the table, shaking from head to foot as in an ague. Vigo swore to
+himself, loudly, violently: "If Mayenne do that, by the throne of
+Heaven, I'll kill him!"</p>
+<p>She sprang to her feet, dry-eyed, fierce as a young lioness.</p>
+<p>"Is that all you can say? Mayenne may torture him and be killed
+for it?"</p>
+<p>"I shall send to the duke&mdash;" Vigo began.</p>
+<p>"Aye! I shall go to the duke! I can say who killed Pontou. I
+know much besides to tell the king. I was Mayenne's cousin, but if
+he would save his secrets he must give up M. de Mar. Mother of God!
+I have been his obedient child; I have let him do so with me as he
+would. I sent my lover away. I consented to the Spanish marriage.
+But to this I will not submit. He shall not torture and kill
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar!"</p>
+<p>Vigo took her hand and kissed it.</p>
+<p>"Shall we start, Vigo? Once at St. Denis, I am hostage for his
+safety. The king can tell Mayenne that if Mar is tortured he will
+torture me! Mayenne may not tender me greatly, but he will not
+relish his cousin's breaking on the wheel."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne won't torture M. &Eacute;tienne," Vigo said, patting
+her hand in both of his, forgetting she was a great lady, he an
+equery. "Fear not! you will save him, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Let us go!" she cried feverishly. "Let us go!"</p>
+<p>Gilles was in the court waiting, stripped of his livery, dressed
+peaceably as a porter, but with a mallet in his hand that I should
+not like to receive on my crown. I thought we were ready, but Vigo
+bade us wait. I stood on the house-steps with mademoiselle, while
+he took aside Squinting Charlot for a low-voiced, emphatic
+interview.</p>
+<p>"Must we wait?" mademoiselle urged me, quivering like the arrow
+on the bow-string. "They may discover I am gone. Need we wait?"</p>
+<p>"Aye," I answered; "if Vigo bids us. He knows."</p>
+<p>We waited then. Vigo disappeared presently. Mademoiselle and I
+stood patient, with, oh! what impatience in our hearts, wondering
+how he could so hinder us. Not till he came back did it dawn on me
+for what we had stayed. He was dressed as an under-groom, not a tag
+of St. Quentin colours on him.</p>
+<p>"I beg a thousand pardons, mademoiselle. I had to give my
+lieutenant his orders. Now, if you will give the word, we go."</p>
+<p>"Do you go, M. Vigo?" She breathed deep. It was easy to see she
+looked upon him as a regiment.</p>
+<p>"Of course," Vigo answered, as if there could be no other
+way.</p>
+<p>I said in pure devilry, to try to ruffle him:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, you said you were here to guard Monsieur's interests-his
+house, his goods, his moneys. Do you desert your trust?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle turned quickly to him:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, you must not let me take you from your rightful post.
+F&eacute;lix and your man here will care for me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The boy talks silliness, mademoiselle," Vigo returned
+tranquilly. "Mademoiselle is worth a dozen h&ocirc;tels. I go with
+her."</p>
+<p>He walked beside her across the court, I following with Gilles,
+laughing to myself. Only yesterday had Vigo declared that never
+would he give aid and comfort to Mlle. de Montluc. It was no marvel
+she had conquered M. &Eacute;tienne, for he must needs have been in
+love with some one, but in bringing Vigo to her feet she had won a
+triumph indeed.</p>
+<p>We had to go out by the great gate, because the key of the
+postern was in the Bastille. But as if by magic every guardsman and
+hanger-about had disappeared&mdash;there was not one to stare at
+the lady; though when we had passed some one locked the gates
+behind us. Vigo called me up to mademoiselle's left. Gilles was to
+loiter behind, far enough to seem not to belong to us, near enough
+to come up at need. Thus, at a good pace, mademoiselle stepping out
+as brave as any of us, we set out across the city for the Porte St.
+Denis.</p>
+<p>Our quarter was very quiet; we scarce met a soul. But afterward,
+as we reached the neighbourhood of the markets, the streets grew
+livelier. Now were we gladder than ever of Vigo's escort; for
+whenever we approached a band of roisterers or of gentlemen with
+lights, mademoiselle sheltered herself behind the equery's broad
+back, hidden as behind a tower. Once the gallant M. de Champfleury,
+he who in pink silk had adorned Mme. de Mayenne's salon, passed
+close enough to touch her. She heaved a sigh of relief when he was
+by. For her own sake she had no fear; the midnight streets, the
+open road to St. Denis, had no power to daunt her: but the dread of
+being recognized and turned back rode her like a nightmare.</p>
+<p>Close by the gate, Vigo bade us pause in the door of a shop
+while he went forward to reconnoiter. Before long he returned.</p>
+<p>"Bad luck, mademoiselle. Brissac's not on. I don't know the
+officer, but he knows me, that's the worst of it. He told me this
+was not St. Quentin night. Well, we must try the Porte Neuve."</p>
+<p>But mademoiselle demurred:</p>
+<p>"That will be out of our way, will it not, Vigo? It is a longer
+road from the Porte Neuve to St. Denis?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; but what to do? We must get through the walls."</p>
+<p>"Suppose we fare no better at the Porte Neuve? If your Brissac
+is suspected, he'll not be on at night. Vigo, I propose that we
+part company here. They will not know Gilles and F&eacute;lix at
+the gate, will they?"</p>
+<p>"No," Vigo said doubtfully; "but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Then can we get through!" she cried. "They will not stop us,
+such humble folk! We are going to the bedside of our dying mother
+at St. Denis. Your name, Gilles?"</p>
+<p>"Forestier, mademoiselle," he stammered, startled.</p>
+<p>"Then are we all Forestiers&mdash;Gilles, F&eacute;lix, and
+Jeanne. We can pass out, Vigo; I am sure we can pass out. I am
+loath to part with you, but I fear to go through the city to the
+Porte Neuve. My absence may be discovered&mdash;I must place myself
+without the walls speedily.</p>
+<p>"Well, mademoiselle may try it," Vigo gave reluctant consent.
+"If you are refused, we can fall back on the Porte Neuve. If you
+succeed&mdash;Listen to me, you fellows. You will deliver
+mademoiselle into Monsieur's hands, or answer to me for it. If any
+one touches her little finger&mdash;well, trust me!"</p>
+<p>"That's understood," we answered, saluting together.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle need have no doubts of them," Vigo said.
+"F&eacute;lix is M. le Comte's own henchman. And Gilles is the best
+man in the household, next to me. God speed you, my lady. I am
+here, if they turn you back."</p>
+<p>We went boldly round the corner and up the street to the gate.
+The sentry walking his beat ordered us away without so much as
+looking at us. Then Gilles, appointed our spokesman, demanded to
+see the captain of the watch. His errand was urgent.</p>
+<p>But the sentry showed no disposition to budge. Had we a
+passport? No, we had no passport. Then we could go about our
+business. There was no leaving Paris to-night for us. Call the
+captain? No; he would do nothing of the kind. Be off, then!</p>
+<p>But at this moment, hearing the altercation, the officer himself
+came out of the guard-room in the tower, and to him Gilles at once
+began his story. Our mother at St. Denis had sent for us to come to
+her dying bed. He was a street-porter; the messenger had had
+trouble to find him. His young brother and sister were in service,
+kept to their duties till late. Our mother might even now be
+yielding up the ghost! It was a pitiful case, M. le Capitaine;
+might we not be permitted to pass?</p>
+<p>The young officer appeared less interested in this moving tale
+than in the face of mademoiselle, lighted up by the flambeau on the
+tower wall.</p>
+<p>"I should be glad to oblige your charming sister," he returned,
+smiling, "but none goes out of the city without a passport. Perhaps
+you have one, though, from my Lord Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of
+Mayenne?" quoth Gilles.</p>
+<p>"It seems improbable," the officer smiled, pleased with his wit.
+"Sorry to discommode you, my dear. But perhaps, lacking a passport,
+you can yet oblige me with the countersign, which does as well.
+Just one little word, now, and I'll let you through."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="408.jpg"></a> <a href="images/408.jpg"><img src=
+"images/408.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"If monsieur will tell me the little word?" she asked
+innocently.</p>
+<p>He burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come, monsieur captain," Gilles urged, "many and many a
+fellow goes in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a
+net to stop big fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do
+to my Lord Mayenne, or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness
+to let three poor servants through to their dying mother?"</p>
+<p>"It desolates me to hear of her extremity," the captain
+answered, with a fine irony, "but I am here to do my duty. I am
+thinking, my dear, that you are some great lady's maid?"</p>
+<p>He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to
+protest:</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer's
+wife."</p>
+<p>"And perhaps you serve in the shop?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur," she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard
+against a trap. "No, monsieur; I am never in the shop. I am far too
+busy with my work. Monsieur does not seem to understand what a
+servant-lass has to do."</p>
+<p>For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light,
+revealing all its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.</p>
+<p>"I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either."</p>
+<p>With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in
+the folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror. He
+softened somewhat at sight of her distress.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's none of my business if a lady chooses to be
+masquerading round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey.
+I don't know what your purpose is&mdash;I don't ask to know. But
+I'm here to keep my gate, and I'll keep it. Go try to wheedle the
+officer at the Porte Neuve."</p>
+<p>In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned
+away&mdash;to face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel's
+shoulder-straps. With a dragoon at his back, he had come so softly
+out of a side alley that not even the captain had marked him.</p>
+<p>"What's this, Guilbert?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir. I've just
+turned them away."</p>
+<p>"What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?"</p>
+<p>"I said they could go see how that gate is kept. I showed them
+how this is."</p>
+<p>"Why must you pass through at this time of night?" said the
+commanding officer, civilly. Gilles once again bemoaned the dying
+mother. The young captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted
+him:</p>
+<p>"I believe that's a fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer
+about these people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and
+has hands like a duchess's."</p>
+<p>The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor
+unfriendly. He said in a perfectly neutral manner:</p>
+<p>"It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a
+duchess&mdash;has a mother or not. The point is whether these
+people have the countersign. If they have it, they can pass,
+whoever they are."</p>
+<p>"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you
+would do well, sir, to demand the lady's name."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the
+superior officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the
+word, she pronounced distinctly her name:</p>
+<p>"Lorance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through,
+Guilbert."</p>
+<p>The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than
+we.</p>
+<p>"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"</p>
+<p>"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They
+have the countersign; pass them through."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+<h3><i>St. Denis&mdash;and Navarre!</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>s the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short
+in his tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:</p>
+<p>"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on
+the St. Denis road?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to
+herself as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us
+out for friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale.
+Mayenne always gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a
+marvel, it was mine!"</p>
+<p>I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis.
+The road was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday
+night's rain. Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they
+were only bushes or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This
+was not now a wolf country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and
+as dangerous. The hangers-on of the army&mdash;beggars, feagues,
+and footpads&mdash;hovered, like the cowardly beasts of prey they
+were, about the outskirts of the city. Did a leaf rustle, we
+started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine for alms, we made
+ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
+concealment&mdash;his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere&mdash;a
+brace of pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking
+care, whenever a rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes,
+seemed to follow us, to talk loud and cheerfully of common things,
+the little interests of a humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy,
+or the pistol-barrels shining in the faint starlight, none molested
+us, though we encountered more than one mysterious company. We
+never passed into the gloom under an arch of trees without the
+resolution to fight for our lives. We never came out again into the
+faint light of the open road without wondering thanks to the
+saints&mdash;silent thanks, for we never spoke a word of any fear,
+Gilles and I. I trow mademoiselle knew well enough, but she spoke
+no word either. She never faltered, never showed by so much as the
+turn of her head that she suspected any danger, but, eyes on the
+distant lights of St. Denis, walked straight along, half a step
+ahead of us all the way. Stride as we might, we two strong fellows
+could never quite keep up with her.</p>
+<p>The journey could not at such pace stretch out forever.
+Presently the distant lights were no longer distant, but near,
+nearer, close at hand&mdash;the lights of the outposts of the camp.
+A sentinel started out from the quoin of a wall to stop us, but
+when we had told our errand he became as friendly as a brother. He
+went across the road into a neighbouring tournebride to report to
+the officer of the guard, and came back presently with a torch and
+the order to take us to the Duke of St. Quentin's lodging.</p>
+<p>It was near an hour after midnight, and St. Denis was in bed.
+Save for a drowsy patrol here and there, we met no one. Fewer than
+the patrols were the lanterns hung on ropes across the streets;
+these were the only lights, for the houses were one and all as dark
+as tombs. Not till we had reached the middle of the town did we
+see, in the second story of a house in the square, a beam of light
+shining through the shutter-chink.</p>
+<p>"Some one in mischief." Gilles pointed.</p>
+<p>"Aye," laughed the sentry, "your duke. This is where he lodges,
+over the saddler's."</p>
+<p>He knocked with the butt of his musket on the door. The shutter
+above creaked open, and a voice&mdash;Monsieur's voice&mdash;asked,
+"Who's there?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle was concealed in the embrasure of the doorway;
+Gilles and I stepped back into the street where Monsieur could see
+us.</p>
+<p>"Gilles Forestier and F&eacute;lix Broux, Monsieur, just from
+Paris, with news."</p>
+<p>"Wait."</p>
+<p>"Is it all right, M. le Duc?" the sentry asked, saluting.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Monsieur answered, closing the shutter.</p>
+<p>The soldier, with another salute to the blank window, and a nod
+of "Good-by, then," to us, went back to his post. Left in darkness,
+we presently heard Monsieur's quick step on the flags of the hall,
+and the clatter of the bolts. He opened to us, standing there fully
+dressed, with a guttering candle.</p>
+<p>"My son?" he said instantly.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle, crouching in the shadow of the door-post, pushed
+me forward. I saw I was to tell him.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, he was arrested and driven to the Bastille to-night
+between seven and eight. Lucas&mdash;Paul de Lorraine&mdash;went to
+the governor and swore that M. &Eacute;tienne killed the lackey
+Pontou in the house in the Rue Coupejarrets. It was Lucas killed
+him&mdash;Lucas told Mayenne so. Mlle. de Montluc heard him, too.
+And here is mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>At the word she came out of the shadow and slowly over the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the
+H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf. She had come
+without thought of herself, without pause, without fear. But now
+the first heat of her impulse was gone. Her long tramp had left her
+faint and weary, and here she had to face not an equery and a page,
+hers to command, but a great duke, the enemy of her house. She came
+blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes dirty from the common road,
+hair ruffled by the night winds, to show herself for the first time
+to her lover's father, opposer of her hopes, thwarter of her
+marriage. Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill and stood a
+moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird whom the
+least movement would startle into flight.</p>
+<p>But Monsieur made none. He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as
+she, looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence
+real. Then as the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten
+her more than the harsh speech she may have feared; with a
+desperate courage she raised her eyes to his face.</p>
+<p>The spell was broken. Monsieur stepped forward at once to
+her.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you have come a journey. You are tired. Let me
+give you some refreshment; then will you tell me the story."</p>
+<p>It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of
+unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his
+escort down the passage. But as she went, she flung me an imploring
+glance; I was to come too. Gilles bolted the door again, and sat
+down to wait on the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden
+me, followed him and mademoiselle. It troubled me that she should
+so dread him&mdash;him, the warmest-hearted of all men. But if she
+needed me to give her confidence, here I was.</p>
+<p>Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the
+passage. It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of
+leather. It was doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the
+saddler's family. Monsieur set his candle down on the big table in
+the middle; then, on second thought, took it up again and lighted
+two iron sconces on the wall.</p>
+<p>"Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest," he bade, for she was
+starting up in nervousness from the chair where he had put her. "I
+will return in a moment."</p>
+<p>When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating,
+yet eagerly:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was
+good cause for fear. But now there is nothing to dread."</p>
+<p>She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for
+something. I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not,
+for she passed the three doors and came back to her place with an
+air of disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.</p>
+<p>"I never before went anywhere unmasked," she murmured.</p>
+<p>Monsieur entered with a salver containing a silver cup of wine
+and some Rheims biscuit. He offered it to her formally; she
+accepted with scarcely audible thanks, and sat, barely touching the
+wine to her lips, crumbling the biscuit into bits with restless
+fingers, making the pretence of a meal serve as excuse for her
+silence. Monsieur glanced at her, puzzled-wise, waiting for her to
+speak. Had the Infanta Isabella come to visit him, he could not
+have been more surprised. It seemed to him discourteous to press
+her; he waited for her to explain her presence.</p>
+<p>I wanted to shake mademoiselle. With a dozen swift words, with a
+glance of her blue eyes, she could sweep Monsieur off his feet as
+she had swept Vigo. And instead, she sat there, not daring to look
+at him, like a child caught stealing sweets. She had found words to
+defend herself from the teasing tongues at the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine, to plead for me, to lash Lucas, to move Mayenne himself;
+but she could not find one syllable for the Duke of St. Quentin.
+She had been to admiration the laughing coquette, the stout
+champion, the haughty great lady, the frank lover; but now she was
+the shy child, blushing, stammering, constrained.</p>
+<p>Had Monsieur attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded
+of her up and down what had brought her this strange road at such
+amazing hour and in such unfitting company, she must needs have
+answered, and, once started, she would quickly have kindled her
+fire again. Had he, on other part, with a smile, an encouraging
+word, given her ever so little a push, she had gone on easily
+enough. But he did neither. He was courteous and cold. Partly was
+his coldness real; he could not look on her as other than the
+daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who had schemed to
+kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to disaster.
+Partly was it mere absence; M. &Eacute;tienne's plight was more to
+him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently
+to me.</p>
+<p>"Tell me, F&eacute;lix, all about it."</p>
+<p>Before I could answer him the door behind us opened to admit two
+gentlemen, shoulder to shoulder. They were dressed much alike,
+plainly, in black. One was about thirty years of age, tall,
+thin-faced, and dark, and of a gravity and dignity beyond his
+years. Living was serious business to him; his eyes were
+thoughtful, steady, and a little cold. His companion was some ten
+years older; his beard and curling hair, worn away from his
+forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled with gray.
+He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as a
+hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him
+seemed to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we
+were no shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny
+candles before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel
+when she recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common
+lout, never heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in
+the flick of an eye that this was Henri Quatre.</p>
+<p>I was hot and cold and trembling, my heart pounding till it was
+like to choke me. I had never dreamed of finding myself in the
+presence. I had never thought to face any man greater than my duke.
+For the moment I was utterly discomfited. Then I bethought me that
+not for God alone were knees given to man, and I slid down quietly
+to the floor, hoping I did right, but reflecting for my comfort
+that in any case I was too small to give great offence.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle started out of her chair and swept a curtsey almost
+to the ground, holding the lowly pose like a lady of marble. Only
+Monsieur remained standing as he was, as if a king was an every-day
+affair with him. I always thought Monsieur a great man, but now I
+knew it.</p>
+<p>The king, leaving his companion to close the door, was across
+the room in three strides.</p>
+<p>"I am come to look after you, St. Quentin," he cried, laughing.
+"I cannot have my council broken up by pretty grisettes. The
+precedent is dangerous."</p>
+<p>With the liveliest curiosity and amusement he surveyed the top
+of mademoiselle's bent head, and Monsieur's puzzled, troubled
+countenance.</p>
+<p>"This is no grisette, Sire," Monsieur answered, "but a very
+high-born demoiselle indeed&mdash;cousin to my Lord Mayenne."</p>
+<p>Astonishment flashed over the king's mobile face; his manner
+changed in an instant to one of utmost deference.</p>
+<p>"Rise, mademoiselle," he begged, as if her appearance were the
+most natural and desirable thing in the world. "I could wish it
+were my good adversary Mayenne himself who was come to treat with
+us; but be assured his cousin shall lack no courtesy."</p>
+<p>She swayed lightly to her feet, raising her face to the king's.
+Into his countenance, which mirrored his emotions like a glass,
+came a quick delight at the sight of her. The colour waxed and
+waned in her cheeks; her breath fluttered uncertainly; her eyes,
+anxious, eager, searched his face.</p>
+<p>"I cry your Majesty's good pardon," she faltered. "I had urgent
+business with M. de St. Quentin&mdash;I did not guess he was with
+your Majesty&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The king's business is glad to step aside for yours,
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She curtseyed, blushing, hiding her eyes under their sooty
+lashes; thinking as I did, I made no doubt, here was a king indeed.
+His Majesty went on:</p>
+<p>"I can well believe, mademoiselle, 'tis no trifling matter
+brings you at midnight to our rough camp. We will not delay you
+further, but be at pains to remember that if in anything Henry of
+France can aid you he stands at your command."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="422.jpg"></a> <a href="images/422.jpg"><img src=
+"images/422.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS.</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>He made her a noble bow and took her hand to kiss, when she,
+like a child that sees itself losing a protector, clutched his hand
+in her little trembling fingers, her wet eyes fixed imploringly on
+his face. He beamed upon her; he felt no desire whatever to be
+gone.</p>
+<p>"Am I to stay?" he asked radiantly; then with grave gentleness
+he added: "Mademoiselle is in trouble. Will she bring her trouble
+to the king? That is what a king is for&mdash;to ease his subjects'
+burdens."</p>
+<p>She could not speak; she made him her obeisance with a look out
+of the depths of her soul.</p>
+<p>"Then are you my subject, mademoiselle?" he demanded slyly.</p>
+<p>She shook the tears from her lashes, and found her voice and her
+smile to answer his:</p>
+<p>"Sire, I was a true Ligueuse this morning. But I came here half
+Navarraise, and now I swear I am wholly one."</p>
+<p>"Now, that is good hearing!" the king cried. "Such a recruit
+from Mayenne! Also is it heartening to discover that my conversion
+is not the only sudden one in the world. It has taken me five
+months to turn my coat, but here is mademoiselle turns hers in a
+day."</p>
+<p>He had glanced over his shoulder to point this out to his
+gentleman, but now he faced about in time to catch his recruit
+looking triste again.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," he said, "you are beautiful, grave; but, as you
+had the graciousness to show me just now, still more beautiful,
+smiling. Now we are going to arrange matters so that you will smile
+always. Will you tell me what is the trouble, my child?"</p>
+<p>"Gladly, Sire," she answered, and dropped down a moment on her
+knees before him, to kiss his hand.</p>
+<p>I marvelled that Mayenne and all his armies had been able to
+keep this man off his throne and in his saddle four long years. It
+was plain why his power grew stronger every day, why every hour
+brought him new allies from the ranks of the League. You had only
+to see him to adore him. Once get him into Paris, the struggle
+would be over. They would put up with no other for king.</p>
+<p>"Sire," mademoiselle said with hesitancy, "I shall tire you with
+my story."</p>
+<p>"I am greatly in dread of it," the king answered, ceremoniously
+placing her in a chair before seating himself to listen. Then, to
+give her a moment, I think, to collect herself, he turned to his
+companion:</p>
+<p>"Here, Rosny, if you ache to be grubbing over your papers, do
+not let us delay you."</p>
+<p>"I am in no haste, Sire," his gentleman answered, unmoving.</p>
+<p>"Which is to say, you dare not leave me alone," the king laughed
+out. "I tell you, St. Quentin, if I am not dragooned into a staid,
+discreet, steady-paced monarch, 'twill be no lapse of Whip-King
+Rosny's. I am listening, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She began at once, eager and unfaltering. All her confusion was
+gone. It had been well-nigh impossible to tell the story to M. de
+St. Quentin, impossible to tell it to this impassive M. de Rosny.
+But to the King of France and Navarre it was as easy to talk as to
+one's playfellow.</p>
+<p>"Sire, I am Lorance de Montluc. My grandfather was the Marshal
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Were to-day next Monday, I could pray, 'God rest his soul,'"
+the king rejoined. "But even a heretic may say that he was a
+gallant general, an honour to France. He married a sister of
+Fran&ccedil;ois le Balafr&eacute;? And mademoiselle is orphaned
+now, and my friend Mayenne's ward?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Sire. I came here, Sire, to tell M. de St. Quentin
+concerning his son. And though I am talking of myself, it is all
+the same story. Three years ago, after the king died, M. de Mayenne
+was endeavouring with all his might to bring the Duke of St.
+Quentin into the League. He offered me to him for his son, M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>"And you are still Mlle. de Montluc?"</p>
+<p>She turned to Monsieur with the prettiest smile in the
+world.</p>
+<p>"M. de St. Quentin, though he has not fought for you, Sire, has
+ever been whole-heartedly loyal."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris!" the king exclaimed. "He is either an
+incredible loyalist or an incredible ass!"</p>
+<p>Even the grave Rosny smiled, and the victim laughed as he
+defended himself.</p>
+<p>"That my loyalty may be credible, Sire, I make haste to say that
+I had never seen mademoiselle till this hour."</p>
+<p>"I know not whether to think better of you for that, or worse,"
+the king retorted. "Had I been in your place, beshrew me but I
+should have seen her."</p>
+<p>Monsieur smiled and was silent, with anxious eyes on
+mademoiselle.</p>
+<p>"M. de St. Quentin withdrew to Picardie, Sire, but M. de Mar
+stayed in Paris. And my cousin Mayenne never gave up entirely the
+notion of the marriage. He is very tenacious of his plans."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said the king, with a grimace. "Well I know."</p>
+<p>"He blew hot and cold with M. de Mar. He favoured the marriage
+on Sunday and scouted it on Wednesday and discussed it again on
+Friday."</p>
+<p>"And what were M. de Mar's opinions?"</p>
+<p>She met his probing gaze blushing but candid.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, Sire, favoured it every day in the week."</p>
+<p>"I'll swear he did!" the king cried.</p>
+<p>"When M. le Duc came back to Paris," mademoiselle went on, "and
+it was known he had espoused your cause, Sire, Mayenne was so loath
+to lose the whole house of St. Quentin to you that he offered to
+marry me out of hand to M. de Mar. And he refused."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris!" Henry cried. "We will marry you to a king's
+son. On my honour, mademoiselle&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Sire," she pleaded, "you promised to hear me."</p>
+<p>"That I will, then. But I warn you I am out of patience with
+these St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"Then you are out of patience with devotion to your cause,
+Sire."</p>
+<p>"What! you speak for the recreants?"</p>
+<p>"I assure you, Sire, you have no more loyal servant than M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>"Strange I cannot recollect the face of my so loyal servant,"
+the king said dryly.</p>
+<p>But she, with a fine scorn of argument, made the audacious
+answer:</p>
+<p>"When you see it, you will like it, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Not half so well as I like yours, mademoiselle, I promise you!
+But he comes to me well commended, since you vouch for him. Or
+rather, he does not come. What is this ardent follower doing so
+long away from me? Where the devil does this eager partizan keep
+himself? St. Quentin, where is your son?"</p>
+<p>"He had been with you long ago, Sire, but for the bright eyes of
+a lady of the League. And now she comes to tell me&mdash;my page
+tells me&mdash;he is in the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris! And how has that calamity befallen?"</p>
+<p>She hesitated a moment, embarrassed by her very wealth of
+matter, confused between her longing to set the whole case before
+the king, and her fear of wearying his patience. But his glance
+told her she need have no misgiving. Had she come to present him
+Paris, he could not have been more interested.</p>
+<p>In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his
+words.</p>
+<p>"Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle? Last night, for the first
+time in a month, I saw my son. He was just returned from an
+adventure under her window. Mayenne's guard had set on him, and he
+was escaped by the skin of his teeth. He declared to me that never
+till he was slain should he cease endeavour to win Mlle. de
+Montluc. And I? Marry, I ate my words in humblest fashion. After
+three years I made my surrender. Since you are his one desire,
+mademoiselle, then are you my one desire. I bade him
+God-speed."</p>
+<p>She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her
+lashes.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends. And I have so
+many!"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king cried in the same breath, "fear not. I
+will get you your lover if I sell France for him."</p>
+<p>She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.</p>
+<p>"I have no fear, Sire. With you and M. de St. Quentin to save
+him, I can have no fear. But he is in desperate case. Has M. de St.
+Quentin told you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de
+Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Aye," said the king, "it is a dolourous topic&mdash;very
+painful! Eh, Rosny?"</p>
+<p>"I do not shrink from my pains, Sire," M. de Rosny answered
+quietly. "I hold myself much to blame in this matter. I thought I
+knew the Lucases root and branch&mdash;I did not discover that a
+daughter of the house had ever been a friend to Henri de
+Guise."</p>
+<p>"And how should you discover it?" the king demanded. He had made
+the attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself
+to the defence. "How were you to dream it? Henri de Guise's side
+was the last place to look for a girl of the Religion. But I
+forgive him. If he stole a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep: we
+have stolen the flower of Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Paul Lucas&mdash;Paul de Lorraine," she went on eagerly, "was
+put into M. le Duc's house to kill him. He went all the more
+willingly that he believed M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor. He
+tried to draw M. de Mar into the scheme, to ruin him. He failed.
+And the whole plot came to naught."</p>
+<p>"I have learned that," the king said. "I have been told how a
+country boy stripped his mask off."</p>
+<p>He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed.
+He was so quick that he grasped everything at half a word.
+Instantly he had turned to the lady again. "Pray continue, dear
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Afterward&mdash;that is, yesterday&mdash;Paul went to M. de
+Belin and swore against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in
+his house in the Rue Coupejarrets. The lackey was murdered there,
+but Paul de Lorraine did it. The man knew the plot; Paul killed him
+to stop his tongue. I heard him confess it to M. de Mayenne. I and
+this F&eacute;lix Broux were in the oratory and heard it."</p>
+<p>"Then M. de Mar was arrested?"</p>
+<p>"Not then. The officers missed him. To-day he came to our house,
+dressed as an Italian jeweller, with a case of trinkets to sell.
+Madame admitted him; no one knew him but me and my chamber-*mate.
+On the way out, Mayenne met him and kept him while he chose a
+jewel. Paul de Lorraine was there too. I was like to die of fear. I
+went in to M. de Mayenne; I begged him to come out with me to
+supper, to dismiss the tradespeople that I might talk with him
+there&mdash;anything. But it availed not. M. de Mayenne spoke
+freely before them, as one does before common folk. Presently he
+led me to supper. Paul was left alone with M. de Mar and the boy.
+He recognized them. He was armed, and they were not, but they
+overbore him and locked him up in the closet."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, mademoiselle! I was to rescue M. de Mar for your sake,
+but now I will do it for his own. I find him much to my liking. He
+came away clear, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, to be seized in the street by the governor's men. When M.
+de Mayenne found how he had been tricked, Sire, he blazed with
+rage."</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant he did!" the king answered, suppressing, however,
+in deference to her distress, his desire to laugh.
+"Ventre-saint-gris, mademoiselle! forgive me if this amuses me here
+at St. Denis. I trow it was not amusing in the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"He sent for me, Sire," she went on, blanching at the memory;
+"he accused me of shielding M. de Mar. It was true. He called me
+liar, traitor, wanton. He said I was false to my house, to my
+bread, to my honour. He said I had smiling lips and a
+Judas-heart&mdash;that I had kissed him and betrayed him. I had
+given him my promise never to hold intercourse with M. de Mar
+again, I had given my word to be true to my house. M. de Mar came
+by no will of mine. I had no inkling of such purpose till I beheld
+him before madame and her ladies. He came to entreat me to
+fly&mdash;to wed him. I denied him, Sire. I sent him away. But was
+I to say to the guard, 'This way, gentlemen. This is my
+lover'?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king exclaimed, "good hap that you have
+turned your back on the house of Lorraine. Here, if we are but
+rough soldiers, we know how to tender you."</p>
+<p>"It was not for myself I came," she said more quietly. "My lord
+had the right to chasten me. I am his ward, and I did deceive him.
+But while he foamed at me came word of M. de Mar's capture. Then
+Mayenne swore he should pay for this dear. He said he should be
+found guilty of the murder. He said plenty of witnesses would swear
+to it. He said M. de Mar should be tortured to make him
+confess."</p>
+<p>With an oath Monsieur sprang forward.</p>
+<p>"Aye," she cried, starting up, "he swore M. de Mar should suffer
+the preparatory and the previous, the estrapade and the
+brodekins!"</p>
+<p>"He dare not," the king shouted. "Mordieu, he dare not!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," she cried, "you can promise him that for every blow he
+strikes &Eacute;tienne de Mar you will strike me two. Mar is in his
+hands, but I am in yours. For M. de Mar, unhurt, you will deliver
+him me, unhurt. If he torture Mar, you will torture me."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king cried, "rather shall he torture every
+chevalier in France than I touch a hair of your head!"</p>
+<p>"Sire&mdash;" the word died away in a sigh; like a snapt rose
+she fell at his feet.</p>
+<p>The king was quick, but Monsieur quicker. On his knees beside
+her, raising her head on his arm, he commanded me:</p>
+<p>"Up-stairs, F&eacute;lix! The door at the back&mdash;bid Dame
+Verney come instantly."</p>
+<p>I flew, and was back to find him risen, holding mademoiselle in
+his arms. Her hair lay loose over his shoulder like a rippling
+flag; her lashes clung to her cheeks as they would never lift
+more.</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin," his Majesty was saying, "I would have married her
+to a prince. But since she wants your son she shall have him,
+ventre-saint-gris, if I storm Paris to-morrow!" And as Monsieur was
+carrying her from the room, the king bent over and kissed her.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle has dropped a packet from her dress," M. de Rosny
+said. "Will you take it, St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>The king, who was nearest, turned to pass it to him; at the
+sight of it he uttered his dear "ventre-saint-gris!" It was a flat,
+oblong packet, tied about with common twine, the seal cut out. The
+king twitched the string off, and with one rapid glance at the
+papers put them into Monsieur's hand.</p>
+<p>"Take them, St. Quentin; they are yours."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2>
+<h3><i>The two dukes.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands,
+Gilles and I were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the
+saddler's shop. Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see
+the crack of light under the door at the back and hear, between
+Gilles's snores, the murmur of voices. The king and his gentlemen
+were planning to save my master; I went to sleep in perfect
+peace.</p>
+<p>At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur
+routed us out.</p>
+<p>"I'm off for Paris, lads. F&eacute;lix comes with me. Gilles
+stays to guard mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle
+knew best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the
+sting passed quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more
+exciting than St. Denis.</p>
+<p>The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway
+mounted the two nags that a sunburnt B&eacute;arn pikeman had
+brought to the door. As we walked them gently across the square,
+which at this rath hour we alone shared with the twittering birds,
+we saw coming down one of the empty streets the hurrying figure of
+M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.</p>
+<p>"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called.
+"I deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to
+wish you God-speed."</p>
+<p>"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his
+hand. "The more that you don't approve me."</p>
+<p>Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day.
+Another man's embrace would have meant less.</p>
+<p>"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly
+see you putting your head into the lion's jaws."</p>
+<p>"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no
+worse off than my son."</p>
+<p>"Your death makes your son's no easier."</p>
+<p>"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle
+the lady? Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"</p>
+<p>"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me
+better to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not
+ripe for us yet. You know my plan&mdash;to send to Villeroi. I
+believe he could manage this thing."</p>
+<p>"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration
+of M. de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what
+he can or will do, uncertain. &Eacute;tienne de Mar is not
+Villeroi's son; he is mine."</p>
+<p>"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take
+your way."</p>
+<p>"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that
+once or twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness
+has served."</p>
+<p>Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.</p>
+<p>"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity
+you are a scamp of a heretic!"</p>
+<p>"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good
+fortune to be born in the Religion."</p>
+<p>Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As
+we turned the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as
+we had left him, gazing soberly after us.</p>
+<p>The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn
+over it. By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great
+danger, he contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden
+all his life with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now.
+As we cantered steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he
+already pictured M. &Eacute;tienne released. However mad he
+acknowledged his errand to be, I think he was scarce visited by a
+doubt of its success. It was impossible to him that his son should
+not be saved.</p>
+<p>We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way
+without hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the
+guard spring on us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by
+gathered in knots, the tradesmen and artisans ran out of their
+shops to cheer St. Quentin, to cheer France, to cheer peace, to
+cheer to the echo the Catholic king.</p>
+<p>"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his
+hat to a big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving
+impudently in the eye of all the world the white flag of the
+king.</p>
+<p>We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in
+other streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out
+for men with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe,
+none stopped us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of
+the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</p>
+<p>They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the
+house, while I led the horses to the stables, where three or four
+grooms at once volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump
+their guardian. But before the fellows had had time to get much out
+of me came Jean Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors.
+I followed him in delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it
+had seemed to me when the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might
+never see him more. Jean ushered me into the well-remembered
+council-room, where Monsieur stood alone, surprised at the sight of
+me.</p>
+<p>"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we
+shut up Lucas."</p>
+<p>I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.</p>
+<p>It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that
+Mayenne could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and
+smiling, whatever emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival
+not only buried, but with a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted
+his guest with all the courteous ease of an unruffled conscience
+and a kindly heart. Not till his glance fell on me did he show any
+sign of discomposure.</p>
+<p>"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.</p>
+<p>"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.</p>
+<p>"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I
+sent for him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M.
+de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
+appearance of truth. "You may go, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves
+the purpose as well as another."</p>
+<p>He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he
+had kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play
+fair. I began to feel somewhat heartened.</p>
+<p>"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly. You have come to join the League."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed out.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to
+join the King."</p>
+<p>"That was a waste of horse-flesh."</p>
+<p>"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will
+come over."</p>
+<p>"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the
+League dead."</p>
+<p>"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de gr&acirc;ce o' Sunday,
+when the king goes to mass."</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such
+case that nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel
+to Henry, be assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my
+game."</p>
+<p>"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur.
+Be assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to
+his Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will
+never go back to him if I choose to stop you!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the
+unsuavity.</p>
+<p>"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered
+the gate. I shall never leave this house if you will
+otherwise."</p>
+<p>"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I
+shall not treat you as your late master treated my brother."</p>
+<p>"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good
+sense."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he
+broke into a laugh.</p>
+<p>"One permits the insolences of the court jester."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick
+flush passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.</p>
+<p>Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke
+made a step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect
+seriousness.</p>
+<p>"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this
+morning. There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my
+course has been offensive to you&mdash;your nephew proved me that.
+I know also that you do not care to meddle with me openly. At
+least, you have not meddled. Whether you will change your
+method&mdash;but I venture to believe not. I am popular just now in
+Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning than have met
+your ears for many a month. You have a great name for prudence, M.
+de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."</p>
+<p>I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence.
+But then, as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne
+returned, with chilling calm:</p>
+<p>"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."</p>
+<p>"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on
+his timidity, but on his judgment."</p>
+<p>"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted
+your death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."</p>
+<p>"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday.
+His party is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a
+blunder to kill me; on Friday it is three days worse a
+blunder."</p>
+<p>"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in
+mind ever since your master killed my brother."</p>
+<p>"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take
+a leaf from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained
+singularly little when he slew Guise to make you head of the
+League."</p>
+<p>Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the
+flattery. But I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the
+less because he knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:</p>
+<p>"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."</p>
+<p>"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a
+little. You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him
+there."</p>
+<p>"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."</p>
+<p>"If he choose."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an
+amiable discussion.</p>
+<p>"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of
+course he did not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real
+offence is making love to your ward."</p>
+<p>"Well, do you deny it?"</p>
+<p>"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much
+worse than dispose of the lady to my heir."</p>
+<p>"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is
+all you have to say."</p>
+<p>"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I have no wish to carry it further."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my
+heir."</p>
+<p>"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."</p>
+<p>"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have
+come to see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne.
+It is for you to choose where among the king's forces you will
+marry mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept
+into Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay
+challenge, and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:</p>
+<p>"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Why, to be sure."</p>
+<p>Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.</p>
+<p>"What mean you?"</p>
+<p>"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is
+your ward, M. de Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! Have you found her?"</p>
+<p>"You speak sooth."</p>
+<p>"In your h&ocirc;tel&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow
+her."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of
+seeking a weapon, of summoning his soldiers.</p>
+<p>"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"</p>
+<p>"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."</p>
+<p>Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:</p>
+<p>"St. Denis! But how&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never
+walked two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But
+she tramped to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at
+one in the morning."</p>
+<p>Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.</p>
+<p>"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"</p>
+<p>"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"</p>
+<p>"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who
+lets them. I left a staunch man in charge&mdash;I have no doubt of
+him."</p>
+<p>"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath
+coming short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.</p>
+<p>"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
+Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
+heart."</p>
+<p>"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be
+hostages for her safe return."</p>
+<p>"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at
+his best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress,
+is eager for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did
+not favour my venture here; he called it a silly business. He said
+you would clap me in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life
+out there before he would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"</p>
+<p>"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out
+of the way, there is Val&egrave;re, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The
+king loses little."</p>
+<p>"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"</p>
+<p>"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to
+sanity."</p>
+<p>I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his
+soldiers. But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again
+in his arm-chair.</p>
+<p>"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"</p>
+<p>"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle
+without a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a
+hostile army cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her
+delicately, tenderly, for that?"</p>
+<p>Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell
+whether the shot hit. Monsieur went on:</p>
+<p>"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but
+you must answer for it to the people of Paris."</p>
+<p>Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table.
+Finally he said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him
+against his will:</p>
+<p>"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The
+arrest was not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it
+to keep him awhile out of my way&mdash;only that. I threatened my
+cousin otherwise in heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I
+shall not kill him."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill
+brooked to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed
+that he did not see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what
+you can with it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me&mdash;knightly
+generosity. It is to that generosity I appeal."</p>
+<p>"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my
+prudence."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence
+point the same path!"</p>
+<p>It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of
+Monsieur's. Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate,
+he suffered it to warm him. He regained of a sudden all the
+amiability with which he had greeted his guest. Smiling and calm,
+he answered:</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your
+cajoleries. They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care
+for my sweet cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you
+have the whiphand."</p>
+<p>Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent,
+waiting.</p>
+<p>"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover.
+Lo! she had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was
+in the streets myself till dawn."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself
+to our torture did you torture Mar."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.</p>
+<p>"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show
+you to what the maid was strung."</p>
+<p>"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
+slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
+befitted her station&mdash;I thought she would be happy enough. And
+she was good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was
+docile till I drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are
+fortunate in your daughter, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne
+added, with his cool smile:</p>
+<p>"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing.
+I laugh at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind
+bars, to say to your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get
+him out.'"</p>
+<p>"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more
+than ever."</p>
+<p>He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the
+chief delayed taking it.</p>
+<p>"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St.
+Quentin, the Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand
+certain little concessions for myself."</p>
+<p>"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."</p>
+<p>My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne
+perceived with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing
+that I could ask of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could
+halve, what I give. Still, that the knightliness may not be, to
+your mortification, all on one side, I have thought of something
+for you to grant."</p>
+<p>"Name it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed,
+with his usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had
+come to spread them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet,
+just arrived, which I was told belonged to you. When I had time to
+think of it again, it had vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later
+it occurred to me that Mlle. de Montluc, arming for battle, had
+purloined it."</p>
+<p>"Your shrewdness does you credit."</p>
+<p>"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no
+prowess of your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I
+want."</p>
+<p>"Even to half my fortune&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, not your gear. Save that for your B&eacute;arnais's itching
+palm."</p>
+<p>"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in
+the League."</p>
+<p>"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne
+went on at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you;
+it had certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders
+to avenge, I have changed my mind about beginning with yours."</p>
+<p>"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless
+creature."</p>
+<p>Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine
+me. Did I let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might
+in time annoy me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in
+Paris you stay out."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't like that!"</p>
+<p>The na&iuml;vet&eacute; amazed while it amused Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of
+my court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers,
+straight to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour
+to make no attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is
+mine."</p>
+<p>Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
+condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his
+dangers, his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the
+League. To be killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled
+away from it to inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a
+moment he actually hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own
+hesitation.</p>
+<p>"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the
+lion's den and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept
+yours, M. de Mayenne, especially since, do I refuse, you will none
+the less pack me off."</p>
+<p>"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of
+your days with me."</p>
+<p>"In the Bastille?"</p>
+<p>"Or in the League."</p>
+<p>"The former is preferable."</p>
+<p>"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third
+alternative is given you."</p>
+<p>"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince
+indeed. Be assured the St. Quentins will not forget."</p>
+<p>"Every one forgets."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have
+had time to forget."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my
+head my course is run!"</p>
+<p>"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court
+jester."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne
+laughed too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length
+of the table to his host:</p>
+<p>"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept
+back but one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come
+over to us sooner or later. Come now!"</p>
+<p>The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered
+coldly:</p>
+<p>"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."</p>
+<p>"Better his than Spain's."</p>
+<p>Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.</p>
+<p>"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.</p>
+<p>"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French
+king, a Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends,
+friendly to old foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the
+looms humming, the mills clacking, wheat growing thick on the
+battle-fields."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.</p>
+<p>"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My
+compliments to your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from
+me that when I submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender,
+from that hour forth am I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and
+obey him. Till then, let him beware of my teeth! While I have one
+pikeman to my back, one sou in my pouch, I fight my cause."</p>
+<p>"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at
+Henry's court to pull you up out of the mire."</p>
+<p>"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their
+offices," Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud
+and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night
+at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king.
+Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord
+Mayenne. When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great
+moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the
+general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.</p>
+<p>"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to
+windward."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2>
+<h3><i>My young lord settles scores with two foes at once.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ccupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our
+several stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I
+awaited in a shady corner of the court the conclusion of
+formalities. I had just declared that King Henry would be in Paris
+within a week, and was on the point of getting my crown cracked for
+it, when, as if for the very purpose&mdash;save the mark!&mdash;of
+rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas. He approached rapidly,
+eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no whit; but all the
+loungers turned to stare at him. Even then he paid no heed, passing
+us without a glance. But the tall d'Auvray bespoke him.</p>
+<p>"M. de Lorraine! Any news?"</p>
+<p>He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he
+had not known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now.
+He was both pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye
+all night.</p>
+<p>"Any news here?" he made Norman answer.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information. We have heard
+nothing."</p>
+<p>"And the woman?"</p>
+<p>"Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word."</p>
+<p>Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of
+us, as if he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he
+was not in the least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a
+full minute before he awoke to my identity.</p>
+<p>"You!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. de Lorraine," I said, with all the respectfulness I
+could muster, which may not have been much. Considering our
+parting, I was ready for any violence. But after the first moment
+of startlement he regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way,
+while he inquired without apparent resentment how I came there.</p>
+<p>"With M. le Duc de St. Quentin," I grinned at him. "We and M. de
+Mayenne are friends now."</p>
+<p>I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed. But he
+turned abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet
+shown.</p>
+<p>"You've not told this fellow?"</p>
+<p>"We understand our orders, monsieur," d'Auvray answered, a bit
+huffed.</p>
+<p>Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but
+of course I could not.</p>
+<p>"They had no need to tell me, M. de Lorraine. I know quite well
+what the trouble is. I know rather more about it than you do
+yourself."</p>
+<p>He confronted me now with all the fire I could ask.</p>
+<p>"What mean you, whelp?"</p>
+<p>"I mean mademoiselle. What else should I mean?"</p>
+<p>"What do you know?"</p>
+<p>"Everything."</p>
+<p>"Her whereabouts?"</p>
+<p>"Her whereabouts."</p>
+<p>He had his hand to his knife by this. I abated somewhat of my
+drawl to say, still airily:</p>
+<p>"Go ask M. de St. Quentin. He's here. He'll be so glad to see
+you."</p>
+<p>"Here?"</p>
+<p>"Certes. He's closeted now with M. de Mayenne. They're thicker
+than brothers. Go see for yourself, M.&mdash;Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Where is mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Safe. She's to marry the Comte de Mar to-morrow."</p>
+<p>He stared at me for one moment, weighing whether this could be
+true; then without further parley he shot into the house.</p>
+<p>"Is that true?" d'Auvray demanded.</p>
+<p>Their tongues loosened now, they flooded me with questions
+concerning mademoiselle, which I answered warily as I could,
+heartily repenting me by this of baiting Lucas. No good could come
+of it. He might even turn Mayenne from his bargain, upset all our
+triumph. I hardly heard what the soldiers said to me; I was almost
+nervous enough, wild enough, to dash up-stairs after him. But that
+was no help. I stayed where I was, fevered with anxiety.</p>
+<p>At the end of five minutes he came out of the house again, and,
+without a glance at us, went straight through the gate with the
+step and air of a man who knows what he is about. I was no easier
+in my mind though I saw him gone.</p>
+<p>Soon on his steps came a lackey to order M. de St. Quentin's
+horses and two musketeers to mount and ride with him. On reaching
+the door with the nags, I discovered I was not to be of the party;
+our second steed must carry gear of mademoiselle's and her
+handwoman, a hard-faced peasant, silent as a stone. Though the men
+quizzed her, asking if she were glad to get to her mistress again,
+whether she had known all this time the lady's whereabouts, she
+answered no single word, but busied herself seeing the horse loaded
+to her notion. Presently, in the guidance of Pierre, Monsieur
+appeared.</p>
+<p>"You stay, F&eacute;lix, and go to the Bastille for your master.
+Then you will wait at the St. Denis gate for Vigo, with
+horses."</p>
+<p>"Is all right, Monsieur?" I had to ask, as I held his stirrup.
+"Is all right? Lucas&mdash;"</p>
+<p>His face had been a little clouded as he came down the stairs,
+and now it darkened more, but he answered:</p>
+<p>"Quite right, Achates. M. de Mayenne stands to his word. Lucas
+availed nothing."</p>
+<p>He stood a moment frowning, then his countenance cleared up.</p>
+<p>"My faith! I have enough to gladden me without fretting that
+Lucas is alive. Fare you well, F&eacute;lix. You are like to reach
+St. Denis as soon as I. My son's horse will not lag."</p>
+<p>He sprang to the saddle with a smiling salute to his guardians,
+and the little train clattered off.</p>
+<p>Pierre came to my elbow with an open paper&mdash;the order
+signed and sealed for M. de Mar's release.</p>
+<p>"Here, my young cockerel, you and d'Auvray are to take this to
+the Bastille, and it will be strange if your master does not walk
+free again. His Grace bids you tell M. de Mar he remembers
+Wednesday night, underground."</p>
+<p>"And I remember Tuesday night in the council-room, Pierre," I
+was beginning, but he cut me short. Even now that I was in favour,
+he risked no mention of his disobedience. He packed me off with
+d'Auvray on the instant; I had no chance to ask him whether he
+suspected us yesterday. Sometimes I have thought he did, but I am
+bound to say he gave us no look to show it.</p>
+<p>D'Auvray and I walked straight across Paris to the many-towered
+Bastille. It seemed a little way. Before the potent name of Mayenne
+bars flew open; a sentry on guard in the court led us into a small
+room all stone, floor, walls, ceiling, where sat at the table some
+high official, perhaps the governor of the prison himself. He was
+an old campaigner, grizzled and weather-beaten, his right sleeve
+hanging empty. An interesting figure, no doubt, but I paid him
+scant attention, for at his side stood Lucas.</p>
+<p>"I come on M. de Mayenne's business," he was expostulating,
+vehement, yet civil. "I suppose he did not think it necessary to
+write the order, since you know me."</p>
+<p>"The regulations, M. de Lorraine&mdash;" The officer broke off
+to demand of our escort, "Well, what now?"</p>
+<p>I went straight up to him, not waiting permission, and held out
+my paper.</p>
+<p>"An order, if it please you, monsieur, for the Comte de Mar's
+release."</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand went out to snatch and crumple it; then his
+clenched fist dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would
+blacken the paper with their fire.</p>
+<p>"Just that&mdash;the requisition for M. de Mar's release," the
+officer told him, looking up from it. "All perfectly regular and in
+order. In five minutes, M. de Lorraine, the Comte de Mar shall be
+before you. You may have all the conversation you wish."</p>
+<p>Lucas's face was as blank as the wall.</p>
+<p>"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," the
+officer went on to explain, evidently not caring to offend the
+general's nephew. "Without the written order I could not admit your
+brother of Guise. But now you can have all the conversation you
+desire with M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of
+his brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his
+Grace," and, barely bowing, went from the room.</p>
+<p>"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard.
+That Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of
+seeing the Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me.
+I knew he had come to stab M. &Eacute;tienne in his cell. It was
+his last chance, and he had missed it. I feared him no longer, for
+I believed in Mayenne's faith. My master once released, Lucas could
+not hurt him.</p>
+<p>What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of
+Mayenne's good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room,
+where we caught sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk
+or two behind them, and in a moment appeared again with a key.</p>
+<p>"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office
+myself," he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.</p>
+<p>This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his
+way to pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go
+with you?"</p>
+<p>He looked at me a moment, surprised.</p>
+<p>"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you
+like."</p>
+<p>So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the
+Comte de Mar.</p>
+<p>We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of
+heavy-barred doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the
+fonder I grew of my friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of
+these doors would shut on me. We climbed at last a steep turret
+stair winding about a huge fir trunk, lighted by slits of windows
+in the four-foot wall, and at the top turned down a dark passage to
+a door at the end, the bolts of which, invisible to me in the
+gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.</p>
+<p>The cell was small, with one high window through which I could
+see naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a
+stool, a bench that might serve as table. M. &Eacute;tienne stood
+at the window, his arm crooked around the iron bars, gazing out
+over the roofs of Paris.</p>
+<p>He wheeled about at the door's creaking.</p>
+<p>"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me
+behind the keeper.</p>
+<p>"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set you
+free."</p>
+<p>I dashed in past the officer, snatching my lord's hand to
+kiss.</p>
+<p>"It's true, monsieur! You're free! It's all settled with
+Mayenne. Monsieur's seen him; he sets you free. He said, 'In
+recognizance of Wednesday night.'"</p>
+<p>Incredulous joy flashed over his face, to give way to belief
+without joy.</p>
+<p>"Now I know she's married."</p>
+<p>"Nothing of the sort!" I fairly shouted at him, dancing up and
+down in my eagerness. "She's to marry M. le Comte. She's at St.
+Denis with Monsieur. She's to marry you. It's all arranged. Mayenne
+consents&mdash;the king&mdash;everybody. It's all settled. She
+marries you."</p>
+<p>Preposterous as it seemed, he could not discredit my fervour. He
+followed us out of the cell and through the fortress in a radiant
+daze. He half believed himself dreaming, I think, and feared to
+speak lest his happiness should melt. I fancied even that he walked
+lightly and gingerly, as if the slightest unwary movement might
+break the spell. Not till we were actually in the open door of the
+court, face to face with freedom, did he rouse himself to
+acknowledge the thing real. With a joyous laugh, he turned to the
+keeper:</p>
+<p>"M. de La Motte, you should employ your leisure in writing down
+your reflections, like the Chevalier de Montaigne. You could give
+us a trenchant essay on the Ingratitude of Man. Here are you host
+of the biggest inn in Paris&mdash;a pile more imposing than the
+Louvre itself. Your hospitality is so eager that you insist on
+entertaining me, so lavish that you lodge me for nothing, would
+keep me without a murmur till the end of my life. Yet I, ingrate
+that I am, depart without a thank you!"</p>
+<p>"They don't leave in such case that they can very well thank me,
+most of my guests," La Motte answered, with a dry smile. "You are a
+fortunate man, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte, will you come quietly with me to the St. Denis
+gate?" d'Auvray asked him. "Or must I borrow a guard from M. de La
+Motte?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's whole face was smiling; not his lips alone,
+but his eyes. Even his skin and hair seemed to have taken on a
+brighter look. He glanced at d'Auvray in surprise at the absurd
+question.</p>
+<p>"I will come like a lamb, M. le Mousquetaire."</p>
+<p>We saluted La Motte and walked merrily out into the Place
+Bastille. I think I never felt so grand as when I passed through
+the noble sally-port, the soldiers making no motion to hinder us,
+but all saluting as if we owned the place. It had its advantage,
+this making friends with Mayenne.</p>
+<p>The first thing my lord did, still in the shadow of the prison,
+was to come to terms with d'Auvray.</p>
+<p>"See here, my friend, why must you put yourself to the fatigue
+of escorting me to the gate?"</p>
+<p>"Orders, monsieur. The general-duke wants to know that you get
+into no mischief between here and the gate. You are banished, you
+understand, from Paris."</p>
+<p>"I pledge you my word I shall make no attempt to elude my fate.
+I go straight to the gate. But, with all politeness to you, Sir
+Musketeer, I could dispense with your company."</p>
+<p>"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed,"
+d'Auvray quoted the keeper's words, which seemed to have impressed
+him. "However, M. le Comte, if I had something to look at, I could
+walk ten paces behind you and look at it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, if it is a question of something to play with!" M.
+&Eacute;tienne laughed.</p>
+<p>D'Auvray was provided with toys, and M. &Eacute;tienne linked
+arms with me, the soldier out of ear-shot behind us. He followed
+till we were in the Rue St. Denis, when, waving his hand in
+farewell, he turned his steps with the pious consciousness of duty
+done. Only I looked back to see it; monsieur had forgotten his
+existence.</p>
+<p>"I am not proud; I don't mind being marched through the streets
+by a musketeer," M. &Eacute;tienne explained as we started; "but I
+can't talk before him. Tell me, F&eacute;lix, the story, if you
+would have me live."</p>
+<p>And I told him, till we almost ran blindly into the tower of the
+St. Denis gate.</p>
+<p>We learned of the warder that M. de St. Quentin had recently
+passed out, but that nothing had been seen of his equery. No steeds
+were here for us.</p>
+<p>"Well, then, we'll go have a glass. But if Vigo doesn't come
+soon, by my faith, I'll walk to St. Denis!"</p>
+<p>But that promised glass was never drunk, nor were we to set out
+at once for St. Denis; for in the door of the wine-shop we met
+Lucas.</p>
+<p>I had dismissed him from thought, as something out of the
+reckoning, dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken
+sword. I thought him gone out of our lives when he went out of
+prison&mdash;gone forever, like last year's snow. And here within
+the hour we encountered him, a naked sword in his hand, a smile on
+his lips. He said, in the flower of his easy insolence:</p>
+<p>"Tuesday I told you our hour would come. It is here."</p>
+<p>"At your service," quoth my lord.</p>
+<p>"Then it needs not to slap your face?"</p>
+<p>"You insult me safely, Lucas. You have but one life. That is
+forfeit, be you courteous."</p>
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+<p>"I know it."</p>
+<p>Lucas held out the bare sword, hilt toward us.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur had a box for weapon yesterday, but as I prefer to
+fight in the established way, I ventured to provide him with a
+sword."</p>
+<p>"Thoughtful of you, Lucas. Is this the make of sword you elect
+to be killed with?"</p>
+<p>He was bending the blade to try its temper. Lucas unsheathed his
+own.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar may have his choice."</p>
+<p>M. de Mar professed himself satisfied with the blade given
+him.</p>
+<p>"Have you summoned your seconds, Lucas?"</p>
+<p>Lucas raised his eyebrows.</p>
+<p>"Is that necessary? I thought we might settle our affairs
+without delay. I confess myself impatient."</p>
+<p>"Your sentiments for once are mine."</p>
+<p>"It is understood you bring your spaniel with you. He will watch
+that I do not spring on you before you are ready," Lucas said, with
+a fine sneer.</p>
+<p>"And who is to watch me?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are
+unnecessary. It is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy
+spot."</p>
+<p>"The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting
+place for you to die."</p>
+<p>"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas
+amended.</p>
+<p>Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on
+our way to that of the Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul
+play. I had suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord,
+who knew, had accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I
+had felt sure of a trap. But his inviting my presence at the place
+of our choice smelt like honesty.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne remarked casually to me:</p>
+<p>"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you
+thought you saw there&mdash;Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What
+ails you, lad? Footsteps on your grave?"</p>
+<p>But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of
+his. For of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not
+Lucas, but M. &Eacute;tienne. What if the vision were, after all,
+the thing I had at first believed it&mdash;a portent? An appearance
+not of those who had died by steel, but of those who must. One,
+two, and now the third.</p>
+<p>Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I
+had seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no
+omen, but a mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?</p>
+<p>And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress
+as a Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this
+house lay under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save
+to our tombs.</p>
+<p>We entered the well-remembered little passage, the
+well-remembered court, where shards of glass still strewed the
+pavement. Some one&mdash;the gendarmes, I fancy, when they took
+away Pontou&mdash;had put a heavy padlock on the door Lucas and
+Grammont left swinging.</p>
+<p>"We go in by your postern, F&eacute;lix," my master said. "M.
+Lucas, I confess I prefer that you go first."</p>
+<p>Lucas put his back to the wall.</p>
+<p>"Why go farther, M. le Comte?"</p>
+<p>"Do you long for interruption'?"</p>
+<p>"We were not noticed coming in. The street was quiet."</p>
+<p>He crossed the court abruptly and went down the alley to look
+into the street.</p>
+<p>"Not a soul in sight," he said, coming back. "I think we shall
+not be interrupted. Still, it is wise to use every care. We will
+fight, if you like, in the house."</p>
+<p>He opened with his knife the fastened shutter, and leaped
+lightly in. Monsieur followed. I, the last, was for closing the
+shutter, but he stopped me.</p>
+<p>"No; leave it wide. I have no fancy for a walk in pitch-darkness
+with M. Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Do we fight here?" Lucas asked, facing us in the wide, square
+hall. "We can let in more light."</p>
+<p>"You seem anxious, my friend, to call attention to your
+whereabouts. As I am host, I designate the fighting-ground.
+Up-stairs, if you please."</p>
+<p>"I suppose you insist on my walking first," Lucas sneered.</p>
+<p>"I request it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"With all the willingness in the world," his rogue-ship
+answered, setting foot straightway on the stair and mounting
+steadily, never turning to see how near we followed, or what we did
+with our hands. His trust made me ashamed of our lack of it. I
+almost believed we did him injustice. Yet at heart I could not
+bring myself to credit him with any fair dealing.</p>
+<p>We went up one flight, up two. We had left behind us the
+twilight of the lower story, had not reached dawn again at the top.
+We walked in blackness. Suddenly I halted.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"What?"</p>
+<p>"I heard a noise."</p>
+<p>"Of course you did. The place is full of rats."</p>
+<p>"It was no rat. It was footsteps."</p>
+<p>We all three held still.</p>
+<p>"There, monsieur. Don't you hear?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing, F&eacute;lix; your teeth are chattering. Cross
+yourself and come on."</p>
+<p>But I could not stand it.</p>
+<p>"I'll go back and see, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No," Lucas said, striding back from the foot of the next
+flight. "I will go."</p>
+<p>We saw a glint in the gloom, monsieur's bared sword.</p>
+<p>"You will go neither one of you. Hush! If we show ourselves,
+there'll be no duel to-day."</p>
+<p>We kept still, all three leaning over the banister, peering down
+to where the white tiles picked themselves out of the floor of the
+hall far beneath. We could see them better than we could see one
+another. All was silent. Not so much as a rustle came up from
+below. Suddenly Lucas made a step or two, as if to pass us. M.
+&Eacute;tienne wheeled about, raising his sword toward the spot
+where from his footfalls we supposed Lucas to be.</p>
+<p>"You show an eagerness to get away from me, M. de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Not in the least, M. de Mar. This alarm is but F&eacute;lix's
+poltroonery, yet it prompts me to go down and close the
+shutter."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, you will go up with me. F&eacute;lix will
+close the shutter."</p>
+<p>They confronted each other, vague shapes in the darkness, each
+with drawn sword. Then Lucas raised his in salute.</p>
+<p>"As you will; so be some one sees to it."</p>
+<p>"Go, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>Lucas first, they mounted the last flight of stairs, and their
+footsteps passed along the corridor to the room at the back. I, as
+I was ordered, set my face down the stairs.</p>
+<p>They might mock me as they liked, but I could not get it out of
+my head that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping
+heart, I stole from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the
+flight. I heard plainly the sound of moving above me, and of
+voices; but below not a whisper, not a creak. It must have been my
+silly fears. Resolved to choke them, I planted my feet boldly on
+the next flight, and descended humming, to prove my ease, the
+rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch. Suddenly, from not three feet off,
+came the soft singing:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth, my love, and Folly dear</i>&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+<p>My knees knocked together, and the breath fluttered in my
+throat. It seemed the darkness itself had given tongue. Then came a
+low laugh and the muttered words:</p>
+<p>"Here we are, M. de Lorraine. Are you ready?"</p>
+<p>There was a stir of feet on the landing before me, behind the
+voice. The house, then, was full of Lucas's cutthroats, the first
+of them Peyrot. In the height of my terror, I remembered that M.
+&Eacute;tienne's life, too, depended on my wits, and I kept them. I
+whispered, for whispering voices are hard to tell apart:</p>
+<p>"Not yet. The two of them are up there. Keep quiet, and I'll
+send the boy down. When you've finished him, come up."</p>
+<p>"As you say, monsieur. It is your job."</p>
+<p>I turned, scarce able to believe my luck, and, not daring to
+run, walked up-stairs again. Prick my ears as I might, I heard no
+movement after me. Actually, I had fooled Peyrot. I had gone down
+to meet my death, and a tune had saved me.</p>
+<p>When I reached the uppermost landing, I rushed along the passage
+and into the room, flinging the door shut, locking and bolting
+it.</p>
+<p>They had not begun to fight, but had busied themselves clearing
+the space of all obstacles. The table was pushed against the wall
+in the corner by the door; the chairs were heaped one on another at
+the end of the room. Both shutters were wide open. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, bareheaded, in his shirt, stood at guard. Lucas was
+kneeling on the floor, picking up with scrupulous care some bits of
+a broken plate. He sprang to his feet at sight of me.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Cutthroats. They'll be here in a minute."</p>
+<p>Even as I spoke, I heard tramping on the stairs below. My slam
+of the door had warned them that something was wrong.</p>
+<p>"Was that your delay?" M. &Eacute;tienne shouted, springing at
+his foe.</p>
+<p>"I play to win!" Lucas answered, smiling.</p>
+<p>The blades met; the men circled about and about. Lucas, though
+he preferred to murder, knew how to duel.</p>
+<p>We were doomed. With monsieur's sword for only weapon, we could
+never hope to pass the gang. In another minute they would be here
+to batter the door down and end us. Our consolation lay in killing
+Lucas first. Yet as I watched, I feared that M. &Eacute;tienne, in
+the brief moments that remained to him, could not conquer him, so
+shrewd and strong was Lucas's fence. Must the scoundrel win? I
+started forward to play Pontou's trick. Lucas sought to murder us.
+Why not we him?</p>
+<p>One flash from my lord's eyes, and I retreated in despair. For I
+knew that did I touch Lucas, M. &Eacute;tienne would let fall his
+sword, let Lucas kill him. And the bravos were on the last
+flight.</p>
+<p>Was there no escape? There were three doors in the room. One led
+to the passage, one to the closet, the third&mdash;I dashed through
+to find myself in a large empty chamber, a door wide open giving on
+the passage. Through it I could see the dusky figures of four men
+running up the stairs.</p>
+<p>I was across the room like an arrow, and got the door shut and
+bolted before they could reach the landing. The next moment some
+one flung against it. It stood firm. Delaying only a moment to
+shake it, three of the four I could hear run to the farther door,
+whence issued the noise of the swords.</p>
+<p>I, inside the wall, ran back too. The combat still raged.
+Neither, that I could see, had gained the least advantage. Outside,
+the murderers dashed themselves upon the door.</p>
+<p>I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed
+myself, pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the
+panels a little firmer.</p>
+<p>Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second
+chamber. Its shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no
+other door to the room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but
+spanned a foot above the fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest
+sweep that ever wielded broom could not have squeezed between
+them.</p>
+<p>In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it
+was, I thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I
+stuck my head out. It was the same window where I had stood when
+Grammont seized me. There, not ten feet away, eight at the most,
+but a little above me, was the casement of my garret in the Amour
+de Dieu. Would it be possible to jump and catch the sill? If I did,
+I could scarce pull myself in.</p>
+<p>I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu.
+And there beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me.
+There was no mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my
+lungs:</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques!"</p>
+<p>He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite
+his amazement, I saw that he knew me.</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out!
+Help us for the love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the
+window there!"</p>
+<p>For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the
+inn.</p>
+<p>I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of
+steel. White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn,
+unflagging, ungaining.</p>
+<p>Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and
+rending, blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were
+fighting out there, that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I
+learned better. Despairing of kicking down the door, they were
+tearing out a piece of stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not
+long stand against that.</p>
+<p>I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost,
+lost!</p>
+<p>Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's
+victory, he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the
+back room. But it was Lucas who lay prone.</p>
+<p>"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would
+not till with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de
+gr&acirc;ce.</p>
+<p>Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great
+splinter six inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the
+opening. A hand came through to wrench it away.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife
+through the hand, nailing it to the wood. On the instant he
+recognized its owner.</p>
+<p>"Good morning, Peyrot. We've recovered the packet."</p>
+<p>Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed
+him into the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the
+oaths of the bravos a good spur. And, St. Quentin be thanked, there
+in the garret window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a
+ladder to us.</p>
+<p>"Go, monsieur! There are four behind us. Go!"</p>
+<p>"You first!"</p>
+<p>But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran
+back to guard the door. He had the sense to see there was no good
+arguing. Crying, "Quick after me, F&eacute;lix!" he crawled out on
+the ladder.</p>
+<p>Peyrot was released. Another blow from the ram, and the door
+fell to finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over
+a dam. I darted to the window. M. &Eacute;tienne was in the garret,
+helping hold the ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too
+eagerly. Like a lath it snapped.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2>
+<h3><i>"The very pattern of a king."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>he next world appeared to be strangely like this. I found myself
+lying on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting
+comfortably on some one's shoulder, while some one else poured wine
+down my gullet. Presently I discovered that Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's
+was the ministering hand, M. &Eacute;tienne's the shoulder. After
+all, this was not heaven, but still Paris.</p>
+<p>I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's
+best Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he
+stopped, and I said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and
+quavery:</p>
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+<p>"Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"</p>
+<p>My lord's voice was as unsteady as mine.</p>
+<p>"But the ladder?" I murmured.</p>
+<p>"The ladder broke. But you had hold beyond the break. You hung
+on till we seized you. And then you swooned."</p>
+<p>"What a baby!" I said, getting to my feet. "But the men,
+monsieur? Peyrot?"</p>
+<p>"I think we've seen the last of those worthies. They took to
+their heels when you escaped them."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, they've gone to inform! You'll be taken for
+killing Lucas."</p>
+<p>"I doubt it. Themselves smell too strong of blood to dare bruit
+the matter. Natheless, if you can walk now, we'll make good time to
+the gate."</p>
+<p>But for all his haste, he would not start till I had had some
+bread and soup down in the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"We must take good care of you, boy F&eacute;lix," he said. "For
+where the St. Quentins would be without you, I tremble to
+think."</p>
+<p>I set out a new man. In three steps, it seemed to me, we had
+reached the city gate, to find the way blocked by a company of
+twenty or thirty horse, the St. Quentin uniform flaunting gay in
+the sun. The nearest trooper set up a shout at sight of us, when
+Vigo, coming out suddenly from behind a nag, took M. le Comte in
+his big embrace. He released him immediately, looking immensely
+startled at his own demonstration.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed out at him.</p>
+<p>"Be more careful, I beg you, Vigo! You will make me imagine
+myself of some importance."</p>
+<p>"I thought you swallowed up," Vigo growled. "You had been
+here&mdash;I couldn't get a trace of you."</p>
+<p>"I was killing Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Sacr&eacute;! He's dead?"</p>
+<p>"Dead."</p>
+<p>"That's the best morning's work ever you did, M.
+&Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"Have you horse for us, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. Some of the men will walk. I suppose we're leaving
+Paris to buy you out of the Bastille?"</p>
+<p>"Not worth it, eh, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Vigo, gravely&mdash;"yes, M. &Eacute;tienne. You are
+worth it."</p>
+<p>Vigo's troop was but slow-moving, as some of the horses carried
+double, some were loaded with chattels. M. &Eacute;tienne and I, on
+the duke's blood-chargers, soon left the cavalcade behind us.
+Before I knew it, we were halted at the outpost of the camp. My
+lord gave his name.</p>
+<p>"To be sure!" cried the sentry. "We've orders about you. You
+dine with the king, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I do?"</p>
+<p>"You do. Orders are to take you to him out of hand.
+Captain!"</p>
+<p>The officer lounged out of the tavern door.</p>
+<p>"Captain, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Oh, aye!" cried the captain, coming forward with brisk
+interest. "M. de Mar, you're the child of luck. You dine with the
+king."</p>
+<p>"I am the child of bewilderment, captain."</p>
+<p>"And you've not too much time to recover from it, M. le Comte.
+You are to go straight to the king."</p>
+<p>"I may go to M. de St. Quentin's lodgings first?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; straight to the king."</p>
+<p>"What! in my shirt?"</p>
+<p>"I can't help it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the
+king did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order
+was to fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our
+king's no stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to
+lack for a coat."</p>
+<p>"I might wash my face, then."</p>
+<p>"Certainly. No harm in that."</p>
+<p>So M. &Eacute;tienne went into the tournebride and washed his
+face. And that was all the toilet he made for audience with the
+greatest king in the world.</p>
+<p>"You'll ride to Monsieur's," he commanded me, when the captain
+answered:</p>
+<p>"No; he goes with you, monsieur, if he's the boy Choux, Troux,
+whatever it is."</p>
+<p>"Broux&mdash;F&eacute;lix Broux!" I cried, a-quiver.</p>
+<p>"That's it. You go to the king, too. Another luck-child."</p>
+<p>I thought so indeed. We followed the sentry through the town in
+a waking dream, content to let him do with us as he would. He did
+the talking, explained to the grandees in the king's hall our names
+and errand. One of them led us up the stairs and knocked at a
+closed door.</p>
+<p>"Enter!"</p>
+<p>It was Henry's own voice. I pinched monsieur's hand to tell him.
+Our guide opened the door a crack.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, Sire, and his servant."</p>
+<p>"Good, La Force. Let them enter."</p>
+<p>M. La Force fairly pushed us over the sill, so abashed were we,
+and shut the door upon us.</p>
+<p>The king was alone. But before this simple gentleman in the
+rusty black, M. &Eacute;tienne caught his breath as he had not done
+before a court in full pomp. He had seen courts, but he had never
+seen the first soldier of Europe. He advanced three steps into the
+room, and forgot to kneel, forgot to lower his gaze in the
+presence, but merely stared wide-eyed at majesty, as majesty stared
+at him. Thus they stood surveying each other from top to toe in the
+frankest curiosity, till at length the king spoke:</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, you look less like a carpet-knight than I
+expected."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne came to himself, to kneel at once.</p>
+<p>"Sire, I blush for my looks. But your zealous soldiers would not
+let me from their clutches. I am just come from killing Paul de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"What! the spy Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Himself. And when I left the spot by way of the window in some
+haste, I was not expecting this honour, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Nor do I think you deserve it, ventre-saint-gris!" the king
+cried. "Though you come hatless and coat-less to-day, you have been
+a long time on the road, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Aye, Sire."</p>
+<p>"You might as well have stayed away as come at this hour. Marry,
+all's over! Go hang yourself, my breathless follower! We have
+fought all our great battles, and you were not there!"</p>
+<p>Scarlet under the lash, M. &Eacute;tienne, kneeling, bent his
+eyes on the ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he
+felt it incumbent to stammer something:</p>
+<p>"That is my life's misfortune, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Misfortune, sirrah? Misfortune you call it? Let me hear you say
+fault."</p>
+<p>"I dare not, Sire," M. &Eacute;tienne murmured. "It was of
+course your Majesty's fault. We cannot serve heretics, we St.
+Quentins."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris! You think well of yourself, young Mar."</p>
+<p>"I must, Sire, when your Majesty invites me to dinner."</p>
+<p>The king burst into laughter, and his temper, which I believe
+was all a play, vanished to the winds.</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! you're a glib fellow, Mar. But I didn't invite you to
+dinner for your own sake, little as you can imagine it. So you
+would have joined my flag four years ago, had I not been a stinking
+heretic?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, Sire, I needs must have. Therefore am I everlastingly
+beholden to your Majesty for remaining so long a Huguenot."</p>
+<p>"How now, cockerel?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne faltered a moment. He was not burdened by
+shyness, but before the king's sharp glance he underwent a cold
+terror lest he had been too free with his tongue. However, there
+was naught to do but go on.</p>
+<p>"Sire, had I fought under your banner like a man, at Dieppe and
+Arques and Ivry, M. de Mayenne had never dreamed of marrying his
+ward to me. I had never known her."</p>
+<p>"The loveliest demoiselle I ever saw!" the king cried. "I shall
+marry her to one of my staunchest supporters."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="478.jpg"></a> <a href="images/478.jpg"><img src=
+"images/478.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>THE MEETING.</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>The smile was washed from M. &Eacute;tienne's lips. He turned as
+white as linen. In one moment his youth seemed to go from him. The
+king, unnoting, picked a parchment off the table.</p>
+<p>"To one of my bravest captains. Here's his commission, my
+lad."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stared up from the writing into the king's
+laughing face.</p>
+<p>"I, Sire? I?"</p>
+<p>"You, Mar, you. You are my staunch supporter, perhaps?"</p>
+<p>"Your horse-boy, an you ask it, Sire!"</p>
+<p>He pressed his lips to the king's hand, great, helpless tears
+dripping down upon it.</p>
+<p>"If I ever desert you, I am a dog, Sire! But the fighting is not
+all done. I will capture you a flag yet."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps. I much fear me there's life in Mayenne still."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, not venturing to rise, yet lifted beseeching
+eyes to the king's.</p>
+<p>"What! you want to get away from me, ventre-saint-gris!"</p>
+<p>My lord, who wanted precisely that, had no choice but to protest
+that nothing was farther from his thoughts.</p>
+<p>"Stuff!" the king exclaimed. "You're in a sweat to be gone, you
+unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with
+the king, and your one itch is to escape the tedium!"</p>
+<p>"Sire&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Peace! You are guilty, sirrah. Take your punishment!"</p>
+<p>He darted across the room, and throwing open an inner door,
+called gently, "Mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Sire," she answered, coming to the threshold.</p>
+<p>The peasant lass was gone forever. The great lady, regal in
+satins, stood before us. She bent on the king a little, eager,
+questioning glance; then she caught sight of her lover. Faith, had
+the sun gone out, the room would have been brilliant with the light
+of her face.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne sprang up and toward her. And she, pushing by
+the king as if he had been the door-post, went to him. They stood
+before each other, neither touching nor speaking, but only looking
+one at the other like two blind folk by a heavenly miracle restored
+to sight.</p>
+<p>"How now, children? Am I not a model monarch? Do you swear by me
+forever? Do you vouch me the very pattern of a king?"</p>
+<p>Answer he got none. They heard nothing, knew nothing, but each
+other. The slighted king chuckled and, beckoning me, withdrew to
+his cabinet.</p>
+<p>So here an end. For if Henry of France leave them, you and I may
+not stay.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14219 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14219 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14219)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Helmet of Navarre
+
+Author: Bertha Runkle
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2004 [EBook #14219]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELMET OF NAVARRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+Bertha Runkle.
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+[Illustration: THE FLORENTINES IN THE HÔTEL DE MAYENNE]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BY BERTHA RUNKLE
+
+
+THE HELMET OF
+
+NAVARRE
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE
+
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+NEW YORK 1901
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+     Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
+     And be your oriflamme to-day the Helmet of Navarre.
+
+                             LORD MACAULAY'S "IVRY."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+     I  A FLASH OF LIGHTNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
+    II  AT THE AMOUR DE DIEU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
+   III  M. LE DUC IS WELL GUARDED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
+    IV  THE THREE MEN IN THE WINDOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
+     V  RAPIERS AND A VOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
+    VI  A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
+   VII  A DIVIDED DUTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  62
+  VIII  CHARLES-ANDRÉ-ÉTIENNE-MARIE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  74
+    IX  THE HONOUR OF ST. QUENTIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  85
+     X  LUCAS AND "LE GAUCHER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  96
+    XI  VIGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
+   XII  THE COMTE DE MAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
+  XIII  MADEMOISELLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
+   XIV  IN THE ORATORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
+    XV  MY LORD MAYENNE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
+   XVI  MAYENNE'S WARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
+  XVII  "I'LL WIN MY LADY!". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
+ XVIII  TO THE BASTILLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
+   XIX  TO THE HÔTEL DE LORRAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
+    XX  "ON GUARD, MONSIEUR" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
+   XXI  A CHANCE ENCOUNTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
+  XXII  THE SIGNET OF THE KING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
+ XXIII  THE CHEVALIER OF THE TOURNELLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
+  XXIV  THE FLORENTINES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
+   XXV  A DOUBLE MASQUERADE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
+  XXVI  WITHIN THE SPIDER'S WEB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
+ XXVII  THE COUNTERSIGN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
+XXVIII  ST. DENIS--AND NAVARRE!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
+  XXIX  THE TWO DUKES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
+   XXX  MY YOUNG LORD SETTLES SCORES WITH TWO FOES AT ONCE . . . . 440
+  XXXI  "THE VERY PATTERN OF A KING" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+THE FLORENTINES IN THE HÔTEL DE MAYENNE. . . . . . . .  _Frontispiece_
+"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  87
+"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE ALLEY". . . 117
+"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY". . . . . . . . 149
+MLLE. DE MONTLUC AND FÉLIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY. . . . . . . . . . 169
+"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE FED". . . . . . 205
+"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH". . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
+"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP" . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
+AT THE "BONNE FEMME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
+"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY" . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
+ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
+THE MEETING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_A flash of lightning._
+
+
+At the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a candle.
+The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would not have you
+break your neck."
+
+"And give the house a bad name," I said.
+
+"No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer inn in
+all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you will have
+larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance."
+
+This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been bragging a
+bit of my prospects. I retorted:
+
+"When I am, Maître Jacques, look out for a rise in your taxes."
+
+The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the honours of
+that encounter. And though the stairs were the steepest I ever climbed,
+I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the way up. What mattered
+it that already I ached in every bone, that the stair was long and my
+bed but a heap of straw in the garret of a mean inn in a poor quarter? I
+was in Paris, the city of my dreams!
+
+I am a Broux of St. Quentin. The great world has never heard of the
+Broux? No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years, Masters of
+the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St. Quentin. The great
+world has heard of the St. Quentins? I warrant you! As loudly as it has
+of Sully and Villeroi, Trémouille and Biron. That is enough for the
+Broux.
+
+I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I loved and
+revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court, seemed as far
+away from us as the saints in heaven. But the year after King Henry III
+was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his estate, to make high and low
+love him for himself.
+
+In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two Leagues were
+tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found himself between the
+devil and the deep sea. He was no friend to the League; for years he had
+stood between the king, his master, and the machinations of the Guises.
+On the other hand, he was no friend to the Huguenots. "To seat a heretic
+on the throne of France were to deny God," he said. Therefore he came
+home to St. Quentin, where he abode in quiet for some three years, to
+the great wonderment of all the world.
+
+Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead, his
+compeers would have understood readily enough that he was waiting to see
+how the cat would jump, taking no part in the quarrel lest he should
+mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's
+character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was
+known to all as a hotspur--a man who acted quickly and seldom counted
+the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of
+the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist
+his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too
+deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a
+pretty word. If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw
+his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward.
+
+Thus he stayed alone in the château for a long, irksome three years.
+Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to stand aside and watch
+while other men fought out great issues. It was a weary procession of
+days to him. His only son, a lad a few years older than I, shared none
+of his father's scruples and refused point-blank to follow him into
+exile. He remained in Paris, where they knew how to be gay in spite of
+sieges. Therefore I, the Forester's son, whom Monsieur took for a page,
+had a chance to come closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere
+servant, and I loved him as the dogs did. Aye, and admired him for a
+fortitude almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive
+here in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and Île de France battles
+raged and towns fell and captains won glory.
+
+At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to have a
+frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for that he was
+accorded long interviews with Monsieur. After these visits my lord was
+always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs, like a stallion when he
+is led out of the stable. I looked for something to happen, and it was
+no surprise to me when M. le Duc announced one day, quite without
+warning, that he was done with St. Quentin and would be off in the
+morning for Mantes. I was in the seventh heaven of joy when he added
+that he should take me with him. I knew the King of Navarre was at
+Mantes--at last we were going to make history! There was no bound to my
+golden dreams, no limit to my future.
+
+But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but my
+father's. He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old servitor's
+privilege, begged him to leave me at home.
+
+"I have lost two sons in Monsieur's service," he said: "Jean, hunting in
+this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois. I have never grudged them
+to Monsieur. But Félix is all I have left."
+
+Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the hay-loft, when
+my duke rode away. I could not watch his going.
+
+Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed. Time does pass, at
+length, even when one is young. It was July. The King of Navarre had
+moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most folk thought he
+would never win the city, the hotbed of the League. Of M. le Duc we
+heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller, putting up at the inn
+in the village, told a startling tale. The Duke of St. Quentin, though
+known to have been at Mantes and strongly suspected of espousing
+Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly into Paris and opened his hôtel! It
+was madness--madness sheer and stark. Thus far his religion had saved
+him, yet any day he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.
+
+My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on the
+grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for keeping
+me at home and spoiling my chances in life. He gave me straightway the
+whole of the story. Long before it was over I had sprung to my feet.
+
+"Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?" he said.
+
+"Father!" was all I could gasp.
+
+"Then you shall go," he answered. That was not bad for an old man who
+had lost two sons for Monsieur!
+
+I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart. I can tell
+naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end of it lay
+Paris. I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered without a
+passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly so strict as
+Mayenne supposed. I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry, in no guise to
+present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no farther that night
+than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue des Coupejarrets.
+
+Far below my garret window lay the street--a trench between the high
+houses. Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the house
+opposite. To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it seemed the
+desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the rabbits in a warren.
+So ingenious were they at contriving to waste no inch of open space
+that the houses, standing at the base but a scant street's width apart,
+ever jutted out farther at each story till they looked to be fairly
+toppling together. I could see into the windows up and down the way; see
+the people move about within; hear opposite neighbours call to each
+other. But across from my aery were no lights and no people, for that
+house was shuttered tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as
+expressionless as a blind face. I marvelled how it came to stand empty
+in that teeming quarter.
+
+Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and was
+asleep before I could shut my eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Crash! Crash! Crash!
+
+I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was bombarding
+Paris. Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the noise was thunder.
+
+From the window I peered into floods of rain. The peals died away.
+Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in
+astonishment. For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid
+vision of three men in the window.
+
+Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.
+
+I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next flash.
+When it came it showed me the window barred as before. Flash followed
+flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain. The shutter
+remained closed as if it had never been opened. Sleep rolled over me in
+a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_At the Amour de Dieu._
+
+
+When I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the room,
+glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared at them,
+sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the thunder-storm and the
+open shutter and the three men. I jumped up and ran to the window. The
+shutters opposite were closed; the house just as I had seen it first,
+save for the long streaks of wet down the wall. The street below was one
+vast puddle. At all events, the storm was no dream, as I half believed
+the vision to be.
+
+I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was deserted save
+for Maître Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of me whether I took myself
+for a prince, that I lay in bed till all decent folk had been hours
+about their business, and then expected breakfast. However, he brought
+me a meal, and I made no complaint that it was a poor one.
+
+"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.
+
+He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed over on
+the table.
+
+"What neighbours?"
+
+"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep them
+open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said airily. "Last
+night I saw three men in the window opposite mine."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is how you
+came to see visions."
+
+"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for that,
+let me tell you, Maître Jacques."
+
+"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no one has
+lived in that house these twenty years."
+
+Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head over
+night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So, with a
+fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:
+
+"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"
+
+He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see that no one
+was by, leaned across the table, up to me.
+
+"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you
+first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted."
+
+"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.
+
+"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre--you know naught of that:
+you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy. But I was
+here, and I know. A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day. The
+gutters ran blood."
+
+"And that house--what happened in that house?"
+
+"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Béthune," he
+answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice. "They were
+all put to the sword--the whole household. It was Guise's work. The Duc
+de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was
+going on. Parbleu! that was a day."
+
+"Mon dieu! yes."
+
+"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different tone.
+"One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen now. But
+the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house.
+No one will live there."
+
+"And have others seen as well as I?"
+
+"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises. Folk
+might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis another matter
+with you, though, since you have had the vision."
+
+"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre dress--"
+
+"M. de Béthune and his cousins. What further? Did you hear shrieks?"
+
+"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for the
+space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute the
+shutters were closed again."
+
+"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has disturbed
+them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have lost their
+leader."
+
+I stared at him blankly, and he added:
+
+"Their Henry of Navarre."
+
+"But he is not lost. There has been no battle."
+
+"Lost to them," said Maître Jacques, "when he turns Catholic."
+
+"Oh!" I cried.
+
+"Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know these
+things."
+
+"But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!"
+
+"Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do the
+learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?"
+
+"Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Maître Jacques."
+
+"If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out, spit me
+on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he added:
+
+"It should be welcome news to you."
+
+Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of base. Yet
+it was my duty to be discreet.
+
+"I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I said.
+
+"Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open secret
+that your patron has gone over to Navarre."
+
+"I know naught of it."
+
+"Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to Paris M.
+de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his parleyings, he
+was a fool."
+
+"His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.
+
+"Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre. For, mark
+you, all France has been wondering these many months where St. Quentin
+was coming out. His movements do not go unnoted like a yokel's. But, i'
+faith, he is not dull; he understands that well enough. Nay, 'tis my
+belief he came into the city in pure effrontery to show them how much he
+dared. He is a bold blade, your duke. And, mon dieu! it had its effect.
+For the Leaguers have been so agape with astonishment ever since that
+they have not raised a finger against him."
+
+"Yet you do not think him safe?"
+
+"Safe, say you? Safe! Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of lions, and
+they did not in the first instant eat you, would you therefore feel
+safe? He was stark mad to come to Paris. There is no man the League
+hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no man they can afford
+so ill to spare to King Henry. A great Catholic noble, he would be meat
+and drink to the Béarnais. He was mad to come here."
+
+"And yet nothing has happened to him."
+
+"Verily, fortune favours the brave. No, nothing has happened--yet. But I
+tell you true, Félix, I had rather be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de
+Dieu than stand in M. de St. Quentin's shoes."
+
+"I was talking with the men here last night," I said. "There was not one
+but had a good word for Monsieur."
+
+"Aye, so they have. They like his pluck. And if the League kills him it
+is quite on the cards that the people will rise up and make the town
+lively. But that will not profit M. de St. Quentin if he is dead."
+
+I would not be dampened, though, by an old croaker.
+
+"Nay, maître, if the people are with him, the League will not dare--"
+
+"There you fool yourself, my springald. If there is one thing which the
+nobles of the League neither know nor care about it is what the people
+think. They sit wrangling over their French League and their Spanish
+League, their kings and their princesses, and what this lord does and
+that lord threatens, and they give no heed at all to us--us, the people.
+But they will find out their mistake. Some day they will be taught that
+the nobles are not all of France. There will come a reckoning when more
+blood will flow in Paris than ever flowed on St. Bartholomew's day. They
+think we are chained down, do they? Pardieu! there will come a day!"
+
+I scarcely knew the man; his face was flushed, his eyes sparkling as if
+they saw more than the common room and mean street. But as I stared the
+glow faded, and he said in a lower tone:
+
+"At least, it will happen unless Henry of Navarre comes to save us from
+it. He is a good fellow, this Navarre."
+
+"They say he can never enter Paris."
+
+"They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he can
+enter Paris to-morrow."
+
+"Mayenne does not think so."
+
+"No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep an inn
+in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.
+
+"Laugh if you like; but I tell you, Félix Broux, my lord's
+council-chamber is not the only place where they make kings. We do it,
+too, we of the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Well," said I, "I leave you, then, to make kings. I must be off to my
+duke. What's the scot, maître?"
+
+He dropped the politician, and was all innkeeper in a second.
+
+"A crown!" I cried in indignation. "Do you think I am made of crowns?
+Remember, I am not yet Minister of Finance."
+
+"No, but soon will be," he grinned. "Besides, what I ask is little
+enough, God knows. Do you think food is cheap in a siege?"
+
+"Then I pray Navarre may come soon and end it."
+
+"Amen to that," said old Jacques, quite gravely. "If he comes a Catholic
+it cannot be too soon."
+
+I counted out my pennies with a last grumble.
+
+"They ought to call this the Rue Coupebourses."
+
+He laughed; he could afford to, with my silver jingling in his pouch. He
+embraced me tenderly at parting, and hoped to see me again at his inn. I
+smiled to myself; I had not come to Paris--I--to stay in the Rue
+Coupejarrets!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_M. le Duc is well guarded._
+
+
+I stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to inquire my
+way to the Hôtel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew, in the Quartier
+Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had found the broad,
+straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to follow it over the hill
+down to the river-bank; my eyes were free, therefore, to stare at all
+the strange sights of the great city--markets and shops and churches and
+prisons. But most of all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had
+scarce realized there were so many people in the world as passed me that
+summer morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the
+place appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris
+was at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by
+the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.
+
+I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as not to
+see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I looked at
+the people I passed who were going about their business so tranquilly.
+Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or Navarre's. Before a
+week was out these peaceable citizens might be using pikes for tools and
+exchanging bullets for good mornings. Whatever happened, here was I in
+Paris in the thick of it! My feet fairly danced under me; I could not
+reach the hôtel soon enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for
+it gave me chance to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die
+for him--whatever fate could offer I was ready for.
+
+The hôtel, when at length I arrived before it, was no disappointment.
+Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun; the street was of
+decent width, and the houses held themselves back with reserve, like the
+proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did one here regret his
+possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+Of all the mansions in the place, the Hôtel St. Quentin was, in my
+opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and stately, with
+gardens at the side. But there was about it none of that stir and
+liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors
+passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were
+looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days
+preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had
+never been a time when they were proud to be seen in his hall.
+
+Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of Monsieur's
+men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him boldly.
+
+He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce repaid him.
+
+"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M. le Duc."
+
+"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which, none of
+the newest, showed signs of my journey.
+
+"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his men."
+
+He looked me up and down with a grin.
+
+"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is not
+receiving to-day."
+
+"I am Félix Broux," I told him.
+
+"You may be Félix anybody for all it avails; you cannot see Monsieur."
+
+"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the
+staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common fellow
+picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been at his side
+these twenty years.
+
+"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."
+
+"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You shall
+smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."
+
+"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to bother
+with you."
+
+"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and resumed
+his pacing up and down the court.
+
+"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he could
+hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by and by. I'll
+pay you off."
+
+It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal; it made
+a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an outcry that
+would bring forward some officer with more sense than the surly sentry,
+or whether to seek some other entrance, I became aware of a sudden
+bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which I could see through the
+gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair of flunkeys passed. There was
+some noise of voices and, finally, of hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen
+men-at-arms ran to the gates and swung them open, taking their stand on
+each side. Clearly, M. le Duc was about to drive out.
+
+A little knot of people had quickly collected--sprung from between the
+stones of the pavement, it would seem--to see Monsieur emerge.
+
+"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye, and a
+handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.
+
+I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in my
+throat now that the moment had come when I should see my Monsieur. At
+the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the coach-step, crying, all
+my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le Duc!"
+
+Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of recognition.
+The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang up-and struck me
+a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where the ponderous wheels
+would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick and kind, pulled me out
+of the way. Some one shouted, "Assassin!"
+
+"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with Monsieur."
+
+"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the sentry.
+"He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He was one of
+Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well, we have seen how
+Monsieur treats him!"
+
+"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young gentleman
+treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a common man so
+much as look at him."
+
+They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.
+
+"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because _he_ knocked
+him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe there's harm in the boy.
+What meant you, lad?"
+
+"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the street. This,
+then, was what I had come to Paris for--to be denied entrance to the
+house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and threatened with a drubbing
+from the lackeys!
+
+For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From waking
+in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was Monsieur's. Never
+was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte more throw his soul
+into his service than I into mine. Never did lover hate to be parted
+from his mistress more than I from Monsieur. The journey to Paris had
+been a journey to Paradise. And now, this!
+
+Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me beseech
+him and not answered--not lifted a finger to save me from being mangled
+under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were two very different
+places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had been pleased to take
+me into the château and treat me to more intimacy than he accorded to
+the high-born lads, his other pages. So much the easier, then, to cast
+me off when he had tired of me. My heart seethed with rage and
+bitterness against Monsieur, against the sentry, and, more than all,
+against the young Comte de Mar, who had flung me under the wheels.
+
+I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son of M. le
+Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share his father's
+exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore him, which he so
+little repaid. I had never thought to like him, St. Quentin though he
+were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His handsome face looked ugly
+enough to me as he struck me that blow.
+
+I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts
+louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not remain in this
+trance forever, and at length I woke to two unpleasant facts: first, I
+had no idea where I was, and, second, I should be no better off if I
+knew.
+
+Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I go back
+to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it was equally
+obvious that never, so long as my father retained the spirit that was
+his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account of my morning's
+achievements. It was just here that, looking at the business with my
+father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I had behaved like an
+insolent young fool. But I was still too angry to acknowledge it.
+
+Remained, then, but one course--to stay in Paris, and keep from
+starvation as best I might.
+
+My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to throw away
+in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely what I should need
+to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for accidents; so that,
+after paying Maître Jacques, I had hardly two pieces to jingle together.
+
+For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I could
+write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian, thanks to
+Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and handle a sword
+none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that it should not be hard
+to pick up a livelihood. But how to start about it I had no notion, and
+finally I made up my mind to go and consult him whom I now called my one
+friend in Paris, Jacques the innkeeper.
+
+'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly Rue St.
+Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might have been laid
+out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so did they twist and
+turn and double on themselves. I could make my way only at a snail's
+pace, asking new guidance at every corner. Noon was long past when at
+length I came on laggard feet around the corner by the Amour de Dieu.
+
+Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though I had
+resolved to seek out Maître Jacques, still 'twas a hateful thing to
+enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I had paid for my
+breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for my dinner. I had
+bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have to tell how I had been
+flung under the coach-wheels. My pace slackened to a stop. I could not
+bring myself to enter the door. I tried to think how to better my story,
+so to tell it that it should redound to my credit. But my invention
+stuck in my pate.
+
+As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found myself
+gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my thoughts
+shifted back to my vision.
+
+Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had appeared to
+me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I had beheld them
+but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up their faces like
+those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was small, pale, with
+pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The second man was conspicuously
+big and burly, black-haired and-bearded. The third and youngest--all
+three were young--stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
+was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
+gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain; the
+next they had vanished like a dream.
+
+It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
+fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from their
+unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son of the
+Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen? Maître Jacques had
+hinted at further terrors, and said no one dared enter the place. Well,
+grant me but the opportunity, and I would dare.
+
+Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance into that
+banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to do whatever mad
+mischief presented itself. Here was the house just across the street.
+
+Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in the
+row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the
+door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it did, for
+there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the
+Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side street, and after
+exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small
+square court bounded on three sides by a tall house with shuttered
+windows.
+
+Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two doors were
+both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor were small, high,
+and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters swung half open, but I
+could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did not despair; I was not
+without experience of shutters. I selected one closed not quite tight,
+leaving a crack for my knife-blade. I found the hook inside, got my
+dagger under it, and at length drove it up. The shutter creaked shrilly
+open.
+
+A few good blows knocked in the casement. I followed.
+
+I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust. From this,
+once a porter's room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway dimly
+lighted from the open window behind me. The hall was large, paved with
+black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway mounted into
+mysterious gloom.
+
+My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a choked cry
+rasping my throat. For, as I crossed the hall, peering into the dimness,
+I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with upraised bludgeon, a man.
+
+For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless, motionless,
+waiting for him to brain me. Then my half-uttered scream changed to a
+quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to the gloom, discovered my
+bogy to be but a figure carved in wood, holding aloft a long since
+quenched flambeau.
+
+I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear. I
+thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled at the
+sword's point up these very stairs. The silence seemed to shriek at me,
+and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering out from the
+shadowed corners. Yet for all that--nay, because of that--I would not
+give up the adventure. I went back into the little room and carefully
+closed the shutter, lest some other meddler should spy my misdeed. Then
+I set my feet on the stair.
+
+If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was naught to
+the blackness now. My hand on the rail was damp. Yet I mounted steadily.
+
+Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of the next
+flight, and went on. Suddenly, above, I heard a noise. I came to an
+instant halt. All was as still as the tomb. I listened; not a breath
+broke the silence. It never occurred to me to imagine a rat in this
+house of the dead, and the noise shook me. With a sick feeling about my
+heart I went on again.
+
+On the next floor it was lighter. Faint outlines of doors and passages
+were visible. I could not stand the gloom a moment longer; I strode into
+the nearest doorway and across the room to where a gleam of brightness
+outlined the window. My shaking fingers found the hook of the shutter
+and flung it wide, letting in a burst of honest sunshine. I leaned out
+into the free air, and saw below me the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of
+the Amour de Dieu.
+
+The next instant a cloth fell over my face and was twisted tight; strong
+arms pulled me back, and a deep voice commanded:
+
+"Close the shutter."
+
+Some one pushed past me and shut it with a clang.
+
+"Devil take you! You'll rouse the quarter," cried my captor, fiercely,
+yet not loud. "Go join monsieur." With that he picked me up in his arms
+and walked across the room.
+
+The capture had been so quick I had no time for outcry. I fought my best
+with him, half strangled as I was by the cloth. I might as well have
+struggled against the grip of the Maiden. The man carried me the length
+of the house, it seemed; flung me down upon the floor, and banged a door
+on me.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_The three men in the window_
+
+
+I tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in pitch-darkness. I
+dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the walls, I discovered
+myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all my force I flung myself
+once more upon the door. It stood firm.
+
+"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.
+
+They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced at that.
+I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil? These might be
+villains--doubtless were, skulking in this deserted house,--yet with
+readiness and pluck I could escape them.
+
+It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the grave. The
+men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had gone cautiously
+down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had given them a fine
+fright, clattering through the house as I had, and even now they were
+looking for my accomplices.
+
+It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness. If ever
+you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water from a rag,
+shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will thank you to take him
+out into the daylight and hang him. In token whereof, my heart welcomed
+like brothers the men returning.
+
+They came into the room, and I thought they were three in number. I
+heard the door shut, and then steps approached my closet.
+
+"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough voice of a
+man without breeding.
+
+"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the deep tones
+of my captor.
+
+Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick voice:
+
+"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do you look
+out for him, Gervais."
+
+I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for freedom. But
+the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for me--to the effect
+that my knife went one way and I another before I could wink. I reeled
+against the wall and stayed there, cursing myself for a fool that I had
+not trusted to fair words instead of to my dagger.
+
+"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid voice--a tall
+fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So had I seen the stalwart
+blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was older, a common-looking fellow
+whose face was new to me. All three were in their shirts on account of
+the heat; all were plain, even shabby, in their dress. But the two young
+men wore swords at their sides.
+
+The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of light
+into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few old chairs
+and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken food and
+wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs, two or three
+hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of dress littered the
+floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean quality except the bearing
+of the two young men. A gentleman is a gentleman even in the Rue
+Coupejarrets--all the more, maybe, in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two
+were gently born.
+
+The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name was
+Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris alone--for so I
+dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well open under dark
+brows--Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or angered; the only emotion to
+be read in his face was a gay interest as the blackavised Gervais put me
+questions.
+
+"How came you here? What are you about?"
+
+"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my stupidity with
+that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I thought the house
+was deserted."
+
+He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.
+
+"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the truth."
+
+"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was the whole
+of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any one. They said the
+house was haunted."
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"Maître Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."
+
+He stared at me in surprise.
+
+"What had you been asking about this house?"
+
+Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:
+
+"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the window
+last night. Did you not?"
+
+"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw you
+plain as day. But Maître Jacques said it was a vision."
+
+"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed very
+neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I thought. So old
+Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de Béthune, who was
+a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.
+
+"He said my house belonged to the Béthunes! Well played, Jacques! You
+owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I took to make him
+think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for Henri Quatre. Did he
+say, perchance, that in this very courtyard Coligny fell?"
+
+"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my terrors
+for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I to know it
+was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but yesterday from St.
+Quentin."
+
+"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be quiet,
+fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.
+
+"Félix Broux."
+
+"Who sent you here?"
+
+"Monsieur, no one."
+
+"You lie."
+
+Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears stood in my
+eyes.
+
+"No one, monsieur; I swear it."
+
+"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."
+
+He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other, torture with
+strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the table.
+
+"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."
+
+"He is a spy."
+
+"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes, forsooth! No
+spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first seized him he was no
+spy. I say it again, now I have heard his story. He saw us by chance,
+and Maître Jacques's bogy story spurred him on instead of keeping him
+off. You are a fool, my cousin."
+
+"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You will bring
+us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a spy it means the
+whole crew are down upon us."
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Pardieu! is it nothing?"
+
+Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:
+
+"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."
+
+Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
+boisterously:
+
+"And do you want Monsieur here?"
+
+Yeux-gris flushed red.
+
+"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble himself to
+come."
+
+Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of several
+things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair of fools,
+you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us now. He shall
+not live to carry the tale of us."
+
+"Then you have me to kill as well!"
+
+Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his sword-hilt.
+
+"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a ruffian," he
+cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then Yeux-gris, with a sudden
+exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke into laughter.
+
+Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For Gervais was
+taking the situation with a seriousness that was as terrifying as it was
+stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I could not but think the end
+of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's laugh said the very notion was
+ridiculous; I was innocent of all harmful intent, and they were
+gentlemen, not cutthroats.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I told
+you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or what you do,
+I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no party and am no man's
+man. As for why you choose to live in this empty house, it is not my
+concern and I care no whit about it. Let me go, messieurs, and I will
+swear to keep silence about what I have seen."
+
+"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me he had
+yet assumed. He answered:
+
+"If he had not said the name--"
+
+"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more. If he
+were what you think, it is the very last name he would have said."
+
+This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Maître Jacques's and
+my own. And he was their friend.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you, why, I
+can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at least it is an
+honest one and has ever been held so down where we live."
+
+"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest to the
+Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+He started, and Gervais cried out:
+
+"Voilà! who is the fool now?"
+
+My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my rescue,
+quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St. Quentin, and
+the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he whom they had
+spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There was more in this
+than I had thought at first. It was no longer a mere question of my
+liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever information I could
+gather.
+
+Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:
+
+"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris. What
+brought you?"
+
+"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered, deeming
+the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in Paris, my
+father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night, and lay at the
+Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's hôtel, but the guard
+would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur drove out I tried to get speech
+with him, but he would have none of me."
+
+The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice and
+face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:
+
+"And do you hate him for that?"
+
+"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he chooses. But I
+hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul blow."
+
+"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.
+
+"His son."
+
+"He has no son."
+
+"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de--"
+
+"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Why, we knew naught--" I was beginning, when Gervais broke in:
+
+"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this! He saw
+the Comte de Mar--!"
+
+"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by
+Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline face--"
+
+"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as who
+should say, "That is his scullion."
+
+Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and
+demanded of me:
+
+"What next?"
+
+"I came away angry."
+
+"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted house?
+Pardieu! too plain a lie."
+
+"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in the
+daytime," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in two lies;
+first the Béthunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a clumsy spy; they
+might have found a better one. Not but what that touch about
+ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of. That was
+Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked like a dolt
+else."
+
+"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not tell me
+about the Béthunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did not know the Comte de
+Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is handsome enough for a count. I
+came here, as I told you, in curiosity concerning Maître Jacques's
+story. I had no idea of seeing you or any living man. It is the truth,
+monsieur."
+
+"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face. You came
+into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite you to stay. You
+shall be my valet."
+
+"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.
+
+The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:
+
+"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand the
+services of M. Félix are not engaged."
+
+"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy--this sneak--"
+
+"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris, with a
+cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this shabby room. He
+added lightly again:
+
+"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not blab of us.
+Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry, they need it."
+
+Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I said:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in rebellion,
+"what! you will not."
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.
+
+"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.
+
+"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by chance; it is
+true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was born on his land and
+I am no traitor. I will not be valet or henchman for either of you, if I
+die for it."
+
+I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and sprang
+for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais struck me
+over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_Rapiers and a vow._
+
+
+I came to my senses slowly, to hear loud, angry voices. As I opened my
+eyes and stirred, the room reeled from me and all was blank again.
+Awhile after, I grew aware of a clashing of steel. I lay wondering
+thickly what it was and why it had to be going on while my head ached
+so, till at length it dawned on my dull brain that swords were crossing.
+I opened my eyes again, then.
+
+They were fighting each other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter was
+almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to the wall.
+Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other round in a circle
+till the room seemed to spin once more.
+
+I crawled out of the way and watched them, bewildered, absorbed. I had
+more reason to thrill over the contest than the mere excellence of
+it,--which was great,--since I was the cause of the duel, and my very
+life, belike, hung on its issue.
+
+They were both admirable swordsmen, yet it was clear from the first
+where the palm lay. Anything nimbler, lighter, easier than the
+sword-play of Yeux-gris I never hope to see in this imperfect world.
+The heavier adversary was hot, angry, breathing hard. A smile hovered
+over Yeux-gris's lips; already a red disk on Gervais's shirt showed
+where his cousin's sword had been and would soon go again, and deeper. I
+had forgotten my bruise in my interest and delight, when, of a sudden,
+one whom we all had ignored took a hand in the game. Gervais's lackey
+started forward and knocked up Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and
+Gervais slashed his arm from wrist to elbow.
+
+With a smothered cry, Yeux-gris caught at his wound. Gervais, ablaze
+with rage, sprang past him on his creature. The man gaped with
+amazement; then, for there was no time for parley, leaped for the door.
+It was locked. He turned, and with a look of deathly terror fell on his
+knees, crouched up against the door-post. Gervais lunged. His blade
+passed clean through the man's shoulders and pinned him to the door. His
+head fell heavily forward.
+
+"Have you killed him?" cried Yeux-gris.
+
+"By my faith! I meant to," came the answer. Gervais was bending over the
+man. With an abrupt laugh he called out: "Killed him, pardieu! He has
+come off cheap."
+
+He raised the fellow's limp head, and we saw that the sword had passed
+just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh. He had
+swooned from sheer terror, being in truth not so much as scratched.
+
+Gervais turned to his cousin.
+
+"I never meant that foul trick. It was no thought of mine. I would have
+turned the blade if I could. I will kill Pontou now, if you say the
+word."
+
+"Nay," answered the other, faintly; "help me."
+
+The blood was pouring from his arm; he was half swooning. Gervais and I
+ran to him and, between us, bathed the cut, bandaged it with strips torn
+from a shirt, and made a sling of a scarf. The wound was long, but not
+deep, and when we had poured some wine down his throat he was himself
+again.
+
+"You will not bear me malice for that poltroon's work, Étienne?" Gervais
+asked, more humbly than I ever thought to hear him speak. "That was a
+foul cut, but it was no fault of mine. I am no blackguard; I fight fair.
+I will kill the knave, if you like."
+
+"You are ungrateful, Gervais; he saved you when you needed saving,"
+Yeux-gris laughed. "Faith! let him live. I forgive him. You will pay me
+for my hurt by yielding me Félix."
+
+Gervais looked at me. While we had worked side by side over Yeux-gris he
+seemed to have forgotten that he was my enemy. But now all the old
+suspicion and dislike came into his face again. However, he answered:
+
+"Aye, you would have been the victor had it not been for Pontou. You
+shall do what you like with your boy. I promise you that."
+
+"Now that is well said, Gervais," returned Yeux-gris, rising, and
+picking up his sword, which he sheathed. "That is very well said. For if
+you did not feel like promising it, why, I should have to begin over
+again with my left hand."
+
+"Oh, I give you the boy," Gervais repeated rather sullenly, turning away
+to pour himself some wine.
+
+I could not but wonder at Yeux-gris, at his gaiety and his
+steadfastness. He had hardly looked grave through the whole affair; he
+had fought with a smile on his lips and had taken a cruel wound with a
+laugh. Withal, he had been the constant champion of my innocence, even
+to drawing his sword on his cousin for me. Now, with his bloody arm in
+its sling, he was as debonair and careless as ever. I had been stupid
+enough to imagine the big Gervais the leader of the two, and I found
+myself mistaken. I dropped on my knee and kissed my saviour's hand in
+all gratitude.
+
+"Aha," said Yeux-gris, "what think you now of being my valet?"
+
+Verily, I was hard pushed.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I owe you much more than I can ever pay. If you
+were any man's enemy but my duke's, I would serve you on my knees. But I
+was born on the duke's land and I cannot be disloyal. You may kill me
+yourself, if you like."
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "that is not my métier."
+
+Gervais laughed.
+
+"Make me that offer, and I accept."
+
+Yeux-gris turned to him with that little hauteur he assumed
+occasionally.
+
+"You are helpless, my cousin. You have passed your word."
+
+"Aye. I leave him to you."
+
+His sullen eyes told me it was no new-born tenderness for me that
+prompted his surrender. Nor had I, truth to tell, any great faith in the
+sacredness of his word. Yet I believed he would let me be. For it was
+borne in upon me that, despite his passion and temper, he had no wish to
+quarrel with Yeux-gris. Whether at bottom he loved him or in some way
+dreaded him, I could not tell; but of this my fear-sharpened wits were
+sure: he had no desire to press an open breach. He was honestly ashamed
+of his henchman's low deed; yet even before that his judgment had
+disliked the quarrel. Else why had he struck me with the hilt of the
+sword?
+
+"I leave him to you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you deem his
+life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a taste for
+insolence, Étienne? Time was when you were touchy on that score."
+
+"Time never was when I did not love courage."
+
+"Oh, it is courage!" With a sneer he turned away.
+
+"Gervais," said Yeux-gris, "have the kindness to unlock the door."
+
+Gervais wheeled around, his face an angry question.
+
+Yeux-gris answered it with cold politeness:
+
+"That Félix Broux may pass out."
+
+"By Heaven, he shall not!"
+
+"You gave your word you would leave him to me. Did you lie?"
+
+"I do leave him to you!" Gervais thundered. "I would slit his impudent
+throat; but since you love him, you may have him to eat out of your
+plate and sleep in your bosom. I will put up with it. But go out of
+that door till the thing is done, sang dieu! he shall not!"
+
+"If he goes straight to the duke, what then? He will say he found us
+living in my house. What harm? We are no felons. Let him say it."
+
+"And put Lucas on his guard?" returned Gervais. He was angry, yet he
+spoke with evident attempt at restraint. "Put Lucas on the trail? He is
+wary as a cat. Let him get wind of us here, and he will never let us
+catch him."
+
+"Well," said Yeux-gris, reluctantly, "it is true. And though I will not
+have the boy harmed, he shall stay here. I will not put a spoke in the
+wheel. We will take no risks till Lucas is shent. The boy shall be held
+prisoner. And afterward--"
+
+"I will come myself and let him out," said Gervais, and laughed.
+
+I glanced at my protector, not liking to think of that moment, whenever
+it might be, "afterward." He went up to Gervais.
+
+"My cousin, are we friends or foes? For, faith! you treat me strangely
+like a foe."
+
+"We are friends."
+
+"I am your friend, since it is in your cause that I am here. I have
+stood at your shoulder like a brother--you cannot deny it."
+
+"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,--my one friend in that
+house,--as I was yours. I stood at your shoulder in the Montluc
+affair--you cannot deny that. I have been your ally, your servant, your
+messenger to mademoiselle, your envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my
+power to win you your lady."
+
+A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face.
+
+"That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais."
+
+He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a sudden as far
+away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue Coupejarrets. He
+shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on Gervais's shoulder:
+"It's beyond you, cousin."
+
+Gervais brought him back to the point.
+
+"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me when you
+let loose a spy to warn Lucas."
+
+"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder than I
+when that knave is dead. But I will not have Félix Broux suffer because
+he dared speak for the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you keep
+him from Lucas."
+
+Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great
+that the words came out of themselves:
+
+"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"
+
+Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him:
+
+"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"
+
+Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me
+nothing I might ask, exclaimed:
+
+"Why, Lucas!"
+
+He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that
+the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight,
+and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair.
+
+A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing
+wet-handed by me.
+
+"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so
+much this Lucas who struck you?"
+
+"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke."
+
+"Did you take us for Leaguers?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself right in my
+eyes.
+
+"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen with a
+grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we have the
+Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to me; I am not
+putting either on the throne. So if you have got it into your head that
+we are plotting for the League, why, get it out again."
+
+"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"
+
+He answered me slowly:
+
+"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his way
+unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man, skulks behind
+the bars of the Hôtel st. Quentin and will not face my cousin's sword.
+So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do you believe me?"
+
+I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my defence,
+and I could not but believe him.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," I said.
+
+He regarded me curiously.
+
+"The duke's life seems much to you."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I am a Broux."
+
+"And could not be disloyal to save your life?"
+
+"My life! Monsieur, the Broux would not seek to save their souls if M.
+le Duc preferred them damned."
+
+I expected he would rebuke me for the outburst, but he did not; he
+merely said:
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Oh, Lucas!" I said. "I know nothing of him. He is new with the duke
+since my time. I do not owe him anything, save a grudge for that blow
+this morning. Mon dieu, monsieur, I am thankful to you for befriending
+me. Dying for Monsieur is all in a day's work; we expect to do that.
+But, my faith, if I had died just now, it would have been for Lucas."
+
+At this moment a long groan came from the end of the room. We turned;
+the lackey was waking from his swoon, under the ministration of Gervais.
+He opened his eyes; their glance was dull till they fell upon his
+master. And then at once they looked venomous.
+
+Gervais kicked him into fuller consciousness.
+
+"Get up, hound. It is time to meet Martin."
+
+The wretch scrambled shakily to his feet, and stood clutching the
+door-jamb and eying Gervais, terror writ large on his chalky
+countenance. Yet there was more than terror in his face; there was the
+look you see in the eyes of a trapped animal that watches its chance to
+bite. Yeux-gris cried out:
+
+"You dare not send that man, Gervais."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because the moment he is clear of the house he will betray you. Look at
+his face."
+
+"He shall swear on the cross!"
+
+"Aye. But you cannot trust the oath of such as he."
+
+"What would you? We must send."
+
+"As you will. But you are mad if you send him."
+
+Gervais pondered a moment, his slower wits taking in the situation. Then
+he seized the man by the collar, fairly flung him across the room into
+the closet, and bolted the door upon him.
+
+"I will settle with him later. But you are right. We cannot send him."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into laughter.
+
+"My faith! we could not have more trouble if we were heads of the League
+than this little duel of yours is giving us. Why, what if we are seen? I
+will go."
+
+Gervais started.
+
+"No; that will not do."
+
+"Eh, bien, then, what will you propose?"
+
+But it was some one else who proposed. I said to Yeux-gris:
+
+"Monsieur, if all your purpose is against Lucas and no other, I am your
+man. I will go."
+
+"What, my stubborn-neck, you?"
+
+"Why, monsieur, I owe you a great debt. While I thought you meant ill to
+M. le Duc, I could not serve you. But this Lucas is another pair of
+sleeves. I owe him no allegiance. Moreover, he nearly killed me this
+morning. Therefore I am quite at your disposal."
+
+"Now, I wonder if you are lying," said Gervais.
+
+"I do not think he is lying," Yeux-gris said. "I trow, Gervais, we have
+got our messenger."
+
+"You tell me to beware of Pontou because he hates me, and then would
+have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some acumen.
+
+I said: "Monsieur, you do not seem to understand how I come to make this
+offer."
+
+"To get out of the house with a whole skin."
+
+I had a joy in daring him, being sure of Yeux-gris.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I should be glad to leave this house with my skin
+whole or broken, so long as I left on my own feet. But you have
+mentioned the very reason why I shall not betray you. I do not love you
+and I do not love Lucas. Therefore, if you and M. Lucas are to fight, I
+ask nothing better than to help the quarrel on."
+
+He stared at me with an air more of bewilderment than aught else, but
+Yeux-gris's ready laughter rang out.
+
+"Bravo, Félix! I am proud of you. That is an idea worthy of Cæsar! You
+would set your enemies to exterminate each other. And I asked you to be
+my valet!"
+
+"Which do you wish to see slain?" demanded the black Gervais.
+
+I answered quite truthfully:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way."
+
+I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out at once:
+
+"Bravo, Félix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough to know whether
+you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but I love you."
+
+"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a well, truth
+lies at the bottom."
+
+"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.
+
+"Do you say, trust him?"
+
+"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest, nor
+honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve against
+the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no coward; he
+was no liar. I think he is not those now."
+
+Gervais was still doubtful.
+
+"It is a risk. If he betrays--"
+
+"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you too good a
+gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."
+
+"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you like."
+
+Yeux-gris said at once to me:
+
+"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open
+fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of
+doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him. Therefore we
+have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a man in the house
+to tell of his movements. He is to fare out secretly at night on a
+mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade only. M. Gervais and I will
+interrupt that little journey."
+
+"Very good, monsieur. And I?"
+
+"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition. Last night,
+when he told us of the plan, it had not been decided."
+
+"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know him."
+
+"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will not know
+you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little alley to the north of the
+Hôtel St. Quentin. Do you know your way to the hôtel? Well, then, you
+are to go down the passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's
+garden--you cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the
+street, on the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway.
+Half-way down the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our
+man, Louis Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"
+
+I repeated the directions.
+
+"You have learned your lesson. You will ask him the hour--only that."
+
+"And you will take oath not to betray us," commanded Gervais.
+
+I took out the cross that hung on my rosary. I was ready to swear.
+Gervais prompted:
+
+"I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but Martin."
+
+With all solemnity I swore it on my cross.
+
+"That oath will be kept," said Yeux-gris. He held out a sudden hand for
+the cross, which I gave him, wondering.
+
+"I swear that we mean no harm whatsoever to the Duke of St. Quentin." He
+kissed the cross and flung the chain back over my neck.
+
+At last I saw the door unlocked. Yeux-gris even returned to me my knife.
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs."
+
+Gervais, sullen to the last, vouchsafed no answer, but Yeux-gris called
+out cheerily, "Au revoir."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_A matter of life and death._
+
+
+Nothing in life can be so sweet as freedom after captivity, safety after
+danger. When I gained the open street once more and breathed the open
+air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could have sung with joy. I
+fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in getting out of my plight. As
+for the combat I was furthering, my only doubt about that was lest the
+skulking Lucas should not prove good sword enough to give trouble to M.
+Gervais. It was very far from my wish that he should come out of the
+attempt unscathed.
+
+But as I went along and had more time to ponder the matter, other doubts
+forced themselves into my reluctant mind. Put it as I pleased, the
+affair smacked too much of secrecy to be quite savoury. It was curious,
+to say the least, that an honest encounter should require so much
+plotting. Also, Lucas, coward and rascal though he might be, was
+Monsieur's man, doing Monsieur's errand, and for me to mix myself up in
+a plot against him was scarcely in keeping with my vaunted loyalty to
+the house of St. Quentin. My friend Gervais's quarrel might be just;
+his manner of procedure, even, might be just, and yet I have no right to
+take part in it.
+
+And yet Monsieur had signified plainly enough that he was no longer my
+patron. For my birth's sake I might never work against him, but I was
+free to do whatever else I chose. Monsieur himself had made it necessary
+for me to take another master, and assuredly I owed something to
+Yeux-gris. I had reason to feel confidence in his honour; surely I might
+reckon that he would not be in the affair unless it were honest. Lucas
+was like enough a scoundrel of whom Monsieur would be well rid. And
+lastly and finally and above all, I was sworn, so there was no use
+worrying about it. I had taken oath, and could not draw back.
+
+I hurried along to the rendezvous, only pausing one moment at the
+street-corner to buy sausages hot from the brazier, which I crammed into
+my mouth as I ran. But after all was there no need of haste; the little
+arch, when I panted up to it, was all deserted.
+
+No better place for a tryst could have been found in the heart of busy
+Paris. Only the one door opened into the alley; M. de Portreuse's high
+garden wall, forming the other side of the passage, was unbroken by a
+gate, and no curious eyes from the house could look into the deep arch
+and see the narrow nail-studded door at the back where I awaited the
+rat-faced Martin.
+
+I stood there long, first on one foot and then on the other, fearful
+every moment lest some one of Monsieur's true men should come along to
+demand my business. No one appeared, either foe or friend, for so long
+that I began to think Yeux-gris had tricked me and sent me here on a
+fool's errand, when, all at once, a low voice said close to my ear:
+
+"What seek you here?"
+
+I jumped on finding at my side a little, pale, sharp-faced man--the man
+of the vision. He had slipped through the door so suddenly and quietly
+that I was once more tempted to take him for a ghost. He eyed me for a
+bare second; then his eyes dropped before mine.
+
+"I am come to learn the hour," said I.
+
+"Did you not hear the chimes ring five?"
+
+"Oh, no need for disguise. I am come from the two in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour."
+
+He favoured me with another of his shifty glances.
+
+"What hour meant they?"
+
+I said bluntly, in a louder tone:
+
+"The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission."
+
+"Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud--his or the other's."
+
+"Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more time than
+I care to lose. How much longer before you will tell me what I came to
+know?"
+
+He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his eyes slunk
+away from mine.
+
+"You should have a password."
+
+"They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the shuttered house
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be enough."
+
+"How came you into this business?"
+
+"By a back window."
+
+He gave me another suspicious glance, but making nothing by it, he
+rejoined:
+
+"Eh bien, I trust you. I will tell you."
+
+He clutched my arm and drew me to the back of the arch, where the
+afternoon shadows were already gathered.
+
+"What have you for me?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing. What should I have?"
+
+"No gold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He promised me ten pistoles to-day. He did not give them to you?"
+
+"I tell you, no."
+
+"You are a thief! You have them!"
+
+He stepped forward menacingly; so did I. He then fell back as abruptly.
+
+"Nay, it was a jest; I know you are honest. But he promised me ten
+pistoles."
+
+"He did not give them to me," I said. "Perhaps he was not so convinced
+of my honesty. He will doubtless pay you afterward."
+
+"Afterward!" he retorted in a high key. "By our Lady, he shall pay me
+afterward! The gutters will run gold then, will they? Pardieu! I will
+see that a good stream flows my way. But one cannot play to-day with
+to-morrow's coin. He said I should have ten pistoles when I let him know
+the hour."
+
+"I cannot mend that. It lies between you and him. I have not seen or
+heard of any money."
+
+Martin edged up close to the door of retreat and waxed defiant.
+
+"Then all I have to say is, he may go whistle for his news."
+
+Now, had I but thought of it, here was an easy road out of a bad
+business. If Martin would not tell the hour of rendezvous, Lucas was
+saved, Monsieur's interests not endangered, yet at the same time I was
+not forsworn. But touch pitch and be defiled. You cannot go hand and
+glove with villains and remain an honest man. I returned directly:
+
+"As you choose. But M. Gervais carries a long sword."
+
+He started at that and made no instant reply, seeming to be balancing
+considerations. Then he gave his decision.
+
+"I will tell you. But your M. Gervais is wrong if he thinks I can be
+slighted and robbed of my dues. I know enough to make trouble for him,
+and I know where to take my knowledge. He will not find it easy to shut
+my mouth afterward, except with good broad gold pieces."
+
+"Enfin, are you telling me the hour?" I said impatiently. I was ill at
+ease; my only wish was to get the errand done and be gone.
+
+He laid a hand on my shoulder and made me bend to him, and even then
+spoke so low I could scarce catch the words.
+
+"They have fixed positively on to-night. They will leave by this door
+and take the route I described last night to M. Gervais. They will start
+as soon as the streets are quiet, sometime between ten and eleven. They
+must allow an hour to reach the gate, and the man goes off at twelve. In
+all likelihood they will not set out before a quarter of eleven; M. le
+Duc does not care to be recognized."
+
+So they planned to kill Lucas at Monsieur's side? Yeux-gris had not
+dared to tell me that. But he had looked me straight in the face and
+sworn on the cross no harm was meant to M. le Duc. Natheless, the thing
+looked ugly. My heart leaped up at the next words:
+
+"Also Vigo will go."
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Not so loud! You will have the guard on us! Yes, he is to go. At first
+Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this visit to the
+king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his confidence, and
+nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches over Monsieur like a
+hen over a chick."
+
+"Then it will be three to three," I said. I thought of Gervais,
+Yeux-gris, and Pontou, for of course I would take no part in it.
+
+"Three to two; Lucas will not fight."
+
+Lucas must be a poltroon, indeed!
+
+"But Vigo and Monsieur--" I began.
+
+"Aye, they are quick enough with their swords. Your side must be
+quicker, that's all. If you are sudden enough you can easily kill the
+duke before he can draw."
+
+Talk of words like thunderbolts! All the thunder of heaven could not
+have whelmed me like those words. Yeux-gris and his oaths! It _was_ the
+duke, after all!
+
+I could not speak. I looked I know not how. But it was dusky in the
+arch.
+
+"It sounds simple," he went on. "But, three of you as you are, you will
+have trouble with Vigo. That is all. I have told you all. I must get
+back before I am missed. Good luck to the enterprise."
+
+Still I stood like a block of wood.
+
+"Tell M. Gervais to remember me," he said, and opening the door, passed
+in. I heard him lock and bolt it after him, and his footsteps hurrying
+down the passageway.
+
+Then I came to myself and sprang to the door and beat upon it furiously.
+But if he heard he was afraid to respond. After a futile moment that
+seemed an hour I rushed out of the arch and around to the great gate.
+
+The grilles were closed as before, but the sentry's face, luckily, was
+strange to me.
+
+"Open! open!" I shouted, breathless. "I must see M. le Duc!"
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded, staring.
+
+"My name is Broux. I have news for M. le Duc. Let me in. It is a matter
+of life and death."
+
+"Why, I suppose, then, I must let you in," that good fellow answered,
+drawing back the bolts. "But you must wait here till--"
+
+The gate was open. I took base advantage of him by sliding under his arm
+and shooting across the court up the steps to the house. The door stood
+open, and a couple of lackeys lounged on a bench in the hall.
+
+"M. le Duc!" I cried. "I must see him."
+
+They jumped up, the picture of bewilderment.
+
+"Who are you? How came you here?" cried the quicker-tongued of the two.
+
+"The sentry opened for me. Where am I to find M. le Duc? I must see him!
+I have news!"
+
+"M. le Duc sees no one to-day," the second lackey announced pompously.
+
+"But I must see him, I tell you," I repeated. I had completely lost what
+little head I ever had; it seemed to me that if I could not see M. le
+Duc on the instant I should find him weltering in his gore. "I must see
+him," I cried, parrot-like. "It is a matter of life and death."
+
+"From whom do you come?"
+
+"That's my affair. Enough that I come with news of the highest moment.
+You will be sorry if I you do not get me quickly to M. le Duc."
+
+They looked at each other, somewhat impressed.
+
+"I will go for M. Constant," said the one who had spoken first.
+
+Constant was Master of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited him with
+the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake. He was old,
+fussy, and self-important, and withal no friend to me.
+
+"I had rather you fetched Vigo," I said.
+
+"Oh, Vigo will not come. He is with Monsieur. If I bring M. Constant, it
+is the best I can do for you."
+
+I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the nature
+of lackeys, and gave the messenger the last silver piece I had in the
+world. He regarded it contemptuously, but pocketed it and departed in
+leisurely fashion up the stairs.
+
+The other was not too grand to cross-examine me.
+
+"What sort of news have you? Do you come from the king?" he asked in a
+lowered voice.
+
+"No."
+
+"From M. de Valère?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then who the devil are you?"
+
+"Félix Broux of St. Quentin."
+
+"Ah, St. Quentin," he said, as if he found that rather tame. "You bring
+news from there?"
+
+"No, I do not. Think you I shall tell you? This news is for Monsieur."
+
+"It won't reach Monsieur unless you learn politeness toward the
+gentlemen of his household," he retorted.
+
+We were getting into a lively quarrel when Constant appeared on the
+stairway--Constant and the lackey who had fetched him, and two more
+lackeys, and a page, all of whom had somehow scented that something was
+in the wind. They came flocking about us as I said:
+
+"Ah, M. Constant! You know me, Félix Broux of St. Quentin. I must see M.
+le Duc."
+
+Constant's face of surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down at St.
+Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow, peevish old
+dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I had not thought he
+would revenge himself at such time as this. He looked at me with a
+spiteful grin, and said to the men:
+
+"He lies. I do not know him. I never saw him."
+
+"Never saw me, Félix Broux!" I cried, completely taken aback.
+
+"No," maintained Constant. "You are an impostor."
+
+"Impostor! Nonsense!" I cried out. "Constant, you know me as well as you
+know yourself. I say I must see the duke; his life is in danger!"
+
+Constant was paying off old scores with interest.
+
+"An impostor," he yelled shrilly, "or else a madman--or an assassin."
+
+"That is the truth," said some one, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder.
+
+I turned; two men of the guard had come up, my friend of just now and my
+foe of the morning. It was the latter who held me and said:
+
+"This is the very rascal who sprang on Monsieur's coach-step in the
+morning. M. Lucas threw him off, else he might have stabbed Monsieur. We
+were fools enough to let him go free. But this time he shall not get off
+so easy."
+
+"I am innocent of all thought of harm," I cried. "I am M. le Duc's loyal
+servant. I meant no harm this morning, and I mean none now. I am here to
+save Monsieur's life."
+
+"He is here to kill Monsieur; he is an assassin!" screamed Constant.
+"Flog him, men; he will own the truth then!"
+
+"I am no assassin!" I shouted, struggling in their grasp. "Let me go,
+villains, let me go! I tell you, Monsieur's life is at stake--Monsieur's
+very life, I tell you!"
+
+They paid me no heed. Not one of them--save hat lying knave
+Constant--knew me as other than the shabby fellow who had acted
+suspiciously in the morning. They were dragging me to the door in spite
+of my shouts and struggles, when suddenly a ringing voice spoke from
+above:
+
+"What is this rumpus? Who talks of Monsieur's life?"
+
+The guards halted dead, and I cried out joyfully:
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Yes, I am Vigo," the big man answered, striding down the stairs. "Who
+are you?"
+
+I wanted to shout, "Félix Broux, Monsieur's page," but a sort of
+nightmare dread came over me lest Vigo, too, should disclaim me, and my
+voice stuck in my throat.
+
+"Whoever you are, you will be taught not to make a racket in M. le Duc's
+hall. By the saints! it's the boy Félix."
+
+At the friendliness in his voice the guards dropped their hands from me.
+
+"M. Vigo," I said, "I have news for Monsieur of the gravest moment. I am
+come on a matter of life and death. And I am stopped in the hall by
+lackeys."
+
+He looked at me sternly.
+
+"This is not one of your fooleries, Félix?"
+
+"No, M. Vigo."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_A divided duty._
+
+
+That was Vigo's way. The toughest snarl untangled at his touch. He had
+more sense and fewer airs than any other, he saw at once that I was in
+earnest; and Constant's voluble protests were as so much wind. The title
+does not make the man. Though Constant was Master of the Household and
+Vigo only Equery, yet Vigo ruled every corner of the establishment and
+every man in it, save only Monsieur, who ruled him.
+
+He said no word to me as we climbed the broad stair; neither reproved me
+for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He would not pry into
+Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned Monsieur, he had no
+interest in me whatsoever. He led the way straight into an antechamber,
+where a page sprang up to bar our passage.
+
+"No one may enter, M. Vigo, not even you. M. le Duc has ordered it. Why,
+Félix! You in Paris!"
+
+"I enter," said Vigo; and, sweeping Marcel aside, he knocked loudly.
+
+"I came last night," I found time to say under my breath to my old
+comrade before the door was opened.
+
+The handsome secretary whom I had taken for the count stood in the
+doorway looking askance at us. He knew me at once and wondered.
+
+"You cannot enter, Vigo. M. le Duc is occupied."
+
+He made to shut the door, but Vigo's foot was over the sill.
+
+"Natheless, I must enter," he answered unabashed and pushed his way into
+the room.
+
+"Then you must answer for it," returned the secretary, with a scowl that
+sat ill on his delicate face.
+
+"_You_ shall answer for it if it turns out a mare's nest," said Vigo, in
+a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I passed him and
+Lucas, and flew down the long room to Monsieur.
+
+M. le Duc was seated before a table heaped with papers. He had been
+watching the scene at the door in surprise and anger. He looked at me
+with a sharp frown, while the deer-hound at his feet rose on its
+haunches growling.
+
+"Roland!" I said. The dog sprang up and came to me.
+
+"Félix Broux!" Monsieur exclaimed, with his quick, warm smile--a smile
+no man in France could match for radiance.
+
+I had no thought of kneeling, of making obeisance, of waiting permission
+to speak.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, half choked, "there is a plot--a vile plot to
+murder you!"
+
+"Where? At St. Quentin?"
+
+"No, Monsieur. Here in Paris. In the streets to-night, when you go to
+the king."
+
+Monsieur sprang to his feet, his hand on his sword. Lucas turned white.
+Vigo swore. Monsieur cried:
+
+"How, in God's name, know you that?"
+
+"You have been betrayed, Monsieur. Your plan is known. You leave the
+house to-night, near a quarter of eleven, to go in secret to the king.
+You leave by the little door in the alley--"
+
+"Diable!" breathed Vigo.
+
+"They set on you on your way--three of them--to run you through before
+you can draw."
+
+"But, ventre bleu! Monsieur is not alone."
+
+"No; he walks between you and M. Lucas."
+
+Not one of them spoke. They stared at me as if I were something uncanny.
+I, a raw country boy, disclosing a perfect knowledge of their most
+intimate plans!
+
+"How know you this?" Monsieur demanded of me. But he was not looking at
+me. His keen glance went first to Lucas, then to Vigo, the two men who
+had shared his confidence. The secretary cried out:
+
+"You cannot think, Monsieur, that I betrayed you?"
+
+Vigo said nothing. His steady eyes never left Monsieur's face.
+
+"No," answered Monsieur to Lucas, "I cannot think it." And to Vigo he
+said: "I shall accuse you when I accuse myself. But--none knew this
+thing save our three selves." And his gaze went back to Lucas.
+
+"It is not likely to be he," I said, impelled to be just to him though I
+did not like him, "for they meant to kill him as well."
+
+Lucas started, then instantly recovered himself.
+
+"A comprehensive plot, Monsieur," he said, with a smile.
+
+"Then who was it?" cried Monsieur to me. "You know. Speak."
+
+"There is a spy in the house--an eavesdropper," I said, and then paused.
+
+"Aye?" said Monsieur. "Who?"
+
+Now the answer to this was easy, yet I flinched before it; for I knew
+well enough what Monsieur would do. He feared no man, and waited on no
+man's advice. And if he was a good lover, he was a good hater. He would
+not inform the governor, and await the tardy course of justice, that
+would probably accomplish--nothing. Nor would he consider the troubled
+times and the danger of his position, and ignore the affair, as many
+would have deemed best. He would not stop to think what the Sixteen
+might have to say to it. No; he would call out his guards and slay the
+plotters in the Rue Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right
+he should, but--I owed my life to Yeux-gris.
+
+"His name, man, his name!" Monsieur was crying.
+
+"Monsieur," I returned, flushing hot, "Monsieur--"
+
+"Do you know his name?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, I know his name, but--"
+
+Monsieur looked at me in surprise and frowning, impatience. Quickly
+Lucas struck in:
+
+"Monsieur, I have grave doubts of the boy's honesty."
+
+"Doubts!" cried Monsieur, with a sudden laugh. "It is not a case for
+doubts. The boy states facts."
+
+He seated himself in his chair, his face growing stern again. The little
+action seemed to make him no longer merely my questioner, but my judge.
+
+"Now, Félix Broux, let us get to the bottom of this."
+
+"Monsieur," I began, struggling to put the case clearly, "I learned of
+the plot by accident. I did not guess for a long time it was you who
+were the victim. When I found out that, I came straight here to you.
+Monsieur, there are four men in the plot, and one of them has stood my
+friend."
+
+"And my assassin!"
+
+"He is a black-hearted villain!" I acknowledged. "For he swore no harm
+was meant to you. He swore it was only a private grudge against M.
+Lucas. But when one of them let out the truth I came straight to you."
+
+"That is likely true," said Vigo, "for he was ready to kill the men who
+barred his way."
+
+"You were in a plot to kill my secretary!"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried.
+
+"You--Félix Broux!"
+
+I curled with shame.
+
+"M. Lucas had struck me," I muttered; "I thought the fight was fair
+enough. And they threatened my life."
+
+Monsieur's contemptuous eyes shrivelled me as flame shrivels a leaf.
+
+"You--a Broux of St. Quentin!"
+
+Lucas, who had watched me close all the while, as they all three did,
+said now:
+
+"I believe he is a cheat, Monsieur. There is no plot. He has learned of
+your plan through the eavesdropper he speaks of and thinks to make
+credit out of a trumped-up tale of murder."
+
+"No," answered Monsieur. "You may think that, Lucas, for he is a
+stranger to you. But I know him. He was a fool sometimes, but he was
+never dishonest. You used to be fond of me, Félix. What has happened to
+make you consort with my enemies?"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I love you. I have always loved you," I cried. "I am not
+lying now, nor cheating you. There is a plot. I learned it and came
+straight to you, though I was under oath not to betray them."
+
+"Then, in Heaven's name, Félix," burst out Vigo, "which side are you
+on?"
+
+Monsieur began to laugh.
+
+"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can make
+nothing of it."
+
+"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him a
+trickster now."
+
+Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.
+
+"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to get
+some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we have not
+yet fathomed."
+
+"Will Monsieur let me speak?"
+
+"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past," he
+answered dryly.
+
+"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin with
+you, three months back. But at length he said I should come, and I
+reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an inn. This
+morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let me enter. I was
+so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove out I sprang up on your
+coach-step--"
+
+"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was you,
+Félix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters. And Lucas
+took you for a miscreant. Now I _am_ sorry."
+
+If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology. But at
+once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you in all good
+faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save me, you turn
+traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him! I had
+believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."
+
+"Monsieur, I was wrong--a thousand times wrong. I knew that as soon as I
+had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath
+or no oath."
+
+"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile. "Now
+you are Félix. Who are my would-be murderers?"
+
+We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before,
+and here we stuck again.
+
+"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten--tell you
+their names, their whereabouts, everything--were it not for one man who
+stood my friend."
+
+The duke's eyes flashed.
+
+"You call him that--my assassin!"
+
+"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's
+assassin--and a perjurer. But--but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the
+other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back by betraying him?"
+
+"According to your own account, he betrayed you."
+
+"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were your
+own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the gutter,
+would you send him to his death?"
+
+"To whom do you owe your first duty?"
+
+"Monsieur, to you."
+
+"Then speak."
+
+But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain, yet he had
+saved my life.
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot."
+
+The duke cried out:
+
+"This to me!"
+
+There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a
+shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to meet
+Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater in
+Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover. Monsieur had
+been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the lightning to strike,
+he said with utmost gentleness:
+
+"Félix, let me understand you. In what manner did this man save your
+life?"
+
+Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness and ever
+strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the finer that it was
+not his nature. His leniency fired me with a sudden hope.
+
+"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be as vile
+as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell you, will you
+let that one go?"
+
+"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke. "Félix, will you
+speak?"
+
+"If Monsieur will promise to let him go--"
+
+"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."
+
+His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger, and for
+the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his sentence. And again
+he did what I could not guess. He cried out:
+
+"Félix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what you do. I am in
+constant danger. The city is filled with my enemies. The Leagues hate me
+and are ever plotting mischief against me. Every day their mistrust and
+hatred grow. I did a bold thing in coming to Paris, but I had a great
+end to serve--to pave a way into the capital for the Catholic king and
+bring the land to peace. For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk
+my life to-night on foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my
+life is lost. The Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours
+be harried to a desert in the civil wars!"
+
+I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this unlooked-for
+appeal pierced me through and through. All the love and loyalty in
+me--and I had much, though it may not have seemed so--rose in answer to
+Monsieur's call. I fell on my knees before him, choked with sobs.
+
+Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:
+
+"Now, Félix, speak."
+
+I answered huskily:
+
+"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"
+
+"Judas betrayed his _master_."
+
+It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my head to
+tell him all.
+
+Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le Duc, I
+saw--not him, but Yeux-gris--Yeux-gris looking at me with warm good
+will, as he had looked when he was saving me from Gervais. I saw him, I
+say, plain before my eyes. The next instant there was nothing but
+Monsieur's face of rising impatience.
+
+I rose to my feet, and said:
+
+"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."
+
+"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.
+
+I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it were no
+more than my deserts.
+
+"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"
+
+I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow knotted, his
+hands clenched as if to keep them off me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever you
+please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not that I
+will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I _cannot_."
+
+He burst into an angry laugh.
+
+"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My faith!
+though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I seem to be
+getting the worst of it."
+
+"There is the boot, Monsieur."
+
+Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.
+
+"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a Broux."
+
+"There Monsieur is wrong. The lad has been disloyal and insolent, if he
+is a Broux."
+
+"Granted, Vigo," said M. le Duc. But he did not add, "Fetch the boot."
+
+Vigo went on with steady persistence. "He has not been loyal to Monsieur
+and his interests in refusing to tell what he knows. And if he goes
+counter to Monsieur's interests he is a traitor, Broux or no Broux. He
+has no claim to be treated as other than an enemy. These are serious
+times. Monsieur does not well to play with his dangers. The boy must
+tell what he knows. Am I to go for the boot, Monsieur?"
+
+M. le Duc was silent for a moment, while the hot flush that had sprung
+to his face died away. Then he answered Vigo:
+
+"Nevertheless, it is owing to Félix that I shall not walk out to meet my
+death to-night."
+
+The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering nervously the
+papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence, when now he stepped
+forward and said:
+
+"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur--"
+
+Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.
+
+"Félix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a bad plan. No
+man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You are either my
+loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the other. Now I am loath to
+hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to hurt you. I give you one more
+chance to be honest. Go and think it over. If in half an hour you have
+decided that you are my true man, well and good. If not, by St. Quentin,
+we will see what a flogging can do!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_Charles-André-Étienne-Marie._
+
+
+Unpleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom. Those
+men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's iron ways,
+said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.
+
+The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned to the
+inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the page burst
+out:
+
+"What is it? What is the coil? What have you done, Félix?"
+
+Now you can guess I was too sick-hearted for chatter. I had defied and
+disobeyed my liege lord; I could never hope for pardon or any man's
+respect. They threatened me with flogging; well, let them flog. They
+could not make my back any sorer than my conscience was. For I had not
+the satisfaction in my trouble of thinking that I had done right.
+Monsieur's danger should have been my first consideration. What was
+Yeux-gris, perjured scoundrel, in comparison with M. le Duc? And yet I
+knew that at the end of the half-hour I should not tell; at the end of
+the flogging I should not tell. I had warned Monsieur; that I would
+have done had it been the breaking of a thousand oaths. But give up
+Yeux-gris? Not if they tore me limb from limb!
+
+"What is it all about?" cried Marcel, again. "You look as glum as a
+Jesuit in Lent. What is the matter with you, Félix?"
+
+"I have cooked my goose," I said gloomily.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Nothing that I can speak about. But I am out of Monsieur's books."
+
+"What was old Vigo after when he took you in to Monsieur? I never saw
+anything so bold. When Monsieur says he is not to be disturbed he means
+it."
+
+I had nothing to tell him, and was silent.
+
+"What is it? Can't you tell an old chum?"
+
+"No; it is Monsieur's private business."
+
+"Well, you are grumpy!" he cried out pettishly. "You must be out of
+grace." He seemed to decide that nothing was to be made out of me just
+now on this tack, and with unabated persistence tried another.
+
+"Is it true, Félix, what one of the men said just now, that you tried to
+speak with Monsieur this morning when he drove out?"
+
+"Yes. But Monsieur did not recognize me."
+
+"Like enough," Marcel answered. "He has a way of late of falling into
+these absent fits. Monsieur is not the man he was."
+
+"He does look older," I said, "and worn. I trow the risk he is
+running--"
+
+"Pshaw!" cried Marcel, with scorn. "Is Monsieur a man to mind risks? No;
+it is M. le Comte."
+
+I started like a guilty thing, remembering what Yeux-gris had told me
+and I, wrapped in my petty troubles, had forgotten. Monsieur had lost
+his only son. And I had chosen this time to defy him!
+
+"How long ago was it?" I asked in a hushed voice.
+
+"Since M. le Comte left us? It will be three weeks next Friday."
+
+"How did he die?"
+
+"Die?" echoed Marcel. "You crazy fellow, he is not dead!"
+
+It was my turn to stare.
+
+"Then where is he?"
+
+"It would be money in my pouch if I knew. What made you think him dead,
+Félix?"
+
+"A man told me so."
+
+"Pardieu!" he cried in some excitement. "When? Who was it?"
+
+"To-day. I do not know the man's name."
+
+"It seems you know very little. Pardieu! I do not believe M. le Comte is
+dead. What else did your man say?"
+
+"Nothing. He only said the Comte de Mar was dead."
+
+"Pshaw! I don't believe it. You believe everything you hear because you
+are just from the country. No; if M. le Comte were dead we should hear
+of it. Oh, certainly, we should hear."
+
+"But where is he, then? You say he is lost."
+
+"Aye. He has not been seen or heard of since the day they had the
+quarrel."
+
+"Who quarrelled?"
+
+"Why, he and Monsieur," answered Marcel, in a lower voice, pointing to
+the door of the inner room. "M. le Comte has been his own master too
+long to take kindly to a hand over him; that is the whole of it. He has
+a quick temper. So has Monsieur."
+
+But I thought of Monsieur's wonderful patience, and I cried:
+
+"Shame!"
+
+"What now?"
+
+"To speak like that of Monsieur."
+
+"Enfin, it is true. He is none the worse for that. But I suppose if
+Monsieur had a cloven hoof one must not mention it."
+
+"One would get his head broken."
+
+"Oh, you Broux!" he cried out. "I have not seen you for half a year. I
+had forgotten that with you the St. Quentins rank with the saints."
+
+"You--you are a hired servant. You come to Monsieur as you might come to
+anybody. With the Broux it is different," I retorted angrily. Yet I
+could not but know in my heart that any hired servant might have served
+Monsieur better than I. My boasted loyalty--what was it but lip-service?
+I said more humbly: "Pshaw! it is no great matter. Tell me about the
+quarrel."
+
+"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was the
+question of M. le Comte's marriage."
+
+"What! is he married?"
+
+"Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see, Félix," Marcel
+said in a tone deep with importance, "we're Navarre's men now."
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne himself.
+You greenhorn! It is as much as our lives are worth to side openly with
+Navarre. The League may attack us any day."
+
+"I know," I said uneasily. Every chance word Marcel spoke seemed to dye
+my guilt the deeper. "But what has this to do with M. le Comte's
+marriage?" I asked him.
+
+"Why, he was more than half a Leaguer. Perhaps he is one now. Some say
+he and Monsieur were at daggers drawn about politics; but I warrant it
+was about Mlle. de Montluc. They call her the Rose of Lorraine. She's
+the Duke of Mayenne's own cousin and housemate. And we're king's men, so
+of course it was no match for Monsieur's son. They say Mayenne himself
+favoured the marriage, but our duke wouldn't hear of it. However, the
+backbone of the trouble was M. de Grammont."
+
+"And who may he be?"
+
+"He's a cousin of the house. He and M. le Comte are as thick as thieves.
+Before we came to Paris they lodged together. So when M. le Comte came
+here he brought M. de Grammont. Dare I speak ill of Monsieur's cousin,
+Félix? For I would say, at the risk of a broken head, that he is a
+sour-faced churl. You cannot deny it. You never saw him."
+
+"No, nor M. le Comte, either."
+
+"Why, you have seen M. le Comte!"
+
+"Never. The only time he came to St. Quentin I was laid up in bed with a
+strained leg. I missed the chase. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Why, you are right; that was the time you fell out of the buttery
+window when you were stealing tarts, and Margot got after you with the
+broomstick. I remember very well."
+
+He was for calling up all our old pranks at the château, but it was
+little joy to me to think on those fortunate days when I was Monsieur's
+favourite. I said:
+
+"Nay, Marcel, you were telling me of M. le Comte and the quarrel."
+
+"Oh, as for that, it is easy told. You see M. le Comte and this Grammont
+took no interest in Monsieur's affairs, and they had very little to say
+to him, and he to them. They had plenty of friends in Paris, Leaguers or
+not, and they used to go about amusing themselves. But at last M. de
+Grammont had such a run of bad luck at the tables that he not only
+emptied his own pockets but M. le Comte's as well. I will say for M. le
+Comte that he would share his last sou with any one who asked."
+
+"And so would any St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, you are always piping up for the St. Quentins."
+
+"He should have no need in this house."
+
+We jumped up to find Vigo standing behind us.
+
+"What have you been saying of Monsieur?"
+
+"Nothing, M. Vigo," stammered the page. "I only said M. le Comte--"
+
+"You are not to discuss M. le Comte. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, M. Vigo."
+
+"Then obey. And you, Félix, I shall have a little interview with you
+shortly."
+
+"As you will, M. Vigo," I said hopelessly.
+
+He went off down the corridor, and Marcel turned angrily on me.
+
+"Mon dieu, Félix, you have got me into a nice scrape with your eternal
+chanting of the praises of Monsieur. Like as not I shall get a beating
+for it. Vigo never forgets."
+
+"I am sorry," I said. "We should not have been talking of it."
+
+"No, we should not. Come over here where we can watch both doors, and
+I'll tell you the rest before the old lynx gets back."
+
+We sat down close together, and he proceeded in a low tone to disobey
+Vigo.
+
+"Enfin, as I said, the two young gentlemen were quite sans le sou, for
+things had come to a point where M. le Duc looked pretty black at any
+application for funds--he has other uses for his gold, you see. One day
+Monsieur was expecting some one to whom he was to pay a thousand
+pistoles, and to have the money handy he put it in a secret drawer in
+his cabinet in the room yonder. The man arrives and is taken to
+Monsieur's private room. Monsieur gives him his orders and goes to the
+cabinet for his pistoles. No pistoles there!"
+
+Marcel paused dramatically. "And what then?" I asked.
+
+"Well, it appears he had once shown M. le Comte the trick of the drawer,
+so he sent for him--not to accuse him, mind you. For M. le Comte is wild
+enough, yet Monsieur did not think he would steal pistoles, nor would
+he, I will stake my oath. No, Monsieur merely asked him if he had ever
+shown any one the drawer, and M. le Comte answered, 'Only Grammont.'"
+
+And how have you learned all this?"
+
+"Oh, one hears."
+
+"One does, with one's ears to the keyhole."
+
+"It behooves you, Félix, to be civil to your better!"
+
+I made pretence of looking about me.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He sits here. I am page to the Duke of St. Quentin. And you?"
+
+"Touché!" I admitted bitterly enough. Little Marcel, my junior, my
+unquestioning follower in the old days, was now indeed my better, quite
+in a position to patronize.
+
+"Continue, if you please, Marcel. Yet, in passing, I should like to ask
+you how much you heard our talk in there just now."
+
+"Nothing," he answered candidly. "When they are so far down the room one
+cannot hear a word. In the affair of the pistoles they stood near the
+cabinet at this end. One could not help but hear. As for listening at
+keyholes, I scorn it."
+
+"Yes, it is well to scorn it. People have an unpleasant trick of opening
+doors so suddenly."
+
+He laughed cheerfully.
+
+"Old Vigo caught us, certes. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, then
+Monsieur put on his proud look and said, if it was a case of no one but
+his son and his cousin, he preferred to drop the matter. But M. le Comte
+got out of him what the trouble was and went off for Grammont, red as
+fire. The two together came back to Monsieur and denied up and down
+that either of them knew aught of his pistoles, or had told of the
+secret to any one. They say it was easy to see that Monsieur did not
+believe Grammont, but he did not give him the lie, and the matter came
+near dropping there, for M. le Duc would not accuse a kinsman. But then
+Lucas gave a new turn to the affair."
+
+"How long has Lucas been here, Marcel? Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, he's a rascal of a Huguenot. Monsieur picked him up at Mantes, just
+before we came to the city. And if he spies on Monsieur's enemies as
+well as he does on this household, he must be a useful man. He has that
+long nose of his in everything, let me tell you. Of course he was
+present when Monsieur missed the pistoles. So then, quite on his own
+account, without any orders, he took two of the men and searched M. de
+Grammont's room. And in a locked chest of his which they forced open
+they found five hundred of the pistoles in the very box Monsieur had
+kept them in."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Marcel made a fine gesture.
+
+"And then, pardieu! the storm broke. M. de Grammont raved like a madman.
+He said Lucas was the thief and had put half the sum in his chest to
+divert suspicion. He said it was a plot to ruin him contrived between
+Monsieur and his henchman, Lucas. It is true enough, certes, that
+Monsieur never liked him. He threatened Monsieur's life and Lucas's. He
+challenged Monsieur, and Monsieur declined to cross swords with a
+thief. He challenged Lucas, and Lucas took the cue from Monsieur. I was
+not there--on either side of the door. What I tell you has leaked out
+bit by bit from Lucas, for Monsieur keeps his mouth shut. The upshot of
+the matter was that Grammont goes at Lucas with a knife, and Monsieur
+has the guards pitch my gentleman into the street. Then M. le Comte
+swore a big oath that he would go with Grammont. Monsieur told him if he
+went in such company it would be forever. M. le Comte swore he would
+never come back under his father's roof if M. le Duc crawled to him on
+his knees to beg him."
+
+"Ah!" I cried; "and then?"
+
+"Marry, that's all. M. le Comte went straight out of this gate, without
+horse or squire. And we have not heard a word of either of them since."
+
+He paused, and when I made no comment, said, a trifle aggrieved:
+
+"Eh bien, you take it calmly, but you would not had you been here. It
+was an altogether lively affair. It wouldn't surprise me a whit if some
+day Monsieur should be attacked as he drives out. He's not one to forget
+an injury, this M. Gervais de Grammont."
+
+At the name, intelligence flashed over me, sudden and clear as last
+night's lightning-gleam. Yet this thing I seemed to see was so hideous,
+so horrible, that my mind recoiled from it.
+
+"Marcel," I stammered, shuddering, "Marcel--"
+
+"Mordieu! what ails you? Is some one walking on your grave?"
+
+"Marcel, how is M. le Comte named?"
+
+"The Comte de Mar? Oh, do you mean his names in baptism?
+Charles-André-Étienne-Marie. They call him Étienne. Why do you ask? What
+is it?"
+
+It was a certainty, then. Yet I could not bring myself to believe this
+horrible thing.
+
+"I have never seen him. How does he look?"
+
+"Oh, not at all like Monsieur. He has fair hair and gray eyes--que
+diable!"
+
+For I had flung open Monsieur's door and dashed in.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_The honour of St. Quentin._
+
+
+Monsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and hurriedly to
+Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon them, and then
+Monsieur cried out to me:
+
+"Ah, Félix! You have come to your senses."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."
+
+He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at Marcel,
+standing agape in the doorway.
+
+"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and shut the
+door into the corridor."
+
+Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.
+
+"Now, Félix."
+
+I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was disposed
+of.
+
+"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I have found
+out. They--"
+
+My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the words died
+on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know that this was no
+story to tell Monsieur before another.
+
+"I will tell Monsieur alone."
+
+"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.
+
+"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."
+
+He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and said to
+the secretary:
+
+"You may go, Lucas."
+
+Lucas protested.
+
+"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be trusted.
+Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your life."
+
+The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:
+
+"You may go."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Go!"
+
+Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that startled
+me. But I did not pay it much heed.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.
+
+But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I had to
+tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two words. I stood
+silent, not knowing how to start.
+
+"Félix! Beware how much longer you abuse my patience!"
+
+"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."
+
+"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he knew--But go on.
+The others--"
+
+"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St. Denis
+gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of the Amour
+de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron from garret
+to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is here that they
+plot."
+
+[Illustration: "WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."]
+
+Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall something
+half remembered, half forgotten.
+
+"But the men," he cried, "the men!"
+
+"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."
+
+"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning forward
+eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking--the quickest way to reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young men--noble."
+
+I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon him.
+
+"Their names, lad!"
+
+Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up and
+covered every other feeling. I burst out:
+
+"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."
+
+He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.
+Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling the
+truth.
+
+I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave
+man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that gray-eyed
+cheat.
+
+With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.
+
+"You lie, you cur!"
+
+"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."
+
+He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog, who had
+sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which the dumb
+beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed head, a man
+stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was, the tears came to
+my eyes for Monsieur.
+
+He recovered himself.
+
+"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"
+
+My rage blazed up again.
+
+"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not who they
+were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things fitted."
+
+"Then it is your guess! You dare to say--"
+
+"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember respect.
+"Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen M. le Comte nor
+M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and heavy, with a black
+beard and a black scowl, whom the other called Gervais. The younger was
+called Étienne, tall and slender, with gray eyes and fair hair. And like
+Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like,
+though he is light! In face, in voice, in manner! He speaks like
+Monsieur. He has Monsieur's laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe
+that was why I loved him so much."
+
+"It was he whom you would not betray?"
+
+"Aye. That was before I knew."
+
+Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.
+Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would look
+through me to the naked soul.
+
+"How do I know that you are not lying?"
+
+"Monsieur does know it."
+
+"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."
+
+He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever saw--the face of
+a man whose son has sought to murder him. Looking back on it now, I
+wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with that story. I wonder why I did
+not bury the shame and disgrace of it in my own heart, at whatever cost
+keep it from Monsieur. But the thought never entered my head then. I was
+so full of black rage against Yeux-gris--him most of all, because he had
+won me so--that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied
+Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.
+
+"Tell me everything--how you met them--all. Else I shall not believe a
+word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur cried out.
+
+I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning
+vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in
+hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had
+spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face
+drew the cry from me:
+
+"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"
+
+"Take care, Félix, he is my son!"
+
+I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.
+
+"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was not
+against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I swore, too,
+never to betray them! Two perjuries!"
+
+I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering it.
+
+"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.
+
+"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since he has
+touched it. He has made it vile--scoundrel, assassin, parricide!"
+
+Monsieur struck the words from my lips.
+
+"It is true," I muttered.
+
+"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."
+
+"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of a St.
+Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came uppermost
+again.
+
+"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a handful
+of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught amiss. They are
+only three--he and Grammont and the lackey."
+
+But Monsieur shook his head.
+
+"I cannot do that."
+
+"Why not, Monsieur?"
+
+"Can I take my own son prisoner?"
+
+"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would have
+gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and two more
+can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame him before the
+men." I guessed at what he was thinking.
+
+"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest my son
+like a common felon--shame him like that?"
+
+"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a right to
+say it. "He has forgotten his honour."
+
+"Aye. But I have remembered mine."
+
+"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"
+
+But his eyes told me that he did mean it.
+
+"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives him?"
+
+His face set sternly.
+
+"No," he answered. "No, Félix. He has placed himself beyond my
+forgiveness."
+
+"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the three!"
+
+He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.
+
+"You would have me kill my son?"
+
+"He would have killed you."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and
+catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud and
+honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry heart.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished for the
+sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back, but the case
+was changed now.
+
+"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."
+
+"Monsieur would spare him as well--him, the ringleader!"
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"He forgets it."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"
+
+Monsieur looked at me.
+
+"When you are a man, Félix Broux, you will know that there are other
+things in this world besides vengeance. You will know that some injuries
+cannot be avenged. You will know that a gentleman cannot use the same
+weapons that blackguards use to him."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I was
+furious with him for it.
+
+He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had been
+standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me with puzzled,
+troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was wrong, and vented his
+feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur spoke to him; Roland bounded
+up to him and licked his hand. They walked up and down together,
+comforting each other.
+
+"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."
+
+He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then as he
+did.
+
+"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat, Félix? But
+does it seem to you fair that a tool should be punished when the leaders
+go free?"
+
+"No," said I; "but it is the common way."
+
+"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.
+
+I waited till he faced me once more.
+
+"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"
+
+"No, Félix. He shall be punished lest he betray again."
+
+He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by me, a
+broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take up his life
+once more. But I thought he would never get over the blow. A husband may
+forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will forgive her child's, but
+a father can neither forget nor forgive the crime of the son who bears
+his name.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the depths
+of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.
+
+Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.
+
+"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be looking to the
+country's business."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_Lucas and "Le Gaucher."_
+
+
+I cursed myself for a fool that I had carried the tale to Monsieur. It
+should have been my business to keep a still tongue and go kill
+Yeux-gris myself. For this last it was not yet too late.
+
+Marcel was hanging about in the corridor, and to him I gave the word for
+Vigo. I tore away from his eager questionings and hurried to the gate.
+
+In the morning I had not been able to get in, and now I could no more
+get out. By Vigo's orders, no man might leave the house.
+
+Vigo was after the spy, of course. Monsieur knew the traitor now; he
+would inform Vigo, and the gates would be open for honest men. But that
+might take time and I could not wait five minutes. I had the audacity to
+cry to the guards:
+
+"M. le Duc will let me pass out. I refer you to M. le Duc."
+
+The men were impressed. They had a respect for me, since I had been
+closeted with Monsieur. Yet they dared not disobey Vigo for their lives.
+In this dilemma the poor sentry, fearful of getting into trouble
+whatever he did, sent up an envoy to ask Monsieur. I was frightened
+then. I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and was very doubtful as
+to how he would answer my impudence. But he was utterly careless, I
+trow, what I did, for presently the word came down that I might pass
+out.
+
+The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for me. A man in
+his senses would have known there was no hope anyway. Who but a madman
+would think of venturing back, forsworn, to those three villains, for
+the killing of one? It would be a miracle if aught resulted but failure
+and death. Yet I felt no jot of fear as I plunged into the mesh of
+crooked streets in the Coupejarrets quarter--only ardour to reach my
+goal. When, on turning a corner, I came upon a group of idlers choking
+the narrow ruelle, I said to myself that a dozen Parisians in the way
+could no more stop me than they could stop a charge of horse. All heels
+and elbows, I pushed into them. But, to my abasement, promptly was I
+seized upon by a burly porter and bidden, with a cuff, to mind my
+manners. Then I discovered the occasion of the crowd to be a little
+procession of choristers out of a neighbouring church--St. Jean of the
+Spire it was, though I knew then no name for it. The boys were singing,
+the watchers quiet, bareheaded. They sang as if there were nothing in
+the world but piety and love. The last level rays of the sun crowned
+them with radiant aureoles, painted their white robes with glory. I shut
+my eyes, dazzled; it was as if I beheld a heavenly host. When I opened
+them again the folk at my side were kneeling as the cross came by. I
+knelt, too, but the holy sign spoke to me only of the crucifix I had
+trampled on, of Yeux-gris and his lies. I prayed to the good God to let
+me kill Yeux-gris, prayed, kneeling there on the cobbles, with a fervour
+I had never reached before. When I rose I ran on at redoubled speed,
+never doubting that a just God would strengthen my hand, would make my
+cause his.
+
+I entered the little court. The shutter was fastened, as before, but I
+had my dagger, and could again free the bolt. I could creep up-stairs
+and mayhap stab Yeux-gris before they were aware of my coming. But that
+was not my purpose. I was no bravo to strike in the back, but the
+instrument of a righteous vengeance. He must know why he died.
+
+One to three, I had no chance. But if I knocked openly it was likely
+that Yeux-gris, being my patron, would be the one to come down to me.
+Then there was the opportunity, man to man. If it were Grammont or the
+lackey, I would boldly declare that I would give my news to none but
+Yeux-gris. In pursuance of this plan I was pounding vigorously on the
+door when a voice behind me cried out blithely:
+
+"So you are back at last, Félix Broux"
+
+At the first word I wheeled around. In the court entrance stood
+Yeux-gris, smiling and debonair. He had laid aside his sword, and held
+on his left arm a basket containing a loaf of bread, a roast capon, and
+some bottles, for all the world like an honest prentice doing his
+master's errand.
+
+"Yes, I am back!" I shouted. "Back to kill you, parricide!"
+
+He had a knife in his belt; the fight was even. I was upon him, my
+dagger raised to strike. He made no motion to draw, and I remembered in
+a flash he could not: his right arm was powerless. He sprang back,
+flinging up his burdened left as a shield, and my blade buried itself in
+the side of the basket.
+
+As I stabbed I heard feet thundering down the stairs within. I jerked my
+knife from the wicker and turned to face this new enemy. "Grammont," I
+thought, and that my end had come.
+
+The door flew open and, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, out rushed
+Grammont and--Lucas!
+
+My fear was drowned in amaze. I forgot to run and stood staring in
+sheer, blank bewilderment. Crying "Damned traitor!" Gervais, with drawn
+sword, charged at me.
+
+I had only the little dagger. I owe my life to Yeux-gris's quick wits
+and no less quick fingers. Dropping the basket, he snatched a bottle
+from it and hurled it at Gervais.
+
+"Ware, Grammont!" shouted Lucas, springing forward. But the missile flew
+too quickly. It struck Grammont square on the forehead, and he went down
+like a slaughtered ox.
+
+We looked, not at him, but at Lucas--Lucas, the duke's deferential
+servant, the coward and skulker, Grammont's hatred, standing here by
+Grammont's side, glaring at us over his naked sword.
+
+I saw in one glance that Yeux-gris was no less astounded than I, and
+from that instant, though the inwardness of the matter was still a
+riddle to me, my heart acquitted him of all dishonesty, of all
+complicity. His was not the face of a parricide.
+
+"Lucas!" he cried, in a dearth of words. "_Lucas!_"
+
+I was staring at Lucas in thick bewilderment. The man was transformed
+from the one I knew. At M. le Duc's he had been pale, nervous, and
+shaken--senselessly and contemptibly scared, as I thought, since he was
+warned of the danger and need not face it. But now he was another man. I
+can think only of those lanterns I have seen, set with coloured glass.
+They look dull enough all day, but when the taper within is lighted
+shine like jewels. So Lucas now. His face, so keen and handsome of
+feature, was brilliant, his eyes sparkling, his figure instinct with
+defiance. A smile crossed his face.
+
+"Aye," he answered evenly, "it is Lucas."
+
+M. le Comte appeared to be in a state of stupor. He could not for a
+space find his tongue to demand:
+
+"How, in the name of Heaven, come you here?"
+
+"To fight Grammont," Lucas answered at once.
+
+"A lie!" I shouted. "You're Grammont's friend. You came here to warn him
+off. It's your plot!"
+
+"Félix! The plot?" Yeux-gris cried.
+
+"The plot's to murder Monsieur. Martin let it out. I thought it was you
+and Grammont. But it's Lucas and Grammont!"
+
+Lucas hesitated. Even now he debated whether he could not lie out of it.
+Then he burst into laughter.
+
+"It seems the cat's out of the bag. Aye, M. le Comte de Mar, I came to
+warn Grammont off. The duke will be here straightway. How will you like
+to swing for parricide?"
+
+Yeux-gris stared at him, neither in fear nor in fury, but in utter
+stupefaction.
+
+"But Gervais? He plotted with you? But he hates you!"
+
+We gaped at Lucas like yokels at a conjurer. He made us no answer but
+looked from one to the other of us with the alertness of an angry viper.
+We were two, but without swords. I knew he was thinking how easiest to
+end us both.
+
+M. le Comte cried: "You! You come from Navarre's camp, from M. de
+Rosny!"
+
+"Aye. I have outwitted more than one man."
+
+"Mordieu! I was right to hate you!"
+
+Lucas laughed. Yeux-gris blazed out:
+
+"Traitor and thief! You stole the money. I said that from the first. You
+drove us from the house. How you and Grammont--"
+
+"Came together? Very simple," Lucas answered with easy insolence.
+"Grammont did not love Monsieur, your honoured father. It was child's
+play to make an assignation with him and to lament the part forced on me
+by Monsieur. Grammont was ready enough to scent a scheme of M. le Duc's
+to ruin him. He had said as much to Monsieur, as you may deign to
+remember."
+
+"Aye," said M. le Comte, still like a puzzled child, "he was angry with
+my father. But afterward he changed his mind. He knew it was you, and
+only you."
+
+Lucas broke again into derisive laughter.
+
+"M. de Grammont is as dull a dolt as ever I met, yet clever enough to
+gull you. He thought you must suspect. I dreaded it--needlessly. You
+wise St. Quentins! You cannot see what goes on under your very nose."
+
+M. le Comte sprang forward, scarlet. Lucas flourished the sword.
+
+"The boy there caught at a glance what you had not found out in a
+fortnight. He gets to the duke and blocks my game--for to-day. But if
+they sent him ahead to hold us till their men came up, they were fools,
+too. I'll have the duke yet, and I'll have you now."
+
+He rushed at the unarmed Yeux-gris. The latter darted at Grammont's
+fallen sword, seized it, was on guard, all in the second before Lucas
+reached him. He might have been in a fortnight's trance, but he was
+awake at last.
+
+I trembled for him, then took heart again, as he parried thrust after
+thrust and pressed Lucas hard. I had never seen a man fight with his
+left arm before; I had not realized it could be done, being myself
+helpless with that hand. But as I watched this combat I speedily
+perceived how dangerous is a left-handed adversary. In later years I was
+to understand better, when M. le Comte had become known the length of
+the land by the title "Le Gaucher." But at this time he was in the
+habit, like the rest of the world, of fencing with his right hand; his
+dexterity with the other he rated only as a pretty accomplishment to
+surprise the crowd. He used his left hand scarcely as well as Lucas the
+right; yet, the thrust sinister being in itself a strength, they were
+not badly matched. I stood watching with all my eyes, when of a sudden I
+felt a grasp on my ankle and the next instant was thrown heavily to the
+pavement.
+
+Grammont had come to life and taken prompt part in the fray.
+
+I fell close to him, and instantly he let go my leg and wound his arms
+around me. I tried to rise and could not, and we rolled about together
+in the wine and blood and broken glass. All the while I heard the
+sword-blades clashing. Yeux-gris, God be thanked! seemed to be holding
+his own.
+
+Fighting Gervais was like fighting two men. Slowly but steadily he
+pressed me down and held me. I struggled for dear life--and could not
+push him back an inch.
+
+I still held my knife but my arms were pinned down. Gervais raised
+himself a little to get a better clutch, and his fingers closed on my
+throat. One grip, and life seemed flowing from me. My arm was free now
+if I could but lift it. If I could not, nevermore should I lift it on
+this sunny earth. I did lift it, and drove the dagger deep into him.
+
+I could not take aim; I could not tell where the knife struck. A gasp
+showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight went from
+me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then thought went, too.
+
+But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed, and I
+wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw Grammont
+clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all, the blow had
+gone home. I had struck him in the left side under the arm. Three good
+inches of steel were in him.
+
+He had turned over on his side, half off me. I scrambled out from under
+him. To my surprise, Yeux-gris and Lucas were still engaged. I had
+thought it hours since Grammont pulled me down.
+
+As I rose, Yeux-gris turned his head toward me. Only for a second, but
+in that second Lucas pinked his shoulder. I dashed between them; they
+lowered their points.
+
+"First blood for me!" cried Lucas. "That serves for to-day, M. le Comte.
+I regret that I cannot wait to kill you, but that will come. It is
+necessary that I go before M. le Duc arrives. Clear the way."
+
+M. le Comte stood his ground, barring the alley. They glared at each
+other motionless.
+
+Grammont had raised himself to his knees and was trying painfully to get
+on his feet.
+
+"A hand, Lucas," he gasped.
+
+Lucas gave him a startled glance but neither went nor spoke to him.
+
+"I am not much hurt," said Grammont, huskily. Holding by the wall, he
+clambered up on his feet. He swayed, reeled forward, and clutched
+Lucas's arm.
+
+"Lucas, Lucas, help me! Draw out the knife. I cannot. I shall be myself
+when the knife is out. Lucas, for God's sake!"
+
+"You will die when the knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching himself
+free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed as he saw the
+blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble in his hand.
+
+"Come on, then," he cried to Yeux-gris.
+
+But I sprang forward and seized the sword from M. le Comte's hand.
+
+"On guard!" I shouted, and we went to work.
+
+I could handle a sword as well as the next one. M. le Duc had taught me
+in his idle days at St. Quentin. It served me well now, and him, too.
+
+The light was fading in the narrow court. Our blades shone white in the
+twilight as the weapons clashed in and out. I saw, without looking,
+Grammont leaning against the wall, his gory face ashen, and Yeux-gris
+watching me with all his soul, now and then shouting a word of advice.
+
+I had had good training, and I fought for all there was in me. Yet I was
+a boy not come to my full strength, and Lucas was more than my match. He
+drove me back farther and farther toward the house-wall. Of a sudden I
+slipped in a smear of blood ('tis no lying excuse, I did slip) and lost
+my guard. He ran his blade into my shoulder, as he had done with
+Yeux-gris.
+
+He would likely have finished me had not a cry from Grammont shaken him.
+
+"The duke!"
+
+In truth, a deepening noise of hoofs and shouts came down the alley from
+the street.
+
+Lucas looked at me, who had regained my guard and stood, little hurt,
+between him and M. le Comte. He could not push past me into the house
+and so through to the other street. He made for the alley, crying out:
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs! We shall meet again."
+
+Grammont seized him.
+
+"Help me, Lucas, for the love of Christ! Don't leave me, Lucas!"
+
+Lucas beat him off with the sword.
+
+"Every man for himself!" he cried, and sprang down the alley.
+
+"It is not the duke," I said to Yeux-gris. "It is most likely the
+watch." I paled at the thought, for the watch was the League's, and
+Lucas by all signs the League's tool. It might go hard with us if
+captured. "Go through the house, M. le Comte," I cried. "Quick, if you
+love your life! I'll keep them at the alley's mouth as long as I can."
+
+Not waiting for his answer, I rushed down the passage. At the end of it
+I ran against Lucas, who, in his turn, had bowled into Vigo.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_Vigo._
+
+
+I knew of old that it was easier to catch a weasel asleep than Vigo
+absent where he was needed; yet I did not expect to meet him in the
+alley. Monsieur, then, had changed his mind.
+
+"Well caught!" cried Vigo, winding his arms round Lucas, who was
+struggling furiously for liberty. "Here, Maurice, Jules, I have number
+one. Ah, you young sinner! with your crew again? I thought as much. Tie
+the knots hard, boys. Better be quiet, you snake; you can't get away."
+
+Lucas seemed to make up his mind to this, for he quieted down directly.
+
+"So the game is up," he said pleasantly. "I had hoped to be gone before
+you arrived, dear Vigo."
+
+We had both been deprived promptly of our swords and Lucas's wrists were
+roped together, but my only bond was Vigo's hand on my arm.
+
+"Where are the others?" he demanded. "No tricks, now."
+
+"Here," I said, and led the way down the passage. Maurice and Jules,
+with their prisoner, pressed after us, and half a dozen of the duke's
+guard after them. The rest stayed without to mind the horses and keep
+off the gathering crowd.
+
+One of the men had a torch which lighted the red pavement. Vigo saw this
+first.
+
+"Morbleu! is it a shambles?"
+
+"That is wine," I said.
+
+"They spilled wine for effect, they spilled so little blood!" Thus
+Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded the
+situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no questions;
+instead, bade Lucas hold his tongue.
+
+"I am dumb," Lucas rejoined, with a mock meekness more insolent than
+insolence. But we paid it no heed for M. le Comte came forward out of
+the shadows. He held his head well up but his face was white above his
+crimsoned doublet.
+
+"M. Étienne! Are you hurt?" shouted Vigo.
+
+"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont leaning
+against the wall.
+
+"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at Gervais.
+
+"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my back,"
+Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo, draw it out."
+
+With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"I."
+
+"You, Félix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to demand again which
+side I was on.
+
+"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I
+could."
+
+"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless, here comes
+the knife."
+
+It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against Vigo's
+man, clapping his hand to his side.
+
+"I am done for," he gasped faintly.
+
+"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.
+
+"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.
+
+"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.
+
+Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage in his
+face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said fretfully:
+
+"Which--which is Étienne?"
+
+He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward silently.
+Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I put my arm
+about him and helped the guardsman to hold him straighter. He reached
+out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's sleeve.
+
+"Étienne--Étienne--pardon. It was wrong toward you--but I never had the
+pistoles. He called me thief--the duke. I beseech--your--pardon."
+
+M. le Comte was silent.
+
+"It was all Lucas--Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with stiffening
+lips. "I am sorry for--it. I am dying--I cannot die--without a chance.
+Say you--for--give--"
+
+Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less treachery
+though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were cousins,
+bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte said nothing.
+
+How Grammont found the strength only God knows, who haply in his
+goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened his
+sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his cousin,
+both hands outstretched in appeal.
+
+M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered forward.
+Then M. Étienne, never changing his countenance, slowly, half
+reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his hand.
+
+But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp again.
+As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.
+
+"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up and added
+the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin. Otherwise he had
+no emotions.
+
+But I was not case-hardened. And I--I myself--had slain this man, who
+had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice sounded to me far off as
+he said bluntly:
+
+"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."
+
+"No, by Heaven!" cried M. Étienne, in a vibrating voice that brought me
+back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer. Things may look black
+against me but I am innocent. You have one villain at your feet and one
+a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am a St. Quentin; I do not plot
+against my father. I was to aid Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not
+answer a challenge. I have been tricked. Gervais asked my
+forgiveness--you heard him. Their dupe, yes--accomplice I was not.
+Never have I lifted my hand against my father, nor would I, whatever
+came. That I swear. Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left
+Monsieur's presence, till now when he came out of that door side by side
+with Grammont. Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St.
+Quentin--no parricide!"
+
+The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with haggard eyes
+on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment he could not have
+waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman and servant, never
+minced words to any man nor swerved from the stark truth.
+
+I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of course he
+believed M. Étienne; how dared he make his master wait for the
+assurance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le Comte's pardon.
+
+But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he pronounce
+judgment, but merely said:
+
+"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his story
+to my master."
+
+"I will tell it before this hour is out!"
+
+"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M. Étienne. Monsieur
+suspects nothing against you. Félix kept your name from him. And by the
+time I had screwed it out of Martin, Monsieur was gone."
+
+"Gone out of Paris?" M. Étienne echoed blankly. To his eagerness it was
+as if M. le Duc were out of France.
+
+"Aye. He meant to go to-night--Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But when Monsieur
+learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day. 'If the League must
+kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight, with all Paris
+watching.' That's Monsieur!"
+
+At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from that unhappy
+house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices, the equery,
+struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant hands on Martin
+the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the household, had had some
+intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that M. le Comte, if guilty,
+should be spared. At once he had sounded boots and saddles.
+
+"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the meanest
+lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet the charge.
+My father and I have differed but if we are no longer friends we are
+still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor could he for one
+moment believe it of me."
+
+I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than to
+confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went back a
+second time and told him."
+
+"And he?" cried M. Étienne.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."
+
+"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him he gave
+no sign."
+
+"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said he could
+not move in the matter; he could not punish his own kin."
+
+M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:
+
+"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I expected
+his faith."
+
+"You had no claim to it, M. le Comte."
+
+"Vigo!" cried the young noble, "you are insolent, sirrah!"
+
+"I cry monsieur's pardon."
+
+He was quite respectful and quite unabashed. He had meant no insolence.
+But M. Étienne had dared criticise the duke and that Vigo did not allow.
+
+M. Étienne glared at him in speechless wrath. It would have liked him
+well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees. But how? It was a
+byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the duke's. The King of France
+could not dash him.
+
+Vigo went on:
+
+"It seems I have exceeded my duty, monsieur, in coming here. Yet it
+turns out for the best, since Lucas is caught and M. de Grammont dead
+and you cleared of suspicion."
+
+"What!" Yeux-gris cried. "What! you call me cleared!"
+
+Vigo looked at him in surprise.
+
+"You said you were innocent, M. le Comte."
+
+M. le Comte stared, without a word to answer. The equery, all unaware of
+having said anything unexpected, turned to the guardsman Maurice:
+
+"Well, is Lucas trussed? Have you searched him?"
+
+Maurice displayed a poniard and a handful of small coins for sole booty,
+but Jules made haste to announce: "He has something else, though--a
+paper sewed up in his doublet. Shall I rip it out, M. Vigo?"
+
+With Lucas's own knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet from
+throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your palm. Vigo
+pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home with the work of a
+quill, save those that winged arrows. M. Étienne, coming forward, with a
+sharp exclamation snatched the packet.
+
+"How came you by my letter?" he demanded of Lucas.
+
+"M. le Comte was pleased to consign it for delivery to Martin."
+
+"What purpose had you with it?"
+
+"Rest assured, dear monsieur, I had a purpose."
+
+The questions were stormily vehement, the answers so gentle as to be
+fairly caressing. It was waste of time and dignity to parley with the
+scoundrel till one could back one's queries with the boot. But M.
+Étienne's passion knew no waiting. Thrusting the letter into his breast
+ere I, who had edged up to him, could catch a glimpse of its address, he
+cried upon Lucas:
+
+"Speak! You were ready enough to jeer at me for a dupe. Tell me what you
+would do with your dupe. You dared not open the plot to me--you did me
+the honour to know I would not kill my father. Then why use me
+blindfold? An awkward game, Lucas."
+
+Lucas disagreed as politely as if exchanging pleasantries in a salon.
+
+"A dexterous game, M. le Comte. Your best friends deemed you guilty.
+What would your enemies have said?"
+
+"Ah-h," breathed M. Étienne.
+
+"It dawns on you, monsieur? You are marvellous thick-witted, yet surely
+you must perceive. We had a dozen fellows ready to swear that your hand
+killed Monsieur."
+
+"You would kill me for my father's murder?"
+
+"Ma foi, no!" cried Lucas, airily. "Never in the world! We should have
+let you live, in the knowledge that whenever you displeased us we could
+send you to the gallows."
+
+M. le Comte, silent, stared at him with wild eyes, like one who looks
+into the open roof of hell. Lucas fell to laughing.
+
+"What! hang you and let our cousin Valère succeed? Mon dieu, no! M. de
+Valère is a man!"
+
+With a blow the guardsman struck the words and the laughter from his
+lips. But I, who no more than Lucas knew how to hold my tongue, thought
+I saw a better way to punish this brazen knave. I cried out:
+
+"You are the dupe, Lucas! Aye, and coward to boot, fleeing here
+from--nothing. I knew naught against you--you saw that. To slip out and
+warn Martin before Vigo got a chance at him--that was all you had to do.
+Yet you never thought of that but rushed away here, leaving Martin to
+betray you. Had you stuck to your post you had been now on the road to
+St. Denis, instead of the road to the Grève! Fool! fool! fool!"
+
+He winced. He had not been ashamed to betray his benefactor, to bite the
+hand that fed him, to desert a wounded comrade; but he was ashamed to
+confront his own blunder. I had the satisfaction of pricking, not his
+conscience, for he had none, but his pride.
+
+"I had to warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St. Quentin
+such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were his kin? You
+did better than you knew when you shut the door on me. You tracked me,
+you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the coil?"
+
+"By God's grace," M. le Comte answered. He laid a hand on my shoulder
+and leaned there heavily. Lucas grinned.
+
+"Ah, waxing pious, is he? The prodigal prepares to return."
+
+M. Étienne's hand clinched on my shoulder. Vigo commanded a gag for
+Lucas, saying, with the only touch of anger I ever knew him to show:
+
+"He shall hang when the king comes in. And now to horse, lads, and out
+of the quarter; we have wasted too much time palavering. King Henry is
+not in Paris yet. We shall do well not to rouse Belin, though we can
+make him trouble if he troubles us. Come, monsieur. Men, guard your
+prisoner. I misjudge if he is not cropful of the devil still."
+
+He did not look it. His figure was drooping; his face purple and
+contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the man's
+mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a sudden frantic
+effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the gag to cry out
+wildly:
+
+"Oh, M. l'Écuyer, have mercy! Have pity upon me! For Christ's sake,
+pity!"
+
+[Illustration: "IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE
+ALLEY."]
+
+His bravado had broken down at last. He tried to fling himself at Vigo's
+feet. The guards relaxed their hold to see him grovel.
+
+That was what he had hoped for. In a flash he was out of their grasp,
+flying down the alley.
+
+"To Vigo! Vigo is attacked," we heard him shout.
+
+It was so quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after,
+pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley we
+ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We lost
+precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it was a ruse
+and our prisoner escaped. When they comprehended, we all rushed together
+out of the passage, emerging among frightened horses and a great press
+of excited men.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_The Comte de Mar._
+
+
+"Which way went he?"
+
+"The man who just came out?"
+
+"This way!"
+
+"No, yonder!"
+
+"Nay, I saw him not."
+
+"A man with bound hands, you say?"
+
+"Here!"
+
+"Down that way!"
+
+"A man in black, was he? Here he is!"
+
+"Fool, no; he went that way!"
+
+M. Étienne, Vigo, I, and the guardsmen rushed hither and thither into
+the ever-thickening crowd, shouting after Lucas and exchanging rapid
+questions with every one we passed. But from the very first the search
+was hopeless. It was dark by this time and a mass of people blocked the
+street, surging this way and that, some eagerly joining in the chase,
+others, from ready sympathy with any rogue, doing their best to hinder
+and confuse us. There was no way to tell how he had gone. A needle in a
+haystack is easy found compared with him who loses himself in a Paris
+crowd by night.
+
+M. Étienne plunged into the first opening he saw, elbowing his way
+manfully. I followed in his wake, his tall bright head making as good an
+oriflamme as the king's plume at Ivry, but when at length we came out
+far down the street we had seen no trace of Lucas.
+
+"He is gone," said M. le Comte.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. If it were day they might find him, but not now."
+
+"No. Even Vigo will not find him. He is worsted for once. He has let
+slip the shrewdest knave in France. Well, he is gone," he repeated after
+a minute. "It cannot be mended by me. He is off, and so am I."
+
+"Whither, monsieur?"
+
+"That is my concern."
+
+"But monsieur will see M. le Duc?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+He broke in on me fiercely.
+
+"Think you that I--I, smirched and sullied, reeking with plots of
+murder--am likely to betake myself to the noblest gentleman in France?"
+
+"He will welcome M. le Comte."
+
+"Nay; he believed me guilty."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"You may not say 'but' to me."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur. Am I to tell Vigo monsieur is gone?"
+
+"Yes, tell him." His lip quivered; he struggled hard for steadiness.
+"You will go to M. le Duc, Félix, and rise in his favour, for it was you
+saved his life. Then tell him this from me--that some day, when I have
+made me worthy to enter his presence, then will I go to him and beg his
+forgiveness on my knees. And now farewell."
+
+He slipped away into the darkness.
+
+I stood hesitating for a moment. Then I followed my lord.
+
+He slackened his pace as he heard footsteps overtake him, and where a
+beam of light shone out from an open door he wheeled about, thinking me
+a footpad.
+
+"You, Félix?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I go with M. le Comte."
+
+"I have not permitted you."
+
+"Then must I go in despite. Monsieur is wounded; I cannot leave him to
+go unsquired."
+
+"There are lackeys to hire. I bade you seek M. le Duc."
+
+"Is not monsieur a thought unreasonable? I cannot be in two places at
+once. Monsieur can send a letter. The duke has Vigo and a household. I
+go with M. le Comte."
+
+"Oh," he cried, "you are a faithful servant! We are ridden to death by
+our faithful servants, we St. Quentins. Myself, I prefer fleas!" He
+added, growing angrier, "Will you leave me?"
+
+"No, monsieur," said I.
+
+He glowered at me and I think he had some notion of chasing me away with
+his sword. But since his dignity could not so stoop, he growled:
+
+"Come, then, if you choose to come unasked and most unwelcome!"
+
+With this he walked on a yard ahead of me, never turning his head nor
+saying a word, I following meekly, wondering whither, and devoutly
+hoping it might be to supper. Presently I observed that we were in a
+better quarter of the town, and before long we came to a broad,
+well-lighted inn, whence proceeded a merry chatter and rattle of dice.
+M. Étienne with accustomed feet turned into the court at the side, and
+seizing upon a drawer who was crossing from door to door despatched him
+for the landlord. Mine host came, fat and smiling, unworried by the hard
+times, greeted Yeux-gris with acclaim as "this dear M. le Comte,"
+wondered at his long absence and bloody shirt, and granted with all
+alacrity his three demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood
+back, ill at ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering
+whether I were to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le
+Comte, without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my
+serving-man," I knew my stomach was safe.
+
+That was the most I thought of then, I do confess, for, except for my
+sausage, I had not tasted food since morning. The barber came and
+bandaged M. le Comte and put him straight to bed, and I was left free to
+fall on the ample victuals set before me, and was so comfortable and
+happy that the Rue Coupejarrets seemed like an evil dream. Since that
+day I have been an easy mark for beggars if they could but manage to
+look starved.
+
+Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le Comte's
+room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for I saw by this
+token that I was forgiven. Indeed, no sooner had I got fairly inside
+the door than my master raised himself on his sound elbow and called
+out:
+
+"Ah, Félix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful churl?"
+
+"I bear malice?" I cried, flushing. "Monsieur is mocking me. I know
+monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life. Yet my wish is to
+be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget it."
+
+"Nay," he said; "I have forgotten it. And it was freely forgiven from
+the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin's side."
+
+"For the second time," I said, "monsieur saved my life." And I dropped
+on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand. But he snatched it away
+from me and flung his arm around my neck and kissed my cheek.
+
+"Félix," he cried, "but for you my hands would be red with my father's
+blood. You rescued him from death and me from worse. If I have any
+shreds of honour left 'tis you have saved them to me."
+
+"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I die."
+
+"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's fool!"
+
+"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what he
+said--"
+
+"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for some time
+what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin Valère duke! He
+was a man. But I--nom de dieu, I was not worth the killing."
+
+"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."
+
+"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot against
+dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind Lucas--I dare
+swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no secret now where Monsieur
+stands. Yet the king's party grows so strong and the mob so cheers
+Monsieur, the League dare not strike openly. So they put a spy in the
+house to choose time and way. And the spy would not stab, for he saw he
+could make me do his work for him. He saw I needed but a push to come to
+open breach with my father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull
+his chestnuts from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I
+could never strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their
+thrall forever!"
+
+"Never that, monsieur; never that!"
+
+"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of a stray
+boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose through. I
+was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais to be morose
+and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always stood his friend. I
+thought him shamefully used; I let myself be turned out of my father's
+house to champion him. I had no more notion he was plotting my ruin than
+a child playing with his dolls. I was their doll, mordieu! their toy,
+their crazy fool on a chain. But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to
+pledge my sword to Henry of Navarre."
+
+"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith--"
+
+"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he were
+better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and
+generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he will not
+starve us. He looks the other way, and the provision-trains come in. But
+the Leaguers, with all their regiments, dare not openly strike down one
+man,--one man who has come all alone into their country,--they put a spy
+into his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin
+to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they are
+most Catholic and noble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these pious
+plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and make me
+outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime with the
+League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"
+
+I caught his fire.
+
+"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers yet!"
+
+He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.
+
+"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, Félix, you and I alone will
+overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are made of. They
+think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with my father. I lazed
+about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my pleasure, too shallow a fop
+even to take sides in the fight for a kingdom. What should they see in
+me but an empty-headed roisterer, frittering away his life in follies?
+But they will find I am something more. Well, enter there!"
+
+He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as Maître
+Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood shuffling on the
+threshold.
+
+"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I think he
+could not but have heard M. Étienne's tirading half-way down the
+passage.
+
+"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"
+
+"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it be sent
+in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had been wounded and
+was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him for a letter that
+would keep till morning. But he would have it 'twas of instant import,
+and so--"
+
+"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the maître in, my
+mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason save my ardent wish, that
+Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.
+
+"I dared not deny him further," added Maître Menard. "He wore the
+liveries of M. de Mayenne."
+
+"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. Étienne had said. "Pardieu,
+it may be Lucas himself!" And snatching up my master's sword I dashed
+out of the door and was in the cabaret in three steps.
+
+The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by the
+uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise resembled
+Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my sudden entrance
+had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his outraged dignity to
+cross swords with me. On any other day I had deemed it impossible to say
+him nay, but now with a real vengeance, a quarrel à outrance on my
+hands, he seemed of no consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I
+demanded M. de Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the
+dark court and the darker street.
+
+A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pass out, and he
+opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I ran a hundred
+yards up street and a hundred yards down street, shouting on the name of
+Lucas, calling him coward and skulker, bidding him come forth and fight
+me. The whole neighbourhood became aware than I wanted one Lucas to
+fight: lights twinkled in windows; men, women, and children poured out
+of doors. But Lucas, if it were he, had for the second time vanished
+soft-footed into the night.
+
+I returned with drooping tail to M. Étienne. He was alone, sitting up in
+bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes blazing.
+
+"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone. Oh, if I
+caught Lucas--"
+
+"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you waited
+long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This is no errand
+of Lucas but a very different matter."
+
+He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement in his
+eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and started to rise.
+
+"Get my clothes, Félix. I must go to the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and dragging the
+cover over him by main force.
+
+"You can go nowhere, M. Étienne; it is madness. The surgeon said you
+must lie here for three days. You will get a fever in your wounds; you
+shall not go."
+
+"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped. Cautiously I
+relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed: "Félix, I must go.
+So long as there is a spark of life left in me, I have no choice but to
+go."
+
+"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers--with M. de
+Mayenne."
+
+"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this--but this is Lorance."
+
+Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand and
+tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.
+
+I read:
+
+     _M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence,
+     or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hôtel
+     de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed? Or is he so sure of
+     his standing that he fears no supplanting? In either case he is
+     wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed forever. He may, if
+     he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be forgotten. If he
+     would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at the eleventh hour,
+     to lay his apologies at the feet of_
+
+     LORANCE DE MONTLUC.
+
+"And she--"
+
+"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's desire."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see why I have
+stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow my father into
+exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused the breach with
+Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de Grammont. That was the
+spark kindled the powder, but the train was laid."
+
+"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"
+
+"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,--or my shame, as you
+choose,--I was not. I was neither one nor the other, neither fish nor
+flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was not. I was not
+disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore me. Monsieur reviled
+me for a skulker, a fainéant; nom de diable, he might have remembered
+his own three years of idleness!"
+
+"Monsieur held out for his religion--"
+
+"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not merrily.
+
+"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked and evaded
+and temporized--for nothing. I would not join the League and break my
+father's heart; would not stand out against it and lose Lorance. I have
+been trying these three years to please both the goat and the
+cabbage--with the usual ending. I have pleased nobody. I am out of
+Mayenne's books: he made me overtures and I refused him. I am out of my
+father's books: he thinks me a traitor and parricide. And I am out of
+mademoiselle's: she despises me for a laggard. Had I gone in with
+Mayenne I had won her. Had I gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command
+in King Henry's army. But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two
+stools, I fall miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a
+do-nothing, the butt and laughing-stock of all brave men.
+
+"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his breath. "For
+once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given me a last chance.
+She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on her threshold, I at
+least die looking at her."
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die looking at
+her, for you will die out here in the street, and that will profit
+neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."
+
+"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I sent her
+a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She thinks me careless
+of her. I must go."
+
+"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself Mayenne is
+likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk into the enemies'
+very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."
+
+"Félix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with quick-blazing ire. "I
+do not permit such words to be spoken in connection with Mlle. de
+Montluc."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of pistolet. The
+St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in those they loved. I
+remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of resentment had forbidden
+me to speak ill of his son. And I remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith
+had been justified and that my accusations were lies. Natheless, I
+liked not the look of this affair, and I attempted further warnings.
+
+"Monsieur, in my opinion--"
+
+"You are not here to hold opinions, Félix, but your tongue."
+
+I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it liked
+him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes lay, only to
+drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and dashed half the water
+in it into his face.
+
+"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it was but
+a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was forced to seize
+my shoulder to keep from falling.
+
+"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I am all
+well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about like a ship at
+sea."
+
+I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue about
+it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the white bed-linen
+I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could drench him again he
+raised his lids.
+
+"Félix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that I shall reach
+Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you cannot walk
+across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M. Étienne."
+
+"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you say to
+her--pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her myself."
+
+"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt--how you would come, but
+cannot."
+
+"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her think it a
+flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you," he added, with
+half a laugh. "There is something very trust-compelling about you,
+Félix. And assure her of my lifelong, never-failing service."
+
+"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of
+Navarre."
+
+"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, Félix, was ever a poor wight so harried
+and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would destroy he first makes
+mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I have done with it."
+
+"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I go now,
+monsieur."
+
+"And good luck to you! Félix, I offer you no reward for this midnight
+journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense you will see her."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_Mademoiselle._
+
+
+I went to find Maître Menard, to urge upon him that some one should stay
+with M. Étienne while I was gone, lest he swooned or became
+light-headed. But the surgeon himself was present, having returned from
+bandaging up some common skull to see how his noble patient rested. He
+promised that he would stay the night with M. le Comte; so, eased of
+that care, I set out for the Hôtel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants
+with a flambeau coming along to guide and guard me. M. Étienne was a
+favourite in this inn of Maître Menard's; they did not stop to ask
+whether he had money in his purse before falling over one another in
+their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one gets more out of
+the world by dint of fair words than by a long purse or a long sword.
+
+We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the right-about,
+to the impatience of my escort.
+
+"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a moment, but
+see Maître Menard I must."
+
+He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.
+
+"Now what brings you back?"
+
+"This, maître," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been
+in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy
+gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at
+large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him
+here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maître, I beg you to admit no one
+to M. le Comte--no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from
+the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the maître declared.
+
+"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St. Quentin's
+equery. You will know him for the biggest man in France."
+
+"Good. And this other; what is he like?"
+
+"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall and
+slim,--oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown hair and thin,
+aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."
+
+"His tongue shall not get around me," Maître Menard promised. "The host
+of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you."
+
+With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition
+with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business. It was
+all very well for M. Étienne to declare grandly that as recompense for
+my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc. But I was not her lover and I
+thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her. I knew
+not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had
+dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had
+not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was
+scared.
+
+And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I
+was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's
+cousin. What mocking devil had driven Étienne de Mar, out of a whole
+France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this
+Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his father's friends no daughters,
+that he must seek a mistress from the black duke's household? Were there
+no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself
+with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?
+
+I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it not. If
+Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I marvelled that my
+master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his
+servant there. Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to
+do his bidding. Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought
+myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do
+confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house
+in Paris, the very core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not
+been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully
+enough.
+
+Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the streets,
+the clear summer night, and all of them were talking politics. As Jean
+and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the wine-shop lanterns, we
+caught always the names of Mayenne and Navarre. Everywhere they asked
+the same two questions: Was it true that Henry was coming into the
+Church? And if so, what would Mayenne do next? I perceived that old
+Maître Jacques of the Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the
+people of Paris were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery,
+galled to desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.
+
+Mayenne's fine new hôtel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a
+fête. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling
+dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a
+happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex
+him in the present situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.
+
+The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by men-at-arms;
+but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers lounged on the stone
+benches in the archway. Some of them were talking to a little knot of
+street idlers who had gathered about the entrance, while others, with
+the aid of a torch and a greasy pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.
+
+I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc, declaring
+that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.
+
+"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard replied at
+once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay, no need to ask,"
+he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would make."
+
+"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for
+mademoiselle."
+
+"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in.
+If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the
+consolation of a message."
+
+A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:
+
+"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the Comte
+de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and M. Paul
+for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the earth. It seemed
+as if she must take the little cheese or nothing. But now things are
+looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly in, and here is a
+messenger at least from the other."
+
+"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took up the
+tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's graces."
+
+"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in his
+ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le Balafré's
+own."
+
+"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came the
+retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him into the
+house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole history, false
+and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down before the lofty of
+the earth, we underlings, but behind their backs there is none with
+whose names we make so free. And there we have the advantage of our
+masters; for they know little of our private matters while we know
+everything of theirs.
+
+In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted me
+through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence issued a
+merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while I remained to
+undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose repose we had
+invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again, lifting the curtain
+for me to enter.
+
+The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces along the
+walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There was a crowd of
+people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my dazzled eyes; grouped,
+most of them, about the tables set up and down, either taking hands
+themselves at cards or dice or betting on those who did. Bluff soldiers
+in breastplate and jack-boots were not wanting in the throng, but the
+larger number of the gallants were brave in silken doublets and spotless
+ruffs, as became a noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what
+am I to say of them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun,
+agleam with jewels--eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had
+thought so fine, were but serving-maids to these.
+
+I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the chatter,
+unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the congregation
+of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me if I could, for
+here close about were a dozen fair women, any one of whom might be
+Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat. I knew not whom to
+address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in a suit of pink, took the
+burden on himself.
+
+"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."
+
+He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In truth, I
+must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned out of a bag in
+the midst of that gorgeous company.
+
+"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"I have wondered what has become of Étienne de Mar this last month,"
+spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his place behind a fair
+one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so fine as the other, but in
+his short, stocky figure and square face there was a force which his
+comrade lacked. He regarded me with a far keener glance as he asked:
+
+"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do for a
+lackey."
+
+"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de
+Montluc," suggested the pink youth.
+
+"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying down her
+hand at cards, rose and came toward me.
+
+She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried herself with
+stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as purely white and pink
+as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl, while her eyes, under their
+sooty lashes, shone blue as corn-flowers.
+
+I began to understand M. Étienne.
+
+"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood
+regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain
+myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her
+with his soft drawl:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
+extraordinary--most extraordinary--from the court of his Highness the
+Comte de Mar."
+
+"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my
+uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.
+
+"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"
+
+"It appears not, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:
+
+"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
+triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not
+produce M. de Mar."
+
+"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de
+Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not
+come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He
+tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."
+
+"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
+"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
+messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."
+
+"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc
+replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished
+for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant
+squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before
+her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled
+from between her fingers.
+
+By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general
+interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of
+authority demanded:
+
+"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"
+
+"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with
+instant gravity and respect.
+
+"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.
+
+"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out
+of the house again now."
+
+"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did
+not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the
+leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
+herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.
+
+"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a
+stable-boy into my salon."
+
+"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
+protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de
+Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they
+were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back
+if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my
+cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is
+the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But
+I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know
+not their duties, not me."
+
+"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I
+consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must
+hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs--to the
+stables."
+
+A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.
+
+"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who
+had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on
+Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed
+her, a curious circle still surrounded us.
+
+"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
+mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
+vanished Mar."
+
+"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
+messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
+demoiselle.
+
+I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out
+in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the
+stables--anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such
+intent.
+
+"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not
+for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de
+Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."
+
+"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."
+
+"Whom was he fighting?"
+
+"And for what lady's favour?"
+
+"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"
+
+"Does she make him read his Bible?"
+
+"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"
+
+The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
+mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:
+
+"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other
+matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that
+his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too
+weak and faint to walk across the floor."
+
+"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been
+about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."
+
+I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Étienne's chosen lady and
+therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could
+not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of
+rudeness that caused my short answer:
+
+"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."
+
+"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly
+fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my
+face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."
+
+"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:
+
+"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my
+haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself
+that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."
+
+Brie had me by the collar.
+
+"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought
+as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom
+de dieu, they are no secret."
+
+He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my
+teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried
+on, his voice rising with excitement:
+
+"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been
+about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
+forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast
+and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last
+month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better
+than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone,
+free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
+pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
+entered the room.
+
+M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I
+turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.
+
+He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His
+wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while
+his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his
+full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the
+Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was
+Mayenne himself.
+
+He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his
+glance travelling straight to me and my captor.
+
+"What have we here, François?"
+
+"This is a fellow of Étienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He
+came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him
+what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."
+
+"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear François; I already know Mar's
+whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."
+
+Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I
+perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but
+you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little;
+what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety.
+If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be
+thinking how well you would grace the gallows.
+
+M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:
+
+"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late,
+François. You little boys are fools; you think because you do not know a
+thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my information from you, ma
+belle Lorance?"
+
+The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe her.
+Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was neither
+loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.
+
+"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"
+
+She met his look unflinching.
+
+"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar, monsieur."
+
+"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"
+
+"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since
+May--until to-night."
+
+"And what has happened to-night?"
+
+"To-night--Paul appeared."
+
+"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his phlegm.
+"Paul here?"
+
+"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I know
+not whither or for what."
+
+Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.
+
+"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"
+
+She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure, but to go
+through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was moistening her
+dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide with apprehension.
+But he answered amiably, half absently, as if the whole affair were a
+triviality:
+
+"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."
+
+He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over our
+childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made him a
+curtsey, laughing lightly.
+
+"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is the
+best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I confess I
+am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might remember me still
+after a month of absence. I should have known it too much to ask of
+mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will you keep our memories
+green for more than a week, messieurs."
+
+"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue, Mlle.
+Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be awake the
+night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a
+far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de
+Mar--behold him!"
+
+She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us
+all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face
+with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M.
+Étienne.
+
+"Behold M. de Mar--behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white
+fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent
+them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.
+
+[Illustration: "I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."]
+
+"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a
+laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the
+flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the
+Holy League?"
+
+But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.
+
+"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come
+himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"
+
+Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.
+
+"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive--and
+forget--his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his
+horse-boy."
+
+Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her faithlessness, her
+vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my master's plight. I knew it was
+sheer madness for me to attempt his defence before this hostile company;
+nay, there was no object in defending him; there was not one here who
+cared to hear good of him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled
+so hot that I lost all command of myself, and I burst out:
+
+"If I were a horse-boy,--which I am not,--I were twenty times too good
+to be carrying messages hither. You need not rail at his poverty,
+mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It was for you he was turned
+out of his father's house. But for you he would not now be lying in a
+garret, penniless and dishonoured. Whatever ills he suffers, it is you
+and your false house have brought them."
+
+Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without excitement.
+
+"Don't strangle him, François; I may need him later. Let him be flogged
+and locked in the oratory."
+
+He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the lackeys
+dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc saying:
+
+"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of
+diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_In the oratory._
+
+
+"Here, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a
+candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He reckoned
+wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay on well, boys;
+make him howl."
+
+Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and see the
+fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon. Pierre, the same
+who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led the way into a long
+oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was a huge chimney carved
+with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door led into a little oratory
+where tapers burned before the image of the Virgin; at the other, before
+the two narrow windows, stood a long table with writing-materials.
+Chests and cupboards nearly filled the walls. I took this to be a sort
+of council-room of my Lord Mayenne.
+
+Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested that he
+should quench the Virgin's candles.
+
+"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a light in
+there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind; she has a
+million others to see by."
+
+I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one good blow
+at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it. But as I gathered
+myself for the rush he spoke to me low and cautiously:
+
+"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."
+
+My clinched fist dropped to my side.
+
+"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think you half
+killed, and I'll manage."
+
+I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the way of
+the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much kindness, too.
+
+"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed boisterously. "Give
+it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left when I get through."
+
+"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the oratory.
+
+"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants him,"
+Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my wrists in front
+of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre laid on. And he, good
+fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull my loose jerkin away from
+my back, so that he dusted it down without greatly incommoding me. Some
+hard whacks I did get, but they were nothing to what a strong man could
+have given in grim earnest.
+
+I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as
+anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should have. I
+yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight of Jean and
+his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning varlets to the door
+before my performance was over. But at length, when I thought I had done
+enough for their pleasure and that of the nobles in the salon, I dropped
+down on the floor and lay quiet, with shut eyes.
+
+"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the master,"
+Pierre said.
+
+"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you have not
+even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back, whereat I
+groaned my hollowest.
+
+"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back touched,"
+laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I wonder what Our Lady
+thinks of some of the devotees we bring her."
+
+As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and I
+squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on the
+oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.
+
+I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my handcuff with
+my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in two. I was minded
+as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered whether he had managed
+to rid himself of their inconvenience. He went straightway, doubtless,
+to some confederate who cut them for him, and even now was planning
+fresh evil against the St. Quentins. I remembered his face as he cried
+to M. le Comte that they should meet again; and I thought that M.
+Étienne was likely to have his hands full with Lucas, without this
+unlucky tanglement with Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I
+called down a murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl
+alone? There were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on
+humanity if there were none kindlier.
+
+He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this girl's
+fair face had stood between him and his home, between him and action,
+between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly; yet, in my
+opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains. If she had
+loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl spurned and flouted
+him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not put the jade out of his
+mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the road to glory? When I got
+back to him and told him how she had mocked him, hang me but he should,
+though!
+
+Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me but with
+my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General, dark-minded Mayenne.
+What he wanted with me he had not revealed; nor was it a pleasant
+subject for speculation. He meant me, of course, to tell him all I knew
+of the St. Quentins; well, that was soon done; belike he understood more
+than I of the day's work. But after he had questioned me, what?
+
+Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never done him
+any harm? Or would he--I wondered, if they flung me out stark into some
+alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would search for me and claim my
+carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen by the blades of the League?
+
+I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not even this
+morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been in such mortal
+dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M. Étienne; but I was not
+likely to happen on succour here. Pierre, for all his kind heart, could
+not save me from the Duke of Mayenne.
+
+Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with me in the
+little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and prayed her to save
+me, and if she might not, then to stand by me during the hard moment of
+dying and receive my seeking soul. Comforted now and deeming I could
+pass, if it came to that, with a steady face, I laid me down, my head on
+the prie-dieu cushion, and presently went to sleep.
+
+I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet
+my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over
+me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not save you
+the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have availed you
+nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."
+
+With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her
+lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too confused
+for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the
+altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands,
+sobbing.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's tears! The
+man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half
+flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard. He did not hurt so
+much."
+
+She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and presently
+dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her shining wet
+eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make sure, she laid her
+hand delicately on my back.
+
+"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St. Généviève, they
+have not brought the blood. I saw a man flogged once--" she shut her
+eyes, shuddering, and her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt,
+mademoiselle," I answered her.
+
+She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks, her hand
+still trembling. I could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your life!" she
+breathed.
+
+It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly I found
+myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this noblewoman for my
+death.
+
+"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can die
+happily."
+
+She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some
+menacing thrust.
+
+"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue fire. "They
+shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a thing that she
+cannot save a serving-boy?"
+
+She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to stifle
+their throbbing.
+
+"It was my fault," she cried--"it was all my fault. It was my vanity and
+silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that
+letter--a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen
+M. de Mar for five weeks--I did not know, what I readily guess now, that
+he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique."
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M. Étienne
+did not come himself."
+
+"You are glad for that?"
+
+"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"
+
+She caught her breath as if in pain.
+
+"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When
+I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my
+gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I
+had accomplished--mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"
+
+I had to tell her I had not thought it.
+
+"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must
+needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the
+throat--there has been bad blood between him and your lord this
+twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I
+interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would
+have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had
+seen to your beating himself."
+
+It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of
+guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display
+so much venom against M. Étienne unless he were a serious obstacle to
+his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a
+serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn
+her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show
+it to me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Étienne
+rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and
+loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to
+make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her
+a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."
+
+"Is he hurt dangerously?"
+
+"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the
+right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."
+
+"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was
+penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."
+
+She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had taken
+from her bosom; but I retreated.
+
+"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we are not
+penniless--or if we are, we get on very well sans le sou. They do
+everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he has only to
+return to the Hôtel St. Quentin to get all the gold pieces he can spend.
+Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle. I was angry when I said it; I
+did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's pardon."
+
+She looked at me a little hesitatingly.
+
+"You are telling me true?"
+
+"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed, indeed, I
+would not refuse it."
+
+"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for yourself. It
+will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find something you like as a
+token from me." With her own white fingers she slipped some tinkling
+coins into my pouch, and cut short my thanks with the little wailing
+cry:
+
+"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I could free
+them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with you they never
+will let you go."
+
+"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her to go
+back to bed. M. Étienne did not send me hither to bring her grief and
+trouble."
+
+"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here before
+on monsieur's errands?"
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I belong on
+the St. Quentin estate. My name is Félix Broux."
+
+"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"
+
+"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing it."
+
+"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered soberly.
+
+She stood looking at me helplessly.
+
+"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to herself; "but
+I might weep François de Brie's rough heart to softness. Then it is a
+question whether he could turn Mayenne. I wish I knew whether the duke
+himself or only Paul de Lorraine has planned this move to-night. That
+is," she added, blushing, but speaking out candidly, "whether they
+attack M. de Mar as the League's enemy or as my lover."
+
+"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as I knew
+how, but eager to find out all I could for M. Étienne--"this M. de
+Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover, too?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We are all
+pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses. For a
+time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my cousin Paul came back
+after a two years' disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de
+Mar was down. And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come,
+and it became the turn of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as
+suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky
+letter. And what it bodes for _him_ I know not."
+
+She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact
+of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as lonely in
+this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would have talked
+delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has been
+happening to my M. Étienne this last month, if you are not afraid to
+stay long enough to hear it."
+
+"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes, you may
+tell me if you wish."
+
+She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I
+began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if
+the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all
+what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the
+affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned
+forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions.
+And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:
+
+"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas,
+without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked reluctantly:
+
+"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne's?"
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for
+their own pleasure."
+
+"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she said with
+an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin. I saw
+well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne's guilt. I
+thought I might tell her a little more.
+
+"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M. de
+Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them. So then
+M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin,
+invented this."
+
+"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave Paris. He
+will--he must!"
+
+"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered; "but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But then the letter came."
+
+"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time is over
+for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am a Ligueuse
+born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is his father's
+side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another day."
+
+"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."
+
+"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for him. If
+he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him a letter
+myself to tell him he must."
+
+"Then he will never go."
+
+"Félix!"
+
+"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted him; when
+he finds she does not--well, if he budges a step out of Paris, I do not
+know him. When he thought himself despised--"
+
+"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did not
+mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I made a mock
+of him, that he might hate me and keep away from me."
+
+"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with her."
+
+"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring out with
+impudent speech."
+
+"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played
+too well."
+
+"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do--well, I will not
+say despise him--but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis?
+Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my
+esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I
+would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore
+me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark.
+Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry
+for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
+mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry
+Brie and Lorraine?"
+
+"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden
+rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said
+woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."
+
+I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.
+
+"Ah, Félix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out
+of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.
+
+I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At
+length she sobbed out:
+
+"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar,
+when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all
+my fault."
+
+"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."
+
+But she shook her head.
+
+"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in
+his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap.
+But I will do my utmost, Félix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I
+will go to François de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."
+
+She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
+quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,--with my
+fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,--and on the threshold
+turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a
+gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door
+shut again.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_My Lord Mayenne._
+
+
+I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next
+second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.
+"What--" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line
+of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on
+account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and
+she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something
+else--a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the
+council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.
+
+Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.
+
+I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a
+sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.
+
+Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just
+roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the
+three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his
+back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared glance at him,
+for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our door seemed to call
+aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light scarcely pierced the
+shadows of the long room.
+
+More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair about,
+sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A tall man in
+black entered, saluting the general from the threshold.
+
+"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It was
+impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a sentence.
+
+"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as Mayenne's own.
+He shut the door after him and walked over to the table.
+
+"And how goes it?"
+
+"Badly."
+
+The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting for an
+invitation.
+
+"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to me with
+that report?"
+
+"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence, leaning back
+in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and proved to me what
+I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night visitor was Lucas.
+"Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone badly. In fact, your game
+is up."
+
+Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the table.
+
+"You tell me this?"
+
+Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.
+
+"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."
+
+[Illustration: MLLE. De MONTLUC AND FÉLIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY]
+
+Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a cat
+sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.
+
+"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.
+
+"When you put up yours, monsieur."
+
+"I have drawn none!"
+
+"In your sleeve, monsieur."
+
+"Liar!" cried Mayenne.
+
+I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade that
+flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from his belt.
+But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and rushed at Lucas. He
+dodged and they circled round each other, wary as two matched cocks.
+Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne, the less agile by reason
+of his weight, could make no chance to strike. He drew off presently.
+
+"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.
+
+"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending
+myself?"
+
+Mayenne let the charge go by default.
+
+"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu, do I
+employ you to fail?"
+
+"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."
+
+Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on
+the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good humour--no mean
+tribute to his power of self-control. For the written words can convey
+no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas's bearing--an insolence so
+studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh
+impossible to silence.
+
+"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."
+
+Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:
+
+"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was
+unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."
+
+"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you
+dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"
+
+He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into
+Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his
+guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas.
+He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the
+first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen rôle was the unmoved, the
+inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into
+the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man
+lived--unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.
+
+"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me
+that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."
+
+"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne
+went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was
+wrong--unless the thing were done."
+
+"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."
+
+"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling--"
+
+"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat
+he had shown. "It was fate--and that fool Grammont."
+
+"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."
+
+Lucas sat down, the table between them.
+
+"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you
+Mar's boy?"
+
+"What boy?"
+
+"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to
+come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message
+to Lorance."
+
+"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of mademoiselle's
+love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It is plain to the very
+lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at present we are discussing
+l'affaire St. Quentin."
+
+"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be the
+reward of my success."
+
+"I thought you told me you had failed."
+
+Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of
+it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.
+
+"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is
+immortal."
+
+"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I
+shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher."
+
+"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I have
+missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."
+
+"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne, reflectively.
+"François de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress. And he
+has not made any failures--as yet."
+
+Lucas sprang to his feet.
+
+"You swore to me I should have her."
+
+"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price."
+
+"I will bring you the price."
+
+"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the
+mouse--"e'en then I might change my mind."
+
+"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead duke in
+France."
+
+Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of
+mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to draw dagger,
+Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I somehow thought that
+the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there
+quiet was the party leader.
+
+He said now, evenly:
+
+"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."
+
+"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.
+
+So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of
+unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself
+began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it
+had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:
+
+"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love
+of my affectionate uncle?"
+
+"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you
+say."
+
+"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
+Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast
+off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the
+Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at
+Ivry."
+
+"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You
+had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized
+you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you
+and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my
+army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."
+
+"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.
+
+"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the
+name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward,
+Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off
+with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering
+house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de
+Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the
+people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the
+scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you
+promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the
+royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's
+camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you
+listened to proposals from Mar again."
+
+"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your
+brother Charles, either."
+
+"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in
+your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you
+would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise
+you mean."
+
+"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.
+
+"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your
+brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the
+Béarnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."
+
+"Nom de dieu, Paul--" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning
+forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on:
+
+"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am
+ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in
+your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk
+the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to
+tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's
+certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with
+mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to
+kill you St. Quentin."
+
+"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not
+killed him."
+
+Lucas reddened with ire.
+
+"I am no Jacques Clément to stab and be massacred. You cannot buy such a
+service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's work for you I choose my
+own time and way. I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you
+to deal with as it liked you. But you with your army at your back were
+afraid to kill him. You flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the
+onus of his death. Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to
+make his own son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke
+and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
+way--"
+
+"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my way; he was
+of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your way."
+
+"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he was a
+hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his ruin."
+
+"Something--not as much. I did not want him killed--I preferred him to
+Valère."
+
+"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."
+
+"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some other
+who might appear?"
+
+"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas answered.
+
+Mayenne broke into laughter.
+
+"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille? Lorance and
+no lovers! Ho, ho!"
+
+"I mean none whom she favours."
+
+"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow," Mayenne said.
+I had no idea whether he really thought it or only said it to annoy
+Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's brows were knotted; he
+spoke with an effort, like a man under stress of physical pain.
+
+"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she would
+not love him a parricide."
+
+"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker the
+villain the more they adore him."
+
+"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you have had
+successes."
+
+Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a laugh.
+
+"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of Lorance; you
+must also have her love?"
+
+"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."
+
+"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how long
+would it last? _Souvent femme varie_--that is the only fixed fact about
+her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will love some one else to-morrow,
+and some one else still the day after to-morrow. It is not worth while
+disturbing yourself about it."
+
+"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"You are very young, Paul."
+
+"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she shall
+not!"
+
+Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him out of
+his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a hundredfold. Lucas's
+face was seared with his passions as with the torture-iron; he clinched
+his hands together, breathing hard. On my side of the door I heard a
+sharp little sound in the darkness; mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.
+
+"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said, "since
+mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become so."
+
+"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would leap over
+the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the duke to take up
+his dagger.
+
+"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have not
+killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the scheme--my
+scheme--is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my scheme. I never advocated
+stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses and angered nephews and deceived
+sons and the rest of your cumbrous machinery. I would have had you stab
+him as he bent over his papers, and walk out of the house before they
+discovered him. But you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot
+and replot to make some one else do your work. Now, after months of
+intriguing and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed.
+Morbleu! is there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the
+gutter, as no true son of the valourous Le Balafré?"
+
+Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to come
+around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did not move;
+and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an effort, he
+said:
+
+"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured harder or
+planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been clever. I have
+made my worst enemy my willing tool--I have made Monsieur's own son my
+cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no contingency unprovided for--and
+I am ruined by a freak of fate."
+
+"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's," Mayenne
+returned.
+
+"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you like!"
+Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen, monsieur."
+
+He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to
+reconquer something of his old coolness.
+
+"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I spoke
+of. You said he had not been here?"
+
+"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I have
+something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's maids."
+
+"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to keep him.
+Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw him."
+
+He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought had
+travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of mademoiselle's
+affections.
+
+"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"
+
+It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low and
+hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it was no fear
+of listeners that kept his voice down--they had shouted at each other
+as if there was no one within a mile. I guessed that Lucas, for all his
+bravado, took little pride in his tale, nor felt happy about its
+reception. I could catch names now and then, Monsieur's, M. Étienne's,
+Grammont's, but the hero of the tale was myself.
+
+"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.
+
+At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old
+defiance:
+
+"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the
+acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your lansquenets
+couldn't keep him out."
+
+"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with shut
+fingers over the table and then opening them.
+
+"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own hôtel stuffed
+with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to do, alone in my enemy's
+house, when at the least suspicion of me they had broken me on the
+wheel."
+
+"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble with
+all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins than of
+accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be to-day--where would
+the Cause be--if my first care was my own peril?"
+
+"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a cold sneer.
+"You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the Church and the
+King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare of Charles of
+Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine, your humble nephew,
+lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I am toiling for no one
+but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should find it most inconvenient
+to get on without a head on my shoulders, and I shall do my best to keep
+it there."
+
+"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne answered.
+"You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time, Paul, you will
+do well to remember that your interest is to forward my interest."
+
+"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet. You need
+not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than any man in your
+ranks."
+
+"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."
+
+Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word of blame.
+He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M. le Duc's
+departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with a sharp oath.
+
+"What! by daylight?"
+
+"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at night."
+
+"He went out in broad day?"
+
+"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of his old
+nonchalance.
+
+"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true, if he
+got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that let him.
+I'll nail it over his own gate."
+
+"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If you did,
+how long would it avail? _Souvent homme trahie_; that is the only fixed
+fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day, they will pass some one
+else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after."
+
+Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some deeper
+emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.
+
+     "Souvent homme trahie,
+     Mal habile qui s'y fie,"
+
+he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto of the
+house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good faith, as no
+man believed in theirs.
+
+"_Souvent homme trahie_," Mayenne said again, as if in the words he
+recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King Francis's
+version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."
+
+"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.
+
+I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne, because, for
+all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's and ability second
+to none, he dared trust no man--not the son of his body, not his
+brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in it, and there was no need
+to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured traitor, was farther from the
+goal of his desire than if we had slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne went on
+in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him once more as
+the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France, and feared and
+hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear lord Étienne.
+
+"Trust me for that."
+
+"Then came you here?"
+
+"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings at the
+Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came here and
+worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his presence. For I
+thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow he might be out of my
+reach. Well, it appears he had not the courage to come but he sent the
+boy. I was not sorry. I thought I could settle him more quietly at the
+inn. The boy went back once and almost ran into me in the court, but he
+did not see me. I entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool
+of a host put me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally
+declared the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no
+use. Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in
+front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But
+instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the cabaret."
+
+Mayenne burst out laughing.
+
+"It was not your night, Paul."
+
+"No," said Lucas, shortly.
+
+"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put out of
+the inn."
+
+"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with whom
+Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all went our ways,
+forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was afraid some one else
+might find him and he might tell tales."
+
+"And will he tell tales?"
+
+"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."
+
+"How about your spy in the Hôtel St. Quentin?"
+
+"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas said
+easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And Grammont, you
+see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the thing but the boy
+Broux."
+
+"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for I have
+the boy."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_Mayenne's ward._
+
+
+Lucas sprang up.
+
+"You have him? Where?"
+
+"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing slowness.
+
+"Alive?"
+
+"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not done with
+him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the oratory there."
+
+"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of Mayenne's good
+faith to him struck his mind.
+
+"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might be in
+the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for that."
+
+"What will you do with him, monsieur?"
+
+"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second bidding,
+hastened down the room.
+
+All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had neither
+stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin herself. But now
+she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my shoulder with an
+encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide just as Lucas reached
+the threshold.
+
+He recoiled as from a ghost.
+
+"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"
+
+"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room. "What!
+Lorance!"
+
+He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.
+
+Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back on the
+other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she lifted her
+head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no fear, but she had
+the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on the oratory floor she
+had been in a panic lest they find her. But in the moment of discovery
+she faced them unflinching.
+
+"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.
+
+"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was here first,
+as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as mine by you."
+
+His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her pale
+cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her indignant eyes.
+
+"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.
+
+"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said. "You
+defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in
+your cowardly schemes."
+
+"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I shall kill
+M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would pleasure you to have
+a word with him first."
+
+I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret the
+speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness and
+recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and vinegar in a
+sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an end, with skill
+and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern his own gusty
+tempers.
+
+"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer tone.
+
+"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved most
+bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into danger. Since
+Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand, and since this is
+not the man you wanted but only his servant, will you not let him go
+free?"
+
+"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne protested,
+smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I thought you
+would thank me for it."
+
+"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."
+
+"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."
+
+She flushed red for very shame.
+
+"I was afraid--I knew you vexed with me," she faltered. "Oh, I have done
+ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring forgiveness. There was no
+need to ask.
+
+"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak before!
+Thank you, my cousin!"
+
+"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of
+impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."
+
+My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a craven that
+I had been overcome by groundless terror.
+
+"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle laughed
+out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall never meddle
+in your affairs again."
+
+"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to let the
+boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear what he
+should not, I have no choice but to silence him."
+
+"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.
+
+"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have made it
+impossible."
+
+Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had my hands
+been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in his heart.
+
+"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept over me,
+and that is worth dying for."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first instant of
+consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in the land! You,
+the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the League, the
+commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in stooping to take
+vengeance on a stable-boy."
+
+"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he
+answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all, since
+absolute power is not obliged to give an account of itself.
+
+"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn it? In
+that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while there is yet
+time."
+
+He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no justification. He
+advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the damsels of my
+household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room. Permit me then to
+conduct you to the staircase."
+
+She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering me as
+with a shield.
+
+"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."
+
+"Your hand, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in appeal.
+
+"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always tried
+to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy because he was
+a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St. Quentin, at least, had
+gone over to the other side. I did not know what you would do with him,
+and I could not rest in my bed because it was through me he came here.
+Monsieur, if I was foolish and frightened and indiscreet, do not punish
+the lad for my wrong-doing."
+
+Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.
+
+"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the
+door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"
+
+"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile, "if
+you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"
+
+"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my white
+cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my little
+cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have made her cry
+her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying, gave her to me to
+guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable. I am sorry. I wish I
+had not done it.'"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your bed?"
+
+She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went on as if
+thinking aloud.
+
+"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and your
+brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You would ask my
+father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I would run in to
+kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I thought you the
+handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as indeed you were."
+
+"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said
+abruptly.
+
+"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of you," she
+returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for my cousin
+Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them one night in
+all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of Henri de Guise; God
+guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you make it hard for me to
+ask it for my cousin Charles."
+
+"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said curtly.
+
+"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."
+
+"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With the
+door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and let him go.
+But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's business,
+mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him listen to my
+concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."
+
+"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble for the
+tales of boys--you, the lord of half France. But if you must needs fear
+his tongue, why, even then you should set him free. He is but a
+serving-boy sent here with a message. It is wanton murder to take his
+life; it is like killing a child."
+
+"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose, mademoiselle,"
+the duke retorted. "Since you have been eavesdropping, you have heard
+how he upset your cousin Paul's arrangements."
+
+"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved you the
+stain of a cowardly crime."
+
+"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my brother?"
+
+"The Valois."
+
+"And his henchman, St. Quentin."
+
+"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He was
+revolted at the deed."
+
+"Did they teach you that at the convent?"
+
+"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go
+to Blois."
+
+"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."
+
+"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin
+Charles."
+
+"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and
+murderer," Mayenne returned.
+
+"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from
+the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad."
+
+He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she went on:
+
+"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil
+that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you
+are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of
+Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field,
+and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of
+a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and
+loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against
+the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and
+their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray
+till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you
+head of the League."
+
+"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that
+is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to
+lead it to success."
+
+"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet
+lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with
+him!"
+
+He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her
+shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:
+
+"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"
+
+With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her
+knees before him, kissing his hand.
+
+Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood
+looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my
+heart to see.
+
+Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His
+mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St.
+Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of
+his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly
+murder. And in the Hôtel de Lorraine, as in the Hôtel de St. Quentin,
+his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both
+cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I
+had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but
+when she rose he said to her:
+
+"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I
+got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."
+
+She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an
+eager pace nearer her.
+
+"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your
+graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will not take
+me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that
+any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding
+here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day
+after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore
+to bring his proud head to the dust?"
+
+Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.
+
+"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not
+approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to
+defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your
+face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's
+housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in
+your veins and mine!"
+
+"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper
+with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and
+not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own
+revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our
+holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic
+kingdom of France."
+
+"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for
+nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever
+on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He
+hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best
+of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they
+fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them,
+they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple
+over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war
+is not a dancing-school."
+
+"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We
+have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen.
+And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in
+my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause
+with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it,
+as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did
+it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit
+for that."
+
+He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning
+her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last
+sentence I knew he spoke the truth.
+
+She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered pride in
+his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead, she eyed him
+with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape from his rampant
+desire.
+
+"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me," she said.
+
+"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I love you
+so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain you; there is
+no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame so bitter, no danger
+so awful, that I would not face it for you. Nor is there any sacrifice I
+will not make to gain your good will. I hate M. de Mar above any living
+man because you have smiled on him; but I will let him go for your sake.
+I swear to you before the figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will
+drop all enmity to Étienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither
+move against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or
+manner, so help me God!"
+
+He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She retreated from
+him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.
+
+"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the truth," she
+said.
+
+"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May my tongue
+rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"
+
+"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again curtsied
+to him.
+
+"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added. "I have
+no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more trouble for me
+than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to settle with St. Quentin.
+But I have no quarrel with the son. I will not molest him."
+
+"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her graceful
+obeisances.
+
+"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him, but not
+that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St. Quentins are
+Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I will let Mar alone;
+but if he come near you again, I will crush him as I would a buzzing
+fly."
+
+"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone. "While I live
+under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I am a Ligueuse and
+he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing between us. There shall be
+nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as Paul needs, because I have
+never lied to you."
+
+She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince under her
+stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de Montluc loved her
+enemies.
+
+"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.
+
+"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this for
+you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."
+
+"You have called me a good girl, cousin."
+
+"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so Friday-faced about
+it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give you another just as
+good."
+
+"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my looks
+belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to have
+ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."
+
+"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter whether your
+husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri was for getting
+himself into a monastery because he could not have his Margot. Yet in
+less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler with the Duchesse
+Katharine."
+
+"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she answered
+gently, if not merrily.
+
+"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But it is
+for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the credit."
+
+"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.
+
+"What use? He would not keep silence."
+
+"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of bright
+confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But Mayenne laughed.
+
+"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will not so
+flatter yourself, Lorance."
+
+Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what I had
+seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.
+
+Mayenne took out his dagger.
+
+"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you shall be."
+
+Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.
+
+"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."
+
+He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him against
+the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of the
+suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife and she cut
+my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a glance earnest,
+beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all she meant by it. The
+next moment she was making her deep curtsey before the duke.
+
+"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I thank you
+for your long patience, and bid you good night."
+
+With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go. But
+Mayenne bade her pause.
+
+"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks, Lorance?"
+
+He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her cheeks.
+
+"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said, and taking
+her hand with stately politeness led her from the room. The light seemed
+to go from it with the gleam of her yellow gown.
+
+"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He stood
+glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once
+no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery
+rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out
+at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed the
+door:
+
+"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh that
+wins; I shall have her yet."
+
+"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence I could
+muster.
+
+"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will never see
+daylight again."
+
+"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw dagger. I
+deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best of soldiers
+must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory, flinging the door
+to after me. He was upon it before I could get it shut, and the heavy
+oak was swung this way and that between us, till it seemed as if we must
+tear it off the hinges. I contrived not to let him push it open wide
+enough to enter; meantime, as I was unarmed, I thought it no shame to
+shriek for succour. I heard an answering cry and hurrying footsteps.
+Then Lucas took his weight from the door so suddenly that mine banged it
+shut. The next minute it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and
+panting, on the threshold.
+
+A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side Lucas
+lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light. His right
+hand he held behind his back, while with his left he poked his dagger
+into the candle-flame.
+
+Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.
+
+"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now, Paul?"
+
+"Mademoiselle's protégé is nervous," Lucas answered with a fine sneer.
+"When I drew out my knife to get the thief from the candle he screamed
+to wake the dead and took sanctuary in the oratory."
+
+I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from the
+darkness Mayenne commanded:
+
+"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."
+
+The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a moment I
+hesitated, burning to defend my valour before mademoiselle. Then,
+reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had previously done me, and
+that the path to freedom was now open before me, I said nothing. Nor had
+I need. For as I turned she flashed over to Lucas and said straight in
+his face:
+
+"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead wife."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_"I'll win my lady!"_
+
+
+Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For
+when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw
+was the morning sun.
+
+My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter
+day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it
+was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy
+house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as
+joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten
+in some dark corner of the Hôtel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts
+when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am
+afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man
+or any thing.
+
+Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have
+been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They
+liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning.
+Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk
+servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city,
+quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in
+the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my
+stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the
+courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut,
+but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and
+cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but,
+dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway
+into dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his
+zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for
+dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the
+pitchfork of a hostler.
+
+"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."
+
+"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M.
+le Comte."
+
+"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be
+disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."
+
+It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the
+trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting
+at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.
+
+"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was.
+Félix, what has happened to you?"
+
+[Illustration: "SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
+FED."]
+
+I glanced at the serving-man; M. Étienne ordered him at once from the
+room.
+
+"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very
+richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is--" I paused in a
+dearth of words worthy of her.
+
+"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke!
+You saw her? And she said--"
+
+He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.
+
+"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him.
+"And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."
+
+"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Félix, does she? You cannot know."
+
+"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't
+have wept so much, just over me."
+
+"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.
+
+"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down
+in the night with a candle and cried over me."
+
+"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne?
+What said she, Félix?"
+
+"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance
+of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something
+you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's
+son."
+
+"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"
+
+"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafré. His mother was Rochelaise, I
+think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to
+hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since
+then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de
+Montluc in marriage."
+
+He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.
+
+"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her
+when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."
+
+"Great God!" said M. Étienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm
+of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry
+handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:
+
+"But she--mademoiselle?"
+
+"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle
+hates him."
+
+"Does she know--"
+
+"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer.
+"Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning,
+or I shall never make it clear to you."
+
+"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.
+
+He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I
+talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got
+deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life,
+me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to
+Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Étienne, to--well, you shall know.
+
+I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:
+
+"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well
+do they call you Félix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby,
+while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for
+all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And
+make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I'll stand
+it no longer. I'm done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun.
+No; to-day I shall take part myself."
+
+"But monsieur's arm--"
+
+"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch--it is nothing. Pardieu,
+it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning.
+To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."
+
+"Monsieur--" I began, but he broke in on me:
+
+"Nom de dieu, Félix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried
+off by that beast Lucas?"
+
+"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant
+to do."
+
+"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, but how?"
+
+"Ah, if I knew!"
+
+He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found
+it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room,
+and came back to seize me by the arm.
+
+"How are we to do it, Félix?" he demanded.
+
+But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:
+
+"Sais pas."
+
+He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the
+declaration:
+
+"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."
+
+"He will only have her own dead body," I said.
+
+He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with
+unseeing eyes. "Lorance--Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he
+did not know he spoke aloud.
+
+"If I could get word to her--" he went on presently. "But I can't send
+you again. Should I write a letter--But letters are mischievous. They
+fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?"
+
+"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands of
+Pierre, that lackey who befriended me--" But he shook his head.
+
+"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these
+inn-men--if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don't
+think I'll go myself!"
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would
+never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his
+way."
+
+"My faith, Félix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."
+
+"Not of mankind, M. Étienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or
+Vigo."
+
+"And of Mayenne?"
+
+"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the worst of
+the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did."
+
+"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"
+
+"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But
+Mayenne--sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and then again
+he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."
+
+"He does not mean you shall," M. Étienne returned. "Yet the key is not
+buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one,
+do not know it."
+
+"Ah, Félix," he cried, "you may believe that till doomsday--you will--of
+Monsieur."
+
+His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his
+thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely
+silent. But of last night's bitter distress he showed no trace. Last
+night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but
+to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but
+one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and
+shames.
+
+"Félix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to eat my pride."
+
+I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to;
+he went on:
+
+"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with
+anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."
+
+"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."
+
+"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were
+churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain
+them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur
+replies, I must go tell him I repent."
+
+I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.
+
+"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like
+sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"
+
+"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped hound."
+
+"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same
+thing."
+
+"I have heard M. l'Abbé read the story of the prodigal son," I said.
+"And he was a vaurien, if you like--no more monsieur's sort than Lucas
+himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off,
+he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck."
+
+M. Étienne looked not altogether convinced.
+
+"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is only
+decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should not go if
+it were not for mademoiselle."
+
+"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"
+
+"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry off
+mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand--well, I confess for the nonce that
+beats me."
+
+"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"Aye, and we will! Come, Félix, you may put your knife in my dish. We
+must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the wine warm, but
+never mind."
+
+I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once
+resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long
+before we were in the streets, bound for the Hôtel St. Quentin. He said
+no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about
+Mlle. de Montluc--not only as to every word she said, but as to every
+turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf
+when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell
+silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. He had his fair
+allowance of pride, this M. Étienne; he found his own words no palatable
+meal.
+
+However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he dropped, as
+one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure, and approached
+the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young gallant who had
+lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll he called to the
+sentry:
+
+"Holà, squinting Charlot! Open now!"
+
+"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw the bolts.
+"Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."
+
+M. Étienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into him, I could see,
+that his first greeting should be thus friendly.
+
+"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot
+volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night,
+after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us all
+blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time, nom d'un
+chien!"
+
+"Eh bien, I am found," M. Étienne returned. "In time we'll get Lucas,
+too. Is Monsieur back?"
+
+"No, M. Étienne, not yet."
+
+I think he was half sorry, half glad.
+
+"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.
+
+"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."
+
+"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."
+
+He went straight across the court and in at the door he had sworn never
+again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there,
+but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without
+a falter.
+
+Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice against
+himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of us, agleam with
+excitement.
+
+"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M. l'Écuyer?"
+
+"I think in the stables, monsieur."
+
+"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."
+
+He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the hall
+where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my duty to
+keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel came flying
+back to say Vigo was on his way. M. Étienne thanked him, and he hung
+about, longing to pump me, and, in my lord's presence, not quite daring,
+till I took him by the shoulders and turned him out. I hate curiosity.
+
+M. Étienne stood behind the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure
+of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern
+determination to set this insolent servant in his place.
+
+The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young lord's
+side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there had never
+been a hard word between them:
+
+"M. Étienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the king himself."
+
+M. Étienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He had been
+prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de haut en bas,
+shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the wind out of his
+sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then laughed. And then he held
+out his hand, saying simply:
+
+"Thank you, Vigo."
+
+Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand had
+itched to box his ears.
+
+"What became of you last night, M. Étienne?" he inquired.
+
+"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"
+
+"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."
+
+"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.
+
+"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on the cards
+that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I want every man
+I have if they do."
+
+"I understand that," M. Étienne said, "but--"
+
+"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo
+pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he will
+not return till the king comes in. But since you are impatient, M. le
+Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If _he_ can get through the gates
+_you_ can."
+
+"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry, Vigo.
+There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would like me
+well to bear away my share. But--"
+
+He broke off, to begin again abruptly:
+
+"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that there was
+more cause of trouble between my father and me than the pistoles?"
+
+"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur. But you
+are cured of that."
+
+"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of it. If I
+hung around the Hôtel de Lorraine, it was not for politics; it was for
+petticoats."
+
+Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth twitched.
+
+"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you may as
+well know more. Step up, Félix, and tell your tale."
+
+I did as I was bid, M. Étienne now and then taking the words out of my
+mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both with grave attention.
+I had for the second time in my career the pleasure of startling him out
+of his iron composure when I told him the true name and condition of
+Lucas. But at the end of the adventure all the comment he made was:
+
+"A fool for luck."
+
+"Well," said M. Étienne, impatiently, "is that all you have to say? What
+are we to do about it?"
+
+"Do? Why, nothing."
+
+"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And let that
+scoundrel have her?"
+
+"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help it."
+
+"I will help it!" M. Étienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to let that
+traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will surely
+get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."
+
+"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"
+
+"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we storm the
+Hôtel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the sea."
+
+"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my lord
+declared.
+
+But Vigo shook his head.
+
+"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance. You
+have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a man ask
+in the world than that? Your father has been without it these three
+years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out. You have been
+without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts of mischief. But
+now all that is coming straight. King Henry is turning Catholic, so that
+a man may follow him without offence to God. He is a good fellow and a
+first-rate general. He's just out there, at St. Denis. There's your
+place, M. Étienne."
+
+"Not to-day, Vigo."
+
+"Yes, M. Étienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo said with his
+steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by staying here to drink
+up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your lady to you now than he would
+give her to Félix. And you can no more carry her off than could Félix.
+Mayenne will have you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat
+breakfast."
+
+"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you, Vigo."
+
+"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to die
+afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell fighting for
+Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve deep. But we should
+say it was well; we grudged not your life to the country and the king.
+While, if you fall in this fool affair--"
+
+"I fall for my lady," M. Étienne finished. "The bravest captain of them
+all does no better than that."
+
+"M. Étienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her. And if you
+could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now on are a staunch
+Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this maggot in your brain
+this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go to St. Denis; take your
+troop among Biron's horse. That is the place for you. You will marry a
+maid of honour and die a marshal of France."
+
+M. Étienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a smile.
+
+"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton waiting
+you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were alone and in
+peril, would you go off after glory?"
+
+"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would go."
+
+"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. Étienne cried. "You would do nothing of
+the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years in that hole, St.
+Quentin?"
+
+"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."
+
+"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I
+shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change me."
+
+"What is your purpose, M. Étienne?" Vigo asked.
+
+Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.
+
+"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can
+contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the
+Hôtel de Lorraine--such feats have been accomplished before and may be
+again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers."
+
+"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."
+
+"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.
+
+"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army after her."
+
+"Coward!" shouted M. Étienne.
+
+I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw
+us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:
+
+"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to hold this
+house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it till the last
+man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hôtel, his
+moneys, and his papers. I don't call it guarding to throw a firebrand
+among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece here would be worse than that."
+
+"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!" M.
+Étienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend the lady if
+every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!'"
+
+A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.
+
+"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage
+as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing
+the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."
+
+"Well, then," cried M. Étienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more
+do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on
+Mayenne's ruffians."
+
+"No, M. Étienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the
+command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with
+a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to
+succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before
+now."
+
+"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know,
+Monsieur would approve."
+
+"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot
+move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur
+returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no
+way with your liberty to proceed as you please."
+
+"I should think not, forsooth!" M. Étienne blazed out furiously.
+
+"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could
+order the guard--and they would obey--to lock you up in your chamber. I
+believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you
+free to act as it likes you."
+
+My lord was white with ire.
+
+"Who is master here, you or I?"
+
+"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my
+hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M.
+Étienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will
+get no countenance from me."
+
+"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. Étienne cried.
+
+Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add
+or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being
+angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.
+
+"Very well." M. Étienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I
+get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Félix
+here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_To the Bastille._
+
+
+But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no
+countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested
+M. Étienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarrassed or
+offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no
+feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in
+the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule,
+nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he
+was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would
+forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.
+
+On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M.
+Étienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would
+have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young
+lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside
+from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.
+
+M. Étienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's attitude,
+but he said little. He accepted the advance of money--"Of course
+Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained--and
+despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.
+
+I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished
+nothing by our return to the hôtel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were
+both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our
+ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to
+Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very
+well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not
+his station, for Vigo never disobeyed _him_, but stood by him in all
+things. But I imagined that, were M. Étienne master, Vigo, for all his
+years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.
+
+I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Étienne did purpose to
+rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was
+somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he
+had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the
+matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hôtel de Lorraine
+hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to
+try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.
+
+"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Félix."
+
+But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois
+Lanternes.
+
+The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared
+to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's
+throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at
+the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once,
+for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my
+master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I
+readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business
+indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.
+
+I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and
+clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth
+while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask
+the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to
+snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was
+so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it
+seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of
+the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good
+will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged
+with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys
+might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.
+
+The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and
+carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale.
+"This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the
+lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and
+shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where
+the staircase was.
+
+Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the
+serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men
+looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door
+of Maître Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:
+
+"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know
+nothing of his whereabouts."
+
+As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look
+at me in fresh dread.
+
+"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a
+little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group
+and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a
+panther had got me.
+
+"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to
+bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour
+our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now,
+go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and
+see how you like it yourself!"
+
+She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door,
+shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.
+
+The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong
+box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.
+
+The bureau stood by the window, with Maître Menard's account-books on
+it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two
+men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe
+of Maître Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of
+Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.
+
+"I say I know not where he went," Maître Menard was gasping, black in
+the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell--I have no
+notion. Ah--" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and
+bulging, rolled toward me.
+
+"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"
+
+He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city
+guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I
+entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance,
+as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.
+
+"My name is Félix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill--"
+
+"His servant," Maître Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing
+him a breath.
+
+"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left
+your master?"
+
+"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.
+
+"Never you mind. I want him."
+
+"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of
+Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."
+
+"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he
+had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is
+friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long.
+But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."
+
+"On what charge?"
+
+"A trifle. Merely murder."
+
+"_Murder?_"
+
+"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."
+
+"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not--"
+
+I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas--Paul de Lorraine
+killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling
+wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I
+had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I
+should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte--" I began again,
+and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn
+last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me
+that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a
+very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.
+
+"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.
+
+At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness
+was the last thing I desired.
+
+"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very
+fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles. The Comte
+de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as
+lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not
+what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for
+him to the Hôtel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last,
+and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he
+employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him.
+But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about
+him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."
+
+To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain
+only laughed at my patent fright.
+
+"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest.
+I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing
+about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."
+
+I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and
+merely answered:
+
+"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would
+have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were
+teaching me something.
+
+"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell
+me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it
+than this old mule."
+
+Maître Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He
+knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled
+him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.
+
+"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where.
+But I know he will be back here to supper."
+
+"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your
+memory."
+
+At the word the soldier who had attended to Maître Menard came over to
+me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I
+had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak
+I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared
+in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For
+had I said that my master was in the Hôtel St Quentin, still those
+fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be
+ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to
+the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maître Menard
+had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.
+
+Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed
+like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for
+M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of
+me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But
+Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could
+only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was
+flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung
+before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the
+threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of
+triumph.
+
+"Oh, M. Étienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing.
+Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my
+master, but--Lucas!
+
+"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For
+the second soldier had seized his other arm.
+
+"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but he is
+wanted at the Bastille."
+
+"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.
+
+He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed him.
+Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for another man.
+
+"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man, Pontou."
+
+He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I had been
+at three o'clock this morning.
+
+"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never seen him
+since."
+
+"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to me. "I am
+not trying you. The handcuffs, men."
+
+One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his captors'
+grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the other, calling
+down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they snapped the handcuffs
+on for all that.
+
+"If this is Mayenne's work--" he panted.
+
+The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.
+
+"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but orders are
+orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de Belin."
+
+"At whose instigation?"
+
+"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught to do
+with it but to arrest you."
+
+"Let me see the warrant."
+
+"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your bluster."
+
+He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before Lucas's
+eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.
+
+"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"
+
+"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it sooner."
+
+"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to my Lord
+Mayenne."
+
+"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de Guise?"
+
+"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He must have
+been cursing himself that he had not given his name sooner. "But I am
+his brother."
+
+"You take me for a fool."
+
+"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"
+
+"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of Guise's
+eldest brother is but seventeen--"
+
+"I did not say I was legitimate."
+
+"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off
+the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so
+simple as you think. You will come along with me to the Bastille."
+
+"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed.
+"I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old
+turnspit," he shouted to Maître Menard. "Am I he?"
+
+Poor Maître Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too limp and sick
+to know what was going on. He only stared helplessly.
+
+"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"
+
+"No," the maître answered in low, faltering tones. He was at the last
+point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as he says. He is
+not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Who is he, then?"
+
+"I know not," the maître stammered. "He came here last night. But it is
+as he says--he is not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're lying."
+
+I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to know
+otherwise, I had thought myself the maître was lying.
+
+"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the captain
+said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass, before I cram
+your lie down your throat. And clear your people away from this door.
+I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack about his business, or
+it will be the worse for him. And every woman Jill, too."
+
+"M. le Capitaine," Maître Menard quavered, rising unsteadily to his
+feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you mistake; this is
+not--"
+
+"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot. Maître
+Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.
+
+A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given way to
+fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now alarm was
+born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake? This obstinate
+disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of all who could swear to
+his identity--was it not rather a plot for his ruin? He swallowed hard
+once or twice, fear gripping his throat harder than ever the dragoon's
+fingers had gripped mine. Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but
+then he was the man who had killed Pontou.
+
+"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have orders to
+arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de Lorraine, not of
+Étienne de Mar."
+
+"The name of Étienne de Mar will do," the captain returned; "we have no
+fancy for aliases at the Bastille."
+
+"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.
+
+"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"
+
+"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.
+
+His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a plot he had
+done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled himself together;
+error or intention, he would act as if he knew it must be error.
+
+"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your
+shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows him
+well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask these
+inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask that boy
+there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."
+
+His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of
+challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie. But
+the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his sword-belt,
+spared me the necessity.
+
+"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the Comte right
+enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen this gentleman a
+score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that the
+captain burst out laughing.
+
+"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's
+nephew--you are a nephew, are you not?--to explain how he comes to ride
+with the Duc de St. Quentin."
+
+It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no future
+for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out angrily:
+
+"He lies! I never rode out with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, come now. Really you waste a great deal of breath," the captain
+said. "I regret the cruel necessity of arresting you, M. de Mar; but
+there is nothing gained by blustering about it. I usually know what I am
+about."
+
+"You do not know! Nom de dieu, you do not know. Félix Broux, speak up
+there. If you have told him behind my back that I am Étienne de Mar, I
+defy you to say it to my face."
+
+"I know nothing about it, messieurs." I repeated my little refrain.
+"Monsieur captain, remember, if you please, I never saw him till
+yesterday; he may be Paul de Lorraine for all I know. But he did not
+call himself that yesterday."
+
+"You hell-hound!" Lucas cried.
+
+"Go tell Louis to drive up to the cabaret door, Gaspard," bade the
+captain.
+
+Lucas gazed at him as if to tear out of him the truth of the matter. I
+think he was still a prey to suspicion of a plot in this, and it
+paralyzed his tongue. He so reeked with intrigue that he smelled one
+wherever he went. He was much too clever to believe that this arresting
+officer was simply thick-witted.
+
+"I say no more," he cried. "You may spare yourself your lies, the whole
+crew of you. I go as your prisoner, but I go as Paul of Lorraine, son of
+Henry, Duke of Guise."
+
+He said it with a certain superbness; but the young captain, bourgeois
+of the bourgeois, did not mean to let himself be put down by any sprig
+of the noblesse.
+
+"Certainly, if it is any comfort to you," he retorted. "But you are very
+dull, monsieur, not to be aware that your identity is known perfectly
+to others besides your lackey here and my man. I did not come to arrest
+you without a minute description of you from M. de Belin himself."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Lucas shouted. "I wrote the description. I myself lodged
+information against Mar. I came here to make sure you took him. Carry me
+before Belin; he will know me."
+
+I trembled lest the officer could not but see that the man spoke truth.
+But I had no need to fear; there is a combination of stupidity and
+vanity which nothing can move.
+
+"I have no orders to take you to M. de Belin," he returned calmly. "So
+you wrote the description, did you? Perhaps you will deny that it fits
+you?"
+
+He read from the paper:
+
+"'Charles-André-Étienne-Marie de St. Quentin, Comte de Mar. Age,
+three-and-twenty; figure, tall and slender; was dressed yesterday in
+black with a plain falling-band; carries his right arm in a sling--"
+
+"Is my arm in a sling?" Lucas demanded.
+
+"No, in a handcuff," the captain laughed, at the same moment that his
+dragoon exclaimed, "His right wrist is bandaged, though."
+
+"That is nothing! It is a mere scratch. I did it myself last night by
+accident," Lucas shouted, striving with his hampered left hand to pull
+the folds apart to show it. But he could not, and fell silent,
+wide-eyed, like one who sees the net of fate drawing in about him. The
+captain went on reading from his little paper:
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH."]
+
+"'Fair hair, gray eyes, aquiline nose'--I suppose you will still tell
+us, monsieur, that you are not the man?"
+
+"I am not he. The Comte de Mar and I are nothing alike. We are both
+young, tall, yes; but that is all. He is slashed all up the forearm; my
+wrist is but scratched with a knife-edge. He has yellow hair; mine is
+brown. His eyes--"
+
+"It is plain to me, monsieur," the officer interrupted, "that the
+description fits you in every particular." And so it did.
+
+I, who had heard M. Étienne described twenty times, had yesterday
+mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both. It was the more
+remarkable because they actually looked no more alike than chalk and
+cheese. Lucas had set down his catalogue without a thought that he was
+drawing his own picture. If ever hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas
+was!
+
+"You lie!" he cried furiously. "You know I am not Mar. You lie, the
+whole pack of you!"
+
+"Gag him, Ravelle," the captain commanded with an angry flush.
+
+"I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!" Lucas shouted.
+
+The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his mouth.
+
+"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in time to
+aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."
+
+He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their prisoner. And
+this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not slip from his
+captors' fingers between the room and the street. He was deposited in
+the big black coach that had aroused my wonder. Louis cracked his whip
+and off they rumbled.
+
+I laughed all the way back to the Hôtel St. Quentin.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_To the Hôtel de Lorraine._
+
+
+I found M. Étienne sitting on the steps before the house. He had doffed
+his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard
+were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat, its white plume pinned in
+a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him. He had discarded his sling
+and was engaged in tuning a lute.
+
+Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he asked at
+once:
+
+"What has happened, Félix?"
+
+"Such a lark!" I cried.
+
+"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your trouble?"
+
+"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."
+
+I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain what
+was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed interest,
+which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to distress.
+
+"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I resemble that
+dirt--"
+
+"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could possibly
+mistake you for two of the same race. But there was nothing in his
+catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be sure, the right arm
+in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist bandaged. I think he cut
+himself last night when he was after me and I flung the door in his
+face, for afterward he held his hand behind his back. At any rate, there
+was the bandage; that was enough to satisfy the captain."
+
+"And they took him off?"
+
+"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged him
+off."
+
+"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize the
+event.
+
+"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer and his
+men. He may be there by this time."
+
+He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe the thing.
+
+"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent
+anything better; but it is true."
+
+"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half so
+good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit--" he broke off,
+laughing.
+
+"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen their
+faces--the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the more the
+officer was sure he was."
+
+"Félix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you should go about
+no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid errand, and see what
+you get into!"
+
+"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas have
+been arrested for Comte de Mar?"
+
+"He won't stay arrested long--more's the pity."
+
+"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."
+
+"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say that my
+face is not known at the Bastille."
+
+"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that he had
+never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he lay perdu.
+At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence of a Paul de
+Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his word already, if they
+are arresting you on this trumped-up charge, you must get out of the
+gates to-night."
+
+"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in Paris."
+
+"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."
+
+"I must go nowhere but to the Hôtel Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Félix; it is the safest spot for me in all Paris; it is
+the last place where they will look for me. Besides, now that they think
+me behind bars, they will not be looking for me at all. I shall be as
+safe as the hottest Leaguer in the camp."
+
+"But in the hôtel-"
+
+"Be comforted; I shall not enter the hôtel. There is a limit to my
+madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in the side street
+under which I have often stood in the old days. She used to contrive to
+be in her chamber after supper."
+
+"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"
+
+"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after my
+father--So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me to-night."
+
+"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.
+
+"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her to-night.
+And I think she will be at the window."
+
+The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet blanket
+in the house was enough.
+
+"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."
+
+"Then I propose supper."
+
+Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles mademoiselle
+had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed to what he was
+about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to see if it was dark
+enough to start. At length, when it was still between dog and wolf, he
+announced that he would delay no longer.
+
+"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.
+
+"But you are not to come!"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."
+
+"But, monsieur, you will need me. You will need some one to watch the
+street while you speak with mademoiselle."
+
+"I can have no listener to-night," he replied immovably.
+
+"But I will not listen, monsieur! I shall stand out of ear-shot. But you
+must have some one to give you warning should the guard set on you."
+
+"I can manage my own affairs," he retorted haughtily; "I desire neither
+your advice nor your company."
+
+"Monsieur!" I cried, almost in tears.
+
+"Enough!" he bade sharply. "Go send me Vigo."
+
+I went like one in whose face the doors of heaven had shut.
+
+Vigo came at once from the guard-room at my summons. It was on my tongue
+to tell him of M. le Comte's mad resolve to fare forth alone; to beg him
+to stop it. But I remembered how blameworthy I myself had held the
+equery for interfering with M. Étienne, and I made up my mind that no
+word of cavil at my lord should ever pass my lips. I lagged across the
+court at Vigo's heels, silent.
+
+M. Étienne was standing in the doorway.
+
+"Vigo," he said, without a change of countenance, "get Félix a rapier,
+which he can use prettily enough. I cannot take him out to-night
+unarmed."
+
+Vigo hesitated a moment, saluted, and went.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried out, "you meant all the time to take me!"
+
+He gazed down on my heated visage and laughed and laughed.
+
+"Félix," he gasped, "you had your sport over there at the inn. But I
+have seen nothing this summer as funny as _your_ face."
+
+Vigo came back with a sword and baldric for me, and a horse-pistol
+besides, but M. Étienne would not let me have it.
+
+"Circumstances are such, Vigo, that I want no noisy weapons."
+
+The equery regarded him with a troubled countenance.
+
+"I wish I knew, monsieur, whether I do right to let you go."
+
+"We will not discuss that, an it please you."
+
+"I do not, monsieur. I have no right to curtail M. le Comte's liberties.
+But I let you go with a heavy heart."
+
+He looked after us with foreboding eyes as we went out of the great
+gate, alone, with not so much as a linkboy. But if his heart was heavy,
+our hearts were light. We paced along as merrily as though to a feast.
+M. Étienne hung his lute over his neck and strummed it; and whenever we
+passed under a window whence leaned a pretty head, he sang snatches of
+love-songs. We were alone in the dark streets of a hostile city, bound
+for the house of a mighty foe; and one of us was wounded and one a tyro.
+Yet we laughed as we went; for there was Lucas languishing in prison,
+and here were we, free as air, steering our course for mademoiselle's
+window. One of us was in love, and the other wore a sword for the first
+time, and all the power of Mayenne daunted us not.
+
+We came at length within bow-shot of the Hôtel de Lorraine, where M.
+Étienne was willing to abate somewhat his swagger. We left the Rue St.
+Antoine, creeping around behind the house through a narrow and twisting
+alley--it was pitch-black, but he knew the way well--into a little
+street dim-lighted from the windows of the houses upon it. It was only a
+few rods long, running from the open square in front of the hôtel to the
+network of unpaved alleys behind. On the farther side stood a row of
+high-gabled houses, their doors opening directly on the pavement; on
+this side was but one big pile, the Hôtel de Lorraine. The wall was
+broken by few windows, most of them dark; this was not the gay side of
+the house. The overhanging turret on the low second story, under which
+M. Étienne halted, was as dark as the rest, nor, though the casement was
+open wide, could we tell whether any one was in the room. We could hear
+nothing but the breeze crackling in the silken curtains.
+
+"Take your station at the corner there," he bade, "and shout if they
+seem to be coming for us. But I think we shall not be molested. My
+fingers are so stiff they will hardly recognize my hand on the strings."
+
+I went to my post, and he began singing, scarce loud enough for any but
+his lady above to mark him:
+
+     _Fairest blossom ever grew
+         Once she loosened from her breast.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     From her breast the rose she drew,
+         Dole for me, her servant blest,
+     Fairest blossom ever grew._
+
+The music paused, and I turned from my watch of the shadowy figures
+crossing the square, in instant alarm lest something was wrong. But
+whatever startled him ceased, for in a moment he went on again, and as
+he sang his voice rang fuller:
+
+     _Of my love the guerdon true,
+         'Tis my bosom's only guest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     Still to me 'tis bright of hue
+         As when first my kisses prest
+     Fairest blossom ever grew.
+
+     Sweeter than when gathered new
+         'Twas the sign her love confest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He stopped again and stood gazing up into the window, but whether he saw
+something or heard something I could not tell. Apparently he was not
+sure himself, for presently, a little tremulous, he added the four
+verses:
+
+     _Askest thou of me a clue
+         To that lady I love best?
+     Fairest blossom ever grew!
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and waited,
+eager, hopeful. There was a little stir in the room that one thought was
+not the wind.
+
+I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the ardour of
+my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by the sound of men
+running round the corner behind me. One glance was enough; two abreast,
+swords in hand, they were charging us. I ran before them, drawing blade
+as I went and shouting to M. Étienne. But even as I called an answering
+shout came from the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the
+darkness and at us.
+
+M. Étienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the lute off his
+neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung it at the head of
+his nearest assailant, who received it full in the face, stopped,
+hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had come. But three foes
+remained, with the whole Hôtel de Lorraine behind them.
+
+We put our backs to the wall and set to. The remaining Spaniard engaged
+me; M. Étienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure of a doorway, held
+at bay with his good left arm a pair of attackers. These were in the
+dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as if their cheeks blushed (well they
+might) for the deeds of their hands.
+
+A broad window in the Hôtel de Lorraine was flung open; a man leaned far
+out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces bewildered our
+gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was about, and rammed my
+point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my blade.
+
+The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M. Étienne, who,
+with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw everything, cried to me,
+"Here!"
+
+I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants finding
+that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather hampered each
+other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the cleverer swordsman.
+This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than
+my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M.
+Étienne was up one step. He could not force home any of his
+shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Étienne out of his coign
+to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers
+clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again;
+and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his
+knees, with M. Étienne's sword in his breast.
+
+M. Étienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his
+mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had thought him--François de
+Brie.
+
+M. Étienne was ready for the second gentleman, but neither he nor the
+soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the window, with a shout, waved
+his arm toward the square. A mob of armed men hurled itself around the
+corner, a pikeman with lowered point in the van.
+
+This was not combat; it was butchery. M. Étienne, with a little moan,
+lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant to the turret
+window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us give. Throwing my
+whole weight upon it, I seized M. Étienne and pulled him over the
+threshold. Some one inside slammed the door to, just as the Spaniard
+hurled himself against it.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_"On guard, monsieur."_
+
+
+We found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a
+flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our
+preserver--a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in chuckling
+triumph against the shot bolts.
+
+She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and shrunken, a
+pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair was as white as
+her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment, furrowed with a
+thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like a girl's.
+
+"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she cried in a
+shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have listened to your
+singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad to-night to find the
+nightingale back again. When I saw that crew rush at you, I said I would
+save you if only you would put your back to my door. Monsieur, you are a
+young man of intelligence."
+
+"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M. Étienne replied,
+with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet blade. "I owe you a debt of
+gratitude which is ill repaid in the base coin of bringing trouble to
+this house."
+
+"Not at all--not at all!" she protested with animation. "No one is
+likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M. Ferou."
+
+"Of the Sixteen?"
+
+"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with mischief. "In
+truth, if my son were within, you were little likely to find harbourage
+here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping with his Grace of
+Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to mass, leaving madame
+grand'mère to shift for herself. No, no, my good friends; you may knock
+till you drop, but you won't get in."
+
+The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the door,
+shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes of the old
+lady glittered with new delight at every rap.
+
+"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M. Ferou's door!
+Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at finding you sanctuaried
+in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's jackal, François de Brie?"
+
+"Yes; and Marc Latour."
+
+"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her sharpness.
+"It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old, but I knew
+them! And which of the ladies is it?"
+
+He could do no less than answer his saviour.
+
+"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once--but that is a
+long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she was not much
+given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she repeated briskly, "and
+now they think I am too old to do aught but tell my beads and wait for
+death. But I like to have a hand in the game."
+
+"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M. Étienne
+assured her. "I like the way you play."
+
+She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.
+
+"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by halves. No; I
+shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as to lift the
+lantern from the hook."
+
+I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like
+spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made no
+protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she paused,
+opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the left, but,
+passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot, suddenly she
+flung it wide.
+
+"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can make
+shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go first."
+
+I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady, gathering her
+petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty, but M. Étienne was
+put to some trouble to bow his tall head low enough. We stood at the top
+of a flight of stone steps descending into blackness. The old lady
+unhesitatingly tripped down before us.
+
+At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway, slippery with
+lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall. Turning two corners,
+we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded door.
+
+"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have only to
+walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the rope once and
+wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and draw a crown with
+your finger in the air."
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne cried, "I hope the day may come when I shall make
+you suitable acknowledgements. My name--"
+
+"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him. "I will
+call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for acknowledgments--pooh! I
+am overpaid in the sport it has been."
+
+"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers--"
+
+"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she
+cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was not.
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne said, "I trust we shall meet again when I shall
+have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped on his knees
+before her, kissing both her hands.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored
+apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to die at
+your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and you too, you
+fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you well."
+
+"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."
+
+"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you, that I
+cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries, but get on
+your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber working my
+altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."
+
+Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly hustled us
+through.
+
+"Good-by--you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon us. We were
+in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of the dank, foul air,
+we heard bolts snap into place.
+
+"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M. Étienne,
+cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it is to throw them off
+the scent should they track us."
+
+I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same thought
+which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her
+beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days;
+she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.
+
+I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it
+as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the
+passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder.
+There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something
+swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and a
+laugh from him.
+
+"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, Félix; they don't bite." But I would not
+go on till I had made sure, as well as I could without seeing, that the
+cursed thing was not clinging on me somewhere.
+
+We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our tread.
+We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of Paris; and I
+wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming and loving over our
+heads. M. Étienne said at length:
+
+"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the Seine."
+But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere, I should not
+greatly mind the Seine.
+
+At this very moment M. Étienne clutched my arm, jerking me to a halt. I
+bounded backward, trying in the blackness to discern a precipice yawning
+at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low, tense voice. I perceived, far
+before us in the gloom, a point of light, which, as we watched it, grew
+bigger and bigger, till it became an approaching lantern.
+
+"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. Étienne.
+
+The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread; naturally he
+did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him alone, but it was
+hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.
+
+He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing without
+becoming aware of me, but M. Étienne's azure and white caught the
+lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped short, holding up the
+light between us and his face. We could make nothing of him, save that
+he was a large man, soberly clad.
+
+"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady. "Is it
+you, Ferou?"
+
+M. Étienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward into the clear
+circle of light.
+
+"No, M. de Mayenne; it is Étienne de Mar."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with comical
+alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My master's came
+bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in silence, till
+Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry from him:
+
+"How the devil come you here?"
+
+"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. Étienne answered. Mayenne
+still stared in thick amazement; after a moment my master added: "I must
+in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware that I am using this passage;
+he is, with madame his wife, supping with the Archbishop of Lyons."
+
+M. Étienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling pleasantly, and
+waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne kept a nonplussed
+silence. The situation was indeed somewhat awkward. He could not come
+forward without encountering an agile opponent, whose exceeding skill
+with the sword was probably known to him. He could not turn tail, had
+his dignity allowed the course, without exposing himself to be spitted.
+He was in the predicament of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping
+at us less in fear, I think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I
+learned later, was one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter.
+Mayenne had as soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a
+foe. He cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a
+great prince's question must be answered:
+
+"How came you here?"
+
+"I don't ask," said M. Étienne, "how it happens that M. le Duc is
+walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to make any
+explanation to him."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready, will
+make adequate explanation."
+
+"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. Étienne, "as it is evident
+that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience your Grace more
+than it will me."
+
+The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his lantern
+on a projecting stone.
+
+"On guard, sir," he answered.
+
+The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following him. He was
+alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state, but only a man
+with a sword, standing opposite another man with a sword. Nor was he in
+the pink of form. Though he gave the effect, from his clear colour and
+proud bearing, perhaps also from his masterful energy, of tremendous
+force and strength, his body was in truth but a poor machine, his great
+corpulence making him clumsy and scant of breath. He must have known, as
+he eyed his supple antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely
+said:
+
+"On guard, monsieur."
+
+M. Étienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace, that I might
+not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring on him. M. Étienne
+said slowly:
+
+"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor have I any
+wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be deprecated.
+Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must respectfully beg to
+be released from the obligation of fighting you."
+
+A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may, even as
+Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But if he insists
+on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must be a hothead
+indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant, feeling that he
+was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and should be still more
+ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his sword, only to lower it
+again, till at last his good sense came to his relief in a laugh.
+
+"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are necessary.
+You think that in declining to fight you put me in your debt. Possibly
+you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I shall hand over
+Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken. Never, while I live,
+shall she marry into the king's camp. Now, monsieur, that we understand
+each other, I abide by your decision whether we fight or not."
+
+For answer, M. Étienne put up his blade. The Duke of Mayenne, saluting
+with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you stood off from us, like a
+coquetting girl, for three years. At length, last May, you refused
+point-blank to join us. I do not often ask a man twice, but I ask you.
+Will you join the League to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"
+
+No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I
+believe now, he meant it. M. Étienne believed he meant it.
+
+"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am planted
+squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put your
+interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall not sign
+myself with the League."
+
+"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each continue on his
+way."
+
+"With all my heart, monsieur."
+
+Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a wary eye
+for daggers. Then M. Étienne, laughing a little, but watching Mayenne
+like a lynx, started to go by. The duke, seeing the look, suddenly
+raised his hands over his head, holding them there while both of us
+squeezed past him.
+
+"Cousin Charles," said M. Étienne, "I see that when I have married
+Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then, God have you ever
+in guard."
+
+"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."
+
+"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have
+submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have as
+delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will yet
+drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your good enemy.
+Fare you well, monsieur."
+
+He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire, returned
+the obeisance with all pomp. M. Étienne took me by the arm and departed.
+Mayenne stood still for a space; then we heard his retreating
+footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly faded away.
+
+[Illustration: "WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP."]
+
+"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M. Étienne
+muttered.
+
+We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor which
+had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was that we
+stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force like to break
+our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran headlong up the
+stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel back on M. Étienne,
+sweeping him off his feet, so that we rolled in a struggling heap on the
+stones of the passage. And for the minute the place was no longer dark;
+I saw more lightning than even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"Are you hurt, Félix?" cried M. Étienne, the first to disentangle
+himself.
+
+"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say it was a
+trap-door."
+
+We ascended the stairs a second time--this time most cautiously on our
+hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of
+spirit, a wooden ceiling.
+
+"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.
+
+The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere
+above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we
+heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and
+then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a silk-mercer's shop.
+
+"Faith, my man," said M. Étienne to the little bourgeois who had opened
+to us, "I am glad to see you appear so promptly."
+
+He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.
+
+"You must have met--" he suggested with hesitancy.
+
+"Yes," said M. Étienne; "but he did not object. We are, of course, of
+the initiated."
+
+"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny
+assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret of the
+passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty few mercers
+have a duke in their shop as often as I."
+
+We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with piles of
+stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the
+counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them--gorgeous
+brocades and satins. Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.
+
+"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said, following our
+glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from. And if I am not at
+liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on the floor--But they told
+you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he added, regarding M. Étienne again a
+little uneasily.
+
+"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M. Étienne answered,
+and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the password, "For the Cause."
+
+"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing in the
+air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.
+
+M. Étienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the shopkeeper had
+felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who wore no hat, they
+vanished in its radiance.
+
+"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our faces."
+
+The man took up his candle to light us to the door.
+
+"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over there?"
+he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M. le Duc has
+every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if monsieur should
+mention how quickly I let him out."
+
+"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. Étienne promised him.
+"Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There is another man to
+come."
+
+Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked out into
+the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we took to our
+heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen streets between
+us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked along in breathless
+silence.
+
+Presently M. Étienne cried out:
+
+"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should have
+changed the history of France!"
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_A chance encounter._
+
+
+The street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame. Few
+way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as placidly as if
+love-trysts and mêlées existed not, and tunnels and countersigns were
+but the smoke of a dream. It was a street of shops, all shuttered,
+while, above, the burghers' families went respectably to bed.
+
+"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a moment to
+take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of the Pierced
+Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We are close by the
+Halles--we must have come half a mile underground. Well, we'll swing
+about in a circle to get home. For this night I've had enough of the
+Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.
+
+"They were wider awake than I thought--those Lorrainers. Pardieu! Féix,
+you and I came closer quarters with death than is entirely amusing."
+
+"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.
+
+"A new saint in the calendar--la Sainte Ferou! But what a madcap of a
+saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance when Francis I was
+king!
+
+"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know that I
+was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated the
+enemy--worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near flinging away
+two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a lady's window."
+
+"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."
+
+"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in the
+morning and find out."
+
+"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."
+
+"Not to-night, Félix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home without
+passing near the Hôtel de Lorraine, if we go outside the walls to do it.
+To-night I draw my sword no more."
+
+To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange city at
+night--Paris of all cities--is a labyrinth. I know that after a time we
+came out in some meadows along the river-bank, traversed them, and
+plunged once more into narrow, high-walled streets. It was very late,
+and lights were few. We had started in clear starlight, but now a rack
+of clouds hid even their pale shine.
+
+"The snake-hole over again," said M. Étienne. "But we are almost at our
+own gates."
+
+But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner, we ran
+straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging along at as
+smart a pace as we.
+
+"A thousand pardons," M. Étienne cried to his encounterer, the possessor
+of years and gravity but of no great size, whom he had almost knocked
+down. "I heard you, but knew not you were so close. We were speeding to
+get home."
+
+The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked
+the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As he scanned
+M. Étienne's open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.
+
+"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he
+said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall
+certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."
+
+"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. Étienne asked with immense
+respect.
+
+"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied, delighted to
+impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.
+
+"Oh," said M. Étienne, with increasing solemnity, "perhaps monsieur had
+a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?"
+
+The little man began to look uneasy.
+
+"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he stammered.
+
+"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. Étienne rejoined, "most
+offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he fingered his sword.
+
+"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his Grace,
+or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all these years of
+blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that
+even he will come to see the matter in a different light--"
+
+"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne," M.
+Étienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the
+street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched little deputy's
+teeth chattered.
+
+The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he seemed
+on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I thought it
+would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble home in the dark,
+so I growled out to the fellow:
+
+"Stir one step at your peril!"
+
+I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not; he only
+sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding deference. He
+knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the scabbard.
+
+The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Étienne's
+example, but there was no help to be seen or heard. He turned to his
+tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay.
+
+"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"
+
+"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he
+happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?"
+
+"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I--we had a little con--that
+is, not to say a conference, but merely a little discussion on matters
+of no importance--"
+
+"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. Étienne, sternly, "of knowing
+where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this direction is not
+accounted for."
+
+"But I was going home--on my sacred honour I was! Ask Jacques, else. But
+as we went down the Rue de l'Évêque we saw two men in front of us. As
+they reached the wall by M. de Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell
+on them. The two drew blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians
+were a dozen--a score. We ran for our lives."
+
+M. Étienne wheeled round to me.
+
+"Félix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau, your decree is
+most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore, since he is my
+particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful night, is it not,
+sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."
+
+He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.
+
+At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to our ears.
+M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the direction of
+the sound.
+
+"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a mob! We
+know how it feels."
+
+The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled around a
+jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.
+
+"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. Étienne. "Shout, Félix! Montjoie St.
+Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"
+
+We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at the top
+of our lungs.
+
+It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures, with
+every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light flashing out, to
+fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm. We could scarce tell
+which were the attackers, which the two comrades we had come to save.
+
+But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We shouted as
+boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter of their heels on
+the stones they could not count our feet. They knew not how many
+followers the darkness held. The group parted. Two men remained in hot
+combat close under the left wall. Across the way one sturdy fighter held
+off two, while a sixth man, crying on his mates to follow, fled down the
+lane.
+
+M. Étienne knew now what he was about, and at once took sides with the
+solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I started in pursuit of
+the flying figure. I had run but a few yards, however, when I tripped
+and fell prostrate over the body of a man. I was up in a moment, feeling
+him to find out if he were dead; my hands over his heart dipped into a
+pool of something wet and warm like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve
+as best I could, and hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need
+it now, and I did.
+
+When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows. M.
+Étienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot in the gloom,
+had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven him, some rods up
+the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed, not knowing where to
+busy myself. M. Étienne's side I could not reach past the two duels; and
+of the four men near me, I could by no means tell, as they circled
+about and about, which were my chosen allies. They were all sombrely
+clad, their faces blurred in the darkness. When one made a clever pass,
+I knew not whether to rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one
+who fenced, though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the
+rest; and I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and
+must certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of
+succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as his
+foe ran him through the arm.
+
+The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the wall to
+face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell from his loose
+fingers.
+
+"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late
+combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off,
+stumbling where I had.
+
+There had been little light toward the last in the court of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the Hôtel de
+Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my sword solely by the
+feel of his against it, and I underwent chilling qualms lest presently,
+without in the least knowing how it got there, I should find his point
+sticking out of my back. I could hardly believe he was not hitting me; I
+began to prickle in half a dozen places, and knew not whether the stings
+were real or imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which
+Lucas had pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I
+fancied that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I
+was bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I
+had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment one of
+the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his weapon
+square through his vis-à-vis's breast.
+
+"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword snapped in
+two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay still, his face in
+the dirt.
+
+My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade, made off
+down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him depart in
+peace.
+
+The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's cry,
+and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and fainter. I
+deemed that the battle was over.
+
+The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his face
+and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He held a
+sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me hesitatingly, not sure
+whether friend or foe remained to him. I felt that an explanation was
+due from me, but in my ignorance as to who he was and who his foes were,
+and why they had been fighting him and why we had been fighting them, I
+stood for a moment confused. It is hard to open conversation with a
+shadow.
+
+He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting four--we came
+to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt, but he got away safe to
+fetch aid."
+
+The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying, "What--"
+
+But at the word M. Étienne emerged from the shadows.
+
+"Who lives?" he called out. "You, Félix?"
+
+"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"
+
+"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to congratulate you,
+monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we did."
+
+The unknown said one word:
+
+"Étienne!"
+
+I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in the
+pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we had
+rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been content to
+mind our own business, had sheered away like the deputy--it turned me
+faint to think how long we had delayed with old Marceau, we were so
+nearly too late. I wanted to seize Monsieur, to convince myself that he
+was all safe, to feel him quick and warm.
+
+I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape stood
+between me and Monsieur--that horrible lying story.
+
+"Dieu!" gasped M. Étienne, "Monsieur!"
+
+For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur flung his
+sword over the wall.
+
+"Do your will, Étienne."
+
+His son darted forward with a cry.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid not
+dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a hundred
+times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the honour of a St.
+Quentin I swear it."
+
+Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not know
+whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.
+
+M. Étienne, catching at his breath, went on:
+
+"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to you,
+unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter words. But
+I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me whipped from the
+house, still would I never have raised hand against you. I knew nothing
+of the plot. Félix told you I was in it--small blame to him. But he was
+wrong. I knew naught of it."
+
+Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur could not
+but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The stones in the
+pavement must have known that he was uttering truth. But he in his
+eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun Monsieur with
+statements new and amazing to his ear.
+
+"My cousin Grammont--who is dead--was in the plot, and his lackey
+Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was Lucas."
+
+"Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas," continued M. Étienne. "Or, to give him his true title, Paul de
+Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."
+
+"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.
+
+"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a Lorraine--Mayenne's nephew,
+and for years Mayenne's spy. He came to you to kill you--for that
+object pure and simple. Last spring, before he came to you, he was here
+in Paris with Mayenne, making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot,
+no Kingsman. He is Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."
+
+"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.
+
+"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck him, he
+fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that, I have no
+more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the darkness.
+
+That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I was sure
+Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of bewilderment.
+
+"M. Étienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the truth. Indeed it
+is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas _is_ a Guise. Monsieur, you must
+listen to me. M. Étienne, you must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble
+with my story to you, Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was
+telling the truth. I was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to
+the Rue Coupejarrets to kill your son--your murderer, I thought. And
+there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them sworn
+foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me because I had
+told, and M. Étienne saved me. Lucas mocked him to his face because he
+had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it was his own scheme--that M.
+Étienne was his dupe. Vigo will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme
+was to saddle M. Étienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed
+what he told me--that the thing was a duel between Lucas and Grammont.
+You must believe it, Monsieur!"
+
+M. Étienne, who had actually obeyed me,--me, his lackey,--turned to his
+father once again.
+
+"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe Félix. You believed him
+when he took away my good name. Believe him now when he restores it."
+
+"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, Étienne."
+
+And he took his son in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_The signet of the king._
+
+
+Already a wan light was revealing the round tops of the plum-trees in M.
+de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the narrow alleyway
+beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no longer vague shapes,
+but were turning moment by moment, as if coming out of an enchantment,
+into their true forms. It really was Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet
+glint in his eyes as he kissed his boy.
+
+Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they said to
+each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a curve in the
+wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the eastern sky, in utter
+content. Never before had the world seemed to me so good a place. Since
+this misery had come right, I knew all the rest would; I should yet
+dance at M. Étienne's wedding.
+
+I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to consider
+the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.
+
+"Félix! Félix! Where is the boy got to?"
+
+The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and wondered
+how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs came hand in
+hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering on Monsieur's
+burnished breastplate, on M. Étienne's bright head, and on both their
+shining faces. Now that for the first time I saw them together, I found
+them, despite the dark hair and the yellow, the brown eyes and the gray,
+wonderfully alike. There was the same carriage, the same cock of the
+head, the same smile. If I had not known before, I knew now, the instant
+I looked at them, that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a
+deeper love of each other, it might never have been.
+
+I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.
+
+"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, Félix?" M. Étienne said.
+"But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what madness sent you
+traversing this back passage at two in the morning."
+
+"I might ask you that, Étienne."
+
+The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:
+
+"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M. Étienne cried
+out:
+
+"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle if I
+would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he would
+kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was why I
+tried."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the window?"
+
+He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.
+
+"Étienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that Mlle. de Montluc is
+not for you?"
+
+"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed says she
+is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."
+
+"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"
+
+"You! You'll help me?"
+
+"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think of you
+in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a Spaniard to
+the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it is a question of
+stealing the lady--well, I never prosed about prudence yet, thank God!"
+
+M. Étienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.
+
+"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage while I
+thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you sacrifice your
+honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your life--that is different."
+
+"My life is a little thing."
+
+"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal--one's life. But one is not to
+guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life sweet."
+
+"Ah, you know how I love her!"
+
+"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I risk my
+life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For they who
+think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to procure it,
+why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when all is done, they
+have never really lived. And that is why they hate death so, these
+worthies. While I, who have never cringed to fear, I live like a king.
+I go my ways without any man's leave; and if death comes to me a little
+sooner for that, I am a poor creature if I do not meet him smiling. If I
+may live as I please, I am content to die when I must."
+
+"Aye," said M. Étienne, "and if we live as we do not please, still we
+must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never to give over striving
+after my lady."
+
+"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's Félix yawning
+his head off. Come, come."
+
+We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at their
+heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden anxiety.
+
+"Félix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I answered,
+remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.
+
+"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to get in,"
+M. Étienne said easily.
+
+But Monsieur asked of me:
+
+"Was he much hurt, Félix?"
+
+"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am sure he
+was not hurt otherwise."
+
+We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M. Étienne
+exclaimed:
+
+"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur! How many
+of the rascals were there?"
+
+"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."
+
+"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the dark?"
+
+"Why, what to do, Étienne? I came in at the gate just after midnight. I
+could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is my time to enter Paris.
+The inns were shut--"
+
+"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered you."
+
+"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the Sixteen."
+
+"Tarigny is no craven."
+
+"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.
+
+"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save you next
+time."
+
+"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."
+
+M. Étienne laughed and said no more.
+
+"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If these
+fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip
+of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost
+home."
+
+M. Étienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run
+through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed
+by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled
+mustache.
+
+"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before,
+Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done
+naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder
+how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed
+him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence
+better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."
+
+But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.
+
+"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"
+
+M. Étienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring
+with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about
+his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.
+
+"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran
+him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A
+boy like that!"
+
+"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Étienne said. "And it is no
+disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."
+
+But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and
+at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.
+
+On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.
+
+"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M.
+Étienne.
+
+"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red
+track."
+
+But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little
+street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned
+the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came
+suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it
+was the squire Huguet.
+
+He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any
+forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail,
+and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we
+had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of
+ours to kill twenty.
+
+Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.
+
+"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about," I said.
+"Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend himself."
+
+"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M. Étienne answered.
+"And one of those who fled last came upon him helpless and did this."
+
+"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John o'dreams?" I
+cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I forgot Huguet."
+
+"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would not have
+forgotten me."
+
+"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You could have
+saved him only by following when he ran. And that was impossible."
+
+"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his own door."
+
+We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.
+
+"I never lost a better man."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say that
+of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."
+
+He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only smile, I
+was content it should be at me.
+
+"Nay, Félix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who compose your
+epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after poor Huguet."
+
+"Félix and I will carry him," M. Étienne said, and we lifted him between
+us--no easy task, for he was a heavy fellow. But it was little enough to
+do for him.
+
+We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a sudden he
+turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn breast.
+
+"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.
+
+"My papers."
+
+We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to toe,
+stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted linen,
+prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed themselves.
+
+"What were they, Monsieur?"
+
+A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.
+
+"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor, have
+lost."
+
+I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his hat on
+the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to its beginning,
+looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass; but no papers. In my
+desperation I even pulled about the dead man, lest the packet had been
+covered, falling from Huguet in the fray. The two gentlemen joined me
+in the search, and we went over every inch of the ground, but to no
+purpose.
+
+"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur groaned. "I
+knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the object of attack; I
+bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the papers."
+
+"And of course he would not."
+
+"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life perhaps, and
+lost me what is dearer than life--my honour."
+
+"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking the
+impossible."
+
+"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur cried.
+"The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's officers
+pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had them for
+Lemaître. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they spell the men's
+destruction. Huguet should have known that if I told him to desert me, I
+meant it."
+
+M. Étienne ventured no word, understanding well enough that in such
+bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc added after a moment:
+
+"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied than in
+blaming the dead--the brave and faithful dead. Belike he could not run,
+they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did go, and he went to his
+death. They were my charge, the papers. I had no right to put the
+responsibility on any other. I should have kept them myself. I should
+have gone to Tarigny. I should never have ventured myself through these
+black lanes. Fool! traitorous fool!"
+
+"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."
+
+"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen Rosny!"
+Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a lack-wit who
+rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can handle a sword, but I
+have no business to meddle in statecraft."
+
+"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to employ you,"
+M. Étienne said. "He is not unknown to fame, this Duke of St. Quentin;
+everybody knows how he goes about things. Monsieur, they gave you the
+papers because no one else would carry them into Paris. They knew you
+had no fear in you; and it is because of that that the papers are
+lacking. But take heart, Monsieur. We'll get them back."
+
+"When? How?"
+
+"Soon," M. Étienne answered, "and easily, if you will tell me what they
+are like. Are they open?"
+
+"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and a
+fourth sheet, a letter--all in cipher."
+
+"Ah, but in that case--"
+
+Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.
+
+"But--Lucas."
+
+"Of course--I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"
+
+"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."
+
+"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne, and
+all is saved," M. Étienne declared cheerfully. "These fellows can't read
+a cipher. If the packet be not open, Monsieur?"
+
+"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the letters _St.
+Q._ in the corner. It was tied with red cord and bore the seal of a
+flying falcon, and the motto, _Je reviendrai_."
+
+"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur, to see
+the papers in an hour's time."
+
+"Étienne, Étienne," Monsieur cried, "are you mad?"
+
+"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough. I told
+you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who lodged at an
+inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake ourselves thither, we
+may easily fall in with some comrades of his bosom who have not the
+misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane, who will know something of
+your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots; while they work for the League,
+they will lend a kindly ear to the chink of Kingsmen's florins."
+
+"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. Étienne laid a
+restraining hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully as in
+the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."
+
+He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to prove his
+devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.
+
+"But," M. Étienne added generously, "you may have the honour of paying
+the piper."
+
+"I give you carte blanche, my son. Étienne, if you put that packet into
+my hand, it is more than if you brought the sceptre of France."
+
+"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."
+
+He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.
+
+The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the labours of
+the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour, for we ran no risk
+now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it behooves not a man
+supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself too liberally to the
+broad eye of the streets. Every time--and it was often--that we
+approached a person who to my nervous imagination looked official, I
+shook in my shoes. The way seemed fairly to bristle with soldiers,
+officers, judges; for aught I knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor
+Belin himself. It was a great surprise to me when at length we arrived
+without let or hindrance before the door of a mean little
+drinking-place, our goal.
+
+We went in, and M. Étienne ordered wine, much to my satisfaction. My
+stomach was beginning to remind me that I had given it nothing for
+twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs hard.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the landlord. We
+were his only patrons at the moment.
+
+"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not mine. I
+but rent the ground floor for my purposes."
+
+"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"
+
+"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off the Rue
+Clichet."
+
+"But he comes here often?"
+
+"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings, too."
+
+M. Étienne laid down the drink-money, and something more.
+
+"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll standing in
+my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he never chances to see
+me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good morning, Jean. Anything in
+the casks to-day?' He can no more get by my door than he'll get by
+Death's when the time comes."
+
+"No," agreed M. Étienne; "we all stop there, soon or late. Those friends
+of M. Bernet, then--there is none you could put a name to?"
+
+"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this quarter.
+M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he lives here, it
+is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere for his friends."
+
+"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"
+
+"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind the bar,
+eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed gallant. "Just
+round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court. The first house on
+the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur, only I cannot leave the
+shop alone, and the wife not back from market. But monsieur cannot miss
+it. The first house in the court. Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir,
+monsieur."
+
+In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little court stood
+an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse out of the
+passage.
+
+"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M. Étienne
+murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can you tell me, friend,
+where I may find M. Bernet?"
+
+The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means ceasing
+his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.
+
+"Third story back," he said.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"
+
+"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty
+broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M. Étienne, coughing,
+pursued his inquiries:
+
+"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a
+friend, then, in the building?"
+
+"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."
+
+"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Étienne
+persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M.
+Bernet?"
+
+"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of
+chattering here all day."
+
+"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Étienne, lightly setting foot
+on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to
+break your head, mon vieillard."
+
+We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the
+back, whereon M. Étienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and
+heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be
+knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it
+again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while
+we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden
+wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the
+marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a
+market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne
+away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking,
+as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
+suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him
+pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real
+creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.
+
+It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened,
+letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood
+a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.
+
+"Madame," M. Étienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess,
+"I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you
+could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"
+
+"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
+regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and
+manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not
+believe he has been in since. He went out about nine--or it may have
+been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till
+after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much
+as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last night, the
+day was so hot, and I was a long time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it
+must have been after ten, because they were asleep, and the man
+stumbling on the stairs woke Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't
+you, my angel?"
+
+She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us. M.
+Étienne asked:
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."
+
+"And what sort of person was this?"
+
+"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common passage with a
+child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."
+
+"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"
+
+"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M. Bernet
+but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only been here a
+week."
+
+"I thank you, madame," M. Étienne said, turning to the stairs.
+
+She ran out to the rail, babies and all.
+
+"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a point of
+seeing him when he comes in."
+
+"I will not burden you, madame," M. Étienne answered from the story
+below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over the railing to
+call:
+
+"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are not so
+tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their rubbish out
+in the public way."
+
+The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and a big,
+brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:
+
+"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you slut?"
+
+We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives down
+the stair.
+
+The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom on the
+outer step.
+
+"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as much had
+you been civil enough to ask."
+
+I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. Étienne drew two gold
+pieces from his pouch.
+
+"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M. Bernet
+went out last night?"
+
+"Who says he went out with anybody?"
+
+"I do," and M. Étienne made a motion to return the coins to their place.
+
+"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little more," the
+old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his, but he goes by
+the name of Peyrot."
+
+"And where does he lodge?"
+
+"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my own
+lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."
+
+"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M. Étienne said
+patiently, with a persuasive chink of his pouch. "Recollect now; you
+have been sent to this monsieur with a message."
+
+"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old carl spat
+out at last.
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Hang me else."
+
+"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a jelly with
+your own broom."
+
+"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of respect at
+last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles. You may beat me
+to a jelly if I lie."
+
+"It would do you good in any event," M. Étienne told him, but flinging
+him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped upon them,
+gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in one movement.
+But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in the upper panel, and
+stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:
+
+"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be. I've told
+you what will profit you none."
+
+"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. Étienne called over his shoulder. "Your
+information is entirely to my needs."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_The Chevalier of the Tournelles._
+
+
+It was a long walk to the Rue des Tournelles, which lay in our own
+quarter, not a dozen streets from the Hôtel St. Quentin itself. We found
+the Gilded Shears hung before a tailor's shop in the cellar of a tall,
+cramped structure, only one window wide. Its narrow door was
+inhospitably shut, but at our summons the concierge appeared to inform
+us that M. Peyrot did truly live here and, moreover, was at home, having
+arrived but half an hour earlier than we. He would go up and find out
+whether monsieur could see us.
+
+But M. Étienne thought that formality unnecessary, and was able, at
+small expense, to convince the concierge of it. We went alone up the
+stairs and crept very quietly along the passage toward the door of M.
+Peyrot. But our shoes made some noise on the flags; had he been
+listening, he might have heard us as easily as we heard him. Peyrot had
+not yet gone to bed after the night's exertion; a certain clatter and
+gurgle convinced us that he was refreshing himself with supper, or
+breakfast, before reposing.
+
+M. Étienne stood still, his hand on the door-knob, eager, hesitating.
+Here was the man; were the papers here? If they were, should we secure
+them? A single false step, a single wrong word, might foil us.
+
+The sound of a chair pushed back came from within, and a young man's
+quick, firm step passed across to the far side of the room. We heard a
+box shut and locked. M. Étienne nipped my arm; we thought we knew what
+went in. Then came steps again and a loud yawn, and presently two whacks
+on the floor. We knew as well as if we could see that Peyrot had thrown
+his boots across the room. Next a clash and jangle of metal, that meant
+his sword-belt with its accoutrements flung on the table. M. Étienne,
+with the rapid murmur, "If I look at you, nab him," turned the
+door-handle.
+
+But M. Peyrot had prepared against surprise by the simple expedient of
+locking his door. He heard us, too, for he stopped in the very middle of
+a prolonged yawn and held himself absolutely still. M. Étienne called
+out softly:
+
+"Peyrot!"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I want to speak with you about something important."
+
+"Who are you, then?"
+
+"I'll tell you when you let me in."
+
+"I'll let you in when you tell me."
+
+"My name's Martin. I'm a friend of Bernet. I want to speak to you
+quietly about a matter of importance."
+
+"A friend of Bernet. Hmm! Well, friend of Bernet, it appears to me you
+speak very well through the door."
+
+"I want to speak with you about the affair of to-night."
+
+"What affair?"
+
+"To-night's affair."
+
+"To-night? I go to a supper-party at St. Germain. What have you to say
+about that?"
+
+"Last night, then," M. Étienne amended, with rising temper. "If you want
+me to shout it out on your stairs, the St. Quentin affair."
+
+"Now, what may you mean by that?" called the voice from within. If
+Peyrot was startled by the name, he carried it off well.
+
+"You know what I mean. Shall I take the house into our confidence?"
+
+"The house knows as much of your meaning as I. See here, friend of
+Bernet, if you are that gentleman's mate, perhaps you have a password
+about you."
+
+"Aye," said M. Étienne, readily. "This is it: twenty pistoles."
+
+No answer came immediately; I could guess Peyrot puzzled. Presently he
+called to us:
+
+"By the bones of St. Anne, I don't believe a word you've been saying.
+But I'll have you in and see what you look like."
+
+We heard him getting into his boots again and buckling on his baldric.
+Then we listened to the turning of a key; a lid was raised and banged
+down again, and the lock refastened. It was the box once more. M.
+Étienne and I looked at each other.
+
+At length Peyrot opened the door and surveyed us.
+
+"What, two friends of Bernet, ventre bleu!" But he allowed us to enter.
+
+He drew back before us with a flourishing bow, his hand resting lightly
+on his belt, in which was stuck a brace of pistols. Any idea of doing
+violence on the person of M. Peyrot we dismissed for the present.
+
+Our eyes travelled from his pistols over the rest of him. He was small,
+lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling eyes. One
+moment's glance gave us to know that Peyrot was no fool.
+
+My lord closed the door after him and went straight to the point.
+
+"M. Peyrot, you were engaged last night in an attack on the Duke of St.
+Quentin. You did not succeed in slaying him, but you did kill his man,
+and you took from him a packet. I come to buy it."
+
+He looked at us a little dazed, not understanding, I deem, how we knew
+this. Certes, it had been too dark in the lane for his face to be seen,
+and he had doubtless made sure that he was not followed home. He said
+directly:
+
+"You are the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Even so, M. Peyrot. I did not care to have the whole stair know it, but
+to you I have no hesitation in confiding that I am M. de Mar."
+
+M. Peyrot swept a bow till his head almost touched the floor.
+
+"My poor apartment is honoured."
+
+As he louted low, I made a spring forward; I thought to pin him before
+he could rise. But he was up with the lightness of a bird from the bough
+and standing three yards away from me, where I crouched on the spring
+like a foiled cat. He grinned at me in open enjoyment.
+
+"Monsieur desired?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+"No, it is I who desire," said M. Étienne, clearing himself a place to
+sit on the corner of the table. "I desire that packet, monsieur. You
+know this little expedition of yours to-night was something of a
+failure. When you report to the general-duke, he will not be in the best
+of humours. He does not like failures, the general; he will not incline
+to reward you dear. While I am in the very best humour in the world."
+
+He smiled to prove it. Nor do I think his complaisance altogether
+feigned. The temper of our host amused him.
+
+As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed. I thought it was because he
+had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had I viewed him
+with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his bewilderment genuine.
+
+"Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what monsieur is
+driving at?" he suggested. "Monsieur's remarks about his noble father
+and the general-duke are interesting, but humble Jean Peyrot, who does
+not move in court circles, is at a loss to translate them. In other
+words, I have no notion what you are talking about."
+
+"Oh, come," M. Étienne cried, "no shuffling, Peyrot. We know as well as
+you where you were before dawn."
+
+"Before dawn? Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous."
+
+M. Étienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's self might
+have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an alcove, and
+disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow undisturbed. He turned with
+a triumphant grin on the owner, who showed all his teeth pleasantly in
+answer, no whit abashed.
+
+"For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners ever came
+inside these walls."
+
+M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour about the
+room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture, even to the
+dishes and tankards on the table. Peyrot, leaning against the wall by
+the window, regarded him steadily, with impassive face. At length M.
+Étienne walked over to the chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately
+put his hand on the key.
+
+Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. Étienne, turning, looked
+into his pistol-barrel.
+
+My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his fingers on the
+key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with raised, protesting
+eyebrows and laughing mouth. But though he laughed, he stood still.
+
+"If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot you as I
+would a rat. Your side is down and mine is up; I have no fear to kill
+you. It will be painful to me, but if necessary I shall do it."
+
+M. Étienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably than ever.
+
+"Why--have I never known you before, Peyrot?"
+
+"One moment, monsieur." The nose of the pistol pointed around to me. "Go
+over there to the door, you."
+
+I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that pleased him.
+
+"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair over
+against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee. "Monsieur was
+saying?"
+
+Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he liked his
+present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of the noble into
+this business, realizing shrewdly that they would but hamper him, as
+lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless adventurer, living by
+his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a count no more than a
+hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference was more insulting than
+outright rudeness; but M. Étienne bore it unruffled. Possibly he
+schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so
+easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence
+merely tickled him.
+
+"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in
+this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks."
+
+"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory bringing a
+deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left
+a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within
+its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged
+friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints
+and living sinners, at twenty."
+
+"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."
+
+"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
+leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
+Paris. And never regretted it, neither."
+
+He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling,
+and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark's:
+
+     _Piety and Grace and Gloom,
+     For such like guests I have no room!
+     Piety and Gloom and Grace,
+     I bang my door shut in your face!
+     Gloom and Grace and Piety,
+     I set my dog on such as ye!_
+
+Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the
+floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have
+twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Étienne rose and leaned
+across the table toward him.
+
+"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in wealth, of
+course?"
+
+Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a
+mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty
+clothing.
+
+"Do I look it?" he answered.
+
+"Oh," said M. Étienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea,
+"I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the
+subject of turning an honest penny."
+
+Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.
+
+"Say on," he permitted lazily.
+
+"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from
+the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."
+
+"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. Étienne had
+been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.
+Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success. I will look about a
+bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your
+packet. I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."
+
+"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are risen
+earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for five minutes
+while you consult your friends."
+
+Peyrot grinned cheerfully.
+
+"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I know
+nothing whatever of this affair."
+
+"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."
+
+Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such as he
+might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be
+convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.
+
+"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so
+misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do
+solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this
+affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that Monsieur,
+your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I pained to hear
+it. These be evil days when such things can happen. As for your packet,
+I learn of it only through your word, having no more to do with this
+deplorable business than a babe unborn."
+
+I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged him. But M.
+Étienne gauged him otherwise.
+
+"Your words please me," he began.
+
+"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn lips,
+in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."
+
+"You have boasted," M. Étienne went on, "that your side was up and mine
+down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be up and yours down,
+you would hardly be at such pains to deny that you ever bared blade
+against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses, far too
+honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on the duke,"
+Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of course it is
+possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the scent of your packet.
+Twenty pistoles, though. That is not much."
+
+M. Étienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table, not pleased with
+the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better it. Had we been sure of
+our suspicions, we would have charged him, pistol or no pistol,
+trusting that our quickness would prevent his shooting, or that the
+powder would miss fire, or that the ball would fly wide, or that we
+should be hit in no vital part; trusting, in short, that God was with us
+and would in some fashion save us. But we could not be sure that the
+packet was with Peyrot. What we had heard him lock in the chest might
+have been these very pistols that he had afterward taken out again.
+Three men had fled from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of
+knowing whether this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had
+encountered, or he who had engaged M. Étienne. And did we know, that
+would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and plundered Huguet.
+Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know who had it, or he might
+be in honest ignorance of its existence. If he had it, it were a crying
+shame to pay out honest money for what we might take by force; to buy
+your own goods from a thief were a sin. But supposing he had it not? If
+we could seize upon him, disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him,
+rack him, would he--granted he knew--reveal its whereabouts? Writ large
+in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice.
+He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went
+to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from
+the very beginning, with some other knave mayhap worse than this.
+
+Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to his lead.
+
+"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this day at
+eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M. Étienne said.
+
+"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur forgets
+the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must be
+reimbursed for that."
+
+"Conscience, quotha!"
+
+"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in yours. I
+have never been false to the hand that fed me. If, therefore, I divert
+to you a certain packet which of rights goes elsewhere, my sin must be
+made worth my while. My conscience will sting me sorely, but with the
+aid of a glass and a lass I may contrive to forget the pain.
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear,
+     Baggages, you're welcome here!_
+
+I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le Comte. Fifty
+in all will bring the packet to your hand."
+
+It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the fellow's
+face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers for Monsieur,
+and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld him.
+
+"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven. You may
+do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my fifty
+pistoles."
+
+"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"
+
+"The word of a St. Quentin."
+
+"Sufficient, of course."
+
+The scamp rose with a bow.
+
+"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I give you
+the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius, that he and the
+packet will be there. This has been a delightful call, monsieur, and I
+am loath to let you go. But it is time I was free to look for that
+packet."
+
+M. Étienne's eyes went over to the chest.
+
+"I wish you all success in your arduous search."
+
+"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot sighed.
+"My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my task difficult
+indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall question every man in
+Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone unturned."
+
+M. Étienne still pensively regarded the chest.
+
+"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the purpose."
+
+"You appear yet to nurse the belief that I have the packet. But as a
+matter of fact, monsieur, I have not."
+
+I studied his grave face, and could not for the life of me make out
+whether he were lying. M. Étienne said merely:
+
+"Come, Félix."
+
+"You'll drink a glass before you go?" Peyrot cried hospitably, running
+to fill a goblet muddy with his last pouring. But M. Étienne drew back.
+
+"Well, I don't blame you. I wouldn't drink it myself if I were a count,"
+Peyrot said, setting the draught to his own lips. "After this noon I
+shall drink it no more all summer. I shall live like a king.
+
+     _Kiss me, Folly; hug me, Mirth:
+     Life without you's nothing worth!_
+
+Monsieur, can I lend you a hat?"
+
+I had already opened the door and was holding it for my master to pass,
+when Peyrot picked up from the floor and held out to him a battered and
+dirty toque, with its draggled feather hanging forlornly over the side.
+Chafed as he was, M. Étienne could not deny a laugh to the rascal's
+impudence.
+
+"I cannot rob monsieur," he said.
+
+"M. le Comte need have no scruple. I shall buy me better out of his
+fifty pistoles."
+
+But M. Étienne was out in the passage, I following, banging the door
+after me. We went down the stair in time to Peyrot's lusty carolling:
+
+     _Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly,
+     While Folly's sure to linger by!_
+
+"Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked.
+
+"Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling to let
+this dog set the terms."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "perhaps he'll not stir out at once. I'll run home
+for Vigo and his men, and we'll make the rascal disgorge."
+
+"Now are you more zealous than honest, boy."
+
+I was silent, abashed, and he added:
+
+"I had not been afraid to try conclusions with him, pistols or not, were
+I sure that he had the packet. I believe he has, yet there is the
+chance that, after all, in this one particular he speaks truth. I cannot
+take any chances; I must get those papers for Monsieur."
+
+"Yes, we could not have done otherwise, M. Étienne. But, monsieur, will
+you dare go to this inn? M. le Comte is a man in jeopardy; he may not
+keep rendezvous of the enemy's choosing."
+
+"I might not keep one of Lucas's choosing. Though," he added, with a
+smile, "natheless, I think I should. But it is not likely this fellow
+knows of the warrant against me. Paris is a big place; news does not
+travel all over town as quickly as at St. Quentin. I think friend Peyrot
+has more to gain by playing fair than playing false, and appointing the
+cabaret of the Bonne Femme has a very open, pleasing sound. Did he mean
+to brain me he would scarce have set that place."
+
+"It was not Peyrot alone I meant. But monsieur is so well known. In the
+streets, or at the dinner-hour, some one may see you who knows Mayenne
+is after you."
+
+"Oh, of that I must take my chance," he made answer, no whit troubled by
+the warning. "I go home now for the ransom, and I will e'en be at the
+pains to doff this gear for something darker."
+
+"Monsieur," I pleaded, "why not stay at home to get your dues of sleep?
+Vigo will bring the gold; he and I will put the matter through."
+
+"I ask not your advice," he cried haughtily; then with instant
+softening: "Nay, this is my affair, Félix. I have taken it upon myself
+to recover Monsieur his papers. I must carry it through myself to the
+very omega."
+
+I said no more, partly because it would have done no good, partly
+because, in spite of the strange word, I understood how he felt.
+
+"Perhaps you should go home and sleep," he suggested tenderly.
+
+"Nay," cried I. "I had a cat-nap in the lane; I'm game to see it
+through."
+
+"Then," he commanded, "you may stay here-abouts and watch that door. For
+I have some curiosity to know whether he will need to fare forth after
+the treasure. If he do as I guess, he will spend the next hours as you
+counsel me, making up arrears of sleep, and you'll not see him till a
+quarter or so before eleven. But whenever he comes out, follow him. Keep
+your safe distance and dog him if you can."
+
+"And if I lose him?"
+
+"Come back home. Station yourself now where he won't notice you. That
+arch there should serve."
+
+We had been standing at the street corner, sheltered by a balcony over
+our heads from the view of Peyrot's window.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I do wish you would bring Vigo back with you."
+
+"Félix," he laughed, "you are the worst courtier I ever saw."
+
+I crossed the street as he told me, glancing up at the third story of
+the house of the Gilded Shears. No watcher was visible. From the
+archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I could well
+command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M. Étienne nodded to me and
+walked off whistling, staring full in the face every one he met.
+
+I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot to be
+doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep. But I was sternly determined
+to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater comfort--cold
+enough comfort it was--I sat me down on the paving-stones, yet I kept my
+eyelids propped open, my eyes on Peyrot's door. I was helped in carrying
+out my virtuous resolve by the fact that the court was populous and my
+carcass in the entrance much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that
+full half of them swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The
+hard part was that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on
+Peyrot's door.
+
+He delayed so long and so long that I feared with shamed misgiving I
+must have let him slip, when at length, on the very stroke of eleven, he
+sauntered forth. He was yawning prodigiously, but set off past my lair
+at a smart pace. I followed at goodly distance, but never once did he
+glance around. He led the way straight to the sign of the Bonne Femme.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE "BONNE FEMME."]
+
+I entered two minutes after him, passing from the cabaret, where my men
+were not, to the dining-hall, where, to my relief, they were. At two
+huge fireplaces savoury soups bubbled, juicy rabbits simmered, fat
+capons roasted; the smell brought the tears to my eyes. A concourse of
+people was about: gentles and burghers seated at table, or passing in
+and out; waiters running back and forth from the fires, drawers from
+the cabaret. I paused to scan the throng, jostled by one and another,
+before I descried my master and my knave. M. Étienne, the prompter at
+the rendezvous, had, like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had
+deserted it now and stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their
+elbows on the deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up
+suddenly to Peyrot's side, making him jump.
+
+"Oh, it's you, my little gentleman!" he exclaimed, smiling to show all
+his firm teeth, as white and even as a court beauty's. He looked in the
+best of humours, as was not wonderful, considering that he was engaged
+in fastening up in the breast of his doublet something hard and lumpy.
+M. Étienne held up a packet for me to see, before Peyrot's shielding
+body; it was tied with red cord and sealed with a spread falcon over the
+tiny letters, _Je reviendrai_. In the corner was written very small,
+_St. Q._ Smiling, he put it into the breast of his doublet.
+
+"Monsieur," my scamp said to him with close lips that the room might not
+hear, "you are a gentleman. If there ever comes a day when You-know-who
+is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to serve you as well as I
+have served him."
+
+"I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M. Étienne
+answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than ever.
+
+"I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have served him.
+Bear me in mind, monsieur."
+
+"Come, Félix," was all my lord's answer.
+
+Peyrot sprang forward to detain us.
+
+"Monsieur, will you not dine with me? Both of you, I beg. I will have
+every wine the cellar affords."
+
+"No," said M. Étienne, carelessly, not deigning to anger; "but there is
+my dinner for you, an you like. I have paid for it, but I have other
+business than to eat it."
+
+Bidding a waiter serve M. Peyrot, he walked from the room without other
+glance at him. A slight shade fell over the reckless, scampish face; he
+was a moment vexed that we scorned him. Merely vexed, I think; shamed
+not at all; he knew not the feel of it. Even in the brief space I
+watched him, as I passed to the door, his visage cleared, and he sat him
+down contentedly to finish M. Étienne's veal broth.
+
+My lord paced along rapidly and gladly, on fire to be before Monsieur
+with the packet. But one little cloud, transient as Peyrot's, passed
+across his lightsome countenance.
+
+"I would that knave were of my rank," he said. "I had not left him
+without slapping a glove in his face."
+
+That Peyrot had come off scot-free put me out of patience, too, but I
+regretted the gold we had given him more than the wounds we had not. The
+money, on the contrary, troubled M. Étienne no whit; what he had never
+toiled for he parted with lightly.
+
+We came to our gates and went straightway up the stairs to Monsieur's
+cabinet. He sprang to meet us at the door, snatching the packet from
+his son's eager hand.
+
+"Well done, Étienne, my champion! An you brought me the crown of France
+I were not so pleased!"
+
+The flush of joy at generous praise of good work kindled on M. Étienne's
+cheek; it were hard to say which of the two messieurs beamed the more
+delightedly on the other.
+
+"My son, you have brought me back my honour," spoke Monsieur, more
+quietly, the exuberance of his delight abating, but leaving him none the
+less happy. "If you had sinned against me--which I do not admit, dear
+lad--it were more than made up for now."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born for.
+Now I know it was for this morning."
+
+"For this and many more mornings, Étienne," Monsieur made gay answer,
+laying a hand on his son's shoulder. "Courage, comrade. We'll have our
+lady yet."
+
+He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his writing-table. For
+all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more interested in his papers
+than in Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"I'll get this off my hands at once," he went on, with the effect of
+talking to himself rather than to us. "It shall go straight off to
+Lemaître. You'd better go to bed, both of you. My faith, you've made a
+night of it!"
+
+"Won't you take me for your messenger, Monsieur? You need a trusty
+one."
+
+"A kindly offer, Étienne. But you have earned your rest. And you, true
+as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I have, God be thanked.
+Gilles will take this straight from my hand to Lemaître's."
+
+He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a thought
+striking him, he took it out again.
+
+"I'd best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the
+president's papers. I'll scratch out my initial, too. The cipher tells
+nothing."
+
+"He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur."
+
+"No, but this time we'll provide for every chance. We'll take all the
+precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute."
+
+He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to scrape
+the wax away. It slipped and severed the cords. Of its own accord the
+stiff paper of the flap unfolded.
+
+"The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if I were
+in danger of forgetting it," Monsieur said idly. "The truth is--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet, slapping it
+wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet. Each was absolutely blank!
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_The Florentines._
+
+
+M. Étienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers from his
+father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to believe his
+senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one moment from flowery
+lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he did.
+
+"But the seal!" he stammered.
+
+"The seal was genuine," Monsieur answered, startled as he. "How your
+fellow could have the king's signet--"
+
+"See," M. Étienne cried, scratching at the fragments. "This is it. Dunce
+that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is a layer of paper
+embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out, smeared hot wax on the
+false packet, pressed in the seal, and curled the new wax over the edge.
+It was cleverly done; the seal is but little thicker, little larger than
+before. It did not look tampered with. Would you have suspected it,
+Monsieur?" he demanded piteously.
+
+"I had no thought of it. But this Peyrot--it may not yet be too late--"
+
+"I will go back," M. Étienne cried, darting to the door. But Monsieur
+laid forcible hands on him.
+
+"Not you, Étienne. You were hurt yesterday; you have not closed your
+eyes for twenty-four hours. I don't want a dead son. I blame you not for
+the failure; not another man of us all would have come so near success."
+
+"Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M. Étienne
+cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I did not think to
+doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in the inn, but it was
+Lemaître's sealed packet. However, Peyrot sat down to my dinner: I can
+be back before he has finished his three kinds of wine."
+
+"Stop, Étienne," Monsieur commanded. "I forbid you. You are gray with
+fatigue. Vigo shall go."
+
+M. Étienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze in his eyes
+flickered out, and he made obedient salute.
+
+"So be it. Let him go. I am no use; I bungle everything I touch. But he
+may accomplish something."
+
+He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his face in
+his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened. A statue-maker might have
+copied him for a figure of Defeat.
+
+"Go find Vigo," Monsieur bade me, "and then get you to bed."
+
+I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.
+
+I too smarted, but mine was the private's disappointment, not the
+general's who had planned the campaign. The credit of the rescue was
+none of mine; no more was the blame of failure. I need not rack myself
+with questioning, Had I in this or that done differently, should I not
+have triumphed? I had done only what I was told. Yet I was part of the
+expedition; I could not but share the grief. If I did not wet my pillow
+with my tears, it was because I could not keep awake long enough.
+Whatever my sorrows, speedily they slipped from me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then wondered
+whether, after all, I had waked. Here, to be sure, was Marcel's bed, on
+which I had lain down; there was the high gable-window, through which
+the westering sun now poured. There was the wardrobe open, with Marcel's
+Sunday suit hanging on the peg; here were the two stools, the little
+image of the Virgin on the wall. But here was also something else, so
+out of place in the chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure
+it was real. At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign
+wood, beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man. It was
+about as large as my lord's despatch-box, bound at the edges with
+shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of leaves
+and flowers. Beside the box were set three shallow trays, lined with
+blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith's work-glittering chains,
+linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of yellow snakes with green
+eyes, buckles with ivory teeth, glove-clasps thick with pearls,
+ear-rings and finger-rings with precious stones.
+
+I stared bedazzled from the display to him who stood as showman. This
+was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller, with a
+shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face, very boyish
+and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois fashion; yet there was
+about him and his apparel something, I could not tell what, unfamiliar,
+different from us others.
+
+He, meeting my eye, smiled in the friendliest way, like a child, and
+said, in Italian:
+
+"Good day to you, my little gentleman."
+
+I had still the uncertain feeling that I must be in a dream, for why
+should an Italian jeweller be displaying his treasures to me, a
+penniless page? But the dream was amusing; I was in no haste to wake.
+
+I knew my Italian well enough, for Monsieur's confessor, the Father
+Francesco, who had followed him into exile, was Florentine; and as he
+always spoke his own tongue to Monsieur, and I was always at the duke's
+heels, I picked up a deal of it. After Monsieur's going, the father,
+already a victim, poor man, to the falling-sickness, of which he died,
+stayed behind with us, and I found a pricking pleasure in talking with
+him in the speech he loved, of Monsieur's Roman journey, of his exploits
+in the war of the Three Henrys. Therefore the words came easily to my
+lips to answer this lad from over the Alps:
+
+"I give you good day, friend."
+
+He looked somewhat surprised and more than pleased, breaking at once
+into voluble speech:
+
+"The best of greetings to you, young sir. Now, what can I sell you this
+fine day? I have not been half a week in this big city of yours, yet
+already I have but one boxful of trinkets left. They are noble,
+open-handed customers, these gallants of Paris. I have not to show them
+my wares twice, I can tell you. They know what key will unlock their
+fair mistresses' hearts. And now, what can I sell you, my little
+gentleman, to buy your sweetheart's kisses?"
+
+"Nay, I have no sweetheart," I said, "and if I had, she would not wear
+these gauds."
+
+"She would if she could get them, then," he retorted. "Now, let me give
+you a bit of advice, my friend, for I see you are but young: buy this
+gold chain of me, or this ring with this little dove on it,--see, how
+cunningly wrought,--and you'll not lack long for a sweetheart."
+
+His words huffed me a bit, for he spoke as if he were vastly my senior.
+
+"I want no sweetheart," I returned with dignity, "to be bought with
+gold."
+
+"Nay," he cried quickly, "but when your own valour and prowess have
+inflamed her with passion, you should be willing to reward her devotion
+and set at rest her suspense by a suitable gift."
+
+I looked at him uneasily, for I had a suspicion that he might be making
+fun of me. But his countenance was as guileless as a kitten's.
+
+"Well, I tell you again I have no sweetheart and I want no sweetheart,"
+I said; "I have no time to bother with girls."
+
+At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making naught by
+it.
+
+"The messer is very much occupied?" he asked with exceeding deference.
+"The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he is occupied with
+great matters? Oh, that can I well believe, and I cry the messer's
+pardon. For when the mind is taken up with affairs of state, it is
+distasteful to listen even for a moment to light talk of maids and
+jewels."
+
+Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly unconscious,
+was sorting over his treasures. I made up my mind his queer talk was but
+the outlandish way of a foreigner. He looked at me again, serious and
+respectful.
+
+"The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous
+encounters. Is it not so? Then he will do well to carry ever over his
+heart the sacred image of our Lord."
+
+He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended a
+crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon it.
+Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin, was
+nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm
+of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed
+myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix;
+the stranger all unwittingly had struck a bull's-eye. I had committed
+grave offence against God, but perhaps if, putting gewgaws aside, I
+should give my all for this cross, he would call the account even. I
+knew nothing of the value of a carving such as this, but I remembered I
+was not moneyless, and I said, albeit somewhat shyly:
+
+"I cannot take the rosary. But I should like well the crucifix. But
+then, I have only ten pistoles."
+
+"Ten pistoles!" he repeated contemptuously. "Corpo di Bacco! The
+workmanship alone is worth twenty." Then, viewing my fallen visage, he
+added: "However, I have received fair treatment in this house, beshrew
+me but I have! I have made good sales to your young count. What sort of
+master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?"
+
+"Oh, there's nobody like him," I answered, "except, of course, M. le
+Duc."
+
+"Ah, then you have two masters?" he inquired curiously, yet with a
+certain careless air. It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he was
+a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman. But he should
+gain nothing from me.
+
+"This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin," I said. "Surely you
+could not come in at the gate without discovering that?"
+
+"He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?"
+
+"Assuredly," I replied cautiously.
+
+"More of a man than the Comte de Mar?"
+
+I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been for my
+hopes of the crucifix. If he planned to sell it to me cheap, thereby
+hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I should not buy
+it at his price--and withhold the information. So I made civil answer:
+
+"They are both as gallant gentlemen as any living. About this cross,
+now--"
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered at once, accepting with willingness--well
+feigned, I thought--the change of topic. "You can give me ten pistoles,
+say you? 'Tis making you a present of the treasure. Yet, since I have
+received good treatment at the hands of your master, I will e'en give it
+to you. You shall have your cross."
+
+With suspicions now at point of certainty, I drew out my pouch from
+under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces which were my
+store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it when I shattered
+the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it together for me with a
+thread, and it served very well. The Italian unhooked the delicate
+carving from the silver chain and hung it on my wooden one, which I
+threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my new possession. Marcel's
+Virgin was a botch compared with it. I remembered that mademoiselle, who
+had given me half my wealth, the half that won me the rest, had bidden
+me buy something in the marts of Paris; and I told myself with pride
+that she could not fail to hold me high did she know how, passing by all
+vanities, I had spent my whole store for a holy image. Few boys of my
+age would be capable of the like. Certes, I had done piously, and should
+now take a further pious joy, my purchase safe on my neck, in thwarting
+the wiles of this serpent. I would play with him awhile, tease and
+baffle him, before handing him over in triumph to Vigo.
+
+Sure enough, he began as I had expected:
+
+"This M. de Mar down-stairs, he is a very good master, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," I said, without enthusiasm.
+
+"He has always treated you well?"
+
+I bethought myself of the trick I had played successfully with the
+officer of the burgess guard.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so. I have only known him two days."
+
+"But you have known him well? You have seen much of him?" he demanded
+with ill-concealed eagerness.
+
+"But not so very much," I made tepid answer. "I have not been with him
+all the time of these two days. I have seen really very little of him."
+
+"And you know not whether or no he be a good master?"
+
+"Oh, pretty good. So-so."
+
+He sprang forward to deal me a stinging box on the ear.
+
+I was out of bed at one bound, scattering the trinkets in a golden rain
+and rushing for him. He retreated before me. It was to save his jewels,
+but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of me. I dashed at him, all
+headlong confidence; the next I knew he had somehow twisted his foot
+between mine, and tripped me before I could grapple. Never was wight
+more confounded to find himself on the floor.
+
+I was starting up again unhurt when I saw something that made me to
+forget my purpose. I sat still where I was, with dropped jaw and bulging
+eyes. For his hair, that had been black, was golden.
+
+"Ventre bleu!" I said.
+
+"And so you know not you little villain, whether you have a good master
+or not?"
+
+"But how was I to dream it was monsieur?" I cried, confounded. "I knew
+there was something queer about him--about you, I mean--about the person
+I took you for, that is. I knew there was something wrong about
+you--that is to say, I mean, I thought there was; I mean I knew he
+wasn't what he seemed--you were not. And Peyrot fooled us, and I didn't
+want to be fooled again."
+
+"Then I am a good master?" he demanded truculently, advancing upon me.
+
+I put up my hands to my ears.
+
+"The best, monsieur. And monsieur wrestled well, too."
+
+"I can't prove that by you, Félix," he retorted, and laughed in my
+nettled face. "Well, if you've not trampled on my jewels, I forgive your
+contumacy."
+
+If I had, my bare toes had done them no harm. I crawled about the floor,
+gathering them all up and putting them on the bed, where I presently sat
+down myself to stare at him, trying to realize him for M. le Comte. He
+had seated himself, too, and was dusting his trampled wig and clapping
+it on again.
+
+He had shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and the whole
+look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke of the razor;
+he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He had stained his face
+so well that it looked for all the world as though the Southern sun had
+done it for him; his eyebrows and, lashes were dark by nature. His wig
+came much lower over his forehead than did his own hair, and altered the
+upper part of his face as much as the shaving of the lower. Only his
+eyes were the same. He had had his back to the window at first, and I
+had not noted them; but now that he had turned, his eyes gleamed so
+light as to be fairly startling in his dark face--like stars in a stormy
+sky.
+
+"Well, then, how do you like me?"
+
+"Monsieur confounds me. It's witchery. I cannot get used to him."
+
+"That's as I would have it," he returned, coming over to the bedside to
+arrange his treasures. "For if I look new to you, I think I may look so
+to the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur goes to the Hôtel de Lorraine as a jeweller?" I cried,
+enlightened.
+
+"Aye. And if the ladies do not crowd about me--" he broke off with a
+gesture, and put his trays back in his box.
+
+"Well, I wondered, monsieur. I wondered if we were going to sell
+ornaments to Peyrot."
+
+He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn Peyrot.
+He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him eating, cursed him
+drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting; cursed him summer, cursed
+him winter; cursed him young, cursed him old; living, dying, and dead. I
+inferred that the packet had not been recovered.
+
+"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne Femme, but
+Peyrot had vanished. So he galloped round to the Rue Tournelles, whither
+he had sent two of our men before him, but the bird was flown. He had
+been home half an hour before,--he left the inn just after us,--had
+paid his arrears of rent, surrendered his key, and taken away his chest,
+with all his worldly goods in it, on the shoulders of two porters, bound
+for parts unknown. Gilles is scouring Paris for him. Mordieu, I wish him
+luck!"
+
+His face betokened little hope of Gilles. We both kept chagrined
+silence.
+
+"And we thought him sleeping!" presently cried he.
+
+"Well," he added, rising, "that milk's spilt; no use crying over it.
+Plan a better venture; that's the only course. Monsieur is gone back to
+St. Denis to report to the king. Marry, he makes as little of these
+gates as if he were a tennis-ball and they the net. Time was when he
+thought he must plan and prepare, and know the captain of the watch, and
+go masked at midnight. He has got bravely over that now; he bounces in
+and out as easily as kiss my hand. I pray he may not try it once too
+often."
+
+"Mayenne dare not touch him."
+
+"What Mayenne may dare is not good betting. Monsieur thinks he dares
+not. Monsieur has come through so many perils of late, he is happily
+convinced he bears a charmed life. Félix, do you come with me to the
+Hôtel de Lorraine?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" I cried, bethinking myself that I had forgotten to
+dress.
+
+"Nay, you need not don these clothes," he interposed, with a look of
+wickedness which I could not interpret. "Wait; I'm back anon."
+
+He darted out of the room, to return speedily with an armful of apparel,
+which he threw on the bed.
+
+"Monsieur," I gasped in horror, "it's woman's gear!"
+
+"Verily."
+
+"Monsieur! you cannot mean me to wear this!"
+
+"I mean it precisely."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Félix," he laughed, "how else am I to take you? You were
+at pains to make yourself conspicuous in M. de Mayenne's salon; they
+will recognize you as quickly as me."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, put me in a wig, in cap and bells, an you like! I will be
+monsieur's clown, anything, only not this!"
+
+"I never heard of a jeweller accompanied by his clown. Nor have I any
+party-colour in my armoires. But since I have exerted myself to borrow
+this toggery,--and a fine, big lass is the owner, so I think it will
+fit,--you must wear it."
+
+I was like to burst with mortification; I stood there in dumb, agonized
+appeal.
+
+"Oh, well, then you need not go at all. If you go, you go as Félicie.
+But you may stay at home, if it likes you better."
+
+That settled me. I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not
+go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and
+clumsily in the murrain petticoats.
+
+There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and a white
+apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back collar, and a
+scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green tongue. I was soon
+in such a desperate tangle over these divers garments, so utterly
+muddled as to which to put on first, and which side forward, and which
+end up, and where and how by the grace of God to fasten them, that M.
+Étienne, with roars of laughter, came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted
+on stuffing the whole of my jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the
+proper curves, and to make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I
+was like to suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so
+that every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces
+from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and again,
+and the more it happened the more we laughed and the less he could dress
+me. I ached in every rib, and the tears were running down his cheeks,
+washing little clean channels in the stain.
+
+"Félix, this will never do," he gasped when at length he could speak.
+"Never after a carouse have I been so maudlin. Compose yourself, for the
+love of Heaven. Think of something serious; think of me! Think of
+Peyrot, think of Mayenne, think of Lucas. Think of what will happen to
+us now if Mayenne know us for ourselves."
+
+"Enough, monsieur," I said. "I am sobered."
+
+But even now that I held still we could not draw the last holes in the
+bodice-point nearly together.
+
+"Nay, monsieur, I can never wear it like this," I panted, when he had
+tied it as tight as he could. "I shall die, or I shall burst the seams."
+He had perforce to give me more room; he pulled the apron higher to
+cover gaps, and fastened a bunch of keys and a pocket at my waist. He
+set a brown wig on my head, nearly covered by a black mortier, with its
+wide scarf hanging down my back.
+
+"Hang me, but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried, proud of
+me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "Félix, you've no notion how
+handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the world when you contrived to
+be born a boy."
+
+"I thank my stars I was born a boy," I declared. "I wouldn't get into
+this toggery for any one else on earth. I tell monsieur that, flat."
+
+"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails spoil
+all."
+
+I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot.
+
+"Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?"
+
+"Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned.
+
+"No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make him
+writhe to lend them.
+
+"Constant's best," he promised, disappearing. It was as good as a play
+to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot, after a month
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages existed; or, more
+likely, he did not care to take the household into his confidence. He
+was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose, and shoes of red morocco,
+the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he brought a hand-mirror, for me
+to look on my beauty.
+
+"Nay, monsieur," I said with a sulk that started anew his laughter.
+"I'll not take it; I want not to see myself. But monsieur will do well
+to examine his own countenance."
+
+"Pardieu! I should say so," he cried. "I must e'en go repair myself; and
+you, Félix,--Félicie,--must be fed."
+
+I was in truth as hollow as a drum, yet I cried out that I had rather
+starve than venture into the kitchen.
+
+"You flatter yourself," he retorted. "You'd not be known. Old Jumel will
+give you the pick of the larder for a kiss," he roared in my sullen
+face, and added, relenting: "Well, then, I will send one of the lackeys
+up with a salver. The lazy beggars have naught else to do."
+
+I bolted the door after him, and when the man brought my tray, bade him
+set it down outside. He informed me through the panels that he would go
+drown himself before he would be content to lie slugabed the livelong
+day while his betters waited on him. I trembled for fear in his virtuous
+scorn he should take his fardel away again. But he had had his orders.
+When, after listening to his footsteps descending the stairs, I reached
+out a cautious arm, the tray was on the floor. The generous meat and
+wine put new heart into me; by the time my lord returned I was eager for
+the enterprise.
+
+"Have you finished?" he demanded. "Faith, I see you have. Then let us
+start; it grows late. The shadows, like good Mussulmans, are stretching
+to the east. I must catch the ladies in their chambers before supper.
+Come, we'll take the box between us."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I carry that on my shoulders."
+
+"What, my lass, on your dainty shoulders? Nay, 'twould make the
+townsfolk stare."
+
+I gnawed my lip in silence; he exclaimed:
+
+"Now, never have I seen a maid fresh from the convent blush so prettily.
+I'd give my right hand to walk you out past the guard-room."
+
+I shrank as a snail when you touch its horns. He cried:
+
+"Marry, but I will, though!"
+
+Now I, unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take refuge in;
+I might writhe, but I could not defend myself.
+
+"As you will, monsieur," I said, setting my teeth hard.
+
+"Nay, I dare not. Those fellows would follow us laughing to the doors of
+Lorraine House itself. I've told none of this prank; I have even
+contrived to send all the lackeys out of doors on fools' errands. We'll
+sneak out like thieves by the postern. Come, tread your wariest."
+
+On tiptoe, with the caution of malefactors, we crept from stair to
+stair, giggling under our breath like the callow lad and saucy lass we
+looked to be. We won in safety to the postern, and came out to face the
+terrible eye of the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_A double masquerade._
+
+
+"Félix, we are speaking in our own tongue. It is such lapses as these
+bring men to the gallows. Italian from this word, my girl."
+
+"Monsieur, I have no notion how to bear myself, what to say," I answered
+uneasily.
+
+"Say as little as you can. For, I confess, your voice and your hands
+give me pause; otherwise I would take you anywhere for a lass. Your part
+must be the shy maiden. My faith, you look the rôle; your cheeks are
+poppies! You will follow docile at my heels while I tell lies for two. I
+have the hope that the ladies will heed me and my jewels more than you."
+
+"Monsieur, could we not go safelier at night?"
+
+"I have thought of that. But at night the household gathers in the
+salon; we should run the gantlet of a hundred looks and tongues. While
+now, if we have luck, we may win to mademoiselle's own chamber--" He
+broke off abruptly, and walked along in a day-dream.
+
+"Well," he resumed presently, coming back to the needs of the moment,
+"let us know our names and station. I am Giovanni Rossini, son of the
+famous goldsmith of Florence; you, Giulietta, my sister. We came to
+Paris in the legate's train, trade being dull at home, the gentry having
+fled to the hills for the hot month. Of course you've never set foot out
+of France, Fé--Giulietta?"
+
+"Never out of St. Quentin till I came hither. But Father Francesco has
+talked to me much of his city of Florence."
+
+"Good; you can then make shift to answer a question or two if put to it.
+Your Italian, I swear, is of excellent quality. You speak French like
+the Picard you are, but Italian like a gentleman--that is to say, like a
+lady."
+
+"Monsieur," I bemoaned miserably, "I shall never come through it alive,
+never in the world. They will know me in the flick of an eye for a boy;
+I know they will. Why, the folk we are passing can see something wrong;
+they all are staring at me."
+
+"Of course they stare," he answered tranquilly. "I should think some
+wrong if they did not. Can your modesty never understand, my Giulietta,
+what a pretty lass you are?"
+
+He fell to laughing at my discomfort, and thus, he full of gay
+confidence, I full of misgiving, we came before the doors of the Hôtel
+de Lorraine.
+
+"Courage," he whispered to me. "Courage will conquer the devil himself.
+Put a good face on it and take the plunge." The next moment he was in
+the archway, deluging the sentry with his rapid Italian.
+
+"Nom d'un chien! What's all this? What are you after?" the man shouted
+at us, to make us understand the better. "Haven't you a word of honest
+French in your head?"
+
+M. Étienne, tapping his box, very brokenly, very laboriously stammered
+forth something about jewels for the ladies.
+
+"Get in with you, then."
+
+We were not slow to obey.
+
+The courtyard was deserted, nor did we see any one in the windows of the
+house, against which the afternoon sun struck hotly. To keep out his
+unwelcome rays, the house door was pushed almost shut. We paused a
+moment on the step, to listen to the voices of gossiping lackeys within,
+and then M. Étienne boldly knocked.
+
+There was a scurrying in the hall, as if half a dozen idlers were
+plunging into their doublets and running to their places. Then my good
+friend Pierre opened the door. In the row of underlings at his back I
+recognized the two who had taken part in my flogging. The cold sweat
+broke out upon me lest they in their turn should know me.
+
+M. Étienne looked from one to another with the childlike smile of his
+bare lips, demanding if any here spoke Italian.
+
+"I," answered Pierre himself. "Now, what may your errand be?"
+
+"Oh, it's soon told," M. Étienne cried volubly, as one delighted to find
+himself understood. "I am a jeweller from Florence; I am selling my
+wares in your great houses. I have but just sold a necklace to the
+Duchesse de Joyeuse; I crave permission to show my trinkets to the fair
+ladies here. But take me up to them, and they'll not make you repent
+it."
+
+"Go tell madame," Pierre bade one of his men, and turning again to us
+gave us kindly permission to set down our burden and wait.
+
+For incredible good luck, the heavy hangings were drawn over the sunny
+windows, making a soft twilight in the room. I sidled over to a bench in
+the far corner and was feeling almost safe, when Pierre--beshrew
+him!--called attention to me.
+
+"Now, that is a heavy box for a maid to help lug. Do you make the lasses
+do porters' work, you Florentines?"
+
+"But I am a stranger here," M. Étienne explained. "Did I hire a porter,
+how am I to tell an honest one? Belike he might run off with all my
+treasures, and where is poor Giovanni then? Besides, it were cruel to
+leave my little sister in our lodging, not a soul to speak to, the long
+day through. There is none where we lodge knows Italian, as you do so
+like an angel, Sir Master of the Household."
+
+Now, Pierre was no more maître d'hôtel than I was, but that did not
+dampen his pleasure to be called so. He sat down on the bench by M.
+Étienne.
+
+"How came you two to be in Paris?" he asked.
+
+My lord proceeded to tell him I know not what glib and convincing
+farrago, with every excellence, I made no doubt, of accent and gesture.
+But I could not listen; I had affairs of my own by this time. The
+lackeys had come up close round me, more interested in me than in my
+brother, and the same Jean who had held me for my beating, who had
+wanted my coat stripped off me that I might be whacked to bleed, now
+said:
+
+"I'll warrant you're hot and tired and thirsty, mademoiselle, for all
+you look as fresh as cress. Will you drink a cup of wine if I fetch it?"
+
+I had kept my eyes on the ground from the first moment of encounter, in
+mortal dread to look these men in the face; but now, gaining courage, I
+raised my glance and smiled at him bashfully, and faltered that I did
+not understand.
+
+He understood the sense, if not the words, of my answer, and repeated
+his offer, slowly, loudly. I strove to look as blank as the wall, and
+shook my head gently and helplessly, and turned an inquiring gaze to the
+others, as if beseeching them to interpret. One of the fellows clapped
+Jean on the shoulder with a roar of laughter.
+
+"A fall, a fall!" he shouted. "Here's the all-conquering Jean Marchand
+tripped up for once. He thinks nothing that wears petticoats can
+withstand him, but here's a maid that hasn't a word to throw at him."
+
+"Pshaw! she doesn't understand me," Jean returned, undaunted, and
+promptly pointed a finger at my mouth and then raised his fist to his
+own, with sucks and gulps. I allowed myself to comprehend then. I smiled
+in as coquettish a fashion as I could contrive, and glanced on the
+ground, and slowly looked up again and nodded.
+
+The men burst into loud applause.
+
+"Good old Jean! Jean wins. Well played, Jean! Vive Jean!"
+
+Jean, flushed with triumph, ran off on his errand, while I thought of
+Margot, the steward's daughter, at home, and tried to recollect every
+air and grace I had ever seen her flaunt before us lads. It was not bad
+fun, this. I hid my hands under my apron and spoke not at all, but
+sighed and smiled and blushed under their stares like any fine lady.
+Once in one's life, for one hour, it is rather amusing to be a girl. But
+that is quite long enough, say I.
+
+Jean came again directly with a great silver tankard.
+
+"Burgundy, pardieu!" cried one of his mates, sticking his nose into the
+pot as it passed him, "and full! Ciel, you must think your lass has a
+head."
+
+"Oh, I shall drink with her," Jean answered.
+
+I put out my hand for the tankard, running the risk of my big paw's
+betraying me, resolved that he should not drink with me of that draught,
+when of a sudden he leaned over to snatch a kiss. I dodged him, more
+frightened than the shyest maid. Though in this half-light I might
+perfectly look a girl, I could not believe I should kiss like one. In a
+panic, I fled from Jean to my master's side.
+
+M. Étienne, wheeling about, came near to laughing out in my face, when
+he remembered his part and played it with a zeal that was like to undo
+us. He sprang to his feet, drawing his dagger.
+
+"Who insults my sister?" he shouted. "Who is the dog does this!"
+
+They were on him, wrenching the knife from his hand, wrenching his lame
+arm at the same time so painfully that he gasped. I was scared chill; I
+knew if they mishandled him they would brush the wig off.
+
+"Mind your manners, sirrah!" Jean cried.
+
+Monsieur's ardour vanished; a gentle, appealing smile spread over his
+face.
+
+"I cry your pardon, sir," he said to Jean; then turning to Pierre, "This
+messer does not understand me. But tell him, I beg you, I crave his good
+pardon. I was but angered for a moment that any should think to touch my
+little sister. I meant no harm."
+
+"Nor he," Pierre retorted. "A kiss, forsooth! What do you expect with a
+handsome lass like that? If you will take her about--"
+
+"Madame says the jeweller fellow is to come up," our messenger
+announced, returning.
+
+My lord besought Pierre:
+
+"My knife? I may have my knife? By the beard of St. Peter, I swear to
+you, I meant no harm with it. I drew it in jest."
+
+Now, this, which was the sole true statement he had made since our
+arrival, was the only one Pierre did not quite believe. He took the
+knife from Jean, but he hesitated to hand it over to its owner.
+
+"No," he said; "you were angry enough. I know your Italian temper. I'm
+thinking I'll keep this little toy of yours till you come down."
+
+"Very well, Sir Majordomo," M. Étienne rejoined indifferently, "so be it
+you give it to me when I go." He grasped the handle of the box, and we
+followed our guide up the stair, my master offering me the comforting
+assurance:
+
+"It really matters not in the least, for if we be caught the dagger's
+not yet forged can save us."
+
+We were ushered into a large, fair chamber hung with arras, the carpet
+under our feet deep and soft as moss. At one side stood the bed, raised
+on its dais; opposite were the windows, the dressing-table between them,
+covered with scent-bottles and boxes, brushes and combs, very glittering
+and grand. Fluttering about the room were some half-dozen fine dames and
+demoiselles, brave in silks and jewels. Among them I was quick to
+recognize Mme. de Mayenne, and I thought I knew vaguely one or two other
+faces as those I had seen before about her. I started presently to
+discover the little Mlle. de Tavanne: that night she had worn sky-colour
+and now she wore rose, but there was no mistaking her saucy face.
+
+We set our box on a table, as the duchess bade us, and I helped M.
+Étienne to lay out its contents, which done, I retired to the
+background, well content to leave the brunt of the business to him. It
+was as he prophesied: they paid me no heed whatever. He was smoothly
+launched on the third relating of his tale; I trow by this time he
+almost believed it himself. Certes, he never faltered, but rattled on as
+if he had two tongues, telling in confidential tone of our father and
+mother, our little brothers and sisters at home in Florence; our journey
+with the legate, his kindness and care of us (I hoped that dignitary
+would not walk in just now to pay his respects to madame la générale);
+of our arrival in Paris, and our wonder and delight at the city's
+grandeur, the like of which was not to be found in Italy; and, last, but
+not least, he had much to say, with an innocent, wide-eyed gravity, in
+praise of the ladies of Paris, so beautiful, so witty, so generous! They
+were all crowding around him, calling him pretty boy, laughing at his
+compliments, handling and exclaiming over his trinkets, trying the
+effect of a buckle or a bracelet, preening and cooing like
+bright-breasted pigeons about the corn-thrower. It was as pretty a sight
+as ever I beheld, but it was not to smile at such that we had risked our
+heads. Of Mlle. de Montluc there was no sign.
+
+No one was marking me, and I wondered if I might not slip out unseen and
+make my way to mademoiselle's chamber. I knew she lodged on this story,
+near the back of the house, in a room overlooking the little street and
+having a turret-window. But I was somewhat doubtful of my skill to find
+it through the winding corridors of a great palace. I was more than
+likely to meet some one who would question my purpose, and what answer
+could I make? I scarce dared say I was seeking mademoiselle. I am not
+ready at explanations, like M. le Comte.
+
+Yet here were the golden moments flying and our cause no further
+advanced. Should I leave it all to M. Étienne, trusting that when he had
+made his sales here he would be permitted to seek out the other ladies
+of the house? Or should I strive to aid him? Could I win in safety to
+mademoiselle's chamber, what a feat!
+
+It so irked me to be doing nothing that I was on the very point of
+gingerly disappearing when one of the ladies, she with the yellow curls,
+the prettiest of them all, turned suddenly from the group, calling
+clearly:
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+Our hearts stood still--mine did, and I can vouch for his--as the heavy
+window-curtain swayed aside and she came forth.
+
+She came listlessly. Her hair sweeping against her cheek was ebony on
+snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were dark rings, like
+the smears of an inky finger. M. Étienne let fall the bracelet he was
+holding, staring at her oblivious of aught else, his brows knotted in
+distress, his face afire with love and sympathy. He made a step forward;
+I thought him about to catch her in his arms, when he recollected
+himself and dropped on his knees to grope for the fallen trinket.
+
+"You wanted me, madame?" she asked Mme. de Mayenne.
+
+"No," said the duchess, with a tartness of voice she seemed to reserve
+for Mlle. de Montluc; "'twas Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"It was I," the fair-haired beauty answered in the same breath. "I want
+you to stop moping over there in the corner. Come look at these baubles
+and see if they cannot bring a sparkle to your eye. Fie, Lorance! The
+having too many lovers is nothing to cry about. It is an affliction many
+and many a lady would give her ears to undergo."
+
+"Take heart o' grace, Lorance!" cried Mlle. de Tavanne. "If you go on
+looking as you look to-day, you'll not long be troubled by lovers."
+
+She made no answer to either, but stood there passively till it might be
+their pleasure to have done with her, with a patient weariness that it
+wrung the heart to see.
+
+"Here's a chain would become you vastly, Lorance," Mme. de Montpensier
+went on, friendlily enough, in her brisk and careless voice. "Let me try
+it on your neck. You can easily coax Paul or some one to buy it for
+you."
+
+She fumbled over the clasp. M. Étienne, with a "Permit me, madame," took
+it boldly from her hand and hooked it himself about mademoiselle's neck.
+He delayed longer than he need over the fastening of it, looking with
+burning intentness straight into her face. She lifted her eyes to his
+with a quick frown of displeasure, drawing herself back; then all at
+once the colour waved across her face like the dawn flush over a gray
+sky. She blushed to her very hair, to her very ruff. Then the red
+vanished as quickly as it had come; she clutched at her bosom, on the
+verge of a swoon.
+
+He threw out his arms to catch her. Instantly she stepped aside, and,
+turning with a little unsteady laugh to the lady at whose elbow she
+found herself, asked:
+
+"Does it become me, madame?"
+
+The little scene had passed so quickly that it seemed none had marked
+it. Mademoiselle had stood a little out of the group, monsieur with his
+back to it, and the ladies were busy over the jewels. She whom
+mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed, loud-voiced lady, older than
+any of the others, answered her bluntly:
+
+"You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for anything to
+become you."
+
+"What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly demanded.
+"Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at your son's
+bedside."
+
+Mme. de Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest, a sort
+of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne bade sharply,
+"Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger, flamed out on her and
+Mlle. de Montluc equally:
+
+"You impudent minxes! 'Tis enough that one of you should bring my son
+to his death, without the other making a mock of it."
+
+"He's not dying," began the irrepressible Blanche de Tavanne, her eyes
+twinkling with mischief; but whatever naughty answer was on her tongue,
+our mademoiselle's deeper voice overbore her:
+
+"I am guiltless of the charge, madame. It was through no wish of mine
+that your son, with half the guard at his back, set on one wounded man."
+
+"I'll warrant it was not," muttered Mlle. Blanche.
+
+"Mar has turned traitor, and deserves nothing so well as to be spitted
+in the dark," Mme. de Brie cried out.
+
+Mademoiselle waited an instant, with flashing eyes meeting madame's. She
+had spoken hotly before, but now, in the face of the other's passion,
+she held herself steady.
+
+"Your charge is as false, madame, as your wish is cruel. Do you go to
+vespers and come home to say such things? M. de Mar is no traitor; he
+was never pledged to us, and may go over to Navarre when he will."
+
+It was quietly spoken, but the blue lightning of her eyes was too much
+for Mme. de Brie. She opened her mouth to retort, faltered, dropped her
+eyes, and finally turned away, yet seething, to feign interest in the
+trinkets. It was a rout.
+
+"Then you are the traitor, Lorance," chimed the silvery tones of Mme. de
+Montpensier. "It is not denied that M. de Mar has gone over to the
+enemy; therefore are you the traitor to have intercourse with him."
+
+She spoke without heat, without any appearance of ill feeling. Hers was
+merely the desire, for the fun of it, to keep the flurry going. But
+mademoiselle answered seriously, with the fleetingest glance at M. le
+Comte, where he, forgetting he knew no French, feasted his eyes
+recklessly on her, pitying, applauding, adoring her. I went softly
+around the group to pull his sleeve; we were lost if any turned to see
+him.
+
+"Madame," mademoiselle addressed her cousin of Montpensier, speaking
+particularly clearly and distinctly, "I mean ever to be loyal to my
+house. I came here a penniless orphan to the care of my kinsman Mayenne;
+and he has always been to me generous and loving--"
+
+"If not madame," murmured Mile. Blanche to herself.
+
+"--as I in my turn have been loving and obedient. It was only two nights
+ago he told me M. de Mar must be as dead to me. Since then I have held
+no intercourse with him. Last night he came under my window; I was not
+in my chamber, as you know. I knew naught of the affair till M. de Brie
+was brought in bleeding. It was not by my will M. de Mar came here--it
+was a misery to me. I sent him word by his boy that other night to leave
+Paris; I implored him to leave Paris. If, instead, he comes here, he
+racks my heart. It is no joy to me, no triumph to me, but a bitter
+distress, that any honest gentleman should risk his life in a vain and
+empty quest. M. de Mar must go his ways, as I must go mine. Should he
+ever make attempt to reach me again, and could I speak to him, I should
+tell him just what I have said now to you."
+
+I pressed monsieur's hand in the endeavour to bring him back to sense;
+he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's earnestness had
+drawn all eyes.
+
+"Pshaw, Lorance! banish these tragedy airs!" Mme. de Montpensier
+rejoined, her lightness little touched. A wounded bird falls by the
+rippling water, but the ripples tinkle on. "M. de Mar is not likely ever
+to venture here again; he had too warm a welcome last night. My faith,
+he may be dead by this time--dead to all as well as to you. After he
+vanished into Ferou's house, no one seems to know what happened. Has
+Charles told you, my sister?"
+
+"Ferou gave him up, of course," Mme. de Mayenne answered. "Monsieur has
+done what seemed to him proper."
+
+"You are darkly mysterious, sister."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne raised her eyebrows and smiled, as one solemnly pledged
+to say no more. She could not, indeed, say more, knowing nothing
+whatever about it. Our mademoiselle spoke in a low voice, looking
+straight before her:
+
+"If Heaven willed that he escaped last night, I pray he may leave the
+city. I pray he may never try to see me more. I pray he may depart
+instantly--at once."
+
+"I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more of him,"
+Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she herself had
+started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but all this solemn
+prating about him is duller than a sermon." She raised a dainty hand
+behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames, let us get back to our
+purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these jeweller folk know no French."
+
+M. Étienne was himself again, all smiles and quick pleasantries. I
+slipped off to my post in the background, trying to get out of the eye
+of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me the last five minutes in
+a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so suspicious, so probing, was it.
+On my retreat she did indeed move her gaze from me, but only to watch M.
+le Comte as a hound watches a thicket. It was a miracle that none had
+pounced on him before, so reckless had he been. I perceived with
+sickening certainty that Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss.
+She fairly bristled with suspicion, with knowledge. I waited from
+breathless moment to moment for announcement. There was nothing to be
+done; she held us in the hollow of her hand. We could not flee, we could
+not fight. We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then
+submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.
+
+Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak. Hope flowed back to
+me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape. I wondered how high were
+the windows from the ground.
+
+As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached herself
+from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.
+
+It was thirty feet to the stones below--sure death that way. But she had
+given us a respite; something might yet be done. I seized M. Étienne's
+arm in a grip that should tell him how serious was our pass.
+Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue, I bespoke him:
+
+"Brother, it grows late. We must go. It will soon be dark. We must go
+now--now!"
+
+He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could answer,
+Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh:
+
+"And do you fear the dark, wench? Marry, you look as if you could take
+care of yourself."
+
+"Nay, madame," I protested, "but the box. Come, Giovanni. If we linger,
+we may be robbed in the dark streets."
+
+"Why, my sister, where are your manners?" he retorted, striving to shake
+me off. "The ladies have not yet dismissed me."
+
+"We shall be robbed of the box," I persisted; "and the night air is bad
+for your health, my Nino. If you stay longer you will have trouble in
+the throat."
+
+He looked at me hard. I tried to make my eyes tell him that my fear was
+no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril here and now.
+He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme. de Montpensier:
+
+"Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves the maid.
+I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells also a beautiful
+young captain--beautiful as the day. It's little of his time he spends
+at home, but we have observed that he comes every evening to array
+himself grandly for supper at some one's palace. We count our day lost
+an we cannot meet him, by accident, on the stairs."
+
+They all laughed. I, with my cheeks burning like any silly maid's, set
+to work to put up our scattered wares. But despair weighed me down; if
+we had to remember ceremony we were lost. The ladies were protesting,
+declaring they had not made their bargains, and monsieur was smirking
+and bowing, as if he had the whole night before him. Our one chance was
+to bolt; to charge past the sentry and flee as from the devil. I pulled
+monsieur's arm again, and muttered in his ear:
+
+"She knows us; she's gone to tell. We must run for it."
+
+At this moment there arose from down the corridor piercing shriek on
+shriek, the howls of a young child frantic with rage and terror. At the
+same time sounded other different cries, wild, outlandish chattering.
+
+"The baby! It's Toto! Oh, ciel!" Mme. de Mayenne gasped. "Help,
+mesdames!" She rushed from the room, Mme. de Montpensier at her heels,
+all the rest following after.
+
+All, that is, but one. Mlle. de Montluc started as the rest, but at the
+threshold paused to let them pass. She flung the door to behind them,
+and ran back to monsieur, her face drawn with terror, her hand
+outstretched.
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur!" she panted. "Go! you must go!"
+
+He seized her hand in both of his.
+
+"O Lorance! Lorance!"
+
+She laid her left hand on his for emphasis.
+
+"Go! go! An you love me, go!"
+
+For answer he fell on his knees before her, covering those sweet hands
+with kisses.
+
+The door was flung open; Mlle. de Tavanne stood on the threshold. They
+started apart, monsieur leaping to his feet, mademoiselle springing back
+with choking cry. But it was too late; she had seen us.
+
+She was rosy with running, her little face brimming over with mischief.
+She flitted into the room, crying:
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was M. de Mar! The gray eyes! M. le Duc has done
+with him as he thought proper, forsooth! Well, I have done as I thought
+proper. I unchained Mme. de Montpensier's monkey and threw him into the
+nursery, where he's scared the baby nearly into spasms. Toto carried the
+cloth-of-gold coverlet up on top of the tester, where he's picking it to
+pieces, the darling! They won't be back--you're safe for a while, my
+children. I'll keep watch for you. Make good use of your time. Kiss her
+well, monsieur."
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are an angel."
+
+"No, she is the angel," Mlle. Blanche laughed back at him. "I'm but your
+warder. Have no fear; I'll keep good watch. Here, you in the petticoats,
+that were a boy the other night, go to the farther door. Mme. de Nemours
+takes her nap in the second room beyond. You watch that door; I'll watch
+the corridor. Farewell, my children! Peste! think you Blanche de Tavanne
+is so badly off for lovers that she need grudge you yours, Lorance?"
+
+She danced out of the door, while I ran across to my station, Mlle. de
+Montluc standing bewildered, ardent, grateful, half laughing, half in
+tears.
+
+"Lorance, Lorance!" M. Étienne murmured tremulously. "She said I should
+kiss you--"
+
+I put my fingers in my ears and then took them out again, for if my ears
+were sealed, how was I to hear Mme. de Nemours approaching? But I admit
+I should have kept my eyes glued to the crack of the door; that I ever
+turned them is my shame. I have no business to know that mademoiselle
+bowed her face upon her lover's shoulder, her hand clasping his neck,
+silent, motionless. He pressed his cheek against her hair, holding her
+close; neither had any will to move or speak. It seemed they were well
+content to stand so the rest of their lives.
+
+Mademoiselle was the first to stir; she raised her head and strove to
+break away from his locked arms.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur! This is madness! You must go!"
+
+"Are you sorry I came?" he demanded vibrantly. "Are you sorry, Lorance?"
+
+His eyes held hers; she threw pretence to the winds.
+
+"No, monsieur; I am glad. For if we never meet again, we have had this."
+
+"Aye. If I die to-night, I have had to-day."
+
+Their voices were like the rune of the heart of the forest, like the
+music of deep streams. I turned away my head ashamed, and strove to
+think of nothing but the waking of Mme. de Nemours.
+
+"I thought you dead," she moaned, her voice muffled against his cheek.
+"No one would tell me what happened last night. I could not devise any
+way of escape for you--"
+
+"There is a tunnel from Ferou's house to the Rue de la Soierie. His
+mother--merciful angel--let me through."
+
+"And you were not hurt?"
+
+"Not a scratch, ma mie."
+
+"But the wound before? Félix said--"
+
+"I was put out of combat the night I got it," he explained earnestly,
+troubled even now because he had not obeyed her summons. "I was dizzy; I
+could not walk."
+
+"But now, monsieur? Does it heal?"
+
+"It is well--almost. 'Twas but a slash on the arm."
+
+"Oh, then have I no anxiety," she murmured, with a smile that twinkled
+across her lips and was gone. "I cannot perceive you to be disabled,
+monsieur."
+
+"My sweeting!" he laughed out. "If I cannot hold a sword yet, I can hold
+my love."
+
+"But you must not, monsieur," she cried, fear, that had slept a moment,
+springing on her again. "You must go, and this instant, while the others
+are yet away. I knew you, Blanche knew you; some other will. Oh, go, go,
+I implore you!"
+
+"If you will come with me."
+
+She made no answer, save to look at him as at a madman.
+
+"Nay, I mean not now, past the sentry. I am not so crazy as that. But
+you will slip out, you will find a way, and come to me."
+
+Silently, sadly, she shook her head. His arms loosened, and she freed
+herself from him. But instantly he was close on her again.
+
+"But you must! you will, you must! Ah, Lorance, my father is won over.
+He bids me win you. He has sworn to welcome you; when he sees you he
+will be your slave."
+
+"But my cousin Mayenne is not won over."
+
+"Devil fly away with your cousin Mayenne!" M. Étienne retorted with a
+vehemence that made me shudder, lest the walls have ears.
+
+"Ah, you are free to say that, monsieur, but I am not. I am of his
+blood, and dwell in his house, and eat at his board."
+
+He was looking at her with a passionate ardour, grasping her actual
+words less than their import of refusal.
+
+"Are you afraid?" he cried. "Are you frightened, heart-root of mine? You
+need not be, mignonne. You can contrive to slip from the house--Mlle. de
+Tavanne will help you. Once in the street, I will meet you; I will carry
+you home to hold you against all the world."
+
+"It is not that," she answered.
+
+"Am I your fear?" he cried quickly. "Ah, Lorance, my Lorance, you need
+not. I love you as I love the Queen of Heaven."
+
+"Ah, hush!"
+
+"As I love the Queen of Heaven. I will as soon do sacrilege toward her
+as ill to you."
+
+He dropped on his knees before her, kissing the hem of her gown. She
+stood looking down on his bowed head with a tenderness that seemed to
+infold him as with a mantle.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers, still kneeling at her feet.
+
+"Lorance, will you come with me?"
+
+She was silent a moment, with heaving breast and face a-quiver.
+
+"Monsieur, I am sworn. That night when Félix came, when I was in deadly
+terror for him and for you, Étienne, I promised my lord, an he would
+lift his hand from you, to obey him in all things. He bade me never
+again to hold intercourse with you--alack, I am already forsworn! But I
+cannot--"
+
+He leaped to his feet, crying out:
+
+"Lorance, he was the first forsworn! For he did move against me--"
+
+"He told you--the warning went through Félix--that if you tried to reach
+me he would crush you as a buzzing fly. Oh, monsieur, I implored you to
+leave Paris! You are not kind to me, you are cruel, when you venture
+here."
+
+"You are cruel to me, Lorance."
+
+Sighing, she turned from him, hiding her face in her hands.
+
+"Mayenne has not kept faith with you!" monsieur went on vehemently. "He
+has broken his oath. I mean not last night. I had my warning; the attack
+was provoked. But yesterday in the afternoon, before I made the attempt
+to see you, he sent to arrest me for the murder of the lackey Pontou."
+
+"Paul's deed!" she cried in white surprise. "He spoke of it--we heard,
+Félix and I. What, monsieur! sent to arrest you? But you are here."
+
+"They missed me. They took by mistake Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"He was not here last night!" she cried. "Mayenne was demanding him of
+me."
+
+"Then he slept pleasantly in the Bastille. May he never look on the
+outside of its walls again!"
+
+"But he will, he does. He must be free by this time; they cannot keep
+Mayenne's nephew in the Bastille. And oh, if he hated you before, how he
+will hate you now! Oh, Étienne, if you love me, go! Go to your own camp,
+your own side, at St. Denis. There are you safe. Here in Paris you may
+not draw a tranquil breath."
+
+"And shall I flee my dangers? Shall I run, in the face of my peril?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is more to me
+than tongue can tell."
+
+"My love, my love!" He snatched her into his arms; she held away from
+him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching hands on
+his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, you will go! you will go!"
+
+"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way! Only to
+meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates
+together--leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis
+keep our honeymoon."
+
+"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a
+month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League.
+Is that true?"
+
+"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love
+for you. I swear to you--"
+
+"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me. Your
+house stands against us; you would not desert your house. Am I then to
+be false to mine?"
+
+"A woman belongs to her husband's house."
+
+"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you are full
+of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father before me, in the
+shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our
+masters, our friends. When I was orphaned young, and penniless because
+King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my
+cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the
+house. Am I to turn traitor now?"
+
+"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.
+
+"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"
+
+She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her lips to
+monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his arms. I was
+at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets, he with shaking
+fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.
+
+The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de Montpensier alone
+conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's face was hot and angry,
+and bore marks of tears. Not in this room only had a combat raged.
+
+"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying
+vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she had
+not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither again."
+
+"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the ladies. "You
+have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too forbearing, too
+patient under many presumptions. One would suppose the mistress here to
+be Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"I will show who is mistress here," the Duchesse de Mayenne retorted.
+Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way softly to the
+door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon her:
+
+"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to the rescue
+of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be eaten by the
+beasts for aught you care, while you prink over trinkets."
+
+Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the whirl of
+her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little Tavanne came
+gallantly to the rescue:
+
+"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely safe;
+Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's rich
+accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her
+belongings.
+
+"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said with
+relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite right,
+Lorance."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_Within the spider's web._
+
+
+Mademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts with her.
+Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier wished than
+accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of bargaining. Mme.
+de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet, Mme. de Brie wanted a
+vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of shoe-buckles. M. Étienne developed a
+recklessness about prices that would have whitened the hair of a
+goldsmith father; I thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious
+of such prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the
+quick settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with
+longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme. de
+Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that no one
+was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine enough for a
+coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking madame for her
+reminder, with the gratitude of victims snatched from an awful fate. We
+were commanded to bundle out, which with all alacrity we did.
+
+Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I had been
+coming in. As we passed, lackey-led, through the long corridors, I had
+ease enough of mind to enable me to take my bearings, and to whisper to
+my master, "That door yonder is the door of the council-room, where I
+was." Even as I spoke the door opened, two gentlemen appearing at the
+threshold. One was a stranger; the other was Mayenne.
+
+Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood a moment
+or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his farewells, and
+went off down the staircase.
+
+Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up the
+passage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of merchandise:
+
+"What have you there, Louis?"
+
+"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just dismissed
+him."
+
+He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at length said
+to M. le Comte:
+
+"I will look at your wares."
+
+M. Étienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing his Highness
+that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.
+
+"How came you in Paris, then?"
+
+M. Étienne for the fourth time went through with his tale. I think this
+time he must have trembled over it. My Lord Mayenne had not the
+reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we knew, he might be
+informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris
+this year. He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to
+himself the number of monsieur's lies. But if M. Étienne trembled in his
+soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At
+its finish Mayenne said:
+
+"Come in here."
+
+The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his Grace of
+Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the window where he had
+sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my teeth to keep them from
+chattering together. Not Grammont's brutality, not Lucas's venom, not
+Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly
+as did Mayenne's amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I
+entered the tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I
+could not see. Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a
+way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over the
+edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look through
+iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see clearly that
+Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as placid as a summer day,
+turning over the contents of the box, showing little interest in us,
+much in our wares, every now and then speaking a generous word of praise
+or asking a friendly question. He was the very model of the gracious
+prince; the humble tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have
+worshipfully loved him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew
+us; that he was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he
+would walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab
+us.
+
+Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I should have
+braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would have been
+bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the uncertainty that was so
+heart-shaking--like crossing a morass in the dark. We might be on the
+safe path; we might with every step be wandering away farther and
+farther into the treacherous bog; there was no way to tell. Mayenne was
+quite the man to be kindly patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich
+present for a friend. He was also the man to sit in the presence of his
+enemy, unbetraying, tranquil, assured, waiting. It seemed to me that in
+a few minutes more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I
+am Félix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"
+
+But before I had verily come to this, something happened to change the
+situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the door after him,
+Lucas.
+
+M. Étienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into the embrasure of
+the window, where we stood in plain sight but with our faces blotted out
+against the light. Mayenne looked up from two rings he was comparing,
+one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came rapidly across the room.
+
+"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost believe
+myself back in night before last."
+
+"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting half from
+hurry, half from wrath.
+
+"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on indifferently,
+his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you have used your time
+profitably."
+
+"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly, arming
+himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a moment he
+had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily into the room.
+He was once more the Lucas who had entered that other night, nonchalant,
+mocking.
+
+"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a bracelet from
+the tray.
+
+The close kinship of these men betrayed itself in nothing so sharply as
+in their unerring instinct for annoying each other. Had Lucas
+volunteered explanation for his absence, Mayenne would not have listened
+to it; but as he withheld it, the duke demanded brusquely:
+
+"Well, do you give an account of yourself? You had better."
+
+Lucas repeated the tactics which he had found such good entertainment
+before. He looked with raised eyebrows toward us.
+
+"You would not have me speak before these vermin, uncle?"
+
+"These vermin understand no French," Mayenne made answer. "But do as it
+likes you. It is nothing to me."
+
+My master pinched my hand. Mayenne did not know us! After all, he was
+what M. Étienne had called him--a man, neither god nor devil. He could
+make mistakes like the rest of us. For once he had been caught napping.
+
+Lucas leaned back in his chair with a meditative air, as if idly
+wondering whether to speak or not. In his place I should not have
+wondered one moment. Had Mayenne assured me in that quiet tone that he
+cared nothing whether I spoke, I should scarce have been able to utter
+my words fast enough. But there was so strange a twist in Lucas's nature
+that he must sometimes thwart his own interests, value his caprice above
+his prosperity. Also, in this case his story was no triumphant one. But
+at length he did begin it:
+
+"I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday Étienne de Mar
+murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Was that your errand?" Mayenne said, looking up in slow surprise. "My
+faith! your oaths to Lorance trouble you little."
+
+Lucas started forward sharply. "Do you tell me you did not know my
+purpose?"
+
+"I knew, of course, that you were up to some warlockry," Mayenne
+answered; "I did not concern myself to discover what."
+
+"There speaks the general! There speaks the gentleman!" Lucas cried out.
+"A general hangs a spy, yet he profits by spying. The spy runs the
+risks, incurs the shames; the general sits in his tent, his honour
+untarnished, pocketing all the glory. Faugh, you gentlemen! You will not
+do dirty work, but you will have it done for you. You sit at home with
+clean hands and eyes that see not, while we go forth to serve you. You
+are the Duke of Mayenne. I am your bastard nephew, living on your
+favour. But you go too far when you sneer at my smirches."
+
+He was on his feet, standing over Mayenne, his face blazing. M. Étienne
+made an instinctive step forward, thinking him about to knife the duke.
+But Mayenne, as we well knew, was no craven.
+
+"Be a little quieter, Paul," he said, unmoved. "You will have the guard
+in, in a moment."
+
+Lucas held absolutely still for a second. So did Mayenne. He knew that
+Lucas, standing, could stab quicker than he defend. He sat there with
+both hands on the table, looking composedly up at his nephew. Lucas
+flung away across the room.
+
+"I shall have dismissed these people directly," Mayenne continued. "Then
+you can tell me your tale."
+
+"I can tell it now in two words," Lucas answered, coming abruptly back.
+"Belin signed the warrant, and sent a young ass of the burgher guard
+after Mar. I attended to some affairs of my own. Then after a time I
+went round to the Trois Lanternes to see if they had got him. He was not
+there--only that cub of a boy of his. When I came in, he swore, the
+innkeeper swore, the whole crew swore, I was Mar. The fool of an officer
+arrested me."
+
+I expected Mayenne to burst out laughing in Lucas's chagrined face. But
+instead he seemed less struck with his nephew's misfortunes than with
+some other aspect of the affair. He said slowly:
+
+"You told Belin this arrest was my desire?"
+
+"I may have implied something of the sort."
+
+"You repeated it to the arresting officer before Mar's boy!"
+
+"I had no time to say anything before they hustled me off," Lucas
+exclaimed. "Mille tonnerres! Never had any man such luck as I. It's
+enough to make me sign papers with the devil."
+
+"Mar would believe I had broken faith with him?"
+
+"I dare say. One isn't responsible for what Mar believes," Lucas
+answered carelessly.
+
+Mayenne was silent, with knit brows, drumming his hand on the table.
+Lucas went on with the tale of his woes:
+
+"At the Bastille, I ordered the commissary to send to you. He did not;
+he sent to Belin. Belin was busy, didn't understand the message,
+wouldn't be bothered. I lay in my cell like a mouse in a trap till an
+hour agone, when at last he saw fit to appear--damn him!"
+
+Mayenne fell to laughing. Lucas cried out:
+
+"When they arrested me my first thought was that this was your work."
+
+"In that case, how should you be free now?"
+
+"You found you needed me."
+
+"You are twice wrong, Paul. For I knew nothing of your arrest. Nor do I
+think I need you. Pardieu! you succeed too badly to give me confidence."
+
+Lucas stood glowering, gnawing his lip, picturing the chagrin, the angry
+reproaches, the justifications he did not utter. I am certain he pitied
+himself as the sport of fate and of tyrants, the most shamefully used
+of mortal men. And so long as he aspired to the hand of Mayenne's ward,
+so long was he helpless under Mayenne's will.
+
+"'Twas pity," Mayenne said reflectively, "that you thought best to be
+absent last night. Had you been here, you had had sport. Your young
+friend Mar came to sing under his lady's window."
+
+"Saw she him?" Lucas cried sharply.
+
+"How should I know? She does not confide in me."
+
+"You took care to find out!" Lucas cried, knowing he was being badgered,
+yet powerless to keep himself from writhing.
+
+"I may have."
+
+"Did she see him?" Lucas demanded again, the heavy lines of hatred and
+jealousy searing his face.
+
+"No credit to you if she did not. You accomplish singularly little to
+harass M. de Mar in his love-making. You deserve that she should have
+seen him. But, as a matter of fact, she did not. She was in the chapel
+with madame."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"François de Brie--now there is a youngster, Paul," Mayenne interrupted
+himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of your cleverness; but he
+has the advantage of being on the spot when needed. Desiring a word with
+mademoiselle, he betook himself to her chamber. She was not there, but
+Mar was warbling under the window."
+
+"Brie?"
+
+"Brie bestirred himself. He sent two of the guard round behind the
+house to cut off the retreat, while he and Latour attacked from the
+front."
+
+"Mar's killed?" Lucas cried. "He's killed!"
+
+"By no means," answered Mayenne. "He got away."
+
+Before he could explain further,--if he meant to,--the door opened, and
+Mlle. de Montluc came in.
+
+Her eyes travelled first to us, in anxiety; then with relief to Mayenne,
+sitting over the jewels; last, to Lucas, with startlement. She advanced
+without hesitation to the duke.
+
+"I am come, monsieur, to fetch you to supper."
+
+"Pardieu, Lorance!" Mayenne exclaimed, "you show me a different face
+from that of dinner-time." Indeed, so she did, for her eyes were shining
+with excitement, while the colour that M. Étienne had kissed into them
+still flushed her cheeks.
+
+"If I do," she made quick answer, "it is because, the more I think on
+it, the surer I grow that my loving cousin will not break my heart."
+
+"I want a word with you, Lorance," Mayenne said quietly.
+
+"As many as you like, monsieur," she replied promptly. "But will you not
+send these creatures from the room first?"
+
+"Do you include your cousin Paul in that term?"
+
+"I meant these jewellers. But since you suggest it, perhaps it would be
+as well for Paul to go."
+
+"You hear your orders, Paul."
+
+"Aye, I hear and I disobey," Lucas retorted. "Mademoiselle, I take too
+much joy in your presence to be willing to leave it."
+
+"Monsieur," she said to the duke, ignoring her cousin Paul with a
+coolness that must have maddened him, "will you not dismiss your
+tradespeople? Then can we talk comfortably."
+
+"Aye," answered Mayenne, "I will. I am more gallant than Paul. If you
+command it, out they go, though I have not half had time to look their
+wares over. Here, master jeweller," he addressed M. Étienne, slipping
+easily into Italian, "pack up your wares and depart."
+
+M. Étienne, bursting into rapid thanks to his Highness for his
+condescension in noticing the dirt of the way, set about his packing.
+Mayenne turned to his lovely cousin.
+
+"Now for my word to you, mademoiselle. You wept so last night, it was
+impossible to discuss the subject properly. But now I rejoice to see you
+more tranquil. Here is the beginning and the middle and the end of the
+matter: your marriage is my affair, and I shall do as I like about it."
+
+She searched his face; before his steady look her colour slowly died. M.
+Étienne, whether by accident or design, knocked his tray of jewels off
+the table. Murmuring profuse apologies, he dropped on his knees to grope
+for them. Neither of the men heeded him, but kept their eyes steadily on
+the lady.
+
+"Mademoiselle," Mayenne deliberately went on, "I have been over-fond
+with you. Had I followed my own interests instead of bowing to your
+whims, you had been a wife these two years. I have indulged you,
+mademoiselle, because you were my ally Montluc's daughter, because you
+came to me a lonely orphan, because you were my little cousin whose
+baby mouth I kissed. I have let you cavil at this suitor and that, pout
+that one was too tall and one too short, and a third too bold and a
+fourth not bold enough. I have been pleased to let you cajole me. But
+now, mademoiselle, I am at the end of my patience."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, "I never meant to abuse your kindness. You let me
+cajole you, as you say, else I could not have done it. You treated my
+whims as a jest. You let me air them. But when you frowned, I have put
+them by. I have always done your will."
+
+"Then do it now, mademoiselle. Be faithful to me and to your birth.
+Cease sighing for the enemy of our house."
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "when you first brought him to me, he was not the
+enemy of our house. When he came here, day after day, season after
+season, he was not our enemy. When I wrote that letter, at Paul's
+dictation, I did not know he was our enemy. You told me that night that
+I was not for him. I promised you obedience. Did he come here to me and
+implore me to wed with him, I would send him away."
+
+Mayenne little imagined how truly she spoke; but he could not look in
+her eyes and doubt her honesty.
+
+"You are a good child, Lorance," he said. "I could wish your lover as
+docile."
+
+"He will not come here again," she cried. "He knows I am not for him. He
+gives it up, monsieur--he takes himself out of Paris. I promise you it
+is over. He gives me up."
+
+"I have not his promise for that," Mayenne said dryly; "but the next
+time he comes after you, he may settle with your husband."
+
+She uttered a little gasp, but scarce of surprise--almost of relief that
+the blow, so long expected, had at last been dealt.
+
+"You will marry me, monsieur?" she murmured. "To M. de Brie?"
+
+"You are shrewd, mademoiselle. You know that it will be a good three
+months before François de Brie can stand up to be wed. You say to
+yourself that much may happen in three months. So it may. Therefore will
+your bridegroom be at hand to-morrow morning."
+
+She made no rejoinder, but her eyes, wide like a hunted animal's, moved
+fearsomely, loathingly, to Lucas. Mayenne uttered an abrupt laugh.
+
+"No; Paul is not the happy man. Besides bungling the St. Quentin affair,
+he has seen fit to make free with my name in an enterprise of his own.
+Therefore, Paul, you will dance at Lorance's wedding a bachelor.
+Mademoiselle, you marry in the morning Señor el Conde del Rondelar y
+Saragossa of his Majesty King Philip's court. After dinner you will
+depart with your husband for Spain."
+
+Lucas sprang forward, hand on sword, face ablaze with furious protest.
+Mayenne, heeding him no more than if he had not been there, rose and
+went to Mlle de Montluc.
+
+"Have I your obedience, cousin?"
+
+"You know it, monsieur."
+
+She was curtseying to him when he folded her in his arms, kissing both
+her cheeks.
+
+"You are as good as you are lovely, and that says much, ma mie. We will
+talk a little more about this after supper. Permit me, mademoiselle."
+
+He took her hand and led her in leisurely fashion out of the room.
+
+It wondered me that Lucas had not killed him. He looked murder. Haply
+had the duke disclosed by so much as a quivering eyelid a consciousness
+of Lucas's rage, of danger to himself, Lucas had struck him down. But he
+walked straight past, clad in his composure as in armour, and Lucas made
+no move. I think to stab was the impulse of a moment, gone in a moment.
+Instantly he was glad he had not killed the Duke of Mayenne, to be cut
+himself into dice by the guard. After the duke was gone, Lucas stood
+still a long time, no less furious, but cogitating deeply.
+
+We had gathered up our jewels and locked our box, and stood holding it
+between us, waiting our chance to depart. We might have gone a dozen
+times during the talking, for none marked us; but M. Étienne, despite my
+tuggings, refused to budge so long as mademoiselle was in the room. Now
+was he ready enough to go, but hesitated to see if Lucas would not leave
+first. That worthy, however, showed no intention of stirring, but
+remained in his pose, buried in thought, unaware of our presence. To get
+out, we had to walk round one end or the other of the table, passing
+either before or behind him. M. le Comte was for marching carelessly
+before his face, but I pulled so violently in the other direction that
+he gave way to me. I think now that had we passed in front of him, Lucas
+would have let us go by without a look. As it was, hearing steps at his
+back, he wheeled about to confront us. If the eye of love is quick, so
+is the eye of hate. He cried out instantly:
+
+"Mar!"
+
+We dropped the box, and sprang at him. But he was too quick for us. He
+leaped back, whipping out his sword.
+
+"I have you now, Mar!" he cried.
+
+M. Étienne grabbed up the heavy box in both hands to brain him. Lucas
+retreated. He might run through M. Étienne, but only at the risk of
+having his head split. After all, it suited his book as well to take us
+alive. Shouting for the guards, he retreated toward the door.
+
+But I was there before him. As he ran at M. Étienne, I had dashed by,
+slammed the door shut, and bolted it. If we were caught, we would make a
+fight for it. I snatched up a stool for weapon.
+
+He halted. Then he darted over to the chimney, and pulled violently the
+bell-rope hanging near. We heard through the closed door two loud peals
+somewhere in the corridor.
+
+We both ran for him. Even as he pulled the rope, M. Étienne struck the
+box over his sword, snapping it. I dropped my stool, as he his box, and
+we pinned Lucas in our arms.
+
+"The oratory!" I gasped. With a strength born of our desperation, we
+dragged him kicking and cursing across the room, heaved him with all our
+force into the oratory, and bolted the door on him.
+
+"Your wig!" cried M. Étienne, running to recover his box. While I picked
+it up and endeavoured with clumsy fingers to put it on properly, he set
+on its legs the stool I had flung down, threw the pieces of Lucas's
+sword into the fireplace, seized his box, dashed to me and set my wig
+straight, dashed to the outer door, and opened it just as Pierre came up
+the corridor.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" the lackey demanded. "You ring as if it was a
+question of life and death."
+
+"I want to be shown out, if the messer will be so kind. His Highness the
+duke, when he went to supper, left me here to put up my wares, but I
+know not my way to the door."
+
+It was after sunset, and the room, back from the windows, was dusky. The
+lackey seemed not to mark our flushed and rumpled looks, and to be quite
+satisfied with M. Étienne's explanation, when of a sudden Lucas, who had
+been stunned for the moment by the violent meeting of his head and the
+tiles, began to pound and kick on the oratory door.
+
+He was shouting as well. But the door closed with absolute tightness; it
+had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us muffled and inarticulate.
+
+"Corpo di Bacco!" M. Étienne exclaimed, with a face of childlike
+surprise. "Some one is in a fine hurry to enter! Do you not let him in,
+Sir Master of the Household?"
+
+"I wonder who he's got there now," Pierre muttered to himself in
+French, staring in puzzled wise at the door. Then he answered M. Étienne
+with a laugh:
+
+"No, my innocent; I do not let him in. It might cost me my neck to open
+that door. Come along now. I must see you out and get back to my
+trenchers."
+
+We met not a soul on the stairs, every one, served or servants, being in
+the supper-room. We passed the sentry without question, and round the
+corner without hindrance. M. Étienne stopped to heave a sigh of
+thanksgiving.
+
+"I thought we were done for that time!" he panted. "Mordieu! another
+scored off Lucas! Come, let us make good time home! 'Twere wise to be
+inside our gates when he gets out of that closet."
+
+We made good time, ever listening for the haro after us. But we heard it
+not. We came unmolested up the street at the back, of the Hôtel St.
+Quentin, on our way to the postern. Monsieur took the key out of his
+doublet, saying as we walked around the corner tower:
+
+"Well, it appears we are safe at home."
+
+"Yes, M. Étienne."
+
+Even as I uttered the words, three men from the shadow of the wall
+sprang out and seized us.
+
+"This is he!" one cried. "M. le Comte de Mar, I have the pleasure of
+taking you to the Bastille."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_The countersign._
+
+
+Instantly two more men came running from the postern arch. The five were
+upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while another gagged me.
+Two held M. Étienne, a third stopping his mouth.
+
+"Prettily done," quoth the leader. "Not a squeal! Morbleu! I wasn't
+anxious to have old Vigo out disputing my rights."
+
+M. Étienne's wrists were neatly trussed by this time. At a word from the
+leader, our captors turned us about and marched us up the lane by
+Mirabeau's garden, where Bernet's blood lay rusty on the stones. We
+offered no resistance whatever; we should only have been prodded with a
+sword-point for our pains. I made out, despite the thickening twilight,
+the familiar uniform of the burgher guard; M. de Belin, having bagged
+the wrong bird once, had now caught the right one.
+
+The captain bade one of the fellows go call the others off; I could
+guess that the job had been done thoroughly, every approach to the house
+guarded. I gnashed my teeth over the gag, that I had not suspected the
+danger. The truth was, both of us had our heads so full of mademoiselle,
+of Mayenne, and of Lucas, that we had forgotten the governor and his
+preposterous warrant.
+
+They led us into the Rue de l'Évêque, where was waiting the same black
+coach that had stood before the Oie d'Or, the same Louis on the box. Its
+lamps were lighted; by their glimmer our captors for the first time saw
+us fairly.
+
+"Why, captain," cried the man at M. Étienne's elbow, "this is no Comte
+de Mar! The Comte de Mar is fair-haired; I've seen him scores of times."
+
+"The Comte de Mar answers to the name of Étienne, and so does this
+fellow," the captain answered. He took the candle from one of the lamps
+and held it in M. Étienne's face. Then he put out a sudden hand, and
+pulled the wig off.
+
+"Good for you, captain!" cried the men. We were indeed unfortunate to
+encounter an officer with brains.
+
+"We'll take your gag off too, M. le Comte, in the coach," the captain
+told him.
+
+"Will you bring the lass along, captain?"
+
+"Not exactly," the leader laughed. "A fine prison it would be, could a
+felon have his bonnibel at his side. No, I'll leave the maid; but she
+needn't give the alarm yet. Do you stay awhile with her, L'Estrange;
+you'll not mind the job. Keep her a quarter of an hour, and then let her
+go her ways."
+
+They bundled my lord into the coach, box and all, the captain and two
+men with him. The fourth clambered up beside Louis as he cracked his
+whip and rattled smartly down the street.
+
+My guardian stole a loving arm around my waist and marched me down the
+quiet lane between the garden walls. He was clutching my right wrist,
+but my left hand was free, and I fumbled at my gag. In the middle of the
+deserted lane he halted.
+
+"Now, my beauty, if you'll be good I'll take that stopper off. But if
+you make a scream, by Heaven, it'll be your last!"
+
+I shook my head and squeezed his hand imploringly, while he, holding me
+tight in one sinewy arm, plucked left-handedly at the knot. I waited,
+meek as Griselda, till the gag was off, and then I let him have it.
+Volleying curses, I hammered him square in the eye.
+
+It was a mad course, for he was armed, I not. But instead of stabbing,
+he dropped me like a hot coal, gasping in the blankest consternation:
+
+"Thousand devils! It's a boy!"
+
+A second later, when he recollected himself, I was tearing down the
+lane.
+
+I am a good runner, and then, any one can run well when he runs for his
+life. Despite the wretched kirtle tying up my legs, I gained on him, and
+when I had reached the corner of our house, he dropped the pursuit and
+made off in the darkness. I ran full tilt round to the great gate,
+bellowing for the sentry to open. He came at once, with a dripping
+torch, to burst into roars of laughter at the sight of me. My wig was
+somewhere in the lane behind me; he knew me perfectly in my silly
+toggery. He leaned against the wall, helpless with laughing, shouting
+feebly to his comrades to come share the jest. I, you may well imagine,
+saw nothing funny about it, but kicked and shook the grilles in my rage
+and impatience. He did open to me at length, and in I dashed, clamouring
+for Vigo. He had appeared in the court by this, as also half a dozen of
+the guard, who surrounded me with shouts of astonished mockery; but I,
+little heeding, cried to the equery:
+
+"Vigo, M. le Comte is arrested! He's in the Bastille!"
+
+Vigo grasped my arm, and lifted rather than led me in at the guard-room
+door, slamming it in the soldiers' faces.
+
+"Now, Félix."
+
+"M. Étienne!" I gasped--"M. Étienne is arrested! They were lying in wait
+for him at the back of the house, by the tower. They've taken him off in
+a coach to the Bastille."
+
+"Who have?"
+
+"The governor's guard. You'll saddle and pursue? You'll rescue him?"
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+"About ten minutes. The coach was standing in the Rue de l'Évêque. They
+left a man guarding me, but I broke away."
+
+"It can't be done," Vigo said. "They'll be out of the quarter by now. If
+I could catch them at all, it would be close by the Bastille. No good in
+that; no use fighting four regiments. What the devil are they arresting
+him for, Félix? I understand Mayenne wants his blood, but what has the
+city guard to do with it?"
+
+"It's Lucas's game," I said. Then I remembered that we had not confided
+to him the tale of the first arrest. I went on to tell of the adventure
+of the Trois Lanternes, and, reflecting that he might better know just
+how the land lay with us, I made a clean breast of everything--the fight
+before Ferou's house, the rescue, the rencounter in the tunnel, to-day's
+excursion, and all that befell in the council-room. I wound up with a
+second full account of our capture under the very walls of the house,
+our garroting before we could cry on the guards to save us. Vigo said
+nothing for some time; at length he delivered himself:
+
+"Monsieur wouldn't have a patrol about the house. He wouldn't publish to
+the mob that he feared any danger whatever. Of course no one foresaw
+this. However, the arrest is the best thing could have happened."
+
+"Vigo!" I gasped in horror. Was Vigo turned traitor? The solid earth
+reeled beneath my feet.
+
+"He'd never rest till he got himself killed," Vigo went on. "Monsieur's
+hot enough, but M. Étienne's mad to bind. If they hadn't caught him
+to-night he'd have been in some worse pickle to-morrow; while, as it is,
+he's safe from swords at least."
+
+"But they can murder as well in the Bastille as elsewhere!" I cried.
+
+Vigo shook his head.
+
+"No; had they meant murder, they'd have settled him here in the alley.
+Since they lugged him off unhurt, they don't mean it. I know not what
+the devil they are up to, but it isn't that."
+
+"It was Lucas's game in the first place," I repeated. "He's too prudent
+to come out in the open and fight M. Étienne. He never strikes with his
+own hand; his way is to make some one else strike for him. So he gets M.
+Étienne into the Bastille. That's the first step. I suppose he thinks
+Mayenne will attend to the second."
+
+"Mayenne dares not take the boy's life," Vigo answered. "He could have
+killed him, an he chose, in the streets, and nobody the wiser. But now
+that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille, Mayenne dares not kill
+him there, by foul play or by law--the Duke of St. Quentin's son. No;
+all Mayenne can do is to confine him at his good pleasure. Whence
+presently we will pluck him out at King Henry's good pleasure."
+
+"And meantime is he to rot behind bars?"
+
+"Unless Monsieur can get him out. But then," Vigo went on, "a month or
+two in a cell won't be a bad thing for him, neither. His head will have
+a chance to cool. After a dose of Mayenne's purge he may recover of his
+fever for Mayenne's ward."
+
+"Monsieur! You will send to Monsieur?"
+
+"Of course. You will go. And Gilles with you to keep you out of
+mischief."
+
+"When? Now?"
+
+"No," said Vigo. "You will go clothe yourself in breeches first, else
+are you not likely to arrive anywhere but at the mad-house. And then eat
+your supper. It's a long road to St. Denis."
+
+I ran at once, through a fusillade of jeers from soldiers, grooms, and
+house-men, across the court, through the hall, and up the stairs to
+Marcel's chamber. Never was I gladder of anything in my life than to
+doff those swaddling petticoats. Two minutes, and I was a man again. I
+found it in my heart to pity the poor things who must wear the trappings
+their lives long.
+
+But for all my joy in my freedom, I choked over my supper and pushed it
+away half tasted, in misery over M. Étienne. Vigo might say comfortably
+that Mayenne dared not kill him, but I thought there were few things
+that gentleman dared not do. Then there was Lucas to be reckoned with.
+He had caught his fly in the web; he was not likely to let him go long
+undevoured. At best, if M. Étienne's life were safe, yet was he
+helpless, while to-morrow our mademoiselle was to marry. Vigo seemed to
+think that a blessing, but I was nigh to weeping into my soup. The one
+ray of light was that she was not to marry Lucas. That was something.
+Still, when M. Étienne came out of prison, if ever he did,--I could
+scarce bring myself to believe it,--he would find his dear vanished over
+the rocky Pyrenees.
+
+Vigo would not even let me start when I was ready. Since we were too
+late to find the gates open, we must wait till ten of the clock, at
+which hour the St. Denis gate would be in the hands of a certain
+Brissac, who would pass us with a wink at the word St. Quentin.
+
+I was so wroth with Vigo that I would not stay with him, but went
+up-stairs into M. Étienne's silent chamber, and flung myself down on the
+window-bench his head might never touch again, and wondered how he was
+faring in prison. I wished I were there with him. I cared not much what
+the place was, so long as we were together. I had gone down the mouth of
+hell smiling, so be it I went at his heels. Mayhap if I had struggled
+harder with my captors, shown my sex earlier, they had taken me too.
+Heartily I wished they had; I trow I am the only wight ever did wish
+himself behind bars. And promptly I repented me, for if Vigo had proved
+but a broken reed, there was Monsieur. Monsieur was not likely to sit
+smug and declare prison the best place for his son.
+
+The slow twilight faded altogether, and the dark came. The city was very
+still. Once in a while a shout or a sound of bell was borne over the
+roofs, or infrequent voices and footsteps sounded in the street beyond
+our gate. The men in the court under my window were quiet too, talking
+among themselves without much raillery or laughter; I knew they
+discussed the unhappy plight of the heir of St. Quentin. The chimes had
+rung some time ago the half-hour after nine, and I was fidgeting to be
+off, but huffed as I was with him, I could not lower myself to go ask
+Vigo's leave to start. He might come after me when he wanted me.
+
+"Félix! Félix!" Marcel shouted down the corridor. I sprang up; then,
+remembering my dignity, moved no further, but bade him come in to me.
+
+"Where are you mooning in the dark?" he demanded, stumbling over the
+threshold. "Oh, there you are. Dame! you'd come down-stairs mighty quick
+if you knew what was there for you?"
+
+"What?" I cried, divided between the wild hope that it was Monsieur and
+the wilder one that it was M. Étienne.
+
+"Don't you wish I'd tell you? Well, you're a good boy, and I will. It's
+the prettiest lass I've seen in a month of Sundays--you in your
+petticoats don't come near her."
+
+"For me?" I stuttered.
+
+"Aye; she asked for M. le Duc, and when he wasn't here, for you. I
+suppose it's some friend of M. Étienne's."
+
+I supposed so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my borrowed
+plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had not returned
+it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my eyes out because I
+had lost the cap--whether I could find it if I went to look with a
+light. None too eagerly I descended to her.
+
+She was standing against the wall in the archway. Two or three of the
+guardsmen were about her, one with a flambeau, by which they were all
+surveying her. She wore the coif and blouse, the black bodice and short
+striped skirt, of the country peasant girl, and, like a country girl,
+she showed a face flushed and downcast under the soldiers' bold
+scrutiny. She looked up at me as at a rescuing angel. It was Mlle. de
+Montluc!
+
+I dashed past the torch-bearer, nearly upsetting him in my haste, and
+snatched her hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle! Come into the house!"
+
+She clutched me with fingers as cold as marble, which trembled on mine.
+
+"Where is M. de St. Quentin?"
+
+"At St. Denis."
+
+"You must take me there to-night."
+
+"I was going," I stammered, bewildered; "but you, mademoiselle--"
+
+"You knew of M. de Mar's arrest?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"What coil is this, Félix?" demanded Vigo, coming up. He took the torch
+from his man, and held it in mademoiselle's face, whereupon an amazing
+change came over his own. He lowered the light, shielding it with his
+hand, as if it were an impertinent eye.
+
+"You are Vigo," she said at once.
+
+"Yes; and I know not what noble lady mademoiselle can be, save--will it
+please her to come into the house?"
+
+He led the way with his torch, not suffering himself to look at her
+again. He had his foot on the staircase, when she called to him, as if
+she had been accustomed to addressing him all her life:
+
+"Vigo, this will do. I will speak to you here."
+
+"As mademoiselle wishes. I thought the salon fitter. My cabinet here
+will be quieter than the hall, mademoiselle."
+
+He opened the door, and she entered. He pushed me in next, giving me the
+torch and saying:
+
+"Ask mademoiselle, Félix, whether she wants me." He amazed me--he who
+always ordered.
+
+"I want you, Vigo," mademoiselle answered him herself. "I want you to
+send two men with me to St. Denis."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"No; to-night."
+
+"But mademoiselle cannot go to St. Denis."
+
+"I can, and I must."
+
+"They will not let a horse-party through the gate at night," Vigo began.
+
+"We will go on foot."
+
+"Mademoiselle," Vigo answered, as if she had proposed flying to the
+moon, "you cannot walk to St. Denis."
+
+"I must!" she cried.
+
+I had put the flambeau in a socket on the wall. Now that the light shone
+on her steadily, I saw for the first time, though I might have known it
+from her presence here, how rent with emotion she was, white to the
+lips, with gleaming eyes and stormy breast. She had spoken low and
+quietly, but it was a main-force composure, liable to snap like glass. I
+thought her on the very verge of passionate tears. Vigo looked at her,
+puzzled, troubled, pitying, as on some beautiful, mad creature. She
+cried out on him suddenly, her rich voice going up a key:
+
+"You need not say 'cannot' to me, Vigo! You know not how I came here. I
+was locked in my chamber. I changed clothes with my Norman maid. There
+was a sentry at each end of the street. I slid down a rope of my
+bedclothes; it was dark--they did not see me. I knocked at Ferou's
+door--thank the saints, it opened to me quickly! I told M. Ferou--God
+forgive me!--I had business for the duke at the other end of the tunnel.
+He took me through, and I came here."
+
+"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.
+
+"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my hands on the
+ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn cruelly from her
+delicate palms and the inside of her fingers. Little threads of blood
+marked the scores. "Then I came here," she repeated. "In all my life I
+have never been in the streets alone--not even for one step at noonday.
+Now will you tell me, M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is yours to say what you can do."
+
+As for me, I dropped on my knees and laid my lips to her fingers,
+softly, for fear even their pressure might hurt her tenderness.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" I cried in pure delight. "Mademoiselle, that you are
+here!"
+
+She flushed under my words.
+
+"Ah, it is no little thing brought me. You knew M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+We assented; she went on, more to me than to Vigo, as if in telling me
+she was telling M. Étienne. She spoke low, as if in pain.
+
+"After supper M. de Mayenne went back to his cabinet and let out Paul de
+Lorraine."
+
+"I wish we had killed him," I muttered. "We had no time or weapons."
+
+"M. de Mayenne sent for me then," she went on, wetting her lips. "I have
+never seen him so angry. He was furious because M. de Mar had been
+before his face and he had not known it. He felt he had been made a mock
+of. He raged against me--I never knew he could be so angry. He said the
+Spanish envoy was too good for me; I should marry Paul de Lorraine
+to-morrow."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle!"
+
+"That was not it. I had borne that!" she cried. "Mayhap I deserved it.
+But while my lord thundered at me, word came that M. de Mar was taken.
+My lord swore he should die. He swore no man ever set him at naught and
+lived to boast of it."
+
+"Will--"
+
+She swept on unheeding:
+
+"He said he should be tried for the murder of Pontou--he should be
+tortured to make him confess it."
+
+She dropped down on her knees, hiding her face in her arms on the table,
+shaking from head to foot as in an ague. Vigo swore to himself, loudly,
+violently: "If Mayenne do that, by the throne of Heaven, I'll kill him!"
+
+She sprang to her feet, dry-eyed, fierce as a young lioness.
+
+"Is that all you can say? Mayenne may torture him and be killed for it?"
+
+"I shall send to the duke--" Vigo began.
+
+"Aye! I shall go to the duke! I can say who killed Pontou. I know much
+besides to tell the king. I was Mayenne's cousin, but if he would save
+his secrets he must give up M. de Mar. Mother of God! I have been his
+obedient child; I have let him do so with me as he would. I sent my
+lover away. I consented to the Spanish marriage. But to this I will not
+submit. He shall not torture and kill Étienne de Mar!"
+
+Vigo took her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Shall we start, Vigo? Once at St. Denis, I am hostage for his safety.
+The king can tell Mayenne that if Mar is tortured he will torture me!
+Mayenne may not tender me greatly, but he will not relish his cousin's
+breaking on the wheel."
+
+"Mayenne won't torture M. Étienne," Vigo said, patting her hand in both
+of his, forgetting she was a great lady, he an equery. "Fear not! you
+will save him, mademoiselle."
+
+"Let us go!" she cried feverishly. "Let us go!"
+
+Gilles was in the court waiting, stripped of his livery, dressed
+peaceably as a porter, but with a mallet in his hand that I should not
+like to receive on my crown. I thought we were ready, but Vigo bade us
+wait. I stood on the house-steps with mademoiselle, while he took aside
+Squinting Charlot for a low-voiced, emphatic interview.
+
+"Must we wait?" mademoiselle urged me, quivering like the arrow on the
+bow-string. "They may discover I am gone. Need we wait?"
+
+"Aye," I answered; "if Vigo bids us. He knows."
+
+We waited then. Vigo disappeared presently. Mademoiselle and I stood
+patient, with, oh! what impatience in our hearts, wondering how he could
+so hinder us. Not till he came back did it dawn on me for what we had
+stayed. He was dressed as an under-groom, not a tag of St. Quentin
+colours on him.
+
+"I beg a thousand pardons, mademoiselle. I had to give my lieutenant his
+orders. Now, if you will give the word, we go."
+
+"Do you go, M. Vigo?" She breathed deep. It was easy to see she looked
+upon him as a regiment.
+
+"Of course," Vigo answered, as if there could be no other way.
+
+I said in pure devilry, to try to ruffle him:
+
+"Vigo, you said you were here to guard Monsieur's interests-his house,
+his goods, his moneys. Do you desert your trust?"
+
+Mademoiselle turned quickly to him:
+
+"Vigo, you must not let me take you from your rightful post. Félix and
+your man here will care for me--"
+
+"The boy talks silliness, mademoiselle," Vigo returned tranquilly.
+"Mademoiselle is worth a dozen hôtels. I go with her."
+
+He walked beside her across the court, I following with Gilles, laughing
+to myself. Only yesterday had Vigo declared that never would he give aid
+and comfort to Mlle. de Montluc. It was no marvel she had conquered M.
+Étienne, for he must needs have been in love with some one, but in
+bringing Vigo to her feet she had won a triumph indeed.
+
+We had to go out by the great gate, because the key of the postern was
+in the Bastille. But as if by magic every guardsman and hanger-about had
+disappeared--there was not one to stare at the lady; though when we had
+passed some one locked the gates behind us. Vigo called me up to
+mademoiselle's left. Gilles was to loiter behind, far enough to seem
+not to belong to us, near enough to come up at need. Thus, at a good
+pace, mademoiselle stepping out as brave as any of us, we set out across
+the city for the Porte St. Denis.
+
+Our quarter was very quiet; we scarce met a soul. But afterward, as we
+reached the neighbourhood of the markets, the streets grew livelier. Now
+were we gladder than ever of Vigo's escort; for whenever we approached a
+band of roisterers or of gentlemen with lights, mademoiselle sheltered
+herself behind the equery's broad back, hidden as behind a tower. Once
+the gallant M. de Champfleury, he who in pink silk had adorned Mme. de
+Mayenne's salon, passed close enough to touch her. She heaved a sigh of
+relief when he was by. For her own sake she had no fear; the midnight
+streets, the open road to St. Denis, had no power to daunt her: but the
+dread of being recognized and turned back rode her like a nightmare.
+
+Close by the gate, Vigo bade us pause in the door of a shop while he
+went forward to reconnoiter. Before long he returned.
+
+"Bad luck, mademoiselle. Brissac's not on. I don't know the officer, but
+he knows me, that's the worst of it. He told me this was not St. Quentin
+night. Well, we must try the Porte Neuve."
+
+But mademoiselle demurred:
+
+"That will be out of our way, will it not, Vigo? It is a longer road
+from the Porte Neuve to St. Denis?"
+
+"Yes; but what to do? We must get through the walls."
+
+"Suppose we fare no better at the Porte Neuve? If your Brissac is
+suspected, he'll not be on at night. Vigo, I propose that we part
+company here. They will not know Gilles and Félix at the gate, will
+they?"
+
+"No," Vigo said doubtfully; "but--"
+
+"Then can we get through!" she cried. "They will not stop us, such
+humble folk! We are going to the bedside of our dying mother at St.
+Denis. Your name, Gilles?"
+
+"Forestier, mademoiselle," he stammered, startled.
+
+"Then are we all Forestiers--Gilles, Félix, and Jeanne. We can pass out,
+Vigo; I am sure we can pass out. I am loath to part with you, but I fear
+to go through the city to the Porte Neuve. My absence may be
+discovered--I must place myself without the walls speedily.
+
+"Well, mademoiselle may try it," Vigo gave reluctant consent. "If you
+are refused, we can fall back on the Porte Neuve. If you succeed--Listen
+to me, you fellows. You will deliver mademoiselle into Monsieur's hands,
+or answer to me for it. If any one touches her little finger--well,
+trust me!"
+
+"That's understood," we answered, saluting together.
+
+"Mademoiselle need have no doubts of them," Vigo said. "Félix is M. le
+Comte's own henchman. And Gilles is the best man in the household, next
+to me. God speed you, my lady. I am here, if they turn you back."
+
+We went boldly round the corner and up the street to the gate. The
+sentry walking his beat ordered us away without so much as looking at
+us. Then Gilles, appointed our spokesman, demanded to see the captain of
+the watch. His errand was urgent.
+
+But the sentry showed no disposition to budge. Had we a passport? No, we
+had no passport. Then we could go about our business. There was no
+leaving Paris to-night for us. Call the captain? No; he would do nothing
+of the kind. Be off, then!
+
+But at this moment, hearing the altercation, the officer himself came
+out of the guard-room in the tower, and to him Gilles at once began his
+story. Our mother at St. Denis had sent for us to come to her dying bed.
+He was a street-porter; the messenger had had trouble to find him. His
+young brother and sister were in service, kept to their duties till
+late. Our mother might even now be yielding up the ghost! It was a
+pitiful case, M. le Capitaine; might we not be permitted to pass?
+
+The young officer appeared less interested in this moving tale than in
+the face of mademoiselle, lighted up by the flambeau on the tower wall.
+
+"I should be glad to oblige your charming sister," he returned, smiling,
+"but none goes out of the city without a passport. Perhaps you have one,
+though, from my Lord Mayenne?"
+
+"Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of Mayenne?" quoth
+Gilles.
+
+"It seems improbable," the officer smiled, pleased with his wit. "Sorry
+to discommode you, my dear. But perhaps, lacking a passport, you can yet
+oblige me with the countersign, which does as well. Just one little
+word, now, and I'll let you through."
+
+[Illustration: "IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY."]
+
+"If monsieur will tell me the little word?" she asked innocently.
+
+He burst into laughter.
+
+"No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl."
+
+"Oh, come, monsieur captain," Gilles urged, "many and many a fellow goes
+in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a net to stop big
+fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do to my Lord Mayenne,
+or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness to let three poor
+servants through to their dying mother?"
+
+"It desolates me to hear of her extremity," the captain answered, with a
+fine irony, "but I am here to do my duty. I am thinking, my dear, that
+you are some great lady's maid?"
+
+He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to protest:
+
+"Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer's wife."
+
+"And perhaps you serve in the shop?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard against a
+trap. "No, monsieur; I am never in the shop. I am far too busy with my
+work. Monsieur does not seem to understand what a servant-lass has to
+do."
+
+For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light, revealing all
+its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.
+
+"I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either."
+
+With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in the
+folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror. He softened
+somewhat at sight of her distress.
+
+"Well, it's none of my business if a lady chooses to be masquerading
+round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey. I don't know what
+your purpose is--I don't ask to know. But I'm here to keep my gate, and
+I'll keep it. Go try to wheedle the officer at the Porte Neuve."
+
+In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned away--to
+face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel's shoulder-straps. With a
+dragoon at his back, he had come so softly out of a side alley that not
+even the captain had marked him.
+
+"What's this, Guilbert?" he demanded.
+
+"Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir. I've just turned them
+away."
+
+"What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?"
+
+"I said they could go see how that gate is kept. I showed them how this
+is."
+
+"Why must you pass through at this time of night?" said the commanding
+officer, civilly. Gilles once again bemoaned the dying mother. The young
+captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted him:
+
+"I believe that's a fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer about these
+people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and has hands like a
+duchess's."
+
+The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He
+said in a perfectly neutral manner:
+
+"It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a duchess--has a
+mother or not. The point is whether these people have the countersign.
+If they have it, they can pass, whoever they are."
+
+"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you would do
+well, sir, to demand the lady's name."
+
+Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the superior
+officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the word, she
+pronounced distinctly her name:
+
+"Lorance--"
+
+"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through, Guilbert."
+
+The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than we.
+
+"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"
+
+"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They have the
+countersign; pass them through."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_St. Denis--and Navarre!_
+
+
+As the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short in his
+tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:
+
+"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on the St.
+Denis road?"
+
+"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to herself
+as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us out for
+friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale. Mayenne always
+gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a marvel, it was mine!"
+
+I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis. The road
+was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday night's rain.
+Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they were only bushes
+or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf
+country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The
+hangers-on of the army--beggars, feagues, and footpads--hovered, like
+the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city.
+Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine
+for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
+concealment--his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere--a brace of
+pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking care, whenever a
+rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes, seemed to follow us, to
+talk loud and cheerfully of common things, the little interests of a
+humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy, or the pistol-barrels shining
+in the faint starlight, none molested us, though we encountered more
+than one mysterious company. We never passed into the gloom under an
+arch of trees without the resolution to fight for our lives. We never
+came out again into the faint light of the open road without wondering
+thanks to the saints--silent thanks, for we never spoke a word of any
+fear, Gilles and I. I trow mademoiselle knew well enough, but she spoke
+no word either. She never faltered, never showed by so much as the turn
+of her head that she suspected any danger, but, eyes on the distant
+lights of St. Denis, walked straight along, half a step ahead of us all
+the way. Stride as we might, we two strong fellows could never quite
+keep up with her.
+
+The journey could not at such pace stretch out forever. Presently the
+distant lights were no longer distant, but near, nearer, close at
+hand--the lights of the outposts of the camp. A sentinel started out
+from the quoin of a wall to stop us, but when we had told our errand he
+became as friendly as a brother. He went across the road into a
+neighbouring tournebride to report to the officer of the guard, and
+came back presently with a torch and the order to take us to the Duke of
+St. Quentin's lodging.
+
+It was near an hour after midnight, and St. Denis was in bed. Save for a
+drowsy patrol here and there, we met no one. Fewer than the patrols were
+the lanterns hung on ropes across the streets; these were the only
+lights, for the houses were one and all as dark as tombs. Not till we
+had reached the middle of the town did we see, in the second story of a
+house in the square, a beam of light shining through the shutter-chink.
+
+"Some one in mischief." Gilles pointed.
+
+"Aye," laughed the sentry, "your duke. This is where he lodges, over the
+saddler's."
+
+He knocked with the butt of his musket on the door. The shutter above
+creaked open, and a voice--Monsieur's voice--asked, "Who's there?"
+
+Mademoiselle was concealed in the embrasure of the doorway; Gilles and I
+stepped back into the street where Monsieur could see us.
+
+"Gilles Forestier and Félix Broux, Monsieur, just from Paris, with
+news."
+
+"Wait."
+
+"Is it all right, M. le Duc?" the sentry asked, saluting.
+
+"Yes," Monsieur answered, closing the shutter.
+
+The soldier, with another salute to the blank window, and a nod of
+"Good-by, then," to us, went back to his post. Left in darkness, we
+presently heard Monsieur's quick step on the flags of the hall, and the
+clatter of the bolts. He opened to us, standing there fully dressed,
+with a guttering candle.
+
+"My son?" he said instantly.
+
+Mademoiselle, crouching in the shadow of the door-post, pushed me
+forward. I saw I was to tell him.
+
+"Monsieur, he was arrested and driven to the Bastille to-night between
+seven and eight. Lucas--Paul de Lorraine--went to the governor and swore
+that M. Étienne killed the lackey Pontou in the house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. It was Lucas killed him--Lucas told Mayenne so. Mlle. de
+Montluc heard him, too. And here is mademoiselle."
+
+At the word she came out of the shadow and slowly over the threshold.
+
+Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the Hôtel St. Quentin
+as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf. She had come without thought of herself,
+without pause, without fear. But now the first heat of her impulse was
+gone. Her long tramp had left her faint and weary, and here she had to
+face not an equery and a page, hers to command, but a great duke, the
+enemy of her house. She came blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes
+dirty from the common road, hair ruffled by the night winds, to show
+herself for the first time to her lover's father, opposer of her hopes,
+thwarter of her marriage. Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill
+and stood a moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird
+whom the least movement would startle into flight.
+
+But Monsieur made none. He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as she,
+looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence real. Then as
+the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten her more than the
+harsh speech she may have feared; with a desperate courage she raised
+her eyes to his face.
+
+The spell was broken. Monsieur stepped forward at once to her.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you have come a journey. You are tired. Let me give you
+some refreshment; then will you tell me the story."
+
+It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of
+unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his escort
+down the passage. But as she went, she flung me an imploring glance; I
+was to come too. Gilles bolted the door again, and sat down to wait on
+the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden me, followed him and
+mademoiselle. It troubled me that she should so dread him--him, the
+warmest-hearted of all men. But if she needed me to give her confidence,
+here I was.
+
+Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the passage.
+It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of leather. It was
+doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the saddler's family. Monsieur
+set his candle down on the big table in the middle; then, on second
+thought, took it up again and lighted two iron sconces on the wall.
+
+"Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest," he bade, for she was starting up in
+nervousness from the chair where he had put her. "I will return in a
+moment."
+
+When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating, yet
+eagerly:
+
+"Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was good
+cause for fear. But now there is nothing to dread."
+
+She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for
+something. I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not, for she
+passed the three doors and came back to her place with an air of
+disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.
+
+"I never before went anywhere unmasked," she murmured.
+
+Monsieur entered with a salver containing a silver cup of wine and some
+Rheims biscuit. He offered it to her formally; she accepted with
+scarcely audible thanks, and sat, barely touching the wine to her lips,
+crumbling the biscuit into bits with restless fingers, making the
+pretence of a meal serve as excuse for her silence. Monsieur glanced at
+her, puzzled-wise, waiting for her to speak. Had the Infanta Isabella
+come to visit him, he could not have been more surprised. It seemed to
+him discourteous to press her; he waited for her to explain her
+presence.
+
+I wanted to shake mademoiselle. With a dozen swift words, with a glance
+of her blue eyes, she could sweep Monsieur off his feet as she had swept
+Vigo. And instead, she sat there, not daring to look at him, like a
+child caught stealing sweets. She had found words to defend herself from
+the teasing tongues at the Hôtel de Lorraine, to plead for me, to lash
+Lucas, to move Mayenne himself; but she could not find one syllable for
+the Duke of St. Quentin. She had been to admiration the laughing
+coquette, the stout champion, the haughty great lady, the frank lover;
+but now she was the shy child, blushing, stammering, constrained.
+
+Had Monsieur attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded of her
+up and down what had brought her this strange road at such amazing hour
+and in such unfitting company, she must needs have answered, and, once
+started, she would quickly have kindled her fire again. Had he, on other
+part, with a smile, an encouraging word, given her ever so little a
+push, she had gone on easily enough. But he did neither. He was
+courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on
+her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who
+had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to
+disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Étienne's plight was more to
+him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently to
+me.
+
+"Tell me, Félix, all about it."
+
+Before I could answer him the door behind us opened to admit two
+gentlemen, shoulder to shoulder. They were dressed much alike, plainly,
+in black. One was about thirty years of age, tall, thin-faced, and dark,
+and of a gravity and dignity beyond his years. Living was serious
+business to him; his eyes were thoughtful, steady, and a little cold.
+His companion was some ten years older; his beard and curling hair, worn
+away from his forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled
+with gray. He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as
+a hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him seemed
+to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we were no
+shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny candles
+before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel when she
+recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common lout, never
+heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in the flick of an eye
+that this was Henri Quatre.
+
+I was hot and cold and trembling, my heart pounding till it was like to
+choke me. I had never dreamed of finding myself in the presence. I had
+never thought to face any man greater than my duke. For the moment I was
+utterly discomfited. Then I bethought me that not for God alone were
+knees given to man, and I slid down quietly to the floor, hoping I did
+right, but reflecting for my comfort that in any case I was too small to
+give great offence.
+
+Mademoiselle started out of her chair and swept a curtsey almost to the
+ground, holding the lowly pose like a lady of marble. Only Monsieur
+remained standing as he was, as if a king was an every-day affair with
+him. I always thought Monsieur a great man, but now I knew it.
+
+The king, leaving his companion to close the door, was across the room
+in three strides.
+
+"I am come to look after you, St. Quentin," he cried, laughing. "I
+cannot have my council broken up by pretty grisettes. The precedent is
+dangerous."
+
+With the liveliest curiosity and amusement he surveyed the top of
+mademoiselle's bent head, and Monsieur's puzzled, troubled countenance.
+
+"This is no grisette, Sire," Monsieur answered, "but a very high-born
+demoiselle indeed--cousin to my Lord Mayenne."
+
+Astonishment flashed over the king's mobile face; his manner changed in
+an instant to one of utmost deference.
+
+"Rise, mademoiselle," he begged, as if her appearance were the most
+natural and desirable thing in the world. "I could wish it were my good
+adversary Mayenne himself who was come to treat with us; but be assured
+his cousin shall lack no courtesy."
+
+She swayed lightly to her feet, raising her face to the king's. Into his
+countenance, which mirrored his emotions like a glass, came a quick
+delight at the sight of her. The colour waxed and waned in her cheeks;
+her breath fluttered uncertainly; her eyes, anxious, eager, searched his
+face.
+
+"I cry your Majesty's good pardon," she faltered. "I had urgent business
+with M. de St. Quentin--I did not guess he was with your Majesty--"
+
+"The king's business is glad to step aside for yours, mademoiselle."
+
+She curtseyed, blushing, hiding her eyes under their sooty lashes;
+thinking as I did, I made no doubt, here was a king indeed. His Majesty
+went on:
+
+"I can well believe, mademoiselle, 'tis no trifling matter brings you at
+midnight to our rough camp. We will not delay you further, but be at
+pains to remember that if in anything Henry of France can aid you he
+stands at your command."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS.]
+
+He made her a noble bow and took her hand to kiss, when she, like a
+child that sees itself losing a protector, clutched his hand in her
+little trembling fingers, her wet eyes fixed imploringly on his face. He
+beamed upon her; he felt no desire whatever to be gone.
+
+"Am I to stay?" he asked radiantly; then with grave gentleness he added:
+"Mademoiselle is in trouble. Will she bring her trouble to the king?
+That is what a king is for--to ease his subjects' burdens."
+
+She could not speak; she made him her obeisance with a look out of the
+depths of her soul.
+
+"Then are you my subject, mademoiselle?" he demanded slyly.
+
+She shook the tears from her lashes, and found her voice and her smile
+to answer his:
+
+"Sire, I was a true Ligueuse this morning. But I came here half
+Navarraise, and now I swear I am wholly one."
+
+"Now, that is good hearing!" the king cried. "Such a recruit from
+Mayenne! Also is it heartening to discover that my conversion is not the
+only sudden one in the world. It has taken me five months to turn my
+coat, but here is mademoiselle turns hers in a day."
+
+He had glanced over his shoulder to point this out to his gentleman, but
+now he faced about in time to catch his recruit looking triste again.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, "you are beautiful, grave; but, as you had the
+graciousness to show me just now, still more beautiful, smiling. Now we
+are going to arrange matters so that you will smile always. Will you
+tell me what is the trouble, my child?"
+
+"Gladly, Sire," she answered, and dropped down a moment on her knees
+before him, to kiss his hand.
+
+I marvelled that Mayenne and all his armies had been able to keep this
+man off his throne and in his saddle four long years. It was plain why
+his power grew stronger every day, why every hour brought him new allies
+from the ranks of the League. You had only to see him to adore him. Once
+get him into Paris, the struggle would be over. They would put up with
+no other for king.
+
+"Sire," mademoiselle said with hesitancy, "I shall tire you with my
+story."
+
+"I am greatly in dread of it," the king answered, ceremoniously placing
+her in a chair before seating himself to listen. Then, to give her a
+moment, I think, to collect herself, he turned to his companion:
+
+"Here, Rosny, if you ache to be grubbing over your papers, do not let us
+delay you."
+
+"I am in no haste, Sire," his gentleman answered, unmoving.
+
+"Which is to say, you dare not leave me alone," the king laughed out. "I
+tell you, St. Quentin, if I am not dragooned into a staid, discreet,
+steady-paced monarch, 'twill be no lapse of Whip-King Rosny's. I am
+listening, mademoiselle."
+
+She began at once, eager and unfaltering. All her confusion was gone.
+It had been well-nigh impossible to tell the story to M. de St. Quentin,
+impossible to tell it to this impassive M. de Rosny. But to the King of
+France and Navarre it was as easy to talk as to one's playfellow.
+
+"Sire, I am Lorance de Montluc. My grandfather was the Marshal Montluc."
+
+"Were to-day next Monday, I could pray, 'God rest his soul,'" the king
+rejoined. "But even a heretic may say that he was a gallant general, an
+honour to France. He married a sister of François le Balafré? And
+mademoiselle is orphaned now, and my friend Mayenne's ward?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. I came here, Sire, to tell M. de St. Quentin concerning his
+son. And though I am talking of myself, it is all the same story. Three
+years ago, after the king died, M. de Mayenne was endeavouring with all
+his might to bring the Duke of St. Quentin into the League. He offered
+me to him for his son, M. de Mar."
+
+"And you are still Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+She turned to Monsieur with the prettiest smile in the world.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin, though he has not fought for you, Sire, has ever
+been whole-heartedly loyal."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" the king exclaimed. "He is either an incredible
+loyalist or an incredible ass!"
+
+Even the grave Rosny smiled, and the victim laughed as he defended
+himself.
+
+"That my loyalty may be credible, Sire, I make haste to say that I had
+never seen mademoiselle till this hour."
+
+"I know not whether to think better of you for that, or worse," the king
+retorted. "Had I been in your place, beshrew me but I should have seen
+her."
+
+Monsieur smiled and was silent, with anxious eyes on mademoiselle.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin withdrew to Picardie, Sire, but M. de Mar stayed in
+Paris. And my cousin Mayenne never gave up entirely the notion of the
+marriage. He is very tenacious of his plans."
+
+"Aye," said the king, with a grimace. "Well I know."
+
+"He blew hot and cold with M. de Mar. He favoured the marriage on Sunday
+and scouted it on Wednesday and discussed it again on Friday."
+
+"And what were M. de Mar's opinions?"
+
+She met his probing gaze blushing but candid.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, favoured it every day in the week."
+
+"I'll swear he did!" the king cried.
+
+"When M. le Duc came back to Paris," mademoiselle went on, "and it was
+known he had espoused your cause, Sire, Mayenne was so loath to lose the
+whole house of St. Quentin to you that he offered to marry me out of
+hand to M. de Mar. And he refused."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" Henry cried. "We will marry you to a king's son. On
+my honour, mademoiselle--"
+
+"Sire," she pleaded, "you promised to hear me."
+
+"That I will, then. But I warn you I am out of patience with these St.
+Quentins."
+
+"Then you are out of patience with devotion to your cause, Sire."
+
+"What! you speak for the recreants?"
+
+"I assure you, Sire, you have no more loyal servant than M. de Mar."
+
+"Strange I cannot recollect the face of my so loyal servant," the king
+said dryly.
+
+But she, with a fine scorn of argument, made the audacious answer:
+
+"When you see it, you will like it, Sire."
+
+"Not half so well as I like yours, mademoiselle, I promise you! But he
+comes to me well commended, since you vouch for him. Or rather, he does
+not come. What is this ardent follower doing so long away from me? Where
+the devil does this eager partizan keep himself? St. Quentin, where is
+your son?"
+
+"He had been with you long ago, Sire, but for the bright eyes of a lady
+of the League. And now she comes to tell me--my page tells me--he is in
+the Bastille."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! And how has that calamity befallen?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, embarrassed by her very wealth of matter,
+confused between her longing to set the whole case before the king, and
+her fear of wearying his patience. But his glance told her she need have
+no misgiving. Had she come to present him Paris, he could not have been
+more interested.
+
+In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his words.
+
+"Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle? Last night, for the first time in
+a month, I saw my son. He was just returned from an adventure under her
+window. Mayenne's guard had set on him, and he was escaped by the skin
+of his teeth. He declared to me that never till he was slain should he
+cease endeavour to win Mlle. de Montluc. And I? Marry, I ate my words in
+humblest fashion. After three years I made my surrender. Since you are
+his one desire, mademoiselle, then are you my one desire. I bade him
+God-speed."
+
+She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her lashes.
+
+"Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends. And I have so many!"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried in the same breath, "fear not. I will get
+you your lover if I sell France for him."
+
+She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.
+
+"I have no fear, Sire. With you and M. de St. Quentin to save him, I can
+have no fear. But he is in desperate case. Has M. de St. Quentin told
+you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de Lorraine?"
+
+"Aye," said the king, "it is a dolourous topic--very painful! Eh,
+Rosny?"
+
+"I do not shrink from my pains, Sire," M. de Rosny answered quietly. "I
+hold myself much to blame in this matter. I thought I knew the Lucases
+root and branch--I did not discover that a daughter of the house had
+ever been a friend to Henri de Guise."
+
+"And how should you discover it?" the king demanded. He had made the
+attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself to the
+defence. "How were you to dream it? Henri de Guise's side was the last
+place to look for a girl of the Religion. But I forgive him. If he stole
+a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep: we have stolen the flower of
+Lorraine."
+
+"Paul Lucas--Paul de Lorraine," she went on eagerly, "was put into M. le
+Duc's house to kill him. He went all the more willingly that he believed
+M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor. He tried to draw M. de Mar into the
+scheme, to ruin him. He failed. And the whole plot came to naught."
+
+"I have learned that," the king said. "I have been told how a country
+boy stripped his mask off."
+
+He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed. He was
+so quick that he grasped everything at half a word. Instantly he had
+turned to the lady again. "Pray continue, dear mademoiselle."
+
+"Afterward--that is, yesterday--Paul went to M. de Belin and swore
+against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in his house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. The lackey was murdered there, but Paul de Lorraine did
+it. The man knew the plot; Paul killed him to stop his tongue. I heard
+him confess it to M. de Mayenne. I and this Félix Broux were in the
+oratory and heard it."
+
+"Then M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+"Not then. The officers missed him. To-day he came to our house, dressed
+as an Italian jeweller, with a case of trinkets to sell. Madame
+admitted him; no one knew him but me and my chamber-*mate. On the way
+out, Mayenne met him and kept him while he chose a jewel. Paul de
+Lorraine was there too. I was like to die of fear. I went in to M. de
+Mayenne; I begged him to come out with me to supper, to dismiss the
+tradespeople that I might talk with him there--anything. But it availed
+not. M. de Mayenne spoke freely before them, as one does before common
+folk. Presently he led me to supper. Paul was left alone with M. de Mar
+and the boy. He recognized them. He was armed, and they were not, but
+they overbore him and locked him up in the closet."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle! I was to rescue M. de Mar for your sake, but now
+I will do it for his own. I find him much to my liking. He came away
+clear, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Aye, to be seized in the street by the governor's men. When M. de
+Mayenne found how he had been tricked, Sire, he blazed with rage."
+
+"I'll warrant he did!" the king answered, suppressing, however, in
+deference to her distress, his desire to laugh. "Ventre-saint-gris,
+mademoiselle! forgive me if this amuses me here at St. Denis. I trow it
+was not amusing in the Hôtel de Lorraine."
+
+"He sent for me, Sire," she went on, blanching at the memory; "he
+accused me of shielding M. de Mar. It was true. He called me liar,
+traitor, wanton. He said I was false to my house, to my bread, to my
+honour. He said I had smiling lips and a Judas-heart--that I had kissed
+him and betrayed him. I had given him my promise never to hold
+intercourse with M. de Mar again, I had given my word to be true to my
+house. M. de Mar came by no will of mine. I had no inkling of such
+purpose till I beheld him before madame and her ladies. He came to
+entreat me to fly--to wed him. I denied him, Sire. I sent him away. But
+was I to say to the guard, 'This way, gentlemen. This is my lover'?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king exclaimed, "good hap that you have turned your
+back on the house of Lorraine. Here, if we are but rough soldiers, we
+know how to tender you."
+
+"It was not for myself I came," she said more quietly. "My lord had the
+right to chasten me. I am his ward, and I did deceive him. But while he
+foamed at me came word of M. de Mar's capture. Then Mayenne swore he
+should pay for this dear. He said he should be found guilty of the
+murder. He said plenty of witnesses would swear to it. He said M. de Mar
+should be tortured to make him confess."
+
+With an oath Monsieur sprang forward.
+
+"Aye," she cried, starting up, "he swore M. de Mar should suffer the
+preparatory and the previous, the estrapade and the brodekins!"
+
+"He dare not," the king shouted. "Mordieu, he dare not!"
+
+"Sire," she cried, "you can promise him that for every blow he strikes
+Étienne de Mar you will strike me two. Mar is in his hands, but I am in
+yours. For M. de Mar, unhurt, you will deliver him me, unhurt. If he
+torture Mar, you will torture me."
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried, "rather shall he torture every chevalier
+in France than I touch a hair of your head!"
+
+"Sire--" the word died away in a sigh; like a snapt rose she fell at his
+feet.
+
+The king was quick, but Monsieur quicker. On his knees beside her,
+raising her head on his arm, he commanded me:
+
+"Up-stairs, Félix! The door at the back--bid Dame Verney come
+instantly."
+
+I flew, and was back to find him risen, holding mademoiselle in his
+arms. Her hair lay loose over his shoulder like a rippling flag; her
+lashes clung to her cheeks as they would never lift more.
+
+"St. Quentin," his Majesty was saying, "I would have married her to a
+prince. But since she wants your son she shall have him,
+ventre-saint-gris, if I storm Paris to-morrow!" And as Monsieur was
+carrying her from the room, the king bent over and kissed her.
+
+"Mademoiselle has dropped a packet from her dress," M. de Rosny said.
+"Will you take it, St. Quentin?"
+
+The king, who was nearest, turned to pass it to him; at the sight of it
+he uttered his dear "ventre-saint-gris!" It was a flat, oblong packet,
+tied about with common twine, the seal cut out. The king twitched the
+string off, and with one rapid glance at the papers put them into
+Monsieur's hand.
+
+"Take them, St. Quentin; they are yours."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_The two dukes._
+
+
+Mademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands, Gilles and I
+were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the saddler's shop.
+Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see the crack of light
+under the door at the back and hear, between Gilles's snores, the murmur
+of voices. The king and his gentlemen were planning to save my master; I
+went to sleep in perfect peace.
+
+At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur routed us
+out.
+
+"I'm off for Paris, lads. Félix comes with me. Gilles stays to guard
+mademoiselle."
+
+I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle knew
+best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the sting passed
+quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more exciting than St. Denis.
+
+The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway mounted the
+two nags that a sunburnt Béarn pikeman had brought to the door. As we
+walked them gently across the square, which at this rath hour we alone
+shared with the twittering birds, we saw coming down one of the empty
+streets the hurrying figure of M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.
+
+"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called. "I
+deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to wish
+you God-speed."
+
+"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his hand. "The
+more that you don't approve me."
+
+Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day. Another
+man's embrace would have meant less.
+
+"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly see you
+putting your head into the lion's jaws."
+
+"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no worse off
+than my son."
+
+"Your death makes your son's no easier."
+
+"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle the lady?
+Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"
+
+"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me better
+to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not ripe for us
+yet. You know my plan--to send to Villeroi. I believe he could manage
+this thing."
+
+"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration of M.
+de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what he can or
+will do, uncertain. Étienne de Mar is not Villeroi's son; he is mine."
+
+"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take your
+way."
+
+"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that once or
+twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness has served."
+
+Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.
+
+"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity you are a
+scamp of a heretic!"
+
+"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good fortune
+to be born in the Religion."
+
+Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As we turned
+the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as we had left him,
+gazing soberly after us.
+
+The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn over it.
+By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great danger, he
+contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden all his life
+with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now. As we cantered
+steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he already pictured M.
+Étienne released. However mad he acknowledged his errand to be, I think
+he was scarce visited by a doubt of its success. It was impossible to
+him that his son should not be saved.
+
+We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way without
+hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the guard spring on
+us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by gathered in knots, the
+tradesmen and artisans ran out of their shops to cheer St. Quentin, to
+cheer France, to cheer peace, to cheer to the echo the Catholic king.
+
+"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his hat to a
+big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving impudently in the eye
+of all the world the white flag of the king.
+
+We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in other
+streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out for men
+with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe, none stopped
+us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of the Hôtel de
+Lorraine.
+
+They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the house, while
+I led the horses to the stables, where three or four grooms at once
+volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump their guardian. But
+before the fellows had had time to get much out of me came Jean
+Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors. I followed him in
+delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it had seemed to me when
+the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might never see him more. Jean
+ushered me into the well-remembered council-room, where Monsieur stood
+alone, surprised at the sight of me.
+
+"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we shut up
+Lucas."
+
+I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.
+
+It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that Mayenne
+could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and smiling, whatever
+emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival not only buried, but with
+a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted his guest with all the
+courteous ease of an unruffled conscience and a kindly heart. Not till
+his glance fell on me did he show any sign of discomposure.
+
+"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.
+
+"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.
+
+"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I sent for
+him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M. de St.
+Quentin."
+
+"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
+appearance of truth. "You may go, Félix."
+
+"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves the
+purpose as well as another."
+
+He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he had
+kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play fair. I
+began to feel somewhat heartened.
+
+"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"
+
+"Certainly. You have come to join the League."
+
+Monsieur laughed out.
+
+"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to join the
+King."
+
+"That was a waste of horse-flesh."
+
+"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will come
+over."
+
+"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the League
+dead."
+
+"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de grâce o' Sunday, when the king
+goes to mass."
+
+"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such case that
+nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel to Henry, be
+assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my game."
+
+"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur. Be
+assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to his
+Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."
+
+"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will never go
+back to him if I choose to stop you!"
+
+Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the unsuavity.
+
+"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered the
+gate. I shall never leave this house if you will otherwise."
+
+"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I shall not
+treat you as your late master treated my brother."
+
+"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good sense."
+
+Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he broke
+into a laugh.
+
+"One permits the insolences of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick flush
+passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.
+
+Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke made a
+step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect seriousness.
+
+"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning.
+There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been
+offensive to you--your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do
+not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled.
+Whether you will change your method--but I venture to believe not. I am
+popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning
+than have met your ears for many a month. You have a great name for
+prudence, M. de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."
+
+I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence. But then,
+as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne returned, with
+chilling calm:
+
+"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."
+
+"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on his
+timidity, but on his judgment."
+
+"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted your
+death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."
+
+"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday. His party
+is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a blunder to kill
+me; on Friday it is three days worse a blunder."
+
+"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in mind ever
+since your master killed my brother."
+
+"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take a leaf
+from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained singularly little
+when he slew Guise to make you head of the League."
+
+Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the flattery. But
+I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the less because he
+knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:
+
+"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."
+
+"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a little.
+You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."
+
+"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him there."
+
+"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."
+
+"If he choose."
+
+Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an amiable
+discussion.
+
+"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of course he did
+not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real offence is making
+love to your ward."
+
+"Well, do you deny it?"
+
+"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much worse
+than dispose of the lady to my heir."
+
+"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is all you
+have to say."
+
+"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne--"
+
+"I have no wish to carry it further."
+
+"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my heir."
+
+"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."
+
+"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have come to
+see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne. It is for you
+to choose where among the king's forces you will marry mademoiselle."
+
+A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into
+Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge,
+and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:
+
+"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."
+
+"Why, to be sure."
+
+Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.
+
+"What mean you?"
+
+"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is your ward,
+M. de Mayenne?"
+
+"Mordieu! Have you found her?"
+
+"You speak sooth."
+
+"In your hôtel--"
+
+"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow her."
+
+Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of seeking a
+weapon, of summoning his soldiers.
+
+"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"
+
+"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."
+
+Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:
+
+"St. Denis! But how--"
+
+"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never walked
+two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But she tramped
+to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at one in the
+morning."
+
+Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.
+
+"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"
+
+"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."
+
+"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"
+
+"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who lets them.
+I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."
+
+"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming
+short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.
+
+"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
+Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
+heart."
+
+"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for
+her safe return."
+
+"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his
+best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager
+for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my
+venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me
+in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he
+would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"
+
+"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the
+way, there is Valère, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses
+little."
+
+"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"
+
+"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."
+
+I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.
+But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his
+arm-chair.
+
+"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"
+
+"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without
+a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army
+cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly,
+for that?"
+
+Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether
+the shot hit. Monsieur went on:
+
+"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must
+answer for it to the people of Paris."
+
+Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he
+said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:
+
+"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was
+not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him
+awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in
+heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked
+to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not
+see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."
+
+"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is
+to that generosity I appeal."
+
+"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."
+
+"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the
+same path!"
+
+It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's.
+Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to
+warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had
+greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:
+
+"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries.
+They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet
+cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."
+
+Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.
+
+"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she
+had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the
+streets myself till dawn."
+
+"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our
+torture did you torture Mar."
+
+"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.
+
+"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to
+what the maid was strung."
+
+"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
+slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
+befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was
+good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I
+drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your
+daughter, St. Quentin."
+
+Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added,
+with his cool smile:
+
+"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh
+at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to
+your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"
+
+"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."
+
+He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief
+delayed taking it.
+
+"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the
+Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little
+concessions for myself."
+
+"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."
+
+My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived
+with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask
+of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still,
+that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one
+side, I have thought of something for you to grant."
+
+"Name it, monsieur."
+
+"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his
+usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread
+them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I
+was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had
+vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle.
+de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."
+
+"Your shrewdness does you credit."
+
+"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of
+your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."
+
+"Even to half my fortune--"
+
+"No, not your gear. Save that for your Béarnais's itching palm."
+
+"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the
+League."
+
+"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on
+at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had
+certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I
+have changed my mind about beginning with yours."
+
+"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I
+let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy
+me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."
+
+"Oh, I don't like that!"
+
+The naïveté amazed while it amused Mayenne.
+
+"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my
+court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight
+to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no
+attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."
+
+Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
+condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers,
+his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be
+killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to
+inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually
+hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.
+
+"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den
+and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne,
+especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."
+
+"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of your
+days with me."
+
+"In the Bastille?"
+
+"Or in the League."
+
+"The former is preferable."
+
+"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third alternative
+is given you."
+
+"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince indeed. Be
+assured the St. Quentins will not forget."
+
+"Every one forgets."
+
+"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have had time
+to forget."
+
+"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my head my
+course is run!"
+
+"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne laughed
+too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length of the table
+to his host:
+
+"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept back but
+one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come over to us
+sooner or later. Come now!"
+
+The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly:
+
+"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."
+
+"Better his than Spain's."
+
+Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.
+
+"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."
+
+Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.
+
+"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French king, a
+Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends, friendly to old
+foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the looms humming, the mills
+clacking, wheat growing thick on the battle-fields."
+
+Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.
+
+"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My compliments to
+your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from me that when I
+submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender, from that hour forth am
+I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and obey him. Till then, let him
+beware of my teeth! While I have one pikeman to my back, one sou in my
+pouch, I fight my cause."
+
+"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry's
+court to pull you up out of the mire."
+
+"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices,"
+Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident,
+the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had
+seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that
+no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly,
+precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you
+know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.
+
+"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to windward."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_My young lord settles scores with two foes at once._
+
+
+Occupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our several
+stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I awaited in a
+shady corner of the court the conclusion of formalities. I had just
+declared that King Henry would be in Paris within a week, and was on the
+point of getting my crown cracked for it, when, as if for the very
+purpose--save the mark!--of rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas.
+He approached rapidly, eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no
+whit; but all the loungers turned to stare at him. Even then he paid no
+heed, passing us without a glance. But the tall d'Auvray bespoke him.
+
+"M. de Lorraine! Any news?"
+
+He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he had not
+known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now. He was both
+pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye all night.
+
+"Any news here?" he made Norman answer.
+
+"No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information. We have heard nothing."
+
+"And the woman?"
+
+"Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word."
+
+Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of us, as if
+he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he was not in the
+least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a full minute before
+he awoke to my identity.
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes, M. de Lorraine," I said, with all the respectfulness I could
+muster, which may not have been much. Considering our parting, I was
+ready for any violence. But after the first moment of startlement he
+regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way, while he inquired without
+apparent resentment how I came there.
+
+"With M. le Duc de St. Quentin," I grinned at him. "We and M. de Mayenne
+are friends now."
+
+I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed. But he turned
+abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet shown.
+
+"You've not told this fellow?"
+
+"We understand our orders, monsieur," d'Auvray answered, a bit huffed.
+
+Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but of course
+I could not.
+
+"They had no need to tell me, M. de Lorraine. I know quite well what the
+trouble is. I know rather more about it than you do yourself."
+
+He confronted me now with all the fire I could ask.
+
+"What mean you, whelp?"
+
+"I mean mademoiselle. What else should I mean?"
+
+"What do you know?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"Her whereabouts?"
+
+"Her whereabouts."
+
+He had his hand to his knife by this. I abated somewhat of my drawl to
+say, still airily:
+
+"Go ask M. de St. Quentin. He's here. He'll be so glad to see you."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Certes. He's closeted now with M. de Mayenne. They're thicker than
+brothers. Go see for yourself, M.--Lucas."
+
+"Where is mademoiselle?"
+
+"Safe. She's to marry the Comte de Mar to-morrow."
+
+He stared at me for one moment, weighing whether this could be true;
+then without further parley he shot into the house.
+
+"Is that true?" d'Auvray demanded.
+
+Their tongues loosened now, they flooded me with questions concerning
+mademoiselle, which I answered warily as I could, heartily repenting me
+by this of baiting Lucas. No good could come of it. He might even turn
+Mayenne from his bargain, upset all our triumph. I hardly heard what the
+soldiers said to me; I was almost nervous enough, wild enough, to dash
+up-stairs after him. But that was no help. I stayed where I was, fevered
+with anxiety.
+
+At the end of five minutes he came out of the house again, and, without
+a glance at us, went straight through the gate with the step and air of
+a man who knows what he is about. I was no easier in my mind though I
+saw him gone.
+
+Soon on his steps came a lackey to order M. de St. Quentin's horses and
+two musketeers to mount and ride with him. On reaching the door with the
+nags, I discovered I was not to be of the party; our second steed must
+carry gear of mademoiselle's and her handwoman, a hard-faced peasant,
+silent as a stone. Though the men quizzed her, asking if she were glad
+to get to her mistress again, whether she had known all this time the
+lady's whereabouts, she answered no single word, but busied herself
+seeing the horse loaded to her notion. Presently, in the guidance of
+Pierre, Monsieur appeared.
+
+"You stay, Félix, and go to the Bastille for your master. Then you will
+wait at the St. Denis gate for Vigo, with horses."
+
+"Is all right, Monsieur?" I had to ask, as I held his stirrup. "Is all
+right? Lucas--"
+
+His face had been a little clouded as he came down the stairs, and now
+it darkened more, but he answered:
+
+"Quite right, Achates. M. de Mayenne stands to his word. Lucas availed
+nothing."
+
+He stood a moment frowning, then his countenance cleared up.
+
+"My faith! I have enough to gladden me without fretting that Lucas is
+alive. Fare you well, Félix. You are like to reach St. Denis as soon as
+I. My son's horse will not lag."
+
+He sprang to the saddle with a smiling salute to his guardians, and the
+little train clattered off.
+
+Pierre came to my elbow with an open paper--the order signed and sealed
+for M. de Mar's release.
+
+"Here, my young cockerel, you and d'Auvray are to take this to the
+Bastille, and it will be strange if your master does not walk free
+again. His Grace bids you tell M. de Mar he remembers Wednesday night,
+underground."
+
+"And I remember Tuesday night in the council-room, Pierre," I was
+beginning, but he cut me short. Even now that I was in favour, he risked
+no mention of his disobedience. He packed me off with d'Auvray on the
+instant; I had no chance to ask him whether he suspected us yesterday.
+Sometimes I have thought he did, but I am bound to say he gave us no
+look to show it.
+
+D'Auvray and I walked straight across Paris to the many-towered
+Bastille. It seemed a little way. Before the potent name of Mayenne bars
+flew open; a sentry on guard in the court led us into a small room all
+stone, floor, walls, ceiling, where sat at the table some high official,
+perhaps the governor of the prison himself. He was an old campaigner,
+grizzled and weather-beaten, his right sleeve hanging empty. An
+interesting figure, no doubt, but I paid him scant attention, for at his
+side stood Lucas.
+
+"I come on M. de Mayenne's business," he was expostulating, vehement,
+yet civil. "I suppose he did not think it necessary to write the order,
+since you know me."
+
+"The regulations, M. de Lorraine--" The officer broke off to demand of
+our escort, "Well, what now?"
+
+I went straight up to him, not waiting permission, and held out my
+paper.
+
+"An order, if it please you, monsieur, for the Comte de Mar's release."
+
+Lucas's hand went out to snatch and crumple it; then his clenched fist
+dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would blacken the paper
+with their fire.
+
+"Just that--the requisition for M. de Mar's release," the officer told
+him, looking up from it. "All perfectly regular and in order. In five
+minutes, M. de Lorraine, the Comte de Mar shall be before you. You may
+have all the conversation you wish."
+
+Lucas's face was as blank as the wall.
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," the officer
+went on to explain, evidently not caring to offend the general's nephew.
+"Without the written order I could not admit your brother of Guise. But
+now you can have all the conversation you desire with M. de Mar."
+
+Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of his
+brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his Grace," and,
+barely bowing, went from the room.
+
+"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That
+Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the
+Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had
+come to stab M. Étienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had
+missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My
+master once released, Lucas could not hurt him.
+
+What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of Mayenne's
+good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room, where we caught
+sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk or two behind them,
+and in a moment appeared again with a key.
+
+"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office myself,"
+he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.
+
+This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his way to
+pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.
+
+"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go with you?"
+
+He looked at me a moment, surprised.
+
+"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you like."
+
+So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the Comte de
+Mar.
+
+We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of heavy-barred
+doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the fonder I grew of my
+friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of these doors would shut on
+me. We climbed at last a steep turret stair winding about a huge fir
+trunk, lighted by slits of windows in the four-foot wall, and at the
+top turned down a dark passage to a door at the end, the bolts of which,
+invisible to me in the gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.
+
+The cell was small, with one high window through which I could see
+naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a stool, a
+bench that might serve as table. M. Étienne stood at the window, his arm
+crooked around the iron bars, gazing out over the roofs of Paris.
+
+He wheeled about at the door's creaking.
+
+"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me behind the
+keeper.
+
+"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set you free."
+
+I dashed in past the officer, snatching my lord's hand to kiss.
+
+"It's true, monsieur! You're free! It's all settled with Mayenne.
+Monsieur's seen him; he sets you free. He said, 'In recognizance of
+Wednesday night.'"
+
+Incredulous joy flashed over his face, to give way to belief without
+joy.
+
+"Now I know she's married."
+
+"Nothing of the sort!" I fairly shouted at him, dancing up and down in
+my eagerness. "She's to marry M. le Comte. She's at St. Denis with
+Monsieur. She's to marry you. It's all arranged. Mayenne consents--the
+king--everybody. It's all settled. She marries you."
+
+Preposterous as it seemed, he could not discredit my fervour. He
+followed us out of the cell and through the fortress in a radiant daze.
+He half believed himself dreaming, I think, and feared to speak lest his
+happiness should melt. I fancied even that he walked lightly and
+gingerly, as if the slightest unwary movement might break the spell. Not
+till we were actually in the open door of the court, face to face with
+freedom, did he rouse himself to acknowledge the thing real. With a
+joyous laugh, he turned to the keeper:
+
+"M. de La Motte, you should employ your leisure in writing down your
+reflections, like the Chevalier de Montaigne. You could give us a
+trenchant essay on the Ingratitude of Man. Here are you host of the
+biggest inn in Paris--a pile more imposing than the Louvre itself. Your
+hospitality is so eager that you insist on entertaining me, so lavish
+that you lodge me for nothing, would keep me without a murmur till the
+end of my life. Yet I, ingrate that I am, depart without a thank you!"
+
+"They don't leave in such case that they can very well thank me, most of
+my guests," La Motte answered, with a dry smile. "You are a fortunate
+man, M. de Mar."
+
+"M. le Comte, will you come quietly with me to the St. Denis gate?"
+d'Auvray asked him. "Or must I borrow a guard from M. de La Motte?"
+
+M. Étienne's whole face was smiling; not his lips alone, but his eyes.
+Even his skin and hair seemed to have taken on a brighter look. He
+glanced at d'Auvray in surprise at the absurd question.
+
+"I will come like a lamb, M. le Mousquetaire."
+
+We saluted La Motte and walked merrily out into the Place Bastille. I
+think I never felt so grand as when I passed through the noble
+sally-port, the soldiers making no motion to hinder us, but all saluting
+as if we owned the place. It had its advantage, this making friends with
+Mayenne.
+
+The first thing my lord did, still in the shadow of the prison, was to
+come to terms with d'Auvray.
+
+"See here, my friend, why must you put yourself to the fatigue of
+escorting me to the gate?"
+
+"Orders, monsieur. The general-duke wants to know that you get into no
+mischief between here and the gate. You are banished, you understand,
+from Paris."
+
+"I pledge you my word I shall make no attempt to elude my fate. I go
+straight to the gate. But, with all politeness to you, Sir Musketeer, I
+could dispense with your company."
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," d'Auvray quoted
+the keeper's words, which seemed to have impressed him. "However, M. le
+Comte, if I had something to look at, I could walk ten paces behind you
+and look at it."
+
+"Oh, if it is a question of something to play with!" M. Étienne laughed.
+
+D'Auvray was provided with toys, and M. Étienne linked arms with me, the
+soldier out of ear-shot behind us. He followed till we were in the Rue
+St. Denis, when, waving his hand in farewell, he turned his steps with
+the pious consciousness of duty done. Only I looked back to see it;
+monsieur had forgotten his existence.
+
+"I am not proud; I don't mind being marched through the streets by a
+musketeer," M. Étienne explained as we started; "but I can't talk before
+him. Tell me, Félix, the story, if you would have me live."
+
+And I told him, till we almost ran blindly into the tower of the St.
+Denis gate.
+
+We learned of the warder that M. de St. Quentin had recently passed out,
+but that nothing had been seen of his equery. No steeds were here for
+us.
+
+"Well, then, we'll go have a glass. But if Vigo doesn't come soon, by my
+faith, I'll walk to St. Denis!"
+
+But that promised glass was never drunk, nor were we to set out at once
+for St. Denis; for in the door of the wine-shop we met Lucas.
+
+I had dismissed him from thought, as something out of the reckoning,
+dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken sword. I thought him
+gone out of our lives when he went out of prison--gone forever, like
+last year's snow. And here within the hour we encountered him, a naked
+sword in his hand, a smile on his lips. He said, in the flower of his
+easy insolence:
+
+"Tuesday I told you our hour would come. It is here."
+
+"At your service," quoth my lord.
+
+"Then it needs not to slap your face?"
+
+"You insult me safely, Lucas. You have but one life. That is forfeit, be
+you courteous."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+Lucas held out the bare sword, hilt toward us.
+
+"Monsieur had a box for weapon yesterday, but as I prefer to fight in
+the established way, I ventured to provide him with a sword."
+
+"Thoughtful of you, Lucas. Is this the make of sword you elect to be
+killed with?"
+
+He was bending the blade to try its temper. Lucas unsheathed his own.
+
+"M. de Mar may have his choice."
+
+M. de Mar professed himself satisfied with the blade given him.
+
+"Have you summoned your seconds, Lucas?"
+
+Lucas raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Is that necessary? I thought we might settle our affairs without delay.
+I confess myself impatient."
+
+"Your sentiments for once are mine."
+
+"It is understood you bring your spaniel with you. He will watch that I
+do not spring on you before you are ready," Lucas said, with a fine
+sneer.
+
+"And who is to watch me?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are unnecessary. It
+is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy spot."
+
+"The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting place
+for you to die."
+
+"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas amended.
+
+Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on our way
+to that of the Coupejarrets.
+
+Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul play. I had
+suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord, who knew, had
+accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I had felt sure of a
+trap. But his inviting my presence at the place of our choice smelt like
+honesty.
+
+M. Étienne remarked casually to me:
+
+"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you thought you
+saw there--Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What ails you, lad?
+Footsteps on your grave?"
+
+But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of his. For
+of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not Lucas, but M.
+Étienne. What if the vision were, after all, the thing I had at first
+believed it--a portent? An appearance not of those who had died by
+steel, but of those who must. One, two, and now the third.
+
+Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I had
+seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no omen, but a
+mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?
+
+And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress as a
+Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this house lay
+under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save to our tombs.
+
+We entered the well-remembered little passage, the well-remembered
+court, where shards of glass still strewed the pavement. Some one--the
+gendarmes, I fancy, when they took away Pontou--had put a heavy padlock
+on the door Lucas and Grammont left swinging.
+
+"We go in by your postern, Félix," my master said. "M. Lucas, I confess
+I prefer that you go first."
+
+Lucas put his back to the wall.
+
+"Why go farther, M. le Comte?"
+
+"Do you long for interruption'?"
+
+"We were not noticed coming in. The street was quiet."
+
+He crossed the court abruptly and went down the alley to look into the
+street.
+
+"Not a soul in sight," he said, coming back. "I think we shall not be
+interrupted. Still, it is wise to use every care. We will fight, if you
+like, in the house."
+
+He opened with his knife the fastened shutter, and leaped lightly in.
+Monsieur followed. I, the last, was for closing the shutter, but he
+stopped me.
+
+"No; leave it wide. I have no fancy for a walk in pitch-darkness with M.
+Lucas."
+
+"Do we fight here?" Lucas asked, facing us in the wide, square hall. "We
+can let in more light."
+
+"You seem anxious, my friend, to call attention to your whereabouts. As
+I am host, I designate the fighting-ground. Up-stairs, if you please."
+
+"I suppose you insist on my walking first," Lucas sneered.
+
+"I request it, monsieur."
+
+"With all the willingness in the world," his rogue-ship answered,
+setting foot straightway on the stair and mounting steadily, never
+turning to see how near we followed, or what we did with our hands. His
+trust made me ashamed of our lack of it. I almost believed we did him
+injustice. Yet at heart I could not bring myself to credit him with any
+fair dealing.
+
+We went up one flight, up two. We had left behind us the twilight of the
+lower story, had not reached dawn again at the top. We walked in
+blackness. Suddenly I halted.
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I heard a noise."
+
+"Of course you did. The place is full of rats."
+
+"It was no rat. It was footsteps."
+
+We all three held still.
+
+"There, monsieur. Don't you hear?"
+
+"Nothing, Félix; your teeth are chattering. Cross yourself and come on."
+
+But I could not stand it.
+
+"I'll go back and see, monsieur."
+
+"No," Lucas said, striding back from the foot of the next flight. "I
+will go."
+
+We saw a glint in the gloom, monsieur's bared sword.
+
+"You will go neither one of you. Hush! If we show ourselves, there'll be
+no duel to-day."
+
+We kept still, all three leaning over the banister, peering down to
+where the white tiles picked themselves out of the floor of the hall far
+beneath. We could see them better than we could see one another. All was
+silent. Not so much as a rustle came up from below. Suddenly Lucas made
+a step or two, as if to pass us. M. Étienne wheeled about, raising his
+sword toward the spot where from his footfalls we supposed Lucas to be.
+
+"You show an eagerness to get away from me, M. de Lorraine."
+
+"Not in the least, M. de Mar. This alarm is but Félix's poltroonery, yet
+it prompts me to go down and close the shutter."
+
+"On the contrary, you will go up with me. Félix will close the shutter."
+
+They confronted each other, vague shapes in the darkness, each with
+drawn sword. Then Lucas raised his in salute.
+
+"As you will; so be some one sees to it."
+
+"Go, Félix."
+
+Lucas first, they mounted the last flight of stairs, and their footsteps
+passed along the corridor to the room at the back. I, as I was ordered,
+set my face down the stairs.
+
+They might mock me as they liked, but I could not get it out of my head
+that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping heart, I stole
+from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the flight. I heard
+plainly the sound of moving above me, and of voices; but below not a
+whisper, not a creak. It must have been my silly fears. Resolved to
+choke them, I planted my feet boldly on the next flight, and descended
+humming, to prove my ease, the rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch.
+Suddenly, from not three feet off, came the soft singing:
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear_--
+
+My knees knocked together, and the breath fluttered in my throat. It
+seemed the darkness itself had given tongue. Then came a low laugh and
+the muttered words:
+
+"Here we are, M. de Lorraine. Are you ready?"
+
+There was a stir of feet on the landing before me, behind the voice. The
+house, then, was full of Lucas's cutthroats, the first of them Peyrot.
+In the height of my terror, I remembered that M. Étienne's life, too,
+depended on my wits, and I kept them. I whispered, for whispering voices
+are hard to tell apart:
+
+"Not yet. The two of them are up there. Keep quiet, and I'll send the
+boy down. When you've finished him, come up."
+
+"As you say, monsieur. It is your job."
+
+I turned, scarce able to believe my luck, and, not daring to run, walked
+up-stairs again. Prick my ears as I might, I heard no movement after me.
+Actually, I had fooled Peyrot. I had gone down to meet my death, and a
+tune had saved me.
+
+When I reached the uppermost landing, I rushed along the passage and
+into the room, flinging the door shut, locking and bolting it.
+
+They had not begun to fight, but had busied themselves clearing the
+space of all obstacles. The table was pushed against the wall in the
+corner by the door; the chairs were heaped one on another at the end of
+the room. Both shutters were wide open. M. Étienne, bareheaded, in his
+shirt, stood at guard. Lucas was kneeling on the floor, picking up with
+scrupulous care some bits of a broken plate. He sprang to his feet at
+sight of me.
+
+"What is it?" cried M. Étienne.
+
+"Cutthroats. They'll be here in a minute."
+
+Even as I spoke, I heard tramping on the stairs below. My slam of the
+door had warned them that something was wrong.
+
+"Was that your delay?" M. Étienne shouted, springing at his foe.
+
+"I play to win!" Lucas answered, smiling.
+
+The blades met; the men circled about and about. Lucas, though he
+preferred to murder, knew how to duel.
+
+We were doomed. With monsieur's sword for only weapon, we could never
+hope to pass the gang. In another minute they would be here to batter
+the door down and end us. Our consolation lay in killing Lucas first.
+Yet as I watched, I feared that M. Étienne, in the brief moments that
+remained to him, could not conquer him, so shrewd and strong was Lucas's
+fence. Must the scoundrel win? I started forward to play Pontou's trick.
+Lucas sought to murder us. Why not we him?
+
+One flash from my lord's eyes, and I retreated in despair. For I knew
+that did I touch Lucas, M. Étienne would let fall his sword, let Lucas
+kill him. And the bravos were on the last flight.
+
+Was there no escape? There were three doors in the room. One led to the
+passage, one to the closet, the third--I dashed through to find myself
+in a large empty chamber, a door wide open giving on the passage.
+Through it I could see the dusky figures of four men running up the
+stairs.
+
+I was across the room like an arrow, and got the door shut and bolted
+before they could reach the landing. The next moment some one flung
+against it. It stood firm. Delaying only a moment to shake it, three of
+the four I could hear run to the farther door, whence issued the noise
+of the swords.
+
+I, inside the wall, ran back too. The combat still raged. Neither, that
+I could see, had gained the least advantage. Outside, the murderers
+dashed themselves upon the door.
+
+I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed myself,
+pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the panels a little
+firmer.
+
+Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second chamber. Its
+shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no other door to the
+room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but spanned a foot above the
+fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest sweep that ever wielded broom
+could not have squeezed between them.
+
+In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it was, I
+thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I stuck my head
+out. It was the same window where I had stood when Grammont seized me.
+There, not ten feet away, eight at the most, but a little above me, was
+the casement of my garret in the Amour de Dieu. Would it be possible to
+jump and catch the sill? If I did, I could scarce pull myself in.
+
+I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu. And there
+beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me. There was no
+mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my lungs:
+
+"Maître Jacques!"
+
+He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his
+amazement, I saw that he knew me.
+
+"Maître Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out! Help us for the
+love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!"
+
+For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the inn.
+
+I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel.
+White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging,
+ungaining.
+
+Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending,
+blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were fighting out there,
+that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I learned better.
+Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of
+stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not long stand against that.
+
+I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost, lost!
+
+Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's victory,
+he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the back room. But it
+was Lucas who lay prone.
+
+"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would not till
+with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de grâce.
+
+Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great splinter six
+inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the opening. A hand came
+through to wrench it away.
+
+M. Étienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife through the hand,
+nailing it to the wood. On the instant he recognized its owner.
+
+"Good morning, Peyrot. We've recovered the packet."
+
+Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed him into
+the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the oaths of the
+bravos a good spur. And, St. Quentin be thanked, there in the garret
+window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a ladder to us.
+
+"Go, monsieur! There are four behind us. Go!"
+
+"You first!"
+
+But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran back to
+guard the door. He had the sense to see there was no good arguing.
+Crying, "Quick after me, Félix!" he crawled out on the ladder.
+
+Peyrot was released. Another blow from the ram, and the door fell to
+finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam. I
+darted to the window. M. Étienne was in the garret, helping hold the
+ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too eagerly. Like a lath it
+snapped.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+_"The very pattern of a king."_
+
+
+The next world appeared to be strangely like this. I found myself lying
+on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting comfortably on
+some one's shoulder, while some one else poured wine down my gullet.
+Presently I discovered that Maître Jacques's was the ministering hand,
+M. Étienne's the shoulder. After all, this was not heaven, but still
+Paris.
+
+I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's best
+Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he stopped, and I
+said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and quavery:
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"
+
+My lord's voice was as unsteady as mine.
+
+"But the ladder?" I murmured.
+
+"The ladder broke. But you had hold beyond the break. You hung on till
+we seized you. And then you swooned."
+
+"What a baby!" I said, getting to my feet. "But the men, monsieur?
+Peyrot?"
+
+"I think we've seen the last of those worthies. They took to their heels
+when you escaped them."
+
+"But, monsieur, they've gone to inform! You'll be taken for killing
+Lucas."
+
+"I doubt it. Themselves smell too strong of blood to dare bruit the
+matter. Natheless, if you can walk now, we'll make good time to the
+gate."
+
+But for all his haste, he would not start till I had had some bread and
+soup down in the kitchen.
+
+"We must take good care of you, boy Félix," he said. "For where the St.
+Quentins would be without you, I tremble to think."
+
+I set out a new man. In three steps, it seemed to me, we had reached the
+city gate, to find the way blocked by a company of twenty or thirty
+horse, the St. Quentin uniform flaunting gay in the sun. The nearest
+trooper set up a shout at sight of us, when Vigo, coming out suddenly
+from behind a nag, took M. le Comte in his big embrace. He released him
+immediately, looking immensely startled at his own demonstration.
+
+M. Étienne laughed out at him.
+
+"Be more careful, I beg you, Vigo! You will make me imagine myself of
+some importance."
+
+"I thought you swallowed up," Vigo growled. "You had been here--I
+couldn't get a trace of you."
+
+"I was killing Lucas."
+
+"Sacré! He's dead?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"That's the best morning's work ever you did, M. Étienne."
+
+"Have you horse for us, Vigo?"
+
+"Of course. Some of the men will walk. I suppose we're leaving Paris to
+buy you out of the Bastille?"
+
+"Not worth it, eh, Vigo?"
+
+"Yes," said Vigo, gravely--"yes, M. Étienne. You are worth it."
+
+Vigo's troop was but slow-moving, as some of the horses carried double,
+some were loaded with chattels. M. Étienne and I, on the duke's
+blood-chargers, soon left the cavalcade behind us. Before I knew it, we
+were halted at the outpost of the camp. My lord gave his name.
+
+"To be sure!" cried the sentry. "We've orders about you. You dine with
+the king, M. de Mar."
+
+"Mordieu! I do?"
+
+"You do. Orders are to take you to him out of hand. Captain!"
+
+The officer lounged out of the tavern door.
+
+"Captain, M. de Mar."
+
+"Oh, aye!" cried the captain, coming forward with brisk interest. "M. de
+Mar, you're the child of luck. You dine with the king."
+
+"I am the child of bewilderment, captain."
+
+"And you've not too much time to recover from it, M. le Comte. You are
+to go straight to the king."
+
+"I may go to M. de St. Quentin's lodgings first?"
+
+"No, monsieur; straight to the king."
+
+"What! in my shirt?"
+
+"I can't help it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the king
+did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order was to
+fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our king's no
+stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to lack for a coat."
+
+"I might wash my face, then."
+
+"Certainly. No harm in that."
+
+So M. Étienne went into the tournebride and washed his face. And that
+was all the toilet he made for audience with the greatest king in the
+world.
+
+"You'll ride to Monsieur's," he commanded me, when the captain answered:
+
+"No; he goes with you, monsieur, if he's the boy Choux, Troux, whatever
+it is."
+
+"Broux--Félix Broux!" I cried, a-quiver.
+
+"That's it. You go to the king, too. Another luck-child."
+
+I thought so indeed. We followed the sentry through the town in a waking
+dream, content to let him do with us as he would. He did the talking,
+explained to the grandees in the king's hall our names and errand. One
+of them led us up the stairs and knocked at a closed door.
+
+"Enter!"
+
+It was Henry's own voice. I pinched monsieur's hand to tell him. Our
+guide opened the door a crack.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, and his servant."
+
+"Good, La Force. Let them enter."
+
+M. La Force fairly pushed us over the sill, so abashed were we, and shut
+the door upon us.
+
+The king was alone. But before this simple gentleman in the rusty black,
+M. Étienne caught his breath as he had not done before a court in full
+pomp. He had seen courts, but he had never seen the first soldier of
+Europe. He advanced three steps into the room, and forgot to kneel,
+forgot to lower his gaze in the presence, but merely stared wide-eyed at
+majesty, as majesty stared at him. Thus they stood surveying each other
+from top to toe in the frankest curiosity, till at length the king
+spoke:
+
+"M. de Mar, you look less like a carpet-knight than I expected."
+
+M. Étienne came to himself, to kneel at once.
+
+"Sire, I blush for my looks. But your zealous soldiers would not let me
+from their clutches. I am just come from killing Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"What! the spy Lucas?"
+
+"Himself. And when I left the spot by way of the window in some haste, I
+was not expecting this honour, Sire."
+
+"Nor do I think you deserve it, ventre-saint-gris!" the king cried.
+"Though you come hatless and coat-less to-day, you have been a long time
+on the road, M. de Mar."
+
+"Aye, Sire."
+
+"You might as well have stayed away as come at this hour. Marry, all's
+over! Go hang yourself, my breathless follower! We have fought all our
+great battles, and you were not there!"
+
+Scarlet under the lash, M. Étienne, kneeling, bent his eyes on the
+ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he felt it incumbent
+to stammer something:
+
+"That is my life's misfortune, Sire."
+
+"Misfortune, sirrah? Misfortune you call it? Let me hear you say fault."
+
+"I dare not, Sire," M. Étienne murmured. "It was of course your
+Majesty's fault. We cannot serve heretics, we St. Quentins."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! You think well of yourself, young Mar."
+
+"I must, Sire, when your Majesty invites me to dinner."
+
+The king burst into laughter, and his temper, which I believe was all a
+play, vanished to the winds.
+
+"Pardieu! you're a glib fellow, Mar. But I didn't invite you to dinner
+for your own sake, little as you can imagine it. So you would have
+joined my flag four years ago, had I not been a stinking heretic?"
+
+"Aye, Sire, I needs must have. Therefore am I everlastingly beholden to
+your Majesty for remaining so long a Huguenot."
+
+"How now, cockerel?"
+
+M. Étienne faltered a moment. He was not burdened by shyness, but before
+the king's sharp glance he underwent a cold terror lest he had been too
+free with his tongue. However, there was naught to do but go on.
+
+"Sire, had I fought under your banner like a man, at Dieppe and Arques
+and Ivry, M. de Mayenne had never dreamed of marrying his ward to me. I
+had never known her."
+
+"The loveliest demoiselle I ever saw!" the king cried. "I shall marry
+her to one of my staunchest supporters."
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING.]
+
+The smile was washed from M. Étienne's lips. He turned as white as
+linen. In one moment his youth seemed to go from him. The king,
+unnoting, picked a parchment off the table.
+
+"To one of my bravest captains. Here's his commission, my lad."
+
+M. Étienne stared up from the writing into the king's laughing face.
+
+"I, Sire? I?"
+
+"You, Mar, you. You are my staunch supporter, perhaps?"
+
+"Your horse-boy, an you ask it, Sire!"
+
+He pressed his lips to the king's hand, great, helpless tears dripping
+down upon it.
+
+"If I ever desert you, I am a dog, Sire! But the fighting is not all
+done. I will capture you a flag yet."
+
+"Perhaps. I much fear me there's life in Mayenne still."
+
+M. Étienne, not venturing to rise, yet lifted beseeching eyes to the
+king's.
+
+"What! you want to get away from me, ventre-saint-gris!"
+
+My lord, who wanted precisely that, had no choice but to protest that
+nothing was farther from his thoughts.
+
+"Stuff!" the king exclaimed. "You're in a sweat to be gone, you
+unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with the
+king, and your one itch is to escape the tedium!"
+
+"Sire--"
+
+"Peace! You are guilty, sirrah. Take your punishment!"
+
+He darted across the room, and throwing open an inner door, called
+gently, "Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes, Sire," she answered, coming to the threshold.
+
+The peasant lass was gone forever. The great lady, regal in satins,
+stood before us. She bent on the king a little, eager, questioning
+glance; then she caught sight of her lover. Faith, had the sun gone out,
+the room would have been brilliant with the light of her face.
+
+M. Étienne sprang up and toward her. And she, pushing by the king as if
+he had been the door-post, went to him. They stood before each other,
+neither touching nor speaking, but only looking one at the other like
+two blind folk by a heavenly miracle restored to sight.
+
+"How now, children? Am I not a model monarch? Do you swear by me
+forever? Do you vouch me the very pattern of a king?"
+
+Answer he got none. They heard nothing, knew nothing, but each other.
+The slighted king chuckled and, beckoning me, withdrew to his cabinet.
+
+So here an end. For if Henry of France leave them, you and I may not
+stay.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Helmet of Navarre
+
+Author: Bertha Runkle
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2004 [EBook #14219]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELMET OF NAVARRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/001.jpg" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="003.jpg"></a> <a href=
+"images/003.jpg"><img src="images/003.jpg" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" /></a><br />
+<b>THE FLORENTINES IN THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE MAYENNE</b>
+<br /></div>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/004.png" width="45%" alt=""
+title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<h1>THE HELMET OF NAVARRE</h1>
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDR&Eacute; CASTAIGNE</h3>
+<h4>THE CENTURY CO.</h4>
+<h5>NEW YORK 1901</h5>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO MY MOTHER</h2>
+<div class="center">Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst
+the ranks of war,<br />
+And be your oriflamme to-day the Helmet of Navarre.<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">LORD MACAULAY'S
+"IVRY."</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br /></div>
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td align="right">CHAPTER</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#I">I</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#I">A FLASH OF LIGHTNING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#I">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#II">II</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#II">AT THE AMOUR DE DIEU</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#II">9</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#III">III</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#III">M. LE DUC IS WELL GUARDED</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#III">16</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IV">THE THREE MEN IN THE WINDOW</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IV">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#V">V</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#V">RAPIERS AND A VOW</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#V">37</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VI">VI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VI">A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VI">51</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VII">VII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VII">A DIVIDED DUTY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VII">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VIII">VIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=
+"#VIII">CHARLES-ANDR&Eacute;-&Eacute;TIENNE-MARIE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#VIII">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IX">IX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IX">THE HONOUR OF ST. QUENTIN</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#IX">85</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#X">X</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#X">LUCAS AND "LE GAUCHER"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#X">96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XI">XI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XI">VIGO</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XI">107</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XII">XII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XII">THE COMTE DE MAR</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XII">120</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIII">XIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIII">MADEMOISELLE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIII">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIV">XIV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIV">IN THE ORATORY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIV">153</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XV">XV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XV">MY LORD MAYENNE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XV">167</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVI">XVI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVI">MAYENNE'S WARD</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVI">186</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVII">XVII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVII">"I'LL WIN MY LADY!"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVII">203</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVIII">TO THE BASTILLE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XVIII">222</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIX">XIX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIX">TO THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE
+LORRAINE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XIX">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XX">XX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XX">"ON GUARD, MONSIEUR"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XX">251</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXI">XXI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXI">A CHANCE ENCOUNTER</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXI">266</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXII">XXII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXII">THE SIGNET OF THE KING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXII">278</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIII">THE CHEVALIER OF THE
+TOURNELLES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIII">296</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIV">THE FLORENTINES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIV">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXV">XXV</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXV">A DOUBLE MASQUERADE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXV">336</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVI">WITHIN THE SPIDER'S WEB</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVI">362</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVII">THE COUNTERSIGN</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVII">379</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXVIII">ST. DENIS&mdash;AND
+NAVARRE!</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII">402</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXIX">THE TWO DUKES</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXIX">423</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXX">XXX</a></td>
+<td><a href="#XXX">MY YOUNG LORD SETTLES SCORES WITH TWO FOES AT
+ONCE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXX">440</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a></td>
+<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXXI">"THE VERY PATTERN OF A
+KING"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#XXXI">461</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#003.jpg">THE FLORENTINES IN THE H&Ocirc;TEL DE
+MAYENNE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#003.jpg"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#098.jpg">"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD
+ME"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#098.jpg">87</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#128.jpg">"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP,
+FLYING DOWN THE ALLEY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#128.jpg">117</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#160.jpg">"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS
+HORSE-BOY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#160.jpg">149</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#180.jpg">MLLE. DE MONTLUC AND F&Eacute;LIX BROUX IN
+THE ORATORY</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#180.jpg">169</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#216.jpg">"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES
+MUST BE FED"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#216.jpg">205</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#248.jpg">"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK
+COACH"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#248.jpg">237</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#272.jpg">"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S
+SHOP"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#272.jpg">261</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#324.jpg">AT THE "BONNE FEMME"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#324.jpg">313</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#408.jpg">"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER
+EXTREMITY"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#408.jpg">397</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#422.jpg">ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#422.jpg">411</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#478.jpg">THE MEETING</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#478.jpg">467</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.</h2>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<img src="images/014.png" width="60%" alt="" title="" />
+<br /></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+<h3><i>A flash of lightning.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>t the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a
+candle. The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would
+not have you break your neck."</p>
+<p>"And give the house a bad name," I said.</p>
+<p>"No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer
+inn in all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you
+will have larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance."</p>
+<p>This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been
+bragging a bit of my prospects. I retorted:</p>
+<p>"When I am, Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, look out for a rise in your
+taxes."</p>
+<p>The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the
+honours of that encounter. And though the stairs were the steepest
+I ever climbed, I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the
+way up. What mattered it that already I ached in every bone, that
+the stair was long and my bed but a heap of straw in the garret of
+a mean inn in a poor quarter? I was in Paris, the city of my
+dreams!</p>
+<p>I am a Broux of St. Quentin. The great world has never heard of
+the Broux? No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years,
+Masters of the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St.
+Quentin. The great world has heard of the St. Quentins? I warrant
+you! As loudly as it has of Sully and Villeroi, Tr&eacute;mouille
+and Biron. That is enough for the Broux.</p>
+<p>I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I
+loved and revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court,
+seemed as far away from us as the saints in heaven. But the year
+after King Henry III was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his
+estate, to make high and low love him for himself.</p>
+<p>In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two
+Leagues were tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found
+himself between the devil and the deep sea. He was no friend to the
+League; for years he had stood between the king, his master, and
+the machinations of the Guises. On the other hand, he was no friend
+to the Huguenots. "To seat a heretic on the throne of France were
+to deny God," he said. Therefore he came home to St. Quentin, where
+he abode in quiet for some three years, to the great wonderment of
+all the world.</p>
+<p>Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead,
+his compeers would have understood readily enough that he was
+waiting to see how the cat would jump, taking no part in the
+quarrel lest he should mix with the losing side. But this theory
+jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst
+detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a
+hotspur&mdash;a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost.
+Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the
+emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to
+enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The
+puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur,
+honour was more than a pretty word. If he could not find his cause
+honest, he would not draw his sword, though all the curs in the
+land called him coward.</p>
+<p>Thus he stayed alone in the ch&acirc;teau for a long, irksome
+three years. Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to
+stand aside and watch while other men fought out great issues. It
+was a weary procession of days to him. His only son, a lad a few
+years older than I, shared none of his father's scruples and
+refused point-blank to follow him into exile. He remained in Paris,
+where they knew how to be gay in spite of sieges. Therefore I, the
+Forester's son, whom Monsieur took for a page, had a chance to come
+closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere servant, and I
+loved him as the dogs did. Aye, and admired him for a fortitude
+almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive here
+in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and &Icirc;le de France
+battles raged and towns fell and captains won glory.</p>
+<p>At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to
+have a frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for
+that he was accorded long interviews with Monsieur. After these
+visits my lord was always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs,
+like a stallion when he is led out of the stable. I looked for
+something to happen, and it was no surprise to me when M. le Duc
+announced one day, quite without warning, that he was done with St.
+Quentin and would be off in the morning for Mantes. I was in the
+seventh heaven of joy when he added that he should take me with
+him. I knew the King of Navarre was at Mantes&mdash;at last we were
+going to make history! There was no bound to my golden dreams, no
+limit to my future.</p>
+<p>But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but
+my father's. He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old
+servitor's privilege, begged him to leave me at home.</p>
+<p>"I have lost two sons in Monsieur's service," he said: "Jean,
+hunting in this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois. I have
+never grudged them to Monsieur. But F&eacute;lix is all I have
+left."</p>
+<p>Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the
+hay-loft, when my duke rode away. I could not watch his going.</p>
+<p>Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed. Time does
+pass, at length, even when one is young. It was July. The King of
+Navarre had moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most
+folk thought he would never win the city, the hotbed of the League.
+Of M. le Duc we heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller,
+putting up at the inn in the village, told a startling tale. The
+Duke of St. Quentin, though known to have been at Mantes and
+strongly suspected of espousing Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly
+into Paris and opened his h&ocirc;tel! It was madness&mdash;madness
+sheer and stark. Thus far his religion had saved him, yet any day
+he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.</p>
+<p>My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on
+the grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for
+keeping me at home and spoiling my chances in life. He gave me
+straightway the whole of the story. Long before it was over I had
+sprung to my feet.</p>
+<p>"Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?" he said.</p>
+<p>"Father!" was all I could gasp.</p>
+<p>"Then you shall go," he answered. That was not bad for an old
+man who had lost two sons for Monsieur!</p>
+<p>I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart. I
+can tell naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end
+of it lay Paris. I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered
+without a passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly
+so strict as Mayenne supposed. I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry,
+in no guise to present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no
+farther that night than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue
+des Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Far below my garret window lay the street&mdash;a trench between
+the high houses. Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the
+house opposite. To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it
+seemed the desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the
+rabbits in a warren. So ingenious were they at contriving to waste
+no inch of open space that the houses, standing at the base but a
+scant street's width apart, ever jutted out farther at each story
+till they looked to be fairly toppling together. I could see into
+the windows up and down the way; see the people move about within;
+hear opposite neighbours call to each other. But across from my
+aery were no lights and no people, for that house was shuttered
+tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as expressionless as a
+blind face. I marvelled how it came to stand empty in that teeming
+quarter.</p>
+<p>Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and
+was asleep before I could shut my eyes.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Crash! Crash! Crash!</p>
+<p>I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was
+bombarding Paris. Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the
+noise was thunder.</p>
+<p>From the window I peered into floods of rain. The peals died
+away. Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in
+astonishment. For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid
+vision of three men in the window.</p>
+<p>Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.</p>
+<p>I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next
+flash. When it came it showed me the window barred as before. Flash
+followed flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain.
+The shutter remained closed as if it had never been opened. Sleep
+rolled over me in a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+<h3><i>At the Amour de Dieu.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hen I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the
+room, glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared
+at them, sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the
+thunder-storm and the open shutter and the three men. I jumped up
+and ran to the window. The shutters opposite were closed; the house
+just as I had seen it first, save for the long streaks of wet down
+the wall. The street below was one vast puddle. At all events, the
+storm was no dream, as I half believed the vision to be.</p>
+<p>I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was
+deserted save for Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of
+me whether I took myself for a prince, that I lay in bed till all
+decent folk had been hours about their business, and then expected
+breakfast. However, he brought me a meal, and I made no complaint
+that it was a poor one.</p>
+<p>"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.</p>
+<p>He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed
+over on the table.</p>
+<p>"What neighbours?"</p>
+<p>"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep
+them open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said
+airily. "Last night I saw three men in the window opposite
+mine."</p>
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+<p>"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is
+how you came to see visions."</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for
+that, let me tell you, Ma&icirc;tre Jacques."</p>
+<p>"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no
+one has lived in that house these twenty years."</p>
+<p>Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head
+over night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So,
+with a fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:</p>
+<p>"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"</p>
+<p>He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see
+that no one was by, leaned across the table, up to me.</p>
+<p>"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell
+you first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is
+haunted."</p>
+<p>"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.</p>
+<p>"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre&mdash;you know
+naught of that: you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a
+country boy. But I was here, and I know. A man dared not stir out
+of doors that dark day. The gutters ran blood."</p>
+<p>"And that house&mdash;what happened in that house?"</p>
+<p>"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de
+B&eacute;thune," he answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in
+a low voice. "They were all put to the sword&mdash;the whole
+household. It was Guise's work. The Duc de Guise sat on his white
+horse, in this very street here, while it was going on. Parbleu!
+that was a day."</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu! yes."</p>
+<p>"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different
+tone. "One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen
+now. But the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near
+that house. No one will live there."</p>
+<p>"And have others seen as well as I?"</p>
+<p>"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises.
+Folk might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis
+another matter with you, though, since you have had the
+vision."</p>
+<p>"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre
+dress&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"M. de B&eacute;thune and his cousins. What further? Did you
+hear shrieks?"</p>
+<p>"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for
+the space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute
+the shutters were closed again."</p>
+<p>"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has
+disturbed them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have
+lost their leader."</p>
+<p>I stared at him blankly, and he added:</p>
+<p>"Their Henry of Navarre."</p>
+<p>"But he is not lost. There has been no battle."</p>
+<p>"Lost to them," said Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, "when he turns
+Catholic."</p>
+<p>"Oh!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know
+these things."</p>
+<p>"But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!"</p>
+<p>"Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do
+the learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?"</p>
+<p>"Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Ma&icirc;tre
+Jacques."</p>
+<p>"If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out,
+spit me on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he
+added:</p>
+<p>"It should be welcome news to you."</p>
+<p>Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of
+base. Yet it was my duty to be discreet.</p>
+<p>"I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I
+said.</p>
+<p>"Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open
+secret that your patron has gone over to Navarre."</p>
+<p>"I know naught of it."</p>
+<p>"Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to
+Paris M. de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his
+parleyings, he was a fool."</p>
+<p>"His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.</p>
+<p>"Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre. For,
+mark you, all France has been wondering these many months where St.
+Quentin was coming out. His movements do not go unnoted like a
+yokel's. But, i' faith, he is not dull; he understands that well
+enough. Nay, 'tis my belief he came into the city in pure
+effrontery to show them how much he dared. He is a bold blade, your
+duke. And, mon dieu! it had its effect. For the Leaguers have been
+so agape with astonishment ever since that they have not raised a
+finger against him."</p>
+<p>"Yet you do not think him safe?"</p>
+<p>"Safe, say you? Safe! Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of
+lions, and they did not in the first instant eat you, would you
+therefore feel safe? He was stark mad to come to Paris. There is no
+man the League hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no
+man they can afford so ill to spare to King Henry. A great Catholic
+noble, he would be meat and drink to the B&eacute;arnais. He was
+mad to come here."</p>
+<p>"And yet nothing has happened to him."</p>
+<p>"Verily, fortune favours the brave. No, nothing has
+happened&mdash;yet. But I tell you true, F&eacute;lix, I had rather
+be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de Dieu than stand in M. de St.
+Quentin's shoes."</p>
+<p>"I was talking with the men here last night," I said. "There was
+not one but had a good word for Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so they have. They like his pluck. And if the League kills
+him it is quite on the cards that the people will rise up and make
+the town lively. But that will not profit M. de St. Quentin if he
+is dead."</p>
+<p>I would not be dampened, though, by an old croaker.</p>
+<p>"Nay, ma&icirc;tre, if the people are with him, the League will
+not dare&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There you fool yourself, my springald. If there is one thing
+which the nobles of the League neither know nor care about it is
+what the people think. They sit wrangling over their French League
+and their Spanish League, their kings and their princesses, and
+what this lord does and that lord threatens, and they give no heed
+at all to us&mdash;us, the people. But they will find out their
+mistake. Some day they will be taught that the nobles are not all
+of France. There will come a reckoning when more blood will flow in
+Paris than ever flowed on St. Bartholomew's day. They think we are
+chained down, do they? Pardieu! there will come a day!"</p>
+<p>I scarcely knew the man; his face was flushed, his eyes
+sparkling as if they saw more than the common room and mean street.
+But as I stared the glow faded, and he said in a lower tone:</p>
+<p>"At least, it will happen unless Henry of Navarre comes to save
+us from it. He is a good fellow, this Navarre."</p>
+<p>"They say he can never enter Paris."</p>
+<p>"They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he
+can enter Paris to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne does not think so."</p>
+<p>"No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep
+an inn in the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.</p>
+<p>"Laugh if you like; but I tell you, F&eacute;lix Broux, my
+lord's council-chamber is not the only place where they make kings.
+We do it, too, we of the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>"Well," said I, "I leave you, then, to make kings. I must be off
+to my duke. What's the scot, ma&icirc;tre?"</p>
+<p>He dropped the politician, and was all innkeeper in a
+second.</p>
+<p>"A crown!" I cried in indignation. "Do you think I am made of
+crowns? Remember, I am not yet Minister of Finance."</p>
+<p>"No, but soon will be," he grinned. "Besides, what I ask is
+little enough, God knows. Do you think food is cheap in a
+siege?"</p>
+<p>"Then I pray Navarre may come soon and end it."</p>
+<p>"Amen to that," said old Jacques, quite gravely. "If he comes a
+Catholic it cannot be too soon."</p>
+<p>I counted out my pennies with a last grumble.</p>
+<p>"They ought to call this the Rue Coupebourses."</p>
+<p>He laughed; he could afford to, with my silver jingling in his
+pouch. He embraced me tenderly at parting, and hoped to see me
+again at his inn. I smiled to myself; I had not come to
+Paris&mdash;I&mdash;to stay in the Rue Coupejarrets!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+<h3><i>M. le Duc is well guarded.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to
+inquire my way to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew,
+in the Quartier Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had
+found the broad, straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to
+follow it over the hill down to the river-bank; my eyes were free,
+therefore, to stare at all the strange sights of the great
+city&mdash;markets and shops and churches and prisons. But most of
+all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had scarce realized
+there were so many people in the world as passed me that summer
+morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the place
+appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris was
+at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by
+the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.</p>
+<p>I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as
+not to see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I
+looked at the people I passed who were going about their business
+so tranquilly. Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or
+Navarre's. Before a week was out these peaceable citizens might be
+using pikes for tools and exchanging bullets for good mornings.
+Whatever happened, here was I in Paris in the thick of it! My feet
+fairly danced under me; I could not reach the h&ocirc;tel soon
+enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for it gave me chance
+to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die for
+him&mdash;whatever fate could offer I was ready for.</p>
+<p>The h&ocirc;tel, when at length I arrived before it, was no
+disappointment. Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun;
+the street was of decent width, and the houses held themselves back
+with reserve, like the proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did
+one here regret his possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in
+the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Of all the mansions in the place, the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin
+was, in my opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and
+stately, with gardens at the side. But there was about it none of
+that stir and liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the
+great. No visitors passed in or out, and the big iron gates were
+shut, as if none were looked for. Of a truth, the persons who
+visited Monsieur these days preferred to slip in by the postern
+after nightfall, as if there had never been a time when they were
+proud to be seen in his hall.</p>
+<p>Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of
+Monsieur's men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him
+boldly.</p>
+<p>He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce
+repaid him.</p>
+<p>"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M.
+le Duc."</p>
+<p>"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which,
+none of the newest, showed signs of my journey.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his
+men."</p>
+<p>He looked me up and down with a grin.</p>
+<p>"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is
+not receiving to-day."</p>
+<p>"I am F&eacute;lix Broux," I told him.</p>
+<p>"You may be F&eacute;lix anybody for all it avails; you cannot
+see Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the
+staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common
+fellow picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been
+at his side these twenty years.</p>
+<p>"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."</p>
+<p>"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You
+shall smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."</p>
+<p>"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to
+bother with you."</p>
+<p>"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and
+resumed his pacing up and down the court.</p>
+<p>"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he
+could hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by
+and by. I'll pay you off."</p>
+<p>It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal;
+it made a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an
+outcry that would bring forward some officer with more sense than
+the surly sentry, or whether to seek some other entrance, I became
+aware of a sudden bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which
+I could see through the gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair
+of flunkeys passed. There was some noise of voices and, finally, of
+hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen men-at-arms ran to the gates and
+swung them open, taking their stand on each side. Clearly, M. le
+Duc was about to drive out.</p>
+<p>A little knot of people had quickly collected&mdash;sprung from
+between the stones of the pavement, it would seem&mdash;to see
+Monsieur emerge.</p>
+<p>"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye,
+and a handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.</p>
+<p>I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in
+my throat now that the moment had come when I should see my
+Monsieur. At the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the
+coach-step, crying, all my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le
+Duc!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of
+recognition. The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang
+up-and struck me a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where
+the ponderous wheels would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick
+and kind, pulled me out of the way. Some one shouted,
+"Assassin!"</p>
+<p>"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with
+Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the
+sentry. "He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He
+was one of Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well,
+we have seen how Monsieur treats him!"</p>
+<p>"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young
+gentleman treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a
+common man so much as look at him."</p>
+<p>They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.</p>
+<p>"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because
+<i>he</i> knocked him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe
+there's harm in the boy. What meant you, lad?"</p>
+<p>"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the
+street. This, then, was what I had come to Paris for&mdash;to be
+denied entrance to the house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and
+threatened with a drubbing from the lackeys!</p>
+<p>For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From
+waking in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was
+Monsieur's. Never was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte
+more throw his soul into his service than I into mine. Never did
+lover hate to be parted from his mistress more than I from
+Monsieur. The journey to Paris had been a journey to Paradise. And
+now, this!</p>
+<p>Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me
+beseech him and not answered&mdash;not lifted a finger to save me
+from being mangled under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were
+two very different places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had
+been pleased to take me into the ch&acirc;teau and treat me to more
+intimacy than he accorded to the high-born lads, his other pages.
+So much the easier, then, to cast me off when he had tired of me.
+My heart seethed with rage and bitterness against Monsieur, against
+the sentry, and, more than all, against the young Comte de Mar, who
+had flung me under the wheels.</p>
+<p>I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son
+of M. le Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share
+his father's exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore
+him, which he so little repaid. I had never thought to like him,
+St. Quentin though he were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His
+handsome face looked ugly enough to me as he struck me that
+blow.</p>
+<p>I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own
+thoughts louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not
+remain in this trance forever, and at length I woke to two
+unpleasant facts: first, I had no idea where I was, and, second, I
+should be no better off if I knew.</p>
+<p>Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I
+go back to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it
+was equally obvious that never, so long as my father retained the
+spirit that was his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account
+of my morning's achievements. It was just here that, looking at the
+business with my father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I
+had behaved like an insolent young fool. But I was still too angry
+to acknowledge it.</p>
+<p>Remained, then, but one course&mdash;to stay in Paris, and keep
+from starvation as best I might.</p>
+<p>My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to
+throw away in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely
+what I should need to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for
+accidents; so that, after paying Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, I had hardly
+two pieces to jingle together.</p>
+<p>For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I
+could write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian,
+thanks to Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and
+handle a sword none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that
+it should not be hard to pick up a livelihood. But how to start
+about it I had no notion, and finally I made up my mind to go and
+consult him whom I now called my one friend in Paris, Jacques the
+innkeeper.</p>
+<p>'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly
+Rue St. Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might
+have been laid out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so
+did they twist and turn and double on themselves. I could make my
+way only at a snail's pace, asking new guidance at every corner.
+Noon was long past when at length I came on laggard feet around the
+corner by the Amour de Dieu.</p>
+<p>Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though
+I had resolved to seek out Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, still 'twas a
+hateful thing to enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I
+had paid for my breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for
+my dinner. I had bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have
+to tell how I had been flung under the coach-wheels. My pace
+slackened to a stop. I could not bring myself to enter the door. I
+tried to think how to better my story, so to tell it that it should
+redound to my credit. But my invention stuck in my pate.</p>
+<p>As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found
+myself gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my
+thoughts shifted back to my vision.</p>
+<p>Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had
+appeared to me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I
+had beheld them but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up
+their faces like those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was
+small, pale, with pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The
+second man was conspicuously big and burly, black-haired
+and-bearded. The third and youngest&mdash;all three were
+young&mdash;stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
+was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
+gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain;
+the next they had vanished like a dream.</p>
+<p>It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
+fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from
+their unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son
+of the Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen?
+Ma&icirc;tre Jacques had hinted at further terrors, and said no one
+dared enter the place. Well, grant me but the opportunity, and I
+would dare.</p>
+<p>Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance
+into that banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to
+do whatever mad mischief presented itself. Here was the house just
+across the street.</p>
+<p>Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in
+the row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over
+the door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it
+did, for there was no use in trying to batter down this door with
+the eye of the Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side
+street, and after exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one
+that led me into a small square court bounded on three sides by a
+tall house with shuttered windows.</p>
+<p>Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two
+doors were both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor
+were small, high, and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters
+swung half open, but I could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did
+not despair; I was not without experience of shutters. I selected
+one closed not quite tight, leaving a crack for my knife-blade. I
+found the hook inside, got my dagger under it, and at length drove
+it up. The shutter creaked shrilly open.</p>
+<p>A few good blows knocked in the casement. I followed.</p>
+<p>I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust. From
+this, once a porter's room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway
+dimly lighted from the open window behind me. The hall was large,
+paved with black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway
+mounted into mysterious gloom.</p>
+<p>My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a
+choked cry rasping my throat. For, as I crossed the hall, peering
+into the dimness, I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with
+upraised bludgeon, a man.</p>
+<p>For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless,
+motionless, waiting for him to brain me. Then my half-uttered
+scream changed to a quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to
+the gloom, discovered my bogy to be but a figure carved in wood,
+holding aloft a long since quenched flambeau.</p>
+<p>I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear.
+I thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled
+at the sword's point up these very stairs. The silence seemed to
+shriek at me, and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering
+out from the shadowed corners. Yet for all that&mdash;nay, because
+of that&mdash;I would not give up the adventure. I went back into
+the little room and carefully closed the shutter, lest some other
+meddler should spy my misdeed. Then I set my feet on the stair.</p>
+<p>If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was
+naught to the blackness now. My hand on the rail was damp. Yet I
+mounted steadily.</p>
+<p>Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of
+the next flight, and went on. Suddenly, above, I heard a noise. I
+came to an instant halt. All was as still as the tomb. I listened;
+not a breath broke the silence. It never occurred to me to imagine
+a rat in this house of the dead, and the noise shook me. With a
+sick feeling about my heart I went on again.</p>
+<p>On the next floor it was lighter. Faint outlines of doors and
+passages were visible. I could not stand the gloom a moment longer;
+I strode into the nearest doorway and across the room to where a
+gleam of brightness outlined the window. My shaking fingers found
+the hook of the shutter and flung it wide, letting in a burst of
+honest sunshine. I leaned out into the free air, and saw below me
+the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of the Amour de Dieu.</p>
+<p>The next instant a cloth fell over my face and was twisted
+tight; strong arms pulled me back, and a deep voice commanded:</p>
+<p>"Close the shutter."</p>
+<p>Some one pushed past me and shut it with a clang.</p>
+<p>"Devil take you! You'll rouse the quarter," cried my captor,
+fiercely, yet not loud. "Go join monsieur." With that he picked me
+up in his arms and walked across the room.</p>
+<p>The capture had been so quick I had no time for outcry. I fought
+my best with him, half strangled as I was by the cloth. I might as
+well have struggled against the grip of the Maiden. The man carried
+me the length of the house, it seemed; flung me down upon the
+floor, and banged a door on me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+<h3><i>The three men in the window</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in
+pitch-darkness. I dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the
+walls, I discovered myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all
+my force I flung myself once more upon the door. It stood firm.</p>
+<p>"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.</p>
+<p>They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced
+at that. I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil?
+These might be villains&mdash;doubtless were, skulking in this
+deserted house,&mdash;yet with readiness and pluck I could escape
+them.</p>
+<p>It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the
+grave. The men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had
+gone cautiously down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had
+given them a fine fright, clattering through the house as I had,
+and even now they were looking for my accomplices.</p>
+<p>It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness.
+If ever you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water
+from a rag, shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will
+thank you to take him out into the daylight and hang him. In token
+whereof, my heart welcomed like brothers the men returning.</p>
+<p>They came into the room, and I thought they were three in
+number. I heard the door shut, and then steps approached my
+closet.</p>
+<p>"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough
+voice of a man without breeding.</p>
+<p>"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the
+deep tones of my captor.</p>
+<p>Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do
+you look out for him, Gervais."</p>
+<p>I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for
+freedom. But the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for
+me&mdash;to the effect that my knife went one way and I another
+before I could wink. I reeled against the wall and stayed there,
+cursing myself for a fool that I had not trusted to fair words
+instead of to my dagger.</p>
+<p>"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid
+voice&mdash;a tall fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So
+had I seen the stalwart blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was
+older, a common-looking fellow whose face was new to me. All three
+were in their shirts on account of the heat; all were plain, even
+shabby, in their dress. But the two young men wore swords at their
+sides.</p>
+<p>The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of
+light into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few
+old chairs and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken
+food and wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs,
+two or three hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of
+dress littered the floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean
+quality except the bearing of the two young men. A gentleman is a
+gentleman even in the Rue Coupejarrets&mdash;all the more, maybe,
+in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two were gently born.</p>
+<p>The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name
+was Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris
+alone&mdash;for so I dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well
+open under dark brows&mdash;Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or
+angered; the only emotion to be read in his face was a gay interest
+as the blackavised Gervais put me questions.</p>
+<p>"How came you here? What are you about?"</p>
+<p>"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my
+stupidity with that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I
+thought the house was deserted."</p>
+<p>He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.</p>
+<p>"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the
+truth."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was
+the whole of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any
+one. They said the house was haunted."</p>
+<p>"Who said that?"</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."</p>
+<p>He stared at me in surprise.</p>
+<p>"What had you been asking about this house?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:</p>
+<p>"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the
+window last night. Did you not?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw
+you plain as day. But Ma&icirc;tre Jacques said it was a
+vision."</p>
+<p>"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed
+very neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I
+thought. So old Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de
+B&eacute;thune, who was a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.</p>
+<p>"He said my house belonged to the B&eacute;thunes! Well played,
+Jacques! You owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I
+took to make him think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for
+Henri Quatre. Did he say, perchance, that in this very courtyard
+Coligny fell?"</p>
+<p>"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my
+terrors for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I
+to know it was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but
+yesterday from St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be
+quiet, fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux."</p>
+<p>"Who sent you here?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, no one."</p>
+<p>"You lie."</p>
+<p>Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears
+stood in my eyes.</p>
+<p>"No one, monsieur; I swear it."</p>
+<p>"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."</p>
+<p>He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other,
+torture with strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the
+table.</p>
+<p>"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."</p>
+<p>"He is a spy."</p>
+<p>"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes,
+forsooth! No spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first
+seized him he was no spy. I say it again, now I have heard his
+story. He saw us by chance, and Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's bogy story
+spurred him on instead of keeping him off. You are a fool, my
+cousin."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You
+will bring us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a
+spy it means the whole crew are down upon us."</p>
+<p>"What of that?"</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! is it nothing?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:</p>
+<p>"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
+boisterously:</p>
+<p>"And do you want Monsieur here?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris flushed red.</p>
+<p>"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble
+himself to come."</p>
+<p>Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of
+several things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair
+of fools, you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us
+now. He shall not live to carry the tale of us."</p>
+<p>"Then you have me to kill as well!"</p>
+<p>Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his
+sword-hilt.</p>
+<p>"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a
+ruffian," he cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then
+Yeux-gris, with a sudden exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke
+into laughter.</p>
+<p>Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For
+Gervais was taking the situation with a seriousness that was as
+terrifying as it was stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I
+could not but think the end of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's
+laugh said the very notion was ridiculous; I was innocent of all
+harmful intent, and they were gentlemen, not cutthroats.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I
+told you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or
+what you do, I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no
+party and am no man's man. As for why you choose to live in this
+empty house, it is not my concern and I care no whit about it. Let
+me go, messieurs, and I will swear to keep silence about what I
+have seen."</p>
+<p>"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me
+he had yet assumed. He answered:</p>
+<p>"If he had not said the name&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more.
+If he were what you think, it is the very last name he would have
+said."</p>
+<p>This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Ma&icirc;tre
+Jacques's and my own. And he was their friend.</p>
+<p>"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you,
+why, I can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at
+least it is an honest one and has ever been held so down where we
+live."</p>
+<p>"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest
+to the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>He started, and Gervais cried out:</p>
+<p>"Voil&agrave;! who is the fool now?"</p>
+<p>My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my
+rescue, quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St.
+Quentin, and the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he
+whom they had spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There
+was more in this than I had thought at first. It was no longer a
+mere question of my liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever
+information I could gather.</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:</p>
+<p>"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris.
+What brought you?"</p>
+<p>"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered,
+deeming the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in
+Paris, my father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night,
+and lay at the Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's
+h&ocirc;tel, but the guard would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur
+drove out I tried to get speech with him, but he would have none of
+me."</p>
+<p>The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice
+and face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:</p>
+<p>"And do you hate him for that?"</p>
+<p>"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he
+chooses. But I hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul
+blow."</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"His son."</p>
+<p>"He has no son."</p>
+<p>"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Why, we knew naught&mdash;" I was beginning, when Gervais broke
+in:</p>
+<p>"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this!
+He saw the Comte de Mar&mdash;!"</p>
+<p>"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by
+Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline
+face&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as
+who should say, "That is his scullion."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his
+shoulders and demanded of me:</p>
+<p>"What next?"</p>
+<p>"I came away angry."</p>
+<p>"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted
+house? Pardieu! too plain a lie."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in
+the daytime," said Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in
+two lies; first the B&eacute;thunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a
+clumsy spy; they might have found a better one. Not but what that
+touch about ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of.
+That was Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked
+like a dolt else."</p>
+<p>"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not
+tell me about the B&eacute;thunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did
+not know the Comte de Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is
+handsome enough for a count. I came here, as I told you, in
+curiosity concerning Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's story. I had no idea of
+seeing you or any living man. It is the truth, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face.
+You came into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite
+you to stay. You shall be my valet."</p>
+<p>"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.</p>
+<p>The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:</p>
+<p>"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand
+the services of M. F&eacute;lix are not engaged."</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy&mdash;this
+sneak&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris,
+with a cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this
+shabby room. He added lightly again:</p>
+<p>"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not
+blab of us. Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry,
+they need it."</p>
+<p>Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."</p>
+<p>"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in
+rebellion, "what! you will not."</p>
+<p>"No," said I.</p>
+<p>"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.</p>
+<p>"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.</p>
+<p>"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by
+chance; it is true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was
+born on his land and I am no traitor. I will not be valet or
+henchman for either of you, if I die for it."</p>
+<p>I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and
+sprang for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais
+struck me over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was
+darkness.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+<h3><i>Rapiers and a vow.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>came to my senses slowly, to hear loud, angry voices. As I
+opened my eyes and stirred, the room reeled from me and all was
+blank again. Awhile after, I grew aware of a clashing of steel. I
+lay wondering thickly what it was and why it had to be going on
+while my head ached so, till at length it dawned on my dull brain
+that swords were crossing. I opened my eyes again, then.</p>
+<p>They were fighting each other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter
+was almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to
+the wall. Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other
+round in a circle till the room seemed to spin once more.</p>
+<p>I crawled out of the way and watched them, bewildered, absorbed.
+I had more reason to thrill over the contest than the mere
+excellence of it,&mdash;which was great,&mdash;since I was the
+cause of the duel, and my very life, belike, hung on its issue.</p>
+<p>They were both admirable swordsmen, yet it was clear from the
+first where the palm lay. Anything nimbler, lighter, easier than
+the sword-play of Yeux-gris I never hope to see in this imperfect
+world. The heavier adversary was hot, angry, breathing hard. A
+smile hovered over Yeux-gris's lips; already a red disk on
+Gervais's shirt showed where his cousin's sword had been and would
+soon go again, and deeper. I had forgotten my bruise in my interest
+and delight, when, of a sudden, one whom we all had ignored took a
+hand in the game. Gervais's lackey started forward and knocked up
+Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and Gervais slashed his arm
+from wrist to elbow.</p>
+<p>With a smothered cry, Yeux-gris caught at his wound. Gervais,
+ablaze with rage, sprang past him on his creature. The man gaped
+with amazement; then, for there was no time for parley, leaped for
+the door. It was locked. He turned, and with a look of deathly
+terror fell on his knees, crouched up against the door-post.
+Gervais lunged. His blade passed clean through the man's shoulders
+and pinned him to the door. His head fell heavily forward.</p>
+<p>"Have you killed him?" cried Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"By my faith! I meant to," came the answer. Gervais was bending
+over the man. With an abrupt laugh he called out: "Killed him,
+pardieu! He has come off cheap."</p>
+<p>He raised the fellow's limp head, and we saw that the sword had
+passed just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh.
+He had swooned from sheer terror, being in truth not so much as
+scratched.</p>
+<p>Gervais turned to his cousin.</p>
+<p>"I never meant that foul trick. It was no thought of mine. I
+would have turned the blade if I could. I will kill Pontou now, if
+you say the word."</p>
+<p>"Nay," answered the other, faintly; "help me."</p>
+<p>The blood was pouring from his arm; he was half swooning.
+Gervais and I ran to him and, between us, bathed the cut, bandaged
+it with strips torn from a shirt, and made a sling of a scarf. The
+wound was long, but not deep, and when we had poured some wine down
+his throat he was himself again.</p>
+<p>"You will not bear me malice for that poltroon's work,
+&Eacute;tienne?" Gervais asked, more humbly than I ever thought to
+hear him speak. "That was a foul cut, but it was no fault of mine.
+I am no blackguard; I fight fair. I will kill the knave, if you
+like."</p>
+<p>"You are ungrateful, Gervais; he saved you when you needed
+saving," Yeux-gris laughed. "Faith! let him live. I forgive him.
+You will pay me for my hurt by yielding me F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>Gervais looked at me. While we had worked side by side over
+Yeux-gris he seemed to have forgotten that he was my enemy. But now
+all the old suspicion and dislike came into his face again.
+However, he answered:</p>
+<p>"Aye, you would have been the victor had it not been for Pontou.
+You shall do what you like with your boy. I promise you that."</p>
+<p>"Now that is well said, Gervais," returned Yeux-gris, rising,
+and picking up his sword, which he sheathed. "That is very well
+said. For if you did not feel like promising it, why, I should have
+to begin over again with my left hand."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I give you the boy," Gervais repeated rather sullenly,
+turning away to pour himself some wine.</p>
+<p>I could not but wonder at Yeux-gris, at his gaiety and his
+steadfastness. He had hardly looked grave through the whole affair;
+he had fought with a smile on his lips and had taken a cruel wound
+with a laugh. Withal, he had been the constant champion of my
+innocence, even to drawing his sword on his cousin for me. Now,
+with his bloody arm in its sling, he was as debonair and careless
+as ever. I had been stupid enough to imagine the big Gervais the
+leader of the two, and I found myself mistaken. I dropped on my
+knee and kissed my saviour's hand in all gratitude.</p>
+<p>"Aha," said Yeux-gris, "what think you now of being my
+valet?"</p>
+<p>Verily, I was hard pushed.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I owe you much more than I can ever pay. If
+you were any man's enemy but my duke's, I would serve you on my
+knees. But I was born on the duke's land and I cannot be disloyal.
+You may kill me yourself, if you like."</p>
+<p>"No," he answered gravely, "that is not my m&eacute;tier."</p>
+<p>Gervais laughed.</p>
+<p>"Make me that offer, and I accept."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris turned to him with that little hauteur he assumed
+occasionally.</p>
+<p>"You are helpless, my cousin. You have passed your word."</p>
+<p>"Aye. I leave him to you."</p>
+<p>His sullen eyes told me it was no new-born tenderness for me
+that prompted his surrender. Nor had I, truth to tell, any great
+faith in the sacredness of his word. Yet I believed he would let me
+be. For it was borne in upon me that, despite his passion and
+temper, he had no wish to quarrel with Yeux-gris. Whether at bottom
+he loved him or in some way dreaded him, I could not tell; but of
+this my fear-sharpened wits were sure: he had no desire to press an
+open breach. He was honestly ashamed of his henchman's low deed;
+yet even before that his judgment had disliked the quarrel. Else
+why had he struck me with the hilt of the sword?</p>
+<p>"I leave him to you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you
+deem his life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a
+taste for insolence, &Eacute;tienne? Time was when you were touchy
+on that score."</p>
+<p>"Time never was when I did not love courage."</p>
+<p>"Oh, it is courage!" With a sneer he turned away.</p>
+<p>"Gervais," said Yeux-gris, "have the kindness to unlock the
+door."</p>
+<p>Gervais wheeled around, his face an angry question.</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris answered it with cold politeness:</p>
+<p>"That F&eacute;lix Broux may pass out."</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, he shall not!"</p>
+<p>"You gave your word you would leave him to me. Did you lie?"</p>
+<p>"I do leave him to you!" Gervais thundered. "I would slit his
+impudent throat; but since you love him, you may have him to eat
+out of your plate and sleep in your bosom. I will put up with it.
+But go out of that door till the thing is done, sang dieu! he shall
+not!"</p>
+<p>"If he goes straight to the duke, what then? He will say he
+found us living in my house. What harm? We are no felons. Let him
+say it."</p>
+<p>"And put Lucas on his guard?" returned Gervais. He was angry,
+yet he spoke with evident attempt at restraint. "Put Lucas on the
+trail? He is wary as a cat. Let him get wind of us here, and he
+will never let us catch him."</p>
+<p>"Well," said Yeux-gris, reluctantly, "it is true. And though I
+will not have the boy harmed, he shall stay here. I will not put a
+spoke in the wheel. We will take no risks till Lucas is shent. The
+boy shall be held prisoner. And afterward&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I will come myself and let him out," said Gervais, and
+laughed.</p>
+<p>I glanced at my protector, not liking to think of that moment,
+whenever it might be, "afterward." He went up to Gervais.</p>
+<p>"My cousin, are we friends or foes? For, faith! you treat me
+strangely like a foe."</p>
+<p>"We are friends."</p>
+<p>"I am your friend, since it is in your cause that I am here. I
+have stood at your shoulder like a brother&mdash;you cannot deny
+it."</p>
+<p>"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,&mdash;my one
+friend in that house,&mdash;as I was yours. I stood at your
+shoulder in the Montluc affair&mdash;you cannot deny that. I have
+been your ally, your servant, your messenger to mademoiselle, your
+envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my power to win you your
+lady."</p>
+<p>A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face.</p>
+<p>"That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais."</p>
+<p>He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a
+sudden as far away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. He shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on
+Gervais's shoulder: "It's beyond you, cousin."</p>
+<p>Gervais brought him back to the point.</p>
+<p>"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me
+when you let loose a spy to warn Lucas."</p>
+<p>"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder
+than I when that knave is dead. But I will not have F&eacute;lix
+Broux suffer because he dared speak for the Duke of St.
+Quentin."</p>
+<p>"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you
+keep him from Lucas."</p>
+<p>Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so
+great that the words came out of themselves:</p>
+<p>"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to
+him:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"</p>
+<p>Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have
+told me nothing I might ask, exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Why, Lucas!"</p>
+<p>He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance
+that the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a
+dead-weight, and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the
+nearest chair.</p>
+<p>A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris
+standing wet-handed by me.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you
+love so much this Lucas who struck you?"</p>
+<p>"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the
+duke."</p>
+<p>"Did you take us for Leaguers?"</p>
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+<p>He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself
+right in my eyes.</p>
+<p>"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen
+with a grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we
+have the Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to
+me; I am not putting either on the throne. So if you have got it
+into your head that we are plotting for the League, why, get it out
+again."</p>
+<p>"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>He answered me slowly:</p>
+<p>"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his
+way unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."</p>
+<p>"And Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man,
+skulks behind the bars of the H&ocirc;tel st. Quentin and will not
+face my cousin's sword. So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do
+you believe me?"</p>
+<p>I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my
+defence, and I could not but believe him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur," I said.</p>
+<p>He regarded me curiously.</p>
+<p>"The duke's life seems much to you."</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I am a Broux."</p>
+<p>"And could not be disloyal to save your life?"</p>
+<p>"My life! Monsieur, the Broux would not seek to save their souls
+if M. le Duc preferred them damned."</p>
+<p>I expected he would rebuke me for the outburst, but he did not;
+he merely said:</p>
+<p>"And Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Lucas!" I said. "I know nothing of him. He is new with the
+duke since my time. I do not owe him anything, save a grudge for
+that blow this morning. Mon dieu, monsieur, I am thankful to you
+for befriending me. Dying for Monsieur is all in a day's work; we
+expect to do that. But, my faith, if I had died just now, it would
+have been for Lucas."</p>
+<p>At this moment a long groan came from the end of the room. We
+turned; the lackey was waking from his swoon, under the
+ministration of Gervais. He opened his eyes; their glance was dull
+till they fell upon his master. And then at once they looked
+venomous.</p>
+<p>Gervais kicked him into fuller consciousness.</p>
+<p>"Get up, hound. It is time to meet Martin."</p>
+<p>The wretch scrambled shakily to his feet, and stood clutching
+the door-jamb and eying Gervais, terror writ large on his chalky
+countenance. Yet there was more than terror in his face; there was
+the look you see in the eyes of a trapped animal that watches its
+chance to bite. Yeux-gris cried out:</p>
+<p>"You dare not send that man, Gervais."</p>
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+<p>"Because the moment he is clear of the house he will betray you.
+Look at his face."</p>
+<p>"He shall swear on the cross!"</p>
+<p>"Aye. But you cannot trust the oath of such as he."</p>
+<p>"What would you? We must send."</p>
+<p>"As you will. But you are mad if you send him."</p>
+<p>Gervais pondered a moment, his slower wits taking in the
+situation. Then he seized the man by the collar, fairly flung him
+across the room into the closet, and bolted the door upon him.</p>
+<p>"I will settle with him later. But you are right. We cannot send
+him."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"My faith! we could not have more trouble if we were heads of
+the League than this little duel of yours is giving us. Why, what
+if we are seen? I will go."</p>
+<p>Gervais started.</p>
+<p>"No; that will not do."</p>
+<p>"Eh, bien, then, what will you propose?"</p>
+<p>But it was some one else who proposed. I said to Yeux-gris:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if all your purpose is against Lucas and no other, I
+am your man. I will go."</p>
+<p>"What, my stubborn-neck, you?"</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I owe you a great debt. While I thought you
+meant ill to M. le Duc, I could not serve you. But this Lucas is
+another pair of sleeves. I owe him no allegiance. Moreover, he
+nearly killed me this morning. Therefore I am quite at your
+disposal."</p>
+<p>"Now, I wonder if you are lying," said Gervais.</p>
+<p>"I do not think he is lying," Yeux-gris said. "I trow, Gervais,
+we have got our messenger."</p>
+<p>"You tell me to beware of Pontou because he hates me, and then
+would have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some
+acumen.</p>
+<p>I said: "Monsieur, you do not seem to understand how I come to
+make this offer."</p>
+<p>"To get out of the house with a whole skin."</p>
+<p>I had a joy in daring him, being sure of Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I should be glad to leave this house with
+my skin whole or broken, so long as I left on my own feet. But you
+have mentioned the very reason why I shall not betray you. I do not
+love you and I do not love Lucas. Therefore, if you and M. Lucas
+are to fight, I ask nothing better than to help the quarrel
+on."</p>
+<p>He stared at me with an air more of bewilderment than aught
+else, but Yeux-gris's ready laughter rang out.</p>
+<p>"Bravo, F&eacute;lix! I am proud of you. That is an idea worthy
+of C&aelig;sar! You would set your enemies to exterminate each
+other. And I asked you to be my valet!"</p>
+<p>"Which do you wish to see slain?" demanded the black
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>I answered quite truthfully:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way."</p>
+<p>I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out
+at once:</p>
+<p>"Bravo, F&eacute;lix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough
+to know whether you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well,
+but I love you."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a
+well, truth lies at the bottom."</p>
+<p>"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.</p>
+<p>"Do you say, trust him?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest,
+nor honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve
+against the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no
+coward; he was no liar. I think he is not those now."</p>
+<p>Gervais was still doubtful.</p>
+<p>"It is a risk. If he betrays&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you
+too good a gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."</p>
+<p>"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you
+like."</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris said at once to me:</p>
+<p>"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in
+open fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose
+out of doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him.
+Therefore we have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a
+man in the house to tell of his movements. He is to fare out
+secretly at night on a mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade
+only. M. Gervais and I will interrupt that little journey."</p>
+<p>"Very good, monsieur. And I?"</p>
+<p>"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition.
+Last night, when he told us of the plan, it had not been
+decided."</p>
+<p>"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know
+him."</p>
+<p>"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will
+not know you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little
+alley to the north of the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin. Do you know your
+way to the h&ocirc;tel? Well, then, you are to go down the
+passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's garden&mdash;you
+cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the street, on
+the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway. Half-way down
+the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our man, Louis
+Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"</p>
+<p>I repeated the directions.</p>
+<p>"You have learned your lesson. You will ask him the
+hour&mdash;only that."</p>
+<p>"And you will take oath not to betray us," commanded
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>I took out the cross that hung on my rosary. I was ready to
+swear. Gervais prompted:</p>
+<p>"I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but
+Martin."</p>
+<p>With all solemnity I swore it on my cross.</p>
+<p>"That oath will be kept," said Yeux-gris. He held out a sudden
+hand for the cross, which I gave him, wondering.</p>
+<p>"I swear that we mean no harm whatsoever to the Duke of St.
+Quentin." He kissed the cross and flung the chain back over my
+neck.</p>
+<p>At last I saw the door unlocked. Yeux-gris even returned to me
+my knife.</p>
+<p>"Au revoir, messieurs."</p>
+<p>Gervais, sullen to the last, vouchsafed no answer, but Yeux-gris
+called out cheerily, "Au revoir."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+<h3><i>A matter of life and death.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-n.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>othing in life can be so sweet as freedom after captivity,
+safety after danger. When I gained the open street once more and
+breathed the open air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could
+have sung with joy. I fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in
+getting out of my plight. As for the combat I was furthering, my
+only doubt about that was lest the skulking Lucas should not prove
+good sword enough to give trouble to M. Gervais. It was very far
+from my wish that he should come out of the attempt unscathed.</p>
+<p>But as I went along and had more time to ponder the matter,
+other doubts forced themselves into my reluctant mind. Put it as I
+pleased, the affair smacked too much of secrecy to be quite
+savoury. It was curious, to say the least, that an honest encounter
+should require so much plotting. Also, Lucas, coward and rascal
+though he might be, was Monsieur's man, doing Monsieur's errand,
+and for me to mix myself up in a plot against him was scarcely in
+keeping with my vaunted loyalty to the house of St. Quentin. My
+friend Gervais's quarrel might be just; his manner of procedure,
+even, might be just, and yet I have no right to take part in
+it.</p>
+<p>And yet Monsieur had signified plainly enough that he was no
+longer my patron. For my birth's sake I might never work against
+him, but I was free to do whatever else I chose. Monsieur himself
+had made it necessary for me to take another master, and assuredly
+I owed something to Yeux-gris. I had reason to feel confidence in
+his honour; surely I might reckon that he would not be in the
+affair unless it were honest. Lucas was like enough a scoundrel of
+whom Monsieur would be well rid. And lastly and finally and above
+all, I was sworn, so there was no use worrying about it. I had
+taken oath, and could not draw back.</p>
+<p>I hurried along to the rendezvous, only pausing one moment at
+the street-corner to buy sausages hot from the brazier, which I
+crammed into my mouth as I ran. But after all was there no need of
+haste; the little arch, when I panted up to it, was all
+deserted.</p>
+<p>No better place for a tryst could have been found in the heart
+of busy Paris. Only the one door opened into the alley; M. de
+Portreuse's high garden wall, forming the other side of the
+passage, was unbroken by a gate, and no curious eyes from the house
+could look into the deep arch and see the narrow nail-studded door
+at the back where I awaited the rat-faced Martin.</p>
+<p>I stood there long, first on one foot and then on the other,
+fearful every moment lest some one of Monsieur's true men should
+come along to demand my business. No one appeared, either foe or
+friend, for so long that I began to think Yeux-gris had tricked me
+and sent me here on a fool's errand, when, all at once, a low voice
+said close to my ear:</p>
+<p>"What seek you here?"</p>
+<p>I jumped on finding at my side a little, pale, sharp-faced
+man&mdash;the man of the vision. He had slipped through the door so
+suddenly and quietly that I was once more tempted to take him for a
+ghost. He eyed me for a bare second; then his eyes dropped before
+mine.</p>
+<p>"I am come to learn the hour," said I.</p>
+<p>"Did you not hear the chimes ring five?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no need for disguise. I am come from the two in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour."</p>
+<p>He favoured me with another of his shifty glances.</p>
+<p>"What hour meant they?"</p>
+<p>I said bluntly, in a louder tone:</p>
+<p>"The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission."</p>
+<p>"Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud&mdash;his or the
+other's."</p>
+<p>"Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more
+time than I care to lose. How much longer before you will tell me
+what I came to know?"</p>
+<p>He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his
+eyes slunk away from mine.</p>
+<p>"You should have a password."</p>
+<p>"They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the
+shuttered house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be
+enough."</p>
+<p>"How came you into this business?"</p>
+<p>"By a back window."</p>
+<p>He gave me another suspicious glance, but making nothing by it,
+he rejoined:</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, I trust you. I will tell you."</p>
+<p>He clutched my arm and drew me to the back of the arch, where
+the afternoon shadows were already gathered.</p>
+<p>"What have you for me?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Nothing. What should I have?"</p>
+<p>"No gold?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"He promised me ten pistoles to-day. He did not give them to
+you?"</p>
+<p>"I tell you, no."</p>
+<p>"You are a thief! You have them!"</p>
+<p>He stepped forward menacingly; so did I. He then fell back as
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"Nay, it was a jest; I know you are honest. But he promised me
+ten pistoles."</p>
+<p>"He did not give them to me," I said. "Perhaps he was not so
+convinced of my honesty. He will doubtless pay you afterward."</p>
+<p>"Afterward!" he retorted in a high key. "By our Lady, he shall
+pay me afterward! The gutters will run gold then, will they?
+Pardieu! I will see that a good stream flows my way. But one cannot
+play to-day with to-morrow's coin. He said I should have ten
+pistoles when I let him know the hour."</p>
+<p>"I cannot mend that. It lies between you and him. I have not
+seen or heard of any money."</p>
+<p>Martin edged up close to the door of retreat and waxed
+defiant.</p>
+<p>"Then all I have to say is, he may go whistle for his news."</p>
+<p>Now, had I but thought of it, here was an easy road out of a bad
+business. If Martin would not tell the hour of rendezvous, Lucas
+was saved, Monsieur's interests not endangered, yet at the same
+time I was not forsworn. But touch pitch and be defiled. You cannot
+go hand and glove with villains and remain an honest man. I
+returned directly:</p>
+<p>"As you choose. But M. Gervais carries a long sword."</p>
+<p>He started at that and made no instant reply, seeming to be
+balancing considerations. Then he gave his decision.</p>
+<p>"I will tell you. But your M. Gervais is wrong if he thinks I
+can be slighted and robbed of my dues. I know enough to make
+trouble for him, and I know where to take my knowledge. He will not
+find it easy to shut my mouth afterward, except with good broad
+gold pieces."</p>
+<p>"Enfin, are you telling me the hour?" I said impatiently. I was
+ill at ease; my only wish was to get the errand done and be
+gone.</p>
+<p>He laid a hand on my shoulder and made me bend to him, and even
+then spoke so low I could scarce catch the words.</p>
+<p>"They have fixed positively on to-night. They will leave by this
+door and take the route I described last night to M. Gervais. They
+will start as soon as the streets are quiet, sometime between ten
+and eleven. They must allow an hour to reach the gate, and the man
+goes off at twelve. In all likelihood they will not set out before
+a quarter of eleven; M. le Duc does not care to be recognized."</p>
+<p>So they planned to kill Lucas at Monsieur's side? Yeux-gris had
+not dared to tell me that. But he had looked me straight in the
+face and sworn on the cross no harm was meant to M. le Duc.
+Natheless, the thing looked ugly. My heart leaped up at the next
+words:</p>
+<p>"Also Vigo will go."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!"</p>
+<p>"Not so loud! You will have the guard on us! Yes, he is to go.
+At first Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this
+visit to the king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his
+confidence, and nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches
+over Monsieur like a hen over a chick."</p>
+<p>"Then it will be three to three," I said. I thought of Gervais,
+Yeux-gris, and Pontou, for of course I would take no part in
+it.</p>
+<p>"Three to two; Lucas will not fight."</p>
+<p>Lucas must be a poltroon, indeed!</p>
+<p>"But Vigo and Monsieur&mdash;" I began.</p>
+<p>"Aye, they are quick enough with their swords. Your side must be
+quicker, that's all. If you are sudden enough you can easily kill
+the duke before he can draw."</p>
+<p>Talk of words like thunderbolts! All the thunder of heaven could
+not have whelmed me like those words. Yeux-gris and his oaths! It
+<i>was</i> the duke, after all!</p>
+<p>I could not speak. I looked I know not how. But it was dusky in
+the arch.</p>
+<p>"It sounds simple," he went on. "But, three of you as you are,
+you will have trouble with Vigo. That is all. I have told you all.
+I must get back before I am missed. Good luck to the
+enterprise."</p>
+<p>Still I stood like a block of wood.</p>
+<p>"Tell M. Gervais to remember me," he said, and opening the door,
+passed in. I heard him lock and bolt it after him, and his
+footsteps hurrying down the passageway.</p>
+<p>Then I came to myself and sprang to the door and beat upon it
+furiously. But if he heard he was afraid to respond. After a futile
+moment that seemed an hour I rushed out of the arch and around to
+the great gate.</p>
+<p>The grilles were closed as before, but the sentry's face,
+luckily, was strange to me.</p>
+<p>"Open! open!" I shouted, breathless. "I must see M. le Duc!"</p>
+<p>"Who are you?" he demanded, staring.</p>
+<p>"My name is Broux. I have news for M. le Duc. Let me in. It is a
+matter of life and death."</p>
+<p>"Why, I suppose, then, I must let you in," that good fellow
+answered, drawing back the bolts. "But you must wait here
+till&mdash;"</p>
+<p>The gate was open. I took base advantage of him by sliding under
+his arm and shooting across the court up the steps to the house.
+The door stood open, and a couple of lackeys lounged on a bench in
+the hall.</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc!" I cried. "I must see him."</p>
+<p>They jumped up, the picture of bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"Who are you? How came you here?" cried the quicker-tongued of
+the two.</p>
+<p>"The sentry opened for me. Where am I to find M. le Duc? I must
+see him! I have news!"</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc sees no one to-day," the second lackey announced
+pompously.</p>
+<p>"But I must see him, I tell you," I repeated. I had completely
+lost what little head I ever had; it seemed to me that if I could
+not see M. le Duc on the instant I should find him weltering in his
+gore. "I must see him," I cried, parrot-like. "It is a matter of
+life and death."</p>
+<p>"From whom do you come?"</p>
+<p>"That's my affair. Enough that I come with news of the highest
+moment. You will be sorry if I you do not get me quickly to M. le
+Duc."</p>
+<p>They looked at each other, somewhat impressed.</p>
+<p>"I will go for M. Constant," said the one who had spoken
+first.</p>
+<p>Constant was Master of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited
+him with the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake.
+He was old, fussy, and self-important, and withal no friend to
+me.</p>
+<p>"I had rather you fetched Vigo," I said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Vigo will not come. He is with Monsieur. If I bring M.
+Constant, it is the best I can do for you."</p>
+<p>I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the
+nature of lackeys, and gave the messenger the last silver piece I
+had in the world. He regarded it contemptuously, but pocketed it
+and departed in leisurely fashion up the stairs.</p>
+<p>The other was not too grand to cross-examine me.</p>
+<p>"What sort of news have you? Do you come from the king?" he
+asked in a lowered voice.</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"From M. de Val&egrave;re?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Then who the devil are you?"</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Ah, St. Quentin," he said, as if he found that rather tame.
+"You bring news from there?"</p>
+<p>"No, I do not. Think you I shall tell you? This news is for
+Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"It won't reach Monsieur unless you learn politeness toward the
+gentlemen of his household," he retorted.</p>
+<p>We were getting into a lively quarrel when Constant appeared on
+the stairway&mdash;Constant and the lackey who had fetched him, and
+two more lackeys, and a page, all of whom had somehow scented that
+something was in the wind. They came flocking about us as I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Ah, M. Constant! You know me, F&eacute;lix Broux of St.
+Quentin. I must see M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>Constant's face of surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down
+at St. Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow,
+peevish old dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I
+had not thought he would revenge himself at such time as this. He
+looked at me with a spiteful grin, and said to the men:</p>
+<p>"He lies. I do not know him. I never saw him."</p>
+<p>"Never saw me, F&eacute;lix Broux!" I cried, completely taken
+aback.</p>
+<p>"No," maintained Constant. "You are an impostor."</p>
+<p>"Impostor! Nonsense!" I cried out. "Constant, you know me as
+well as you know yourself. I say I must see the duke; his life is
+in danger!"</p>
+<p>Constant was paying off old scores with interest.</p>
+<p>"An impostor," he yelled shrilly, "or else a madman&mdash;or an
+assassin."</p>
+<p>"That is the truth," said some one, laying a heavy hand on my
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>I turned; two men of the guard had come up, my friend of just
+now and my foe of the morning. It was the latter who held me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"This is the very rascal who sprang on Monsieur's coach-step in
+the morning. M. Lucas threw him off, else he might have stabbed
+Monsieur. We were fools enough to let him go free. But this time he
+shall not get off so easy."</p>
+<p>"I am innocent of all thought of harm," I cried. "I am M. le
+Duc's loyal servant. I meant no harm this morning, and I mean none
+now. I am here to save Monsieur's life."</p>
+<p>"He is here to kill Monsieur; he is an assassin!" screamed
+Constant. "Flog him, men; he will own the truth then!"</p>
+<p>"I am no assassin!" I shouted, struggling in their grasp. "Let
+me go, villains, let me go! I tell you, Monsieur's life is at
+stake&mdash;Monsieur's very life, I tell you!"</p>
+<p>They paid me no heed. Not one of them&mdash;save hat lying knave
+Constant&mdash;knew me as other than the shabby fellow who had
+acted suspiciously in the morning. They were dragging me to the
+door in spite of my shouts and struggles, when suddenly a ringing
+voice spoke from above:</p>
+<p>"What is this rumpus? Who talks of Monsieur's life?"</p>
+<p>The guards halted dead, and I cried out joyfully:</p>
+<p>"Vigo!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am Vigo," the big man answered, striding down the
+stairs. "Who are you?"</p>
+<p>I wanted to shout, "F&eacute;lix Broux, Monsieur's page," but a
+sort of nightmare dread came over me lest Vigo, too, should
+disclaim me, and my voice stuck in my throat.</p>
+<p>"Whoever you are, you will be taught not to make a racket in M.
+le Duc's hall. By the saints! it's the boy F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>At the friendliness in his voice the guards dropped their hands
+from me.</p>
+<p>"M. Vigo," I said, "I have news for Monsieur of the gravest
+moment. I am come on a matter of life and death. And I am stopped
+in the hall by lackeys."</p>
+<p>He looked at me sternly.</p>
+<p>"This is not one of your fooleries, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"No, M. Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Come with me."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+<h3><i>A divided duty.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hat was Vigo's way. The toughest snarl untangled at his touch.
+He had more sense and fewer airs than any other, he saw at once
+that I was in earnest; and Constant's voluble protests were as so
+much wind. The title does not make the man. Though Constant was
+Master of the Household and Vigo only Equery, yet Vigo ruled every
+corner of the establishment and every man in it, save only
+Monsieur, who ruled him.</p>
+<p>He said no word to me as we climbed the broad stair; neither
+reproved me for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He
+would not pry into Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned
+Monsieur, he had no interest in me whatsoever. He led the way
+straight into an antechamber, where a page sprang up to bar our
+passage.</p>
+<p>"No one may enter, M. Vigo, not even you. M. le Duc has ordered
+it. Why, F&eacute;lix! You in Paris!"</p>
+<p>"I enter," said Vigo; and, sweeping Marcel aside, he knocked
+loudly.</p>
+<p>"I came last night," I found time to say under my breath to my
+old comrade before the door was opened.</p>
+<p>The handsome secretary whom I had taken for the count stood in
+the doorway looking askance at us. He knew me at once and
+wondered.</p>
+<p>"You cannot enter, Vigo. M. le Duc is occupied."</p>
+<p>He made to shut the door, but Vigo's foot was over the sill.</p>
+<p>"Natheless, I must enter," he answered unabashed and pushed his
+way into the room.</p>
+<p>"Then you must answer for it," returned the secretary, with a
+scowl that sat ill on his delicate face.</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> shall answer for it if it turns out a mare's nest,"
+said Vigo, in a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I
+passed him and Lucas, and flew down the long room to Monsieur.</p>
+<p>M. le Duc was seated before a table heaped with papers. He had
+been watching the scene at the door in surprise and anger. He
+looked at me with a sharp frown, while the deer-hound at his feet
+rose on its haunches growling.</p>
+<p>"Roland!" I said. The dog sprang up and came to me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux!" Monsieur exclaimed, with his quick, warm
+smile&mdash;a smile no man in France could match for radiance.</p>
+<p>I had no thought of kneeling, of making obeisance, of waiting
+permission to speak.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, half choked, "there is a plot&mdash;a vile
+plot to murder you!"</p>
+<p>"Where? At St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"No, Monsieur. Here in Paris. In the streets to-night, when you
+go to the king."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang to his feet, his hand on his sword. Lucas turned
+white. Vigo swore. Monsieur cried:</p>
+<p>"How, in God's name, know you that?"</p>
+<p>"You have been betrayed, Monsieur. Your plan is known. You leave
+the house to-night, near a quarter of eleven, to go in secret to
+the king. You leave by the little door in the alley&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Diable!" breathed Vigo.</p>
+<p>"They set on you on your way&mdash;three of them&mdash;to run
+you through before you can draw."</p>
+<p>"But, ventre bleu! Monsieur is not alone."</p>
+<p>"No; he walks between you and M. Lucas."</p>
+<p>Not one of them spoke. They stared at me as if I were something
+uncanny. I, a raw country boy, disclosing a perfect knowledge of
+their most intimate plans!</p>
+<p>"How know you this?" Monsieur demanded of me. But he was not
+looking at me. His keen glance went first to Lucas, then to Vigo,
+the two men who had shared his confidence. The secretary cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"You cannot think, Monsieur, that I betrayed you?"</p>
+<p>Vigo said nothing. His steady eyes never left Monsieur's
+face.</p>
+<p>"No," answered Monsieur to Lucas, "I cannot think it." And to
+Vigo he said: "I shall accuse you when I accuse myself.
+But&mdash;none knew this thing save our three selves." And his gaze
+went back to Lucas.</p>
+<p>"It is not likely to be he," I said, impelled to be just to him
+though I did not like him, "for they meant to kill him as
+well."</p>
+<p>Lucas started, then instantly recovered himself.</p>
+<p>"A comprehensive plot, Monsieur," he said, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Then who was it?" cried Monsieur to me. "You know. Speak."</p>
+<p>"There is a spy in the house&mdash;an eavesdropper," I said, and
+then paused.</p>
+<p>"Aye?" said Monsieur. "Who?"</p>
+<p>Now the answer to this was easy, yet I flinched before it; for I
+knew well enough what Monsieur would do. He feared no man, and
+waited on no man's advice. And if he was a good lover, he was a
+good hater. He would not inform the governor, and await the tardy
+course of justice, that would probably accomplish&mdash;nothing.
+Nor would he consider the troubled times and the danger of his
+position, and ignore the affair, as many would have deemed best. He
+would not stop to think what the Sixteen might have to say to it.
+No; he would call out his guards and slay the plotters in the Rue
+Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right he should,
+but&mdash;I owed my life to Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>"His name, man, his name!" Monsieur was crying.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I returned, flushing hot, "Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Do you know his name?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur, I know his name, but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me in surprise and frowning, impatience.
+Quickly Lucas struck in:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I have grave doubts of the boy's honesty."</p>
+<p>"Doubts!" cried Monsieur, with a sudden laugh. "It is not a case
+for doubts. The boy states facts."</p>
+<p>He seated himself in his chair, his face growing stern again.
+The little action seemed to make him no longer merely my
+questioner, but my judge.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix Broux, let us get to the bottom of this."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I began, struggling to put the case clearly, "I
+learned of the plot by accident. I did not guess for a long time it
+was you who were the victim. When I found out that, I came straight
+here to you. Monsieur, there are four men in the plot, and one of
+them has stood my friend."</p>
+<p>"And my assassin!"</p>
+<p>"He is a black-hearted villain!" I acknowledged. "For he swore
+no harm was meant to you. He swore it was only a private grudge
+against M. Lucas. But when one of them let out the truth I came
+straight to you."</p>
+<p>"That is likely true," said Vigo, "for he was ready to kill the
+men who barred his way."</p>
+<p>"You were in a plot to kill my secretary!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;F&eacute;lix Broux!"</p>
+<p>I curled with shame.</p>
+<p>"M. Lucas had struck me," I muttered; "I thought the fight was
+fair enough. And they threatened my life."</p>
+<p>Monsieur's contemptuous eyes shrivelled me as flame shrivels a
+leaf.</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;a Broux of St. Quentin!"</p>
+<p>Lucas, who had watched me close all the while, as they all three
+did, said now:</p>
+<p>"I believe he is a cheat, Monsieur. There is no plot. He has
+learned of your plan through the eavesdropper he speaks of and
+thinks to make credit out of a trumped-up tale of murder."</p>
+<p>"No," answered Monsieur. "You may think that, Lucas, for he is a
+stranger to you. But I know him. He was a fool sometimes, but he
+was never dishonest. You used to be fond of me, F&eacute;lix. What
+has happened to make you consort with my enemies?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, I love you. I have always loved you," I cried. "I
+am not lying now, nor cheating you. There is a plot. I learned it
+and came straight to you, though I was under oath not to betray
+them."</p>
+<p>"Then, in Heaven's name, F&eacute;lix," burst out Vigo, "which
+side are you on?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur began to laugh.</p>
+<p>"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can
+make nothing of it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him
+a trickster now."</p>
+<p>Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.</p>
+<p>"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to
+get some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we
+have not yet fathomed."</p>
+<p>"Will Monsieur let me speak?"</p>
+<p>"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past,"
+he answered dryly.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin
+with you, three months back. But at length he said I should come,
+and I reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an
+inn. This morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let
+me enter. I was so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove
+out I sprang up on your coach-step&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was
+you, F&eacute;lix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other
+matters. And Lucas took you for a miscreant. Now I <i>am</i>
+sorry."</p>
+<p>If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology.
+But at once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you
+in all good faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save
+me, you turn traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill
+him! I had believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I was wrong&mdash;a thousand times wrong. I knew that
+as soon as I had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I
+came to you, oath or no oath."</p>
+<p>"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant
+smile. "Now you are F&eacute;lix. Who are my would-be
+murderers?"</p>
+<p>We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck
+before, and here we stuck again.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count
+ten&mdash;tell you their names, their whereabouts,
+everything&mdash;were it not for one man who stood my friend."</p>
+<p>The duke's eyes flashed.</p>
+<p>"You call him that&mdash;my assassin!"</p>
+<p>"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's
+assassin&mdash;and a perjurer. But&mdash;but, Monsieur, he saved my
+life from the other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back
+by betraying him?"</p>
+<p>"According to your own account, he betrayed you."</p>
+<p>"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were
+your own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the
+gutter, would you send him to his death?"</p>
+<p>"To whom do you owe your first duty?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, to you."</p>
+<p>"Then speak."</p>
+<p>But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain,
+yet he had saved my life.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I cannot."</p>
+<p>The duke cried out:</p>
+<p>"This to me!"</p>
+<p>There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a
+shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to
+meet Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater
+in Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover.
+Monsieur had been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the
+lightning to strike, he said with utmost gentleness:</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, let me understand you. In what manner did this
+man save your life?"</p>
+<p>Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness
+and ever strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the
+finer that it was not his nature. His leniency fired me with a
+sudden hope.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be
+as vile as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell
+you, will you let that one go?"</p>
+<p>"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke.
+"F&eacute;lix, will you speak?"</p>
+<p>"If Monsieur will promise to let him go&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."</p>
+<p>His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger,
+and for the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his
+sentence. And again he did what I could not guess. He cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what
+you do. I am in constant danger. The city is filled with my
+enemies. The Leagues hate me and are ever plotting mischief against
+me. Every day their mistrust and hatred grow. I did a bold thing in
+coming to Paris, but I had a great end to serve&mdash;to pave a way
+into the capital for the Catholic king and bring the land to peace.
+For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk my life to-night on
+foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my life is lost. The
+Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours be harried
+to a desert in the civil wars!"</p>
+<p>I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this
+unlooked-for appeal pierced me through and through. All the love
+and loyalty in me&mdash;and I had much, though it may not have
+seemed so&mdash;rose in answer to Monsieur's call. I fell on my
+knees before him, choked with sobs.</p>
+<p>Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix, speak."</p>
+<p>I answered huskily:</p>
+<p>"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"</p>
+<p>"Judas betrayed his <i>master</i>."</p>
+<p>It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my
+head to tell him all.</p>
+<p>Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le
+Duc, I saw&mdash;not him, but Yeux-gris&mdash;Yeux-gris looking at
+me with warm good will, as he had looked when he was saving me from
+Gervais. I saw him, I say, plain before my eyes. The next instant
+there was nothing but Monsieur's face of rising impatience.</p>
+<p>I rose to my feet, and said:</p>
+<p>"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.</p>
+<p>I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it
+were no more than my deserts.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"</p>
+<p>I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow
+knotted, his hands clenched as if to keep them off me.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever
+you please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not
+that I will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I
+<i>cannot</i>."</p>
+<p>He burst into an angry laugh.</p>
+<p>"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My
+faith! though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I
+seem to be getting the worst of it."</p>
+<p>"There is the boot, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.</p>
+<p>"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a
+Broux."</p>
+<p>"There Monsieur is wrong. The lad has been disloyal and
+insolent, if he is a Broux."</p>
+<p>"Granted, Vigo," said M. le Duc. But he did not add, "Fetch the
+boot."</p>
+<p>Vigo went on with steady persistence. "He has not been loyal to
+Monsieur and his interests in refusing to tell what he knows. And
+if he goes counter to Monsieur's interests he is a traitor, Broux
+or no Broux. He has no claim to be treated as other than an enemy.
+These are serious times. Monsieur does not well to play with his
+dangers. The boy must tell what he knows. Am I to go for the boot,
+Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>M. le Duc was silent for a moment, while the hot flush that had
+sprung to his face died away. Then he answered Vigo:</p>
+<p>"Nevertheless, it is owing to F&eacute;lix that I shall not walk
+out to meet my death to-night."</p>
+<p>The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering
+nervously the papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence,
+when now he stepped forward and said:</p>
+<p>"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a
+bad plan. No man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
+You are either my loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the
+other. Now I am loath to hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to
+hurt you. I give you one more chance to be honest. Go and think it
+over. If in half an hour you have decided that you are my true man,
+well and good. If not, by St. Quentin, we will see what a flogging
+can do!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+<h3><i>Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-u.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>npleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom.
+Those men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's
+iron ways, said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.</p>
+<p>The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned
+to the inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the
+page burst out:</p>
+<p>"What is it? What is the coil? What have you done,
+F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>Now you can guess I was too sick-hearted for chatter. I had
+defied and disobeyed my liege lord; I could never hope for pardon
+or any man's respect. They threatened me with flogging; well, let
+them flog. They could not make my back any sorer than my conscience
+was. For I had not the satisfaction in my trouble of thinking that
+I had done right. Monsieur's danger should have been my first
+consideration. What was Yeux-gris, perjured scoundrel, in
+comparison with M. le Duc? And yet I knew that at the end of the
+half-hour I should not tell; at the end of the flogging I should
+not tell. I had warned Monsieur; that I would have done had it been
+the breaking of a thousand oaths. But give up Yeux-gris? Not if
+they tore me limb from limb!</p>
+<p>"What is it all about?" cried Marcel, again. "You look as glum
+as a Jesuit in Lent. What is the matter with you,
+F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"I have cooked my goose," I said gloomily.</p>
+<p>"What have you done?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing that I can speak about. But I am out of Monsieur's
+books."</p>
+<p>"What was old Vigo after when he took you in to Monsieur? I
+never saw anything so bold. When Monsieur says he is not to be
+disturbed he means it."</p>
+<p>I had nothing to tell him, and was silent.</p>
+<p>"What is it? Can't you tell an old chum?"</p>
+<p>"No; it is Monsieur's private business."</p>
+<p>"Well, you are grumpy!" he cried out pettishly. "You must be out
+of grace." He seemed to decide that nothing was to be made out of
+me just now on this tack, and with unabated persistence tried
+another.</p>
+<p>"Is it true, F&eacute;lix, what one of the men said just now,
+that you tried to speak with Monsieur this morning when he drove
+out?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. But Monsieur did not recognize me."</p>
+<p>"Like enough," Marcel answered. "He has a way of late of falling
+into these absent fits. Monsieur is not the man he was."</p>
+<p>"He does look older," I said, "and worn. I trow the risk he is
+running&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pshaw!" cried Marcel, with scorn. "Is Monsieur a man to mind
+risks? No; it is M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>I started like a guilty thing, remembering what Yeux-gris had
+told me and I, wrapped in my petty troubles, had forgotten.
+Monsieur had lost his only son. And I had chosen this time to defy
+him!</p>
+<p>"How long ago was it?" I asked in a hushed voice.</p>
+<p>"Since M. le Comte left us? It will be three weeks next
+Friday."</p>
+<p>"How did he die?"</p>
+<p>"Die?" echoed Marcel. "You crazy fellow, he is not dead!"</p>
+<p>It was my turn to stare.</p>
+<p>"Then where is he?"</p>
+<p>"It would be money in my pouch if I knew. What made you think
+him dead, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"A man told me so."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu!" he cried in some excitement. "When? Who was it?"</p>
+<p>"To-day. I do not know the man's name."</p>
+<p>"It seems you know very little. Pardieu! I do not believe M. le
+Comte is dead. What else did your man say?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing. He only said the Comte de Mar was dead."</p>
+<p>"Pshaw! I don't believe it. You believe everything you hear
+because you are just from the country. No; if M. le Comte were dead
+we should hear of it. Oh, certainly, we should hear."</p>
+<p>"But where is he, then? You say he is lost."</p>
+<p>"Aye. He has not been seen or heard of since the day they had
+the quarrel."</p>
+<p>"Who quarrelled?"</p>
+<p>"Why, he and Monsieur," answered Marcel, in a lower voice,
+pointing to the door of the inner room. "M. le Comte has been his
+own master too long to take kindly to a hand over him; that is the
+whole of it. He has a quick temper. So has Monsieur."</p>
+<p>But I thought of Monsieur's wonderful patience, and I cried:</p>
+<p>"Shame!"</p>
+<p>"What now?"</p>
+<p>"To speak like that of Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Enfin, it is true. He is none the worse for that. But I suppose
+if Monsieur had a cloven hoof one must not mention it."</p>
+<p>"One would get his head broken."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you Broux!" he cried out. "I have not seen you for half a
+year. I had forgotten that with you the St. Quentins rank with the
+saints."</p>
+<p>"You&mdash;you are a hired servant. You come to Monsieur as you
+might come to anybody. With the Broux it is different," I retorted
+angrily. Yet I could not but know in my heart that any hired
+servant might have served Monsieur better than I. My boasted
+loyalty&mdash;what was it but lip-service? I said more humbly:
+"Pshaw! it is no great matter. Tell me about the quarrel."</p>
+<p>"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was
+the question of M. le Comte's marriage."</p>
+<p>"What! is he married?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see,
+F&eacute;lix," Marcel said in a tone deep with importance, "we're
+Navarre's men now."</p>
+<p>"Of course," said I.</p>
+<p>"I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne
+himself. You greenhorn! It is as much as our lives are worth to
+side openly with Navarre. The League may attack us any day."</p>
+<p>"I know," I said uneasily. Every chance word Marcel spoke seemed
+to dye my guilt the deeper. "But what has this to do with M. le
+Comte's marriage?" I asked him.</p>
+<p>"Why, he was more than half a Leaguer. Perhaps he is one now.
+Some say he and Monsieur were at daggers drawn about politics; but
+I warrant it was about Mlle. de Montluc. They call her the Rose of
+Lorraine. She's the Duke of Mayenne's own cousin and housemate. And
+we're king's men, so of course it was no match for Monsieur's son.
+They say Mayenne himself favoured the marriage, but our duke
+wouldn't hear of it. However, the backbone of the trouble was M. de
+Grammont."</p>
+<p>"And who may he be?"</p>
+<p>"He's a cousin of the house. He and M. le Comte are as thick as
+thieves. Before we came to Paris they lodged together. So when M.
+le Comte came here he brought M. de Grammont. Dare I speak ill of
+Monsieur's cousin, F&eacute;lix? For I would say, at the risk of a
+broken head, that he is a sour-faced churl. You cannot deny it. You
+never saw him."</p>
+<p>"No, nor M. le Comte, either."</p>
+<p>"Why, you have seen M. le Comte!"</p>
+<p>"Never. The only time he came to St. Quentin I was laid up in
+bed with a strained leg. I missed the chase. Don't you
+remember?"</p>
+<p>"Why, you are right; that was the time you fell out of the
+buttery window when you were stealing tarts, and Margot got after
+you with the broomstick. I remember very well."</p>
+<p>He was for calling up all our old pranks at the ch&acirc;teau,
+but it was little joy to me to think on those fortunate days when I
+was Monsieur's favourite. I said:</p>
+<p>"Nay, Marcel, you were telling me of M. le Comte and the
+quarrel."</p>
+<p>"Oh, as for that, it is easy told. You see M. le Comte and this
+Grammont took no interest in Monsieur's affairs, and they had very
+little to say to him, and he to them. They had plenty of friends in
+Paris, Leaguers or not, and they used to go about amusing
+themselves. But at last M. de Grammont had such a run of bad luck
+at the tables that he not only emptied his own pockets but M. le
+Comte's as well. I will say for M. le Comte that he would share his
+last sou with any one who asked."</p>
+<p>"And so would any St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are always piping up for the St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"He should have no need in this house."</p>
+<p>We jumped up to find Vigo standing behind us.</p>
+<p>"What have you been saying of Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing, M. Vigo," stammered the page. "I only said M. le
+Comte&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You are not to discuss M. le Comte. Do you hear?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Then obey. And you, F&eacute;lix, I shall have a little
+interview with you shortly."</p>
+<p>"As you will, M. Vigo," I said hopelessly.</p>
+<p>He went off down the corridor, and Marcel turned angrily on
+me.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu, F&eacute;lix, you have got me into a nice scrape with
+your eternal chanting of the praises of Monsieur. Like as not I
+shall get a beating for it. Vigo never forgets."</p>
+<p>"I am sorry," I said. "We should not have been talking of
+it."</p>
+<p>"No, we should not. Come over here where we can watch both
+doors, and I'll tell you the rest before the old lynx gets
+back."</p>
+<p>We sat down close together, and he proceeded in a low tone to
+disobey Vigo.</p>
+<p>"Enfin, as I said, the two young gentlemen were quite sans le
+sou, for things had come to a point where M. le Duc looked pretty
+black at any application for funds&mdash;he has other uses for his
+gold, you see. One day Monsieur was expecting some one to whom he
+was to pay a thousand pistoles, and to have the money handy he put
+it in a secret drawer in his cabinet in the room yonder. The man
+arrives and is taken to Monsieur's private room. Monsieur gives him
+his orders and goes to the cabinet for his pistoles. No pistoles
+there!"</p>
+<p>Marcel paused dramatically. "And what then?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Well, it appears he had once shown M. le Comte the trick of the
+drawer, so he sent for him&mdash;not to accuse him, mind you. For
+M. le Comte is wild enough, yet Monsieur did not think he would
+steal pistoles, nor would he, I will stake my oath. No, Monsieur
+merely asked him if he had ever shown any one the drawer, and M. le
+Comte answered, 'Only Grammont.'"</p>
+<p>And how have you learned all this?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, one hears."</p>
+<p>"One does, with one's ears to the keyhole."</p>
+<p>"It behooves you, F&eacute;lix, to be civil to your better!"</p>
+<p>I made pretence of looking about me.</p>
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+<p>"He sits here. I am page to the Duke of St. Quentin. And
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Touch&eacute;!" I admitted bitterly enough. Little Marcel, my
+junior, my unquestioning follower in the old days, was now indeed
+my better, quite in a position to patronize.</p>
+<p>"Continue, if you please, Marcel. Yet, in passing, I should like
+to ask you how much you heard our talk in there just now."</p>
+<p>"Nothing," he answered candidly. "When they are so far down the
+room one cannot hear a word. In the affair of the pistoles they
+stood near the cabinet at this end. One could not help but hear. As
+for listening at keyholes, I scorn it."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it is well to scorn it. People have an unpleasant trick of
+opening doors so suddenly."</p>
+<p>He laughed cheerfully.</p>
+<p>"Old Vigo caught us, certes. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes,
+then Monsieur put on his proud look and said, if it was a case of
+no one but his son and his cousin, he preferred to drop the matter.
+But M. le Comte got out of him what the trouble was and went off
+for Grammont, red as fire. The two together came back to Monsieur
+and denied up and down that either of them knew aught of his
+pistoles, or had told of the secret to any one. They say it was
+easy to see that Monsieur did not believe Grammont, but he did not
+give him the lie, and the matter came near dropping there, for M.
+le Duc would not accuse a kinsman. But then Lucas gave a new turn
+to the affair."</p>
+<p>"How long has Lucas been here, Marcel? Who is he?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, he's a rascal of a Huguenot. Monsieur picked him up at
+Mantes, just before we came to the city. And if he spies on
+Monsieur's enemies as well as he does on this household, he must be
+a useful man. He has that long nose of his in everything, let me
+tell you. Of course he was present when Monsieur missed the
+pistoles. So then, quite on his own account, without any orders, he
+took two of the men and searched M. de Grammont's room. And in a
+locked chest of his which they forced open they found five hundred
+of the pistoles in the very box Monsieur had kept them in."</p>
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+<p>Marcel made a fine gesture.</p>
+<p>"And then, pardieu! the storm broke. M. de Grammont raved like a
+madman. He said Lucas was the thief and had put half the sum in his
+chest to divert suspicion. He said it was a plot to ruin him
+contrived between Monsieur and his henchman, Lucas. It is true
+enough, certes, that Monsieur never liked him. He threatened
+Monsieur's life and Lucas's. He challenged Monsieur, and Monsieur
+declined to cross swords with a thief. He challenged Lucas, and
+Lucas took the cue from Monsieur. I was not there&mdash;on either
+side of the door. What I tell you has leaked out bit by bit from
+Lucas, for Monsieur keeps his mouth shut. The upshot of the matter
+was that Grammont goes at Lucas with a knife, and Monsieur has the
+guards pitch my gentleman into the street. Then M. le Comte swore a
+big oath that he would go with Grammont. Monsieur told him if he
+went in such company it would be forever. M. le Comte swore he
+would never come back under his father's roof if M. le Duc crawled
+to him on his knees to beg him."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" I cried; "and then?"</p>
+<p>"Marry, that's all. M. le Comte went straight out of this gate,
+without horse or squire. And we have not heard a word of either of
+them since."</p>
+<p>He paused, and when I made no comment, said, a trifle
+aggrieved:</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, you take it calmly, but you would not had you been
+here. It was an altogether lively affair. It wouldn't surprise me a
+whit if some day Monsieur should be attacked as he drives out. He's
+not one to forget an injury, this M. Gervais de Grammont."</p>
+<p>At the name, intelligence flashed over me, sudden and clear as
+last night's lightning-gleam. Yet this thing I seemed to see was so
+hideous, so horrible, that my mind recoiled from it.</p>
+<p>"Marcel," I stammered, shuddering, "Marcel&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! what ails you? Is some one walking on your grave?"</p>
+<p>"Marcel, how is M. le Comte named?"</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar? Oh, do you mean his names in baptism?
+Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie. They call him
+&Eacute;tienne. Why do you ask? What is it?"</p>
+<p>It was a certainty, then. Yet I could not bring myself to
+believe this horrible thing.</p>
+<p>"I have never seen him. How does he look?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, not at all like Monsieur. He has fair hair and gray
+eyes&mdash;que diable!"</p>
+<p>For I had flung open Monsieur's door and dashed in.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+<h3><i>The honour of St. Quentin.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>onsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and
+hurriedly to Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon
+them, and then Monsieur cried out to me:</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix! You have come to your senses."</p>
+<p>"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."</p>
+<p>He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at
+Marcel, standing agape in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and
+shut the door into the corridor."</p>
+<p>Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was
+disposed of.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I
+have found out. They&mdash;"</p>
+<p>My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the
+words died on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know
+that this was no story to tell Monsieur before another.</p>
+<p>"I will tell Monsieur alone."</p>
+<p>"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.</p>
+<p>"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."</p>
+<p>He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and
+said to the secretary:</p>
+<p>"You may go, Lucas."</p>
+<p>Lucas protested.</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be
+trusted. Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your
+life."</p>
+<p>The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:</p>
+<p>"You may go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Go!"</p>
+<p>Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that
+startled me. But I did not pay it much heed.</p>
+<p>"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.</p>
+<p>But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I
+had to tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two
+words. I stood silent, not knowing how to start.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! Beware how much longer you abuse my
+patience!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he
+knew&mdash;But go on. The others&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St.
+Denis gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of
+the Amour de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron
+from garret to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is
+here that they plot."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="098.jpg"></a> <a href="images/098.jpg"><img src=
+"images/098.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall
+something half remembered, half forgotten.</p>
+<p>"But the men," he cried, "the men!"</p>
+<p>"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."</p>
+<p>"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning
+forward eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking&mdash;the quickest
+way to reach the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young
+men&mdash;noble."</p>
+<p>I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon
+him.</p>
+<p>"Their names, lad!"</p>
+<p>Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up
+and covered every other feeling. I burst out:</p>
+<p>"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.
+Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling
+the truth.</p>
+<p>I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a
+brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that
+gray-eyed cheat.</p>
+<p>With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.</p>
+<p>"You lie, you cur!"</p>
+<p>"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."</p>
+<p>He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog,
+who had sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which
+the dumb beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed
+head, a man stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was,
+the tears came to my eyes for Monsieur.</p>
+<p>He recovered himself.</p>
+<p>"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"</p>
+<p>My rage blazed up again.</p>
+<p>"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not
+who they were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things
+fitted."</p>
+<p>"Then it is your guess! You dare to say&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember
+respect. "Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen
+M. le Comte nor M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and
+heavy, with a black beard and a black scowl, whom the other called
+Gervais. The younger was called &Eacute;tienne, tall and slender,
+with gray eyes and fair hair. And like Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly
+aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like, though he is light! In face,
+in voice, in manner! He speaks like Monsieur. He has Monsieur's
+laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe that was why I loved
+him so much."</p>
+<p>"It was he whom you would not betray?"</p>
+<p>"Aye. That was before I knew."</p>
+<p>Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.
+Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would
+look through me to the naked soul.</p>
+<p>"How do I know that you are not lying?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur does know it."</p>
+<p>"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."</p>
+<p>He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever
+saw&mdash;the face of a man whose son has sought to murder him.
+Looking back on it now, I wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with
+that story. I wonder why I did not bury the shame and disgrace of
+it in my own heart, at whatever cost keep it from Monsieur. But the
+thought never entered my head then. I was so full of black rage
+against Yeux-gris&mdash;him most of all, because he had won me
+so&mdash;that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied
+Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.</p>
+<p>"Tell me everything&mdash;how you met them&mdash;all. Else I
+shall not believe a word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur
+cried out.</p>
+<p>I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my
+lightning vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he
+listening in hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed
+hours since he had spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The
+grayness of his face drew the cry from me:</p>
+<p>"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"</p>
+<p>"Take care, F&eacute;lix, he is my son!"</p>
+<p>I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.</p>
+<p>"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was
+not against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I
+swore, too, never to betray them! Two perjuries!"</p>
+<p>I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering
+it.</p>
+<p>"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since
+he has touched it. He has made it vile&mdash;scoundrel, assassin,
+parricide!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur struck the words from my lips.</p>
+<p>"It is true," I muttered.</p>
+<p>"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."</p>
+<p>"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of
+a St. Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came
+uppermost again.</p>
+<p>"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a
+handful of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught
+amiss. They are only three&mdash;he and Grammont and the
+lackey."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur shook his head.</p>
+<p>"I cannot do that."</p>
+<p>"Why not, Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Can I take my own son prisoner?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would
+have gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and
+two more can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame
+him before the men." I guessed at what he was thinking.</p>
+<p>"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest
+my son like a common felon&mdash;shame him like that?"</p>
+<p>"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a
+right to say it. "He has forgotten his honour."</p>
+<p>"Aye. But I have remembered mine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"</p>
+<p>But his eyes told me that he did mean it.</p>
+<p>"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives
+him?"</p>
+<p>His face set sternly.</p>
+<p>"No," he answered. "No, F&eacute;lix. He has placed himself
+beyond my forgiveness."</p>
+<p>"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the
+three!"</p>
+<p>He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.</p>
+<p>"You would have me kill my son?"</p>
+<p>"He would have killed you."</p>
+<p>"That makes no difference."</p>
+<p>I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and
+catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud
+and honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry
+heart.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished
+for the sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back,
+but the case was changed now.</p>
+<p>"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur would spare him as well&mdash;him, the
+ringleader!"</p>
+<p>"He is my cousin."</p>
+<p>"He forgets it."</p>
+<p>"But I do not."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur looked at me.</p>
+<p>"When you are a man, F&eacute;lix Broux, you will know that
+there are other things in this world besides vengeance. You will
+know that some injuries cannot be avenged. You will know that a
+gentleman cannot use the same weapons that blackguards use to
+him."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I
+was furious with him for it.</p>
+<p>He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had
+been standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me
+with puzzled, troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was
+wrong, and vented his feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur
+spoke to him; Roland bounded up to him and licked his hand. They
+walked up and down together, comforting each other.</p>
+<p>"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."</p>
+<p>He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then
+as he did.</p>
+<p>"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat,
+F&eacute;lix? But does it seem to you fair that a tool should be
+punished when the leaders go free?"</p>
+<p>"No," said I; "but it is the common way."</p>
+<p>"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.</p>
+<p>I waited till he faced me once more.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"</p>
+<p>"No, F&eacute;lix. He shall be punished lest he betray
+again."</p>
+<p>He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by
+me, a broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take
+up his life once more. But I thought he would never get over the
+blow. A husband may forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will
+forgive her child's, but a father can neither forget nor forgive
+the crime of the son who bears his name.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the
+depths of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.</p>
+<p>Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.</p>
+<p>"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be
+looking to the country's business."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+<h3><i>Lucas and "Le Gaucher."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>cursed myself for a fool that I had carried the tale to
+Monsieur. It should have been my business to keep a still tongue
+and go kill Yeux-gris myself. For this last it was not yet too
+late.</p>
+<p>Marcel was hanging about in the corridor, and to him I gave the
+word for Vigo. I tore away from his eager questionings and hurried
+to the gate.</p>
+<p>In the morning I had not been able to get in, and now I could no
+more get out. By Vigo's orders, no man might leave the house.</p>
+<p>Vigo was after the spy, of course. Monsieur knew the traitor
+now; he would inform Vigo, and the gates would be open for honest
+men. But that might take time and I could not wait five minutes. I
+had the audacity to cry to the guards:</p>
+<p>"M. le Duc will let me pass out. I refer you to M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>The men were impressed. They had a respect for me, since I had
+been closeted with Monsieur. Yet they dared not disobey Vigo for
+their lives. In this dilemma the poor sentry, fearful of getting
+into trouble whatever he did, sent up an envoy to ask Monsieur. I
+was frightened then. I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and
+was very doubtful as to how he would answer my impudence. But he
+was utterly careless, I trow, what I did, for presently the word
+came down that I might pass out.</p>
+<p>The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must
+reach the Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for
+me. A man in his senses would have known there was no hope anyway.
+Who but a madman would think of venturing back, forsworn, to those
+three villains, for the killing of one? It would be a miracle if
+aught resulted but failure and death. Yet I felt no jot of fear as
+I plunged into the mesh of crooked streets in the Coupejarrets
+quarter&mdash;only ardour to reach my goal. When, on turning a
+corner, I came upon a group of idlers choking the narrow ruelle, I
+said to myself that a dozen Parisians in the way could no more stop
+me than they could stop a charge of horse. All heels and elbows, I
+pushed into them. But, to my abasement, promptly was I seized upon
+by a burly porter and bidden, with a cuff, to mind my manners. Then
+I discovered the occasion of the crowd to be a little procession of
+choristers out of a neighbouring church&mdash;St. Jean of the Spire
+it was, though I knew then no name for it. The boys were singing,
+the watchers quiet, bareheaded. They sang as if there were nothing
+in the world but piety and love. The last level rays of the sun
+crowned them with radiant aureoles, painted their white robes with
+glory. I shut my eyes, dazzled; it was as if I beheld a heavenly
+host. When I opened them again the folk at my side were kneeling as
+the cross came by. I knelt, too, but the holy sign spoke to me only
+of the crucifix I had trampled on, of Yeux-gris and his lies. I
+prayed to the good God to let me kill Yeux-gris, prayed, kneeling
+there on the cobbles, with a fervour I had never reached before.
+When I rose I ran on at redoubled speed, never doubting that a just
+God would strengthen my hand, would make my cause his.</p>
+<p>I entered the little court. The shutter was fastened, as before,
+but I had my dagger, and could again free the bolt. I could creep
+up-stairs and mayhap stab Yeux-gris before they were aware of my
+coming. But that was not my purpose. I was no bravo to strike in
+the back, but the instrument of a righteous vengeance. He must know
+why he died.</p>
+<p>One to three, I had no chance. But if I knocked openly it was
+likely that Yeux-gris, being my patron, would be the one to come
+down to me. Then there was the opportunity, man to man. If it were
+Grammont or the lackey, I would boldly declare that I would give my
+news to none but Yeux-gris. In pursuance of this plan I was
+pounding vigorously on the door when a voice behind me cried out
+blithely:</p>
+<p>"So you are back at last, F&eacute;lix Broux"</p>
+<p>At the first word I wheeled around. In the court entrance stood
+Yeux-gris, smiling and debonair. He had laid aside his sword, and
+held on his left arm a basket containing a loaf of bread, a roast
+capon, and some bottles, for all the world like an honest prentice
+doing his master's errand.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am back!" I shouted. "Back to kill you, parricide!"</p>
+<p>He had a knife in his belt; the fight was even. I was upon him,
+my dagger raised to strike. He made no motion to draw, and I
+remembered in a flash he could not: his right arm was powerless. He
+sprang back, flinging up his burdened left as a shield, and my
+blade buried itself in the side of the basket.</p>
+<p>As I stabbed I heard feet thundering down the stairs within. I
+jerked my knife from the wicker and turned to face this new enemy.
+"Grammont," I thought, and that my end had come.</p>
+<p>The door flew open and, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, out
+rushed Grammont and&mdash;Lucas!</p>
+<p>My fear was drowned in amaze. I forgot to run and stood staring
+in sheer, blank bewilderment. Crying "Damned traitor!" Gervais,
+with drawn sword, charged at me.</p>
+<p>I had only the little dagger. I owe my life to Yeux-gris's quick
+wits and no less quick fingers. Dropping the basket, he snatched a
+bottle from it and hurled it at Gervais.</p>
+<p>"Ware, Grammont!" shouted Lucas, springing forward. But the
+missile flew too quickly. It struck Grammont square on the
+forehead, and he went down like a slaughtered ox.</p>
+<p>We looked, not at him, but at Lucas&mdash;Lucas, the duke's
+deferential servant, the coward and skulker, Grammont's hatred,
+standing here by Grammont's side, glaring at us over his naked
+sword.</p>
+<p>I saw in one glance that Yeux-gris was no less astounded than I,
+and from that instant, though the inwardness of the matter was
+still a riddle to me, my heart acquitted him of all dishonesty, of
+all complicity. His was not the face of a parricide.</p>
+<p>"Lucas!" he cried, in a dearth of words. "<i>Lucas!</i>"</p>
+<p>I was staring at Lucas in thick bewilderment. The man was
+transformed from the one I knew. At M. le Duc's he had been pale,
+nervous, and shaken&mdash;senselessly and contemptibly scared, as I
+thought, since he was warned of the danger and need not face it.
+But now he was another man. I can think only of those lanterns I
+have seen, set with coloured glass. They look dull enough all day,
+but when the taper within is lighted shine like jewels. So Lucas
+now. His face, so keen and handsome of feature, was brilliant, his
+eyes sparkling, his figure instinct with defiance. A smile crossed
+his face.</p>
+<p>"Aye," he answered evenly, "it is Lucas."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte appeared to be in a state of stupor. He could not
+for a space find his tongue to demand:</p>
+<p>"How, in the name of Heaven, come you here?"</p>
+<p>"To fight Grammont," Lucas answered at once.</p>
+<p>"A lie!" I shouted. "You're Grammont's friend. You came here to
+warn him off. It's your plot!"</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! The plot?" Yeux-gris cried.</p>
+<p>"The plot's to murder Monsieur. Martin let it out. I thought it
+was you and Grammont. But it's Lucas and Grammont!"</p>
+<p>Lucas hesitated. Even now he debated whether he could not lie
+out of it. Then he burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"It seems the cat's out of the bag. Aye, M. le Comte de Mar, I
+came to warn Grammont off. The duke will be here straightway. How
+will you like to swing for parricide?"</p>
+<p>Yeux-gris stared at him, neither in fear nor in fury, but in
+utter stupefaction.</p>
+<p>"But Gervais? He plotted with you? But he hates you!"</p>
+<p>We gaped at Lucas like yokels at a conjurer. He made us no
+answer but looked from one to the other of us with the alertness of
+an angry viper. We were two, but without swords. I knew he was
+thinking how easiest to end us both.</p>
+<p>M. le Comte cried: "You! You come from Navarre's camp, from M.
+de Rosny!"</p>
+<p>"Aye. I have outwitted more than one man."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I was right to hate you!"</p>
+<p>Lucas laughed. Yeux-gris blazed out:</p>
+<p>"Traitor and thief! You stole the money. I said that from the
+first. You drove us from the house. How you and
+Grammont&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Came together? Very simple," Lucas answered with easy
+insolence. "Grammont did not love Monsieur, your honoured father.
+It was child's play to make an assignation with him and to lament
+the part forced on me by Monsieur. Grammont was ready enough to
+scent a scheme of M. le Duc's to ruin him. He had said as much to
+Monsieur, as you may deign to remember."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. le Comte, still like a puzzled child, "he was
+angry with my father. But afterward he changed his mind. He knew it
+was you, and only you."</p>
+<p>Lucas broke again into derisive laughter.</p>
+<p>"M. de Grammont is as dull a dolt as ever I met, yet clever
+enough to gull you. He thought you must suspect. I dreaded
+it&mdash;needlessly. You wise St. Quentins! You cannot see what
+goes on under your very nose."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte sprang forward, scarlet. Lucas flourished the
+sword.</p>
+<p>"The boy there caught at a glance what you had not found out in
+a fortnight. He gets to the duke and blocks my game&mdash;for
+to-day. But if they sent him ahead to hold us till their men came
+up, they were fools, too. I'll have the duke yet, and I'll have you
+now."</p>
+<p>He rushed at the unarmed Yeux-gris. The latter darted at
+Grammont's fallen sword, seized it, was on guard, all in the second
+before Lucas reached him. He might have been in a fortnight's
+trance, but he was awake at last.</p>
+<p>I trembled for him, then took heart again, as he parried thrust
+after thrust and pressed Lucas hard. I had never seen a man fight
+with his left arm before; I had not realized it could be done,
+being myself helpless with that hand. But as I watched this combat
+I speedily perceived how dangerous is a left-handed adversary. In
+later years I was to understand better, when M. le Comte had become
+known the length of the land by the title "Le Gaucher." But at this
+time he was in the habit, like the rest of the world, of fencing
+with his right hand; his dexterity with the other he rated only as
+a pretty accomplishment to surprise the crowd. He used his left
+hand scarcely as well as Lucas the right; yet, the thrust sinister
+being in itself a strength, they were not badly matched. I stood
+watching with all my eyes, when of a sudden I felt a grasp on my
+ankle and the next instant was thrown heavily to the pavement.</p>
+<p>Grammont had come to life and taken prompt part in the fray.</p>
+<p>I fell close to him, and instantly he let go my leg and wound
+his arms around me. I tried to rise and could not, and we rolled
+about together in the wine and blood and broken glass. All the
+while I heard the sword-blades clashing. Yeux-gris, God be thanked!
+seemed to be holding his own.</p>
+<p>Fighting Gervais was like fighting two men. Slowly but steadily
+he pressed me down and held me. I struggled for dear life&mdash;and
+could not push him back an inch.</p>
+<p>I still held my knife but my arms were pinned down. Gervais
+raised himself a little to get a better clutch, and his fingers
+closed on my throat. One grip, and life seemed flowing from me. My
+arm was free now if I could but lift it. If I could not, nevermore
+should I lift it on this sunny earth. I did lift it, and drove the
+dagger deep into him.</p>
+<p>I could not take aim; I could not tell where the knife struck. A
+gasp showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight
+went from me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then
+thought went, too.</p>
+<p>But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed,
+and I wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw
+Grammont clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all,
+the blow had gone home. I had struck him in the left side under the
+arm. Three good inches of steel were in him.</p>
+<p>He had turned over on his side, half off me. I scrambled out
+from under him. To my surprise, Yeux-gris and Lucas were still
+engaged. I had thought it hours since Grammont pulled me down.</p>
+<p>As I rose, Yeux-gris turned his head toward me. Only for a
+second, but in that second Lucas pinked his shoulder. I dashed
+between them; they lowered their points.</p>
+<p>"First blood for me!" cried Lucas. "That serves for to-day, M.
+le Comte. I regret that I cannot wait to kill you, but that will
+come. It is necessary that I go before M. le Duc arrives. Clear the
+way."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte stood his ground, barring the alley. They glared at
+each other motionless.</p>
+<p>Grammont had raised himself to his knees and was trying
+painfully to get on his feet.</p>
+<p>"A hand, Lucas," he gasped.</p>
+<p>Lucas gave him a startled glance but neither went nor spoke to
+him.</p>
+<p>"I am not much hurt," said Grammont, huskily. Holding by the
+wall, he clambered up on his feet. He swayed, reeled forward, and
+clutched Lucas's arm.</p>
+<p>"Lucas, Lucas, help me! Draw out the knife. I cannot. I shall be
+myself when the knife is out. Lucas, for God's sake!"</p>
+<p>"You will die when the knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching
+himself free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed
+as he saw the blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble
+in his hand.</p>
+<p>"Come on, then," he cried to Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>But I sprang forward and seized the sword from M. le Comte's
+hand.</p>
+<p>"On guard!" I shouted, and we went to work.</p>
+<p>I could handle a sword as well as the next one. M. le Duc had
+taught me in his idle days at St. Quentin. It served me well now,
+and him, too.</p>
+<p>The light was fading in the narrow court. Our blades shone white
+in the twilight as the weapons clashed in and out. I saw, without
+looking, Grammont leaning against the wall, his gory face ashen,
+and Yeux-gris watching me with all his soul, now and then shouting
+a word of advice.</p>
+<p>I had had good training, and I fought for all there was in me.
+Yet I was a boy not come to my full strength, and Lucas was more
+than my match. He drove me back farther and farther toward the
+house-wall. Of a sudden I slipped in a smear of blood ('tis no
+lying excuse, I did slip) and lost my guard. He ran his blade into
+my shoulder, as he had done with Yeux-gris.</p>
+<p>He would likely have finished me had not a cry from Grammont
+shaken him.</p>
+<p>"The duke!"</p>
+<p>In truth, a deepening noise of hoofs and shouts came down the
+alley from the street.</p>
+<p>Lucas looked at me, who had regained my guard and stood, little
+hurt, between him and M. le Comte. He could not push past me into
+the house and so through to the other street. He made for the
+alley, crying out:</p>
+<p>"Au revoir, messieurs! We shall meet again."</p>
+<p>Grammont seized him.</p>
+<p>"Help me, Lucas, for the love of Christ! Don't leave me,
+Lucas!"</p>
+<p>Lucas beat him off with the sword.</p>
+<p>"Every man for himself!" he cried, and sprang down the
+alley.</p>
+<p>"It is not the duke," I said to Yeux-gris. "It is most likely
+the watch." I paled at the thought, for the watch was the League's,
+and Lucas by all signs the League's tool. It might go hard with us
+if captured. "Go through the house, M. le Comte," I cried. "Quick,
+if you love your life! I'll keep them at the alley's mouth as long
+as I can."</p>
+<p>Not waiting for his answer, I rushed down the passage. At the
+end of it I ran against Lucas, who, in his turn, had bowled into
+Vigo.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+<h3><i>Vigo.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>knew of old that it was easier to catch a weasel asleep than
+Vigo absent where he was needed; yet I did not expect to meet him
+in the alley. Monsieur, then, had changed his mind.</p>
+<p>"Well caught!" cried Vigo, winding his arms round Lucas, who was
+struggling furiously for liberty. "Here, Maurice, Jules, I have
+number one. Ah, you young sinner! with your crew again? I thought
+as much. Tie the knots hard, boys. Better be quiet, you snake; you
+can't get away."</p>
+<p>Lucas seemed to make up his mind to this, for he quieted down
+directly.</p>
+<p>"So the game is up," he said pleasantly. "I had hoped to be gone
+before you arrived, dear Vigo."</p>
+<p>We had both been deprived promptly of our swords and Lucas's
+wrists were roped together, but my only bond was Vigo's hand on my
+arm.</p>
+<p>"Where are the others?" he demanded. "No tricks, now."</p>
+<p>"Here," I said, and led the way down the passage. Maurice and
+Jules, with their prisoner, pressed after us, and half a dozen of
+the duke's guard after them. The rest stayed without to mind the
+horses and keep off the gathering crowd.</p>
+<p>One of the men had a torch which lighted the red pavement. Vigo
+saw this first.</p>
+<p>"Morbleu! is it a shambles?"</p>
+<p>"That is wine," I said.</p>
+<p>"They spilled wine for effect, they spilled so little blood!"
+Thus Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded
+the situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no
+questions; instead, bade Lucas hold his tongue.</p>
+<p>"I am dumb," Lucas rejoined, with a mock meekness more insolent
+than insolence. But we paid it no heed for M. le Comte came forward
+out of the shadows. He held his head well up but his face was white
+above his crimsoned doublet.</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne! Are you hurt?" shouted Vigo.</p>
+<p>"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont
+leaning against the wall.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at
+Gervais.</p>
+<p>"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my
+back," Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo,
+draw it out."</p>
+<p>With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.</p>
+<p>"Who did it?"</p>
+<p>"I."</p>
+<p>"You, F&eacute;lix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to
+demand again which side I was on.</p>
+<p>"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I
+could."</p>
+<p>"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless,
+here comes the knife."</p>
+<p>It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against
+Vigo's man, clapping his hand to his side.</p>
+<p>"I am done for," he gasped faintly.</p>
+<p>"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.</p>
+<p>"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.</p>
+<p>"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.</p>
+<p>Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage
+in his face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said
+fretfully:</p>
+<p>"Which&mdash;which is &Eacute;tienne?"</p>
+<p>He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward
+silently. Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I
+put my arm about him and helped the guardsman to hold him
+straighter. He reached out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's
+sleeve.</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne&mdash;&Eacute;tienne&mdash;pardon. It was wrong
+toward you&mdash;but I never had the pistoles. He called me
+thief&mdash;the duke. I beseech&mdash;your&mdash;pardon."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte was silent.</p>
+<p>"It was all Lucas&mdash;Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with
+stiffening lips. "I am sorry for&mdash;it. I am dying&mdash;I
+cannot die&mdash;without a chance. Say
+you&mdash;for&mdash;give&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less
+treachery though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were
+cousins, bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte
+said nothing.</p>
+<p>How Grammont found the strength only God knows, who haply in his
+goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened
+his sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his
+cousin, both hands outstretched in appeal.</p>
+<p>M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered
+forward. Then M. &Eacute;tienne, never changing his countenance,
+slowly, half reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his
+hand.</p>
+<p>But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp
+again. As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.</p>
+<p>"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up
+and added the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin.
+Otherwise he had no emotions.</p>
+<p>But I was not case-hardened. And I&mdash;I myself&mdash;had
+slain this man, who had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice
+sounded to me far off as he said bluntly:</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."</p>
+<p>"No, by Heaven!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, in a vibrating voice
+that brought me back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer.
+Things may look black against me but I am innocent. You have one
+villain at your feet and one a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am
+a St. Quentin; I do not plot against my father. I was to aid
+Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not answer a challenge. I have
+been tricked. Gervais asked my forgiveness&mdash;you heard him.
+Their dupe, yes&mdash;accomplice I was not. Never have I lifted my
+hand against my father, nor would I, whatever came. That I swear.
+Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left Monsieur's presence,
+till now when he came out of that door side by side with Grammont.
+Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St. Quentin&mdash;no
+parricide!"</p>
+<p>The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with
+haggard eyes on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment
+he could not have waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman
+and servant, never minced words to any man nor swerved from the
+stark truth.</p>
+<p>I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of
+course he believed M. &Eacute;tienne; how dared he make his master
+wait for the assurance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le
+Comte's pardon.</p>
+<p>But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he
+pronounce judgment, but merely said:</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his
+story to my master."</p>
+<p>"I will tell it before this hour is out!"</p>
+<p>"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M.
+&Eacute;tienne. Monsieur suspects nothing against you. F&eacute;lix
+kept your name from him. And by the time I had screwed it out of
+Martin, Monsieur was gone."</p>
+<p>"Gone out of Paris?" M. &Eacute;tienne echoed blankly. To his
+eagerness it was as if M. le Duc were out of France.</p>
+<p>"Aye. He meant to go to-night&mdash;Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But
+when Monsieur learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day.
+'If the League must kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight,
+with all Paris watching.' That's Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from
+that unhappy house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices,
+the equery, struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant
+hands on Martin the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the
+household, had had some intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that
+M. le Comte, if guilty, should be spared. At once he had sounded
+boots and saddles.</p>
+<p>"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the
+meanest lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet
+the charge. My father and I have differed but if we are no longer
+friends we are still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor
+could he for one moment believe it of me."</p>
+<p>I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than
+to confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went
+back a second time and told him."</p>
+<p>"And he?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him
+he gave no sign."</p>
+<p>"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said
+he could not move in the matter; he could not punish his own
+kin."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:</p>
+<p>"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I
+expected his faith."</p>
+<p>"You had no claim to it, M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!" cried the young noble, "you are insolent, sirrah!"</p>
+<p>"I cry monsieur's pardon."</p>
+<p>He was quite respectful and quite unabashed. He had meant no
+insolence. But M. &Eacute;tienne had dared criticise the duke and
+that Vigo did not allow.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne glared at him in speechless wrath. It would
+have liked him well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees.
+But how? It was a byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the
+duke's. The King of France could not dash him.</p>
+<p>Vigo went on:</p>
+<p>"It seems I have exceeded my duty, monsieur, in coming here. Yet
+it turns out for the best, since Lucas is caught and M. de Grammont
+dead and you cleared of suspicion."</p>
+<p>"What!" Yeux-gris cried. "What! you call me cleared!"</p>
+<p>Vigo looked at him in surprise.</p>
+<p>"You said you were innocent, M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte stared, without a word to answer. The equery, all
+unaware of having said anything unexpected, turned to the guardsman
+Maurice:</p>
+<p>"Well, is Lucas trussed? Have you searched him?"</p>
+<p>Maurice displayed a poniard and a handful of small coins for
+sole booty, but Jules made haste to announce: "He has something
+else, though&mdash;a paper sewed up in his doublet. Shall I rip it
+out, M. Vigo?"</p>
+<p>With Lucas's own knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet
+from throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your
+palm. Vigo pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home
+with the work of a quill, save those that winged arrows. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, coming forward, with a sharp exclamation snatched
+the packet.</p>
+<p>"How came you by my letter?" he demanded of Lucas.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte was pleased to consign it for delivery to
+Martin."</p>
+<p>"What purpose had you with it?"</p>
+<p>"Rest assured, dear monsieur, I had a purpose."</p>
+<p>The questions were stormily vehement, the answers so gentle as
+to be fairly caressing. It was waste of time and dignity to parley
+with the scoundrel till one could back one's queries with the boot.
+But M. &Eacute;tienne's passion knew no waiting. Thrusting the
+letter into his breast ere I, who had edged up to him, could catch
+a glimpse of its address, he cried upon Lucas:</p>
+<p>"Speak! You were ready enough to jeer at me for a dupe. Tell me
+what you would do with your dupe. You dared not open the plot to
+me&mdash;you did me the honour to know I would not kill my father.
+Then why use me blindfold? An awkward game, Lucas."</p>
+<p>Lucas disagreed as politely as if exchanging pleasantries in a
+salon.</p>
+<p>"A dexterous game, M. le Comte. Your best friends deemed you
+guilty. What would your enemies have said?"</p>
+<p>"Ah-h," breathed M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"It dawns on you, monsieur? You are marvellous thick-witted, yet
+surely you must perceive. We had a dozen fellows ready to swear
+that your hand killed Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"You would kill me for my father's murder?"</p>
+<p>"Ma foi, no!" cried Lucas, airily. "Never in the world! We
+should have let you live, in the knowledge that whenever you
+displeased us we could send you to the gallows."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte, silent, stared at him with wild eyes, like one who
+looks into the open roof of hell. Lucas fell to laughing.</p>
+<p>"What! hang you and let our cousin Val&egrave;re succeed? Mon
+dieu, no! M. de Val&egrave;re is a man!"</p>
+<p>With a blow the guardsman struck the words and the laughter from
+his lips. But I, who no more than Lucas knew how to hold my tongue,
+thought I saw a better way to punish this brazen knave. I cried
+out:</p>
+<p>"You are the dupe, Lucas! Aye, and coward to boot, fleeing here
+from&mdash;nothing. I knew naught against you&mdash;you saw that.
+To slip out and warn Martin before Vigo got a chance at
+him&mdash;that was all you had to do. Yet you never thought of that
+but rushed away here, leaving Martin to betray you. Had you stuck
+to your post you had been now on the road to St. Denis, instead of
+the road to the Gr&egrave;ve! Fool! fool! fool!"</p>
+<p>He winced. He had not been ashamed to betray his benefactor, to
+bite the hand that fed him, to desert a wounded comrade; but he was
+ashamed to confront his own blunder. I had the satisfaction of
+pricking, not his conscience, for he had none, but his pride.</p>
+<p>"I had to warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St.
+Quentin such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were
+his kin? You did better than you knew when you shut the door on me.
+You tracked me, you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the
+coil?"</p>
+<p>"By God's grace," M. le Comte answered. He laid a hand on my
+shoulder and leaned there heavily. Lucas grinned.</p>
+<p>"Ah, waxing pious, is he? The prodigal prepares to return."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's hand clinched on my shoulder. Vigo commanded
+a gag for Lucas, saying, with the only touch of anger I ever knew
+him to show:</p>
+<p>"He shall hang when the king comes in. And now to horse, lads,
+and out of the quarter; we have wasted too much time palavering.
+King Henry is not in Paris yet. We shall do well not to rouse
+Belin, though we can make him trouble if he troubles us. Come,
+monsieur. Men, guard your prisoner. I misjudge if he is not cropful
+of the devil still."</p>
+<p>He did not look it. His figure was drooping; his face purple and
+contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the
+man's mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a
+sudden frantic effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the
+gag to cry out wildly:</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. l'&Eacute;cuyer, have mercy! Have pity upon me! For
+Christ's sake, pity!"</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="128.jpg"></a> <a href="images/128.jpg"><img src=
+"images/128.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE
+ALLEY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>His bravado had broken down at last. He tried to fling himself
+at Vigo's feet. The guards relaxed their hold to see him
+grovel.</p>
+<p>That was what he had hoped for. In a flash he was out of their
+grasp, flying down the alley.</p>
+<p>"To Vigo! Vigo is attacked," we heard him shout.</p>
+<p>It was so quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after,
+pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley
+we ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We
+lost precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it
+was a ruse and our prisoner escaped. When they comprehended, we all
+rushed together out of the passage, emerging among frightened
+horses and a great press of excited men.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+<h3><i>The Comte de Mar.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>hich way went he?"</p>
+<p>"The man who just came out?"</p>
+<p>"This way!"</p>
+<p>"No, yonder!"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I saw him not."</p>
+<p>"A man with bound hands, you say?"</p>
+<p>"Here!"</p>
+<p>"Down that way!"</p>
+<p>"A man in black, was he? Here he is!"</p>
+<p>"Fool, no; he went that way!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, Vigo, I, and the guardsmen rushed hither and
+thither into the ever-thickening crowd, shouting after Lucas and
+exchanging rapid questions with every one we passed. But from the
+very first the search was hopeless. It was dark by this time and a
+mass of people blocked the street, surging this way and that, some
+eagerly joining in the chase, others, from ready sympathy with any
+rogue, doing their best to hinder and confuse us. There was no way
+to tell how he had gone. A needle in a haystack is easy found
+compared with him who loses himself in a Paris crowd by night.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne plunged into the first opening he saw,
+elbowing his way manfully. I followed in his wake, his tall bright
+head making as good an oriflamme as the king's plume at Ivry, but
+when at length we came out far down the street we had seen no trace
+of Lucas.</p>
+<p>"He is gone," said M. le Comte.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur. If it were day they might find him, but not
+now."</p>
+<p>"No. Even Vigo will not find him. He is worsted for once. He has
+let slip the shrewdest knave in France. Well, he is gone," he
+repeated after a minute. "It cannot be mended by me. He is off, and
+so am I."</p>
+<p>"Whither, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"That is my concern."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur will see M. le Duc?"</p>
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He broke in on me fiercely.</p>
+<p>"Think you that I&mdash;I, smirched and sullied, reeking with
+plots of murder&mdash;am likely to betake myself to the noblest
+gentleman in France?"</p>
+<p>"He will welcome M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Nay; he believed me guilty."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You may not say 'but' to me."</p>
+<p>"Pardon, monsieur. Am I to tell Vigo monsieur is gone?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, tell him." His lip quivered; he struggled hard for
+steadiness. "You will go to M. le Duc, F&eacute;lix, and rise in
+his favour, for it was you saved his life. Then tell him this from
+me&mdash;that some day, when I have made me worthy to enter his
+presence, then will I go to him and beg his forgiveness on my
+knees. And now farewell."</p>
+<p>He slipped away into the darkness.</p>
+<p>I stood hesitating for a moment. Then I followed my lord.</p>
+<p>He slackened his pace as he heard footsteps overtake him, and
+where a beam of light shone out from an open door he wheeled about,
+thinking me a footpad.</p>
+<p>"You, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur; I go with M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"I have not permitted you."</p>
+<p>"Then must I go in despite. Monsieur is wounded; I cannot leave
+him to go unsquired."</p>
+<p>"There are lackeys to hire. I bade you seek M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>"Is not monsieur a thought unreasonable? I cannot be in two
+places at once. Monsieur can send a letter. The duke has Vigo and a
+household. I go with M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"Oh," he cried, "you are a faithful servant! We are ridden to
+death by our faithful servants, we St. Quentins. Myself, I prefer
+fleas!" He added, growing angrier, "Will you leave me?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur," said I.</p>
+<p>He glowered at me and I think he had some notion of chasing me
+away with his sword. But since his dignity could not so stoop, he
+growled:</p>
+<p>"Come, then, if you choose to come unasked and most
+unwelcome!"</p>
+<p>With this he walked on a yard ahead of me, never turning his
+head nor saying a word, I following meekly, wondering whither, and
+devoutly hoping it might be to supper. Presently I observed that we
+were in a better quarter of the town, and before long we came to a
+broad, well-lighted inn, whence proceeded a merry chatter and
+rattle of dice. M. &Eacute;tienne with accustomed feet turned into
+the court at the side, and seizing upon a drawer who was crossing
+from door to door despatched him for the landlord. Mine host came,
+fat and smiling, unworried by the hard times, greeted Yeux-gris
+with acclaim as "this dear M. le Comte," wondered at his long
+absence and bloody shirt, and granted with all alacrity his three
+demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood back, ill at
+ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering whether I were
+to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le Comte,
+without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my
+serving-man," I knew my stomach was safe.</p>
+<p>That was the most I thought of then, I do confess, for, except
+for my sausage, I had not tasted food since morning. The barber
+came and bandaged M. le Comte and put him straight to bed, and I
+was left free to fall on the ample victuals set before me, and was
+so comfortable and happy that the Rue Coupejarrets seemed like an
+evil dream. Since that day I have been an easy mark for beggars if
+they could but manage to look starved.</p>
+<p>Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le
+Comte's room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for
+I saw by this token that I was forgiven. Indeed, no sooner had I
+got fairly inside the door than my master raised himself on his
+sound elbow and called out:</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful
+churl?"</p>
+<p>"I bear malice?" I cried, flushing. "Monsieur is mocking me. I
+know monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life. Yet my
+wish is to be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget
+it."</p>
+<p>"Nay," he said; "I have forgotten it. And it was freely forgiven
+from the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin's side."</p>
+<p>"For the second time," I said, "monsieur saved my life." And I
+dropped on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand. But he
+snatched it away from me and flung his arm around my neck and
+kissed my cheek.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he cried, "but for you my hands would be red
+with my father's blood. You rescued him from death and me from
+worse. If I have any shreds of honour left 'tis you have saved them
+to me."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I
+die."</p>
+<p>"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's
+fool!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what
+he said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for
+some time what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin
+Val&egrave;re duke! He was a man. But I&mdash;nom de dieu, I was
+not worth the killing."</p>
+<p>"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot
+against dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind
+Lucas&mdash;I dare swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no
+secret now where Monsieur stands. Yet the king's party grows so
+strong and the mob so cheers Monsieur, the League dare not strike
+openly. So they put a spy in the house to choose time and way. And
+the spy would not stab, for he saw he could make me do his work for
+him. He saw I needed but a push to come to open breach with my
+father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull his chestnuts
+from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I could never
+strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their thrall
+forever!"</p>
+<p>"Never that, monsieur; never that!"</p>
+<p>"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of
+a stray boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose
+through. I was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais
+to be morose and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always
+stood his friend. I thought him shamefully used; I let myself be
+turned out of my father's house to champion him. I had no more
+notion he was plotting my ruin than a child playing with his dolls.
+I was their doll, mordieu! their toy, their crazy fool on a chain.
+But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to pledge my sword to
+Henry of Navarre."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he
+were better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and
+generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he
+will not starve us. He looks the other way, and the
+provision-trains come in. But the Leaguers, with all their
+regiments, dare not openly strike down one man,&mdash;one man who
+has come all alone into their country,&mdash;they put a spy into
+his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin
+to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they
+are most Catholic and noble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these
+pious plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and
+make me outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime
+with the League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"</p>
+<p>I caught his fire.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers
+yet!"</p>
+<p>He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, F&eacute;lix, you and I
+alone will overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are
+made of. They think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with
+my father. I lazed about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my
+pleasure, too shallow a fop even to take sides in the fight for a
+kingdom. What should they see in me but an empty-headed roisterer,
+frittering away his life in follies? But they will find I am
+something more. Well, enter there!"</p>
+<p>He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as
+Ma&icirc;tre Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood
+shuffling on the threshold.</p>
+<p>"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I
+think he could not but have heard M. &Eacute;tienne's tirading
+half-way down the passage.</p>
+<p>"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"</p>
+<p>"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it
+be sent in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had
+been wounded and was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him
+for a letter that would keep till morning. But he would have it
+'twas of instant import, and so&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the
+ma&icirc;tre in, my mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason
+save my ardent wish, that Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.</p>
+<p>"I dared not deny him further," added Ma&icirc;tre Menard. "He
+wore the liveries of M. de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. &Eacute;tienne had
+said. "Pardieu, it may be Lucas himself!" And snatching up my
+master's sword I dashed out of the door and was in the cabaret in
+three steps.</p>
+<p>The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by
+the uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise
+resembled Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my
+sudden entrance had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his
+outraged dignity to cross swords with me. On any other day I had
+deemed it impossible to say him nay, but now with a real vengeance,
+a quarrel &agrave; outrance on my hands, he seemed of no
+consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I demanded M. de
+Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the dark court
+and the darker street.</p>
+<p>A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pass out,
+and he opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I
+ran a hundred yards up street and a hundred yards down street,
+shouting on the name of Lucas, calling him coward and skulker,
+bidding him come forth and fight me. The whole neighbourhood became
+aware than I wanted one Lucas to fight: lights twinkled in windows;
+men, women, and children poured out of doors. But Lucas, if it were
+he, had for the second time vanished soft-footed into the
+night.</p>
+<p>I returned with drooping tail to M. &Eacute;tienne. He was
+alone, sitting up in bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes
+blazing.</p>
+<p>"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone.
+Oh, if I caught Lucas&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you
+waited long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This
+is no errand of Lucas but a very different matter."</p>
+<p>He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement
+in his eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and
+started to rise.</p>
+<p>"Get my clothes, F&eacute;lix. I must go to the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and
+dragging the cover over him by main force.</p>
+<p>"You can go nowhere, M. &Eacute;tienne; it is madness. The
+surgeon said you must lie here for three days. You will get a fever
+in your wounds; you shall not go."</p>
+<p>"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped.
+Cautiously I relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed:
+"F&eacute;lix, I must go. So long as there is a spark of life left
+in me, I have no choice but to go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers&mdash;with
+M. de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this&mdash;but this is
+Lorance."</p>
+<p>Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand
+and tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.</p>
+<p>I read:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little
+consequence, or of very great, since he is absent a whole month
+from the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed?
+Or is he so sure of his standing that he fears no supplanting? In
+either case he is wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed
+forever. He may, if he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be
+forgotten. If he would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at
+the eleventh hour, to lay his apologies at the feet of</i></p>
+<p>LORANCE DE MONTLUC.</p>
+</div>
+<p>"And she&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's
+desire."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see
+why I have stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow
+my father into exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused
+the breach with Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de
+Grammont. That was the spark kindled the powder, but the train was
+laid."</p>
+<p>"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,&mdash;or my shame, as
+you choose,&mdash;I was not. I was neither one nor the other,
+neither fish nor flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was
+not. I was not disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore
+me. Monsieur reviled me for a skulker, a fain&eacute;ant; nom de
+diable, he might have remembered his own three years of
+idleness!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur held out for his religion&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not
+merrily.</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked
+and evaded and temporized&mdash;for nothing. I would not join the
+League and break my father's heart; would not stand out against it
+and lose Lorance. I have been trying these three years to please
+both the goat and the cabbage&mdash;with the usual ending. I have
+pleased nobody. I am out of Mayenne's books: he made me overtures
+and I refused him. I am out of my father's books: he thinks me a
+traitor and parricide. And I am out of mademoiselle's: she despises
+me for a laggard. Had I gone in with Mayenne I had won her. Had I
+gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command in King Henry's army.
+But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two stools, I fall
+miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a do-nothing, the butt
+and laughing-stock of all brave men.</p>
+<p>"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his
+breath. "For once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given
+me a last chance. She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on
+her threshold, I at least die looking at her."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die
+looking at her, for you will die out here in the street, and that
+will profit neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."</p>
+<p>"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I
+sent her a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She
+thinks me careless of her. I must go."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself
+Mayenne is likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk
+into the enemies' very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with
+quick-blazing ire. "I do not permit such words to be spoken in
+connection with Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of
+pistolet. The St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in
+those they loved. I remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of
+resentment had forbidden me to speak ill of his son. And I
+remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith had been justified and that
+my accusations were lies. Natheless, I liked not the look of this
+affair, and I attempted further warnings.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, in my opinion&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You are not here to hold opinions, F&eacute;lix, but your
+tongue."</p>
+<p>I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it
+liked him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes
+lay, only to drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and
+dashed half the water in it into his face.</p>
+<p>"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it
+was but a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was
+forced to seize my shoulder to keep from falling.</p>
+<p>"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I
+am all well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about
+like a ship at sea."</p>
+<p>I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue
+about it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the
+white bed-linen I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could
+drench him again he raised his lids.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that
+I shall reach Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you
+cannot walk across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M.
+&Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you
+say to her&mdash;pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her
+myself."</p>
+<p>"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt&mdash;how you would
+come, but cannot."</p>
+<p>"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her
+think it a flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you,"
+he added, with half a laugh. "There is something very
+trust-compelling about you, F&eacute;lix. And assure her of my
+lifelong, never-failing service."</p>
+<p>"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of
+Navarre."</p>
+<p>"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, F&eacute;lix, was ever a poor
+wight so harried and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would
+destroy he first makes mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I
+have done with it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I
+go now, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"And good luck to you! F&eacute;lix, I offer you no reward for
+this midnight journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense
+you will see her."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+<h3><i>Mademoiselle.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>went to find Ma&icirc;tre Menard, to urge upon him that some one
+should stay with M. &Eacute;tienne while I was gone, lest he
+swooned or became light-headed. But the surgeon himself was
+present, having returned from bandaging up some common skull to see
+how his noble patient rested. He promised that he would stay the
+night with M. le Comte; so, eased of that care, I set out for the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants with a flambeau
+coming along to guide and guard me. M. &Eacute;tienne was a
+favourite in this inn of Ma&icirc;tre Menard's; they did not stop
+to ask whether he had money in his purse before falling over one
+another in their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one
+gets more out of the world by dint of fair words than by a long
+purse or a long sword.</p>
+<p>We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the
+right-about, to the impatience of my escort.</p>
+<p>"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a
+moment, but see Ma&icirc;tre Menard I must."</p>
+<p>He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.</p>
+<p>"Now what brings you back?"</p>
+<p>"This, ma&icirc;tre," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le
+Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have
+divined. His arch-enemy gave us the slip. And I am not easy for
+monsieur while this Lucas is at large. He has the devil's own
+cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns.
+Therefore, ma&icirc;tre, I beg you to admit no one to M. le
+Comte&mdash;no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from
+the Duke of Mayenne himself."</p>
+<p>"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the ma&icirc;tre
+declared.</p>
+<p>"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St.
+Quentin's equery. You will know him for the biggest man in
+France."</p>
+<p>"Good. And this other; what is he like?"</p>
+<p>"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall
+and slim,&mdash;oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown
+hair and thin, aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."</p>
+<p>"His tongue shall not get around me," Ma&icirc;tre Menard
+promised. "The host of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday
+let me tell you."</p>
+<p>With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my
+expedition with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the
+business. It was all very well for M. &Eacute;tienne to declare
+grandly that as recompense for my trouble I should see Mlle. de
+Montluc. But I was not her lover and I thought I could get along
+very comfortably without seeing her. I knew not how to bear myself
+before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had dashed across Paris
+to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid;
+but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared.</p>
+<p>And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me
+pause. I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de
+Mayenne's cousin. What mocking devil had driven &Eacute;tienne de
+Mar, out of a whole France full of lovely women, to fix his
+unturnable desire on this Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his
+father's friends no daughters, that he must seek a mistress from
+the black duke's household? Were there no families of clean hands
+and honest speech, that he must ally himself with the treacherous
+blood of Lorraine?</p>
+<p>I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it
+not. If Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I
+marvelled that my master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that
+he cared to send his servant there. Yet I went none the less
+readily for that; I was here to do his bidding. Nor was I greatly
+alarmed for my own skin; I thought myself too small to be worth my
+Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do confess, a lively curiosity
+to behold the interior of the greatest house in Paris, the very
+core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not been for terror
+of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully enough.</p>
+<p>Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the
+streets, the clear summer night, and all of them were talking
+politics. As Jean and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the
+wine-shop lanterns, we caught always the names of Mayenne and
+Navarre. Everywhere they asked the same two questions: Was it true
+that Henry was coming into the Church? And if so, what would
+Mayenne do next? I perceived that old Ma&icirc;tre Jacques of the
+Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the people of Paris
+were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery, galled to
+desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.</p>
+<p>Mayenne's fine new h&ocirc;tel in the Rue St. Antoine was
+lighted as for a f&ecirc;te. From its open windows came sounds of
+gay laughter and rattling dice. You might have thought them keeping
+carnival in the midst of a happy and loyal city. If the
+Lieutenant-General found anything to vex him in the present
+situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.</p>
+<p>The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by
+men-at-arms; but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers
+lounged on the stone benches in the archway. Some of them were
+talking to a little knot of street idlers who had gathered about
+the entrance, while others, with the aid of a torch and a greasy
+pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.</p>
+<p>I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc,
+declaring that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.</p>
+<p>"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard
+replied at once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay,
+no need to ask," he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would
+make."</p>
+<p>"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may
+go in. If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny
+her the consolation of a message."</p>
+<p>A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:</p>
+<p>"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the
+Comte de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and
+M. Paul for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the
+earth. It seemed as if she must take the little cheese or nothing.
+But now things are looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly
+in, and here is a messenger at least from the other."</p>
+<p>"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took
+up the tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's
+graces."</p>
+<p>"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in
+his ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le
+Balafr&eacute;'s own."</p>
+<p>"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came
+the retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him
+into the house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole
+history, false and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down
+before the lofty of the earth, we underlings, but behind their
+backs there is none with whose names we make so free. And there we
+have the advantage of our masters; for they know little of our
+private matters while we know everything of theirs.</p>
+<p>In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted
+me through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence
+issued a merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while
+I remained to undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose
+repose we had invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again,
+lifting the curtain for me to enter.</p>
+<p>The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces
+along the walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There
+was a crowd of people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my
+dazzled eyes; grouped, most of them, about the tables set up and
+down, either taking hands themselves at cards or dice or betting on
+those who did. Bluff soldiers in breastplate and jack-boots were
+not wanting in the throng, but the larger number of the gallants
+were brave in silken doublets and spotless ruffs, as became a
+noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what am I to say of
+them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun, agleam with
+jewels&mdash;eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had thought
+so fine, were but serving-maids to these.</p>
+<p>I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the
+chatter, unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the
+congregation of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me
+if I could, for here close about were a dozen fair women, any one
+of whom might be Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat.
+I knew not whom to address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in
+a suit of pink, took the burden on himself.</p>
+<p>"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."</p>
+<p>He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In
+truth, I must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned
+out of a bag in the midst of that gorgeous company.</p>
+<p>"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"I have wondered what has become of &Eacute;tienne de Mar this
+last month," spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his
+place behind a fair one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so
+fine as the other, but in his short, stocky figure and square face
+there was a force which his comrade lacked. He regarded me with a
+far keener glance as he asked:</p>
+<p>"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do
+for a lackey."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de
+Montluc," suggested the pink youth.</p>
+<p>"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying
+down her hand at cards, rose and came toward me.</p>
+<p>She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried
+herself with stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as
+purely white and pink as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl,
+while her eyes, under their sooty lashes, shone blue as
+corn-flowers.</p>
+<p>I began to understand M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me
+stood regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me
+to explain myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in
+pink answered her with his soft drawl:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
+extraordinary&mdash;most extraordinary&mdash;from the court of his
+Highness the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I
+think, at my uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.</p>
+<p>"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"It appears not, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in
+doleful tones:</p>
+<p>"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
+triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I
+could not produce M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not
+M. de Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he
+could not come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk
+across his room. He tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet
+his lifelong services."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
+"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
+messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."</p>
+<p>"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de
+Montluc replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I
+am punished for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to
+produce my recreant squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up
+her white hands before her face with a pretty imitation of despair,
+save that her eyes sparkled from between her fingers.</p>
+<p>By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a
+general interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with
+an air of authority demanded:</p>
+<p>"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"</p>
+<p>"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered
+with instant gravity and respect.</p>
+<p>"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I
+thought.</p>
+<p>"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He
+is out of the house again now."</p>
+<p>"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour,
+"though he did not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la
+Duchesse, he had the leisure for considerable conversation with
+Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
+herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.</p>
+<p>"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the
+introduction of a stable-boy into my salon."</p>
+<p>"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
+protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning
+M. de Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection
+and they were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could
+get him back if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a
+letter which my cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's
+old lodgings. This is the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave
+of her hand toward me. "But I did not expect it in this guise,
+madame. Blame your lackeys who know not their duties, not me."</p>
+<p>"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her,
+tartly. "I consider my salon no place for intrigues with
+horse-boys. If you must hold colloquy with this fellow, take him
+whither he belongs&mdash;to the stables."</p>
+<p>A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess
+says.</p>
+<p>"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the
+ladies who had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in
+lofty disdain on Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some
+of the company obeyed her, a curious circle still surrounded
+us.</p>
+<p>"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
+mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
+vanished Mar."</p>
+<p>"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
+messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
+demoiselle.</p>
+<p>I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to
+be out in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me
+to the stables&mdash;anywhere out of this laughing company. But she
+had no such intent.</p>
+<p>"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I
+would not for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor
+yours, M. de Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master,
+Sir Courier."</p>
+<p>"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Whom was he fighting?"</p>
+<p>"And for what lady's favour?"</p>
+<p>"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"</p>
+<p>"Does she make him read his Bible?"</p>
+<p>"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"</p>
+<p>The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
+mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:</p>
+<p>"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over
+other matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most
+heartily that his wound prevents his coming, and to assure
+mademoiselle that he is too weak and faint to walk across the
+floor."</p>
+<p>"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur
+has been about these four weeks that he could not take time to
+visit us."</p>
+<p>I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. &Eacute;tienne's chosen
+lady and therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same
+time I could not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment
+and no intent of rudeness that caused my short answer:</p>
+<p>"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set
+soldierly fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had
+never left my face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this
+insolence."</p>
+<p>"M. de Brie&mdash;" she began at the same moment that I cried
+out to her:</p>
+<p>"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added,
+in my haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees
+for herself that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this
+house."</p>
+<p>Brie had me by the collar.</p>
+<p>"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I
+thought as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this
+house, then, nom de dieu, they are no secret."</p>
+<p>He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me,
+till my teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would.
+But he cried on, his voice rising with excitement:</p>
+<p>"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has
+been about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
+forsooth&mdash;neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was
+Henry's, fast and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so.
+I told Mayenne last month we ought to settle with M. de St.
+Quentin; I asked nothing better than to attend to him. But the
+general would not, but let him alone, free and unmolested in his
+work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
+pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
+entered the room.</p>
+<p>M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the
+passage. I turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.</p>
+<p>He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked,
+heavy-jowled. His wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was
+lightest brown, while his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark.
+His eyes were dark also, his full lips red and smiling. He had the
+beauty and presence of all the Guises; it needed not the star on
+his breast to tell me that this was Mayenne himself.</p>
+<p>He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company,
+but his glance travelling straight to me and my captor.</p>
+<p>"What have we here, Fran&ccedil;ois?"</p>
+<p>"This is a fellow of &Eacute;tienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie
+answered. "He came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am
+getting out of him what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a
+month back."</p>
+<p>"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear Fran&ccedil;ois; I
+already know Mar's whereabouts and doings rather better than he
+knows them himself."</p>
+<p>Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at
+ease. I perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what
+he said but you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy
+face varied little; what went on in his mind behind the smiling
+mask was matter for anxiety. If he asked pleasantly after your
+health, you fancied he might be thinking how well you would grace
+the gallows.</p>
+<p>M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late,
+Fran&ccedil;ois. You little boys are fools; you think because you
+do not know a thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my
+information from you, ma belle Lorance?"</p>
+<p>The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe
+her. Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was
+neither loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.</p>
+<p>"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>She met his look unflinching.</p>
+<p>"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar,
+monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since
+May&mdash;until to-night."</p>
+<p>"And what has happened to-night?"</p>
+<p>"To-night&mdash;Paul appeared."</p>
+<p>"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his
+phlegm. "Paul here?"</p>
+<p>"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I
+know not whither or for what."</p>
+<p>Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.</p>
+<p>"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"</p>
+<p>She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure,
+but to go through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was
+moistening her dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide
+with apprehension. But he answered amiably, half absently, as if
+the whole affair were a triviality:</p>
+<p>"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."</p>
+<p>He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over
+our childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made
+him a curtsey, laughing lightly.</p>
+<p>"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is
+the best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I
+confess I am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might
+remember me still after a month of absence. I should have known it
+too much to ask of mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will
+you keep our memories green for more than a week, messieurs."</p>
+<p>"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue,
+Mlle. Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be
+awake the night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."</p>
+<p>"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It
+is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The
+Comte de Mar&mdash;behold him!"</p>
+<p>She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft
+for us all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the
+pictured face with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a
+suggestion of M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Behold M. de Mar&mdash;behold his fate!" With a twinkling of
+her white fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen
+pieces and sent them whirling over her head to fall far and wide
+among the company.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="160.jpg"></a> <a href="images/160.jpg"><img src=
+"images/160.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with
+a laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise
+with the flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for
+conspiring against the Holy League?"</p>
+<p>But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his
+answer.</p>
+<p>"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not
+come himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.</p>
+<p>"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could
+forgive&mdash;and forget&mdash;his absence; but I do not forgive
+his despatching me his horse-boy."</p>
+<p>Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her
+faithlessness, her vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my
+master's plight. I knew it was sheer madness for me to attempt his
+defence before this hostile company; nay, there was no object in
+defending him; there was not one here who cared to hear good of
+him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled so hot that I
+lost all command of myself, and I burst out:</p>
+<p>"If I were a horse-boy,&mdash;which I am not,&mdash;I were
+twenty times too good to be carrying messages hither. You need not
+rail at his poverty, mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It
+was for you he was turned out of his father's house. But for you he
+would not now be lying in a garret, penniless and dishonoured.
+Whatever ills he suffers, it is you and your false house have
+brought them."</p>
+<p>Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"Don't strangle him, Fran&ccedil;ois; I may need him later. Let
+him be flogged and locked in the oratory."</p>
+<p>He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the
+lackeys dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of
+diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+<h3><i>In the oratory.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-h.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ere, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a
+candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He
+reckoned wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay
+on well, boys; make him howl."</p>
+<p>Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and
+see the fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon.
+Pierre, the same who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led
+the way into a long oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was
+a huge chimney carved with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door
+led into a little oratory where tapers burned before the image of
+the Virgin; at the other, before the two narrow windows, stood a
+long table with writing-materials. Chests and cupboards nearly
+filled the walls. I took this to be a sort of council-room of my
+Lord Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested
+that he should quench the Virgin's candles.</p>
+<p>"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a
+light in there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind;
+she has a million others to see by."</p>
+<p>I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one
+good blow at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it.
+But as I gathered myself for the rush he spoke to me low and
+cautiously:</p>
+<p>"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."</p>
+<p>My clinched fist dropped to my side.</p>
+<p>"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think
+you half killed, and I'll manage."</p>
+<p>I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the
+way of the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much
+kindness, too.</p>
+<p>"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed
+boisterously. "Give it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left
+when I get through."</p>
+<p>"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the
+oratory.</p>
+<p>"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants
+him," Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my
+wrists in front of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre
+laid on. And he, good fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull
+my loose jerkin away from my back, so that he dusted it down
+without greatly incommoding me. Some hard whacks I did get, but
+they were nothing to what a strong man could have given in grim
+earnest.</p>
+<p>I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as
+anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should
+have. I yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight
+of Jean and his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning
+varlets to the door before my performance was over. But at length,
+when I thought I had done enough for their pleasure and that of the
+nobles in the salon, I dropped down on the floor and lay quiet,
+with shut eyes.</p>
+<p>"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the
+master," Pierre said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you
+have not even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back,
+whereat I groaned my hollowest.</p>
+<p>"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back
+touched," laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I
+wonder what Our Lady thinks of some of the devotees we bring
+her."</p>
+<p>As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and
+I squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on
+the oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.</p>
+<p>I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my
+handcuff with my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in
+two. I was minded as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered
+whether he had managed to rid himself of their inconvenience. He
+went straightway, doubtless, to some confederate who cut them for
+him, and even now was planning fresh evil against the St. Quentins.
+I remembered his face as he cried to M. le Comte that they should
+meet again; and I thought that M. &Eacute;tienne was likely to have
+his hands full with Lucas, without this unlucky tanglement with
+Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I called down a
+murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl alone? There
+were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on humanity
+if there were none kindlier.</p>
+<p>He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this
+girl's fair face had stood between him and his home, between him
+and action, between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly;
+yet, in my opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains.
+If she had loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl
+spurned and flouted him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not
+put the jade out of his mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the
+road to glory? When I got back to him and told him how she had
+mocked him, hang me but he should, though!</p>
+<p>Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me
+but with my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General,
+dark-minded Mayenne. What he wanted with me he had not revealed;
+nor was it a pleasant subject for speculation. He meant me, of
+course, to tell him all I knew of the St. Quentins; well, that was
+soon done; belike he understood more than I of the day's work. But
+after he had questioned me, what?</p>
+<p>Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never
+done him any harm? Or would he&mdash;I wondered, if they flung me
+out stark into some alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would
+search for me and claim my carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen
+by the blades of the League?</p>
+<p>I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not
+even this morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been
+in such mortal dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M.
+&Eacute;tienne; but I was not likely to happen on succour here.
+Pierre, for all his kind heart, could not save me from the Duke of
+Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with
+me in the little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and
+prayed her to save me, and if she might not, then to stand by me
+during the hard moment of dying and receive my seeking soul.
+Comforted now and deeming I could pass, if it came to that, with a
+steady face, I laid me down, my head on the prie-dieu cushion, and
+presently went to sleep.</p>
+<p>I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up
+to meet my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings
+who bent over me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not
+save you the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have
+availed you nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."</p>
+<p>With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over
+her lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too
+confused for speech, while she, putting down the shaking
+candlestick on the altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face
+with her hands, sobbing.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's
+tears! The man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think
+he was half flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard.
+He did not hurt so much."</p>
+<p>She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and
+presently dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her
+shining wet eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make
+sure, she laid her hand delicately on my back.</p>
+<p>"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St.
+G&eacute;n&eacute;vi&egrave;ve, they have not brought the blood. I
+saw a man flogged once&mdash;" she shut her eyes, shuddering, and
+her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt, mademoiselle," I
+answered her.</p>
+<p>She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks,
+her hand still trembling. I could think of nothing but to
+repeat:</p>
+<p>"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your
+life!" she breathed.</p>
+<p>It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly
+I found myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this
+noblewoman for my death.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can
+die happily."</p>
+<p>She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some
+menacing thrust.</p>
+<p>"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue
+fire. "They shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a
+thing that she cannot save a serving-boy?"</p>
+<p>She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to
+stifle their throbbing.</p>
+<p>"It was my fault," she cried&mdash;"it was all my fault. It was
+my vanity and silliness brought you to this. I should never have
+written that letter&mdash;a three years' child would have known
+better. But I had not seen M. de Mar for five weeks&mdash;I did not
+know, what I readily guess now, that he had taken sides against us.
+M. de Lorraine played on my pique."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M.
+&Eacute;tienne did not come himself."</p>
+<p>"You are glad for that?"</p>
+<p>"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"</p>
+<p>She caught her breath as if in pain.</p>
+<p>"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not
+angry. When I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I
+should have my gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop
+beating. I saw what I had accomplished&mdash;mon dieu, I was sick
+with repentance of it!"</p>
+<p>I had to tell her I had not thought it.</p>
+<p>"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness;
+I must needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took
+you by the throat&mdash;there has been bad blood between him and
+your lord this twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him
+through the wrist. Had I interfered for you," she said, colouring a
+little, "M. de Brie would have inferred interest in the master from
+that in the man, and he had seen to your beating himself."</p>
+<p>It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little
+cheese" of guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman
+would hardly display so much venom against M. &Eacute;tienne unless
+he were a serious obstacle to his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be
+here at midnight, weeping over a serving-lad, if she cared nothing
+for the master. If she had not worn her heart on her sleeve before
+the laughing salon, mayhap she would show it to me.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M.
+&Eacute;tienne rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint
+from fatigue and loss of blood; he could not walk across the room.
+But he bade me try to make mademoiselle believe his absence was no
+fault of his. He wrote her a month ago; he found to-day the letter
+was never delivered."</p>
+<p>"Is he hurt dangerously?"</p>
+<p>"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded
+in the right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will
+recover."</p>
+<p>"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that
+he was penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely
+his."</p>
+<p>She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had
+taken from her bosom; but I retreated.</p>
+<p>"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we
+are not penniless&mdash;or if we are, we get on very well sans le
+sou. They do everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he
+has only to return to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin to get all the
+gold pieces he can spend. Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle.
+I was angry when I said it; I did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's
+pardon."</p>
+<p>She looked at me a little hesitatingly.</p>
+<p>"You are telling me true?"</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed,
+indeed, I would not refuse it."</p>
+<p>"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for
+yourself. It will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find
+something you like as a token from me." With her own white fingers
+she slipped some tinkling coins into my pouch, and cut short my
+thanks with the little wailing cry:</p>
+<p>"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I
+could free them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with
+you they never will let you go."</p>
+<p>"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her
+to go back to bed. M. &Eacute;tienne did not send me hither to
+bring her grief and trouble."</p>
+<p>"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here
+before on monsieur's errands?"</p>
+<p>"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I
+belong on the St. Quentin estate. My name is F&eacute;lix
+Broux."</p>
+<p>"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"</p>
+<p>"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing
+it."</p>
+<p>"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered
+soberly.</p>
+<p>She stood looking at me helplessly.</p>
+<p>"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to
+herself; "but I might weep Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie's rough heart to
+softness. Then it is a question whether he could turn Mayenne. I
+wish I knew whether the duke himself or only Paul de Lorraine has
+planned this move to-night. That is," she added, blushing, but
+speaking out candidly, "whether they attack M. de Mar as the
+League's enemy or as my lover."</p>
+<p>"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as
+I knew how, but eager to find out all I could for M.
+&Eacute;tienne&mdash;"this M. de Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover,
+too?"</p>
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We
+are all pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he
+chooses. For a time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my
+cousin Paul came back after a two years' disappearance, and
+straightway he was up and M. de Mar was down. And then Paul
+vanished again as suddenly as he had come, and it became the turn
+of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as suddenly as he had
+left and at once played on me to write that unlucky letter. And
+what it bodes for <i>him</i> I know not."</p>
+<p>She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me,
+the fact of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as
+lonely in this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would
+have talked delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has
+been happening to my M. &Eacute;tienne this last month, if you are
+not afraid to stay long enough to hear it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes,
+you may tell me if you wish."</p>
+<p>She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other,
+and I began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of
+languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really
+did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five
+weeks. But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she
+forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks,
+hanging on my words with eager questions. And when I told her how
+Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:</p>
+<p>"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this
+Lucas, without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne
+himself."</p>
+<p>I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked
+reluctantly:</p>
+<p>"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de
+Mayenne's?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against
+dukedoms for their own pleasure."</p>
+<p>"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she
+said with an accent of confidence that rang as false as a
+counterfeit coin. I saw well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at
+least, Mayenne's guilt. I thought I might tell her a little
+more.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M.
+de Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them.
+So then M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St.
+Quentin, invented this."</p>
+<p>"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave
+Paris. He will&mdash;he must!"</p>
+<p>"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered;
+"but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But what?"</p>
+<p>"But then the letter came."</p>
+<p>"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time
+is over for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am
+a Ligueuse born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is
+his father's side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another
+day."</p>
+<p>"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for
+him. If he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him
+a letter myself to tell him he must."</p>
+<p>"Then he will never go."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix!"</p>
+<p>"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted
+him; when he finds she does not&mdash;well, if he budges a step out
+of Paris, I do not know him. When he thought himself
+despised&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did
+not mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I
+made a mock of him, that he might hate me and keep away from
+me."</p>
+<p>"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with
+her."</p>
+<p>"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring
+out with impudent speech."</p>
+<p>"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But
+she played too well."</p>
+<p>"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I
+do&mdash;well, I will not say despise him&mdash;but care nothing
+for him? Will he then go to St. Denis? Then tell him from me that
+he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my esteem as a one-time
+servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I would willingly save
+him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore me. But as for any
+answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark. Tell him to go
+find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry for the moon
+as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
+mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to
+marry Brie and Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a
+sudden rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she
+said woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love
+me."</p>
+<p>I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her
+dress.</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you
+would get him out of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her
+heart would break.</p>
+<p>I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her,
+silent. At length she sobbed out:</p>
+<p>"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M.
+de Mar, when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And
+it was all my fault."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."</p>
+<p>But she shook her head.</p>
+<p>"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had
+something in his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear
+and lives so cheap. But I will do my utmost, F&eacute;lix, lad. It
+is not long to daylight now. I will go to Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie
+and we'll believe I shall prevail."</p>
+<p>She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
+quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the
+door,&mdash;with my fettered wrists I could not do the office for
+her,&mdash;and on the threshold turned to smile on me, wistfully,
+hopefully. In the next second, with a gasp that was half a cry, she
+blew out the light and pushed the door shut again.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+<h3><i>My Lord Mayenne.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the
+next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of
+it. "What&mdash;" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my
+mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite
+closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried
+again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered
+breathing and I heard something else&mdash;a rapid, heavy tread in
+the corridor without. Into the council-room came a man carrying a
+lighted taper. It was Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at
+my feet.</p>
+<p>I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my
+hand in a sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.</p>
+<p>Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like
+one just roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted
+the three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself
+with his back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared
+glance at him, for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our
+door seemed to call aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light
+scarcely pierced the shadows of the long room.</p>
+<p>More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair
+about, sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A
+tall man in black entered, saluting the general from the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It
+was impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a
+sentence.</p>
+<p>"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as
+Mayenne's own. He shut the door after him and walked over to the
+table.</p>
+<p>"And how goes it?"</p>
+<p>"Badly."</p>
+<p>The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting
+for an invitation.</p>
+<p>"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to
+me with that report?"</p>
+<p>"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence,
+leaning back in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and
+proved to me what I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night
+visitor was Lucas. "Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone
+badly. In fact, your game is up."</p>
+<p>Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the
+table.</p>
+<p>"You tell me this?"</p>
+<p>Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.</p>
+<p>"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="180.jpg"></a> <a href="images/180.jpg"><img src=
+"images/180.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>MLLE. De MONTLUC AND F&Eacute;LIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a
+cat sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.</p>
+<p>"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"When you put up yours, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"I have drawn none!"</p>
+<p>"In your sleeve, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Liar!" cried Mayenne.</p>
+<p>I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade
+that flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from
+his belt. But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and
+rushed at Lucas. He dodged and they circled round each other, wary
+as two matched cocks. Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne,
+the less agile by reason of his weight, could make no chance to
+strike. He drew off presently.</p>
+<p>"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.</p>
+<p>"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending
+myself?"</p>
+<p>Mayenne let the charge go by default.</p>
+<p>"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu,
+do I employ you to fail?"</p>
+<p>"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."</p>
+<p>Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his
+knife on the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good
+humour&mdash;no mean tribute to his power of self-control. For the
+written words can convey no notion of the maddening insolence of
+Lucas's bearing&mdash;an insolence so studied that it almost seemed
+unconscious and was thereby well-nigh impossible to silence.</p>
+<p>"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."</p>
+<p>Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:</p>
+<p>"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was
+unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much
+further you dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"</p>
+<p>He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it
+into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or
+summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how
+infuriating was Lucas. He carried himself with an air of easy
+equality insufferable to the first noble in the land. Mayenne's
+chosen r&ocirc;le was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat
+him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and
+violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived&mdash;unless,
+indeed, he were a prince in disguise.</p>
+<p>"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had
+called me that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in
+the family."</p>
+<p>"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night,"
+Mayenne went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew
+something was wrong&mdash;unless the thing were done."</p>
+<p>"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch
+of heat he had shown. "It was fate&mdash;and that fool
+Grammont."</p>
+<p>"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for
+you."</p>
+<p>Lucas sat down, the table between them.</p>
+<p>"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board.
+"Have you Mar's boy?"</p>
+<p>"What boy?"</p>
+<p>"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil
+prompted to come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with
+a love-message to Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of
+mademoiselle's love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It
+is plain to the very lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at
+present we are discussing l'affaire St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be
+the reward of my success."</p>
+<p>"I thought you told me you had failed."</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought
+better of it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.</p>
+<p>"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is
+immortal."</p>
+<p>"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke
+observed. "I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered
+flincher."</p>
+<p>"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I
+have missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."</p>
+<p>"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne,
+reflectively. "Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie is agitating himself about
+that young mistress. And he has not made any failures&mdash;as
+yet."</p>
+<p>Lucas sprang to his feet.</p>
+<p>"You swore to me I should have her."</p>
+<p>"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the
+price."</p>
+<p>"I will bring you the price."</p>
+<p>"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing
+over the mouse&mdash;"e'en then I might change my mind."</p>
+<p>"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead
+duke in France."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the
+power of mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to
+draw dagger, Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I
+somehow thought that the man who had shown hot anger was the real
+man; the man who sat there quiet was the party leader.</p>
+<p>He said now, evenly:</p>
+<p>"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."</p>
+<p>"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.</p>
+<p>So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an
+air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience
+and himself began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice
+rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out
+violently:</p>
+<p>"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for?
+For love of my affectionate uncle?"</p>
+<p>"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle,
+as you say."</p>
+<p>"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
+Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father
+cast off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League
+or the Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made
+prisoner at Ivry."</p>
+<p>"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught
+you. You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not
+recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the
+rope from you and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode
+forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the
+gallows."</p>
+<p>"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.</p>
+<p>"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear
+the name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and
+ward, Lorance de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put
+me off with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the
+faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin
+and the Comte de Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed
+into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the
+Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it
+would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you
+certain information from the royalist army. I returned in the guise
+of an escaped prisoner to Henry's camp to steal you secrets; and
+the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar
+again."</p>
+<p>"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of
+your brother Charles, either."</p>
+<p>"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant
+name in your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King
+Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is
+not Charles of Guise you mean."</p>
+<p>"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began
+angrily.</p>
+<p>"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown
+on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish
+hammer and the B&eacute;arnais anvil; there will soon be nothing
+left of you but powder."</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu, Paul&mdash;" Mayenne cried, half rising; but
+Lucas, leaning forward on the table, riveting him with his keen
+eyes, went on:</p>
+<p>"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but
+I am ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance
+is in your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not
+hesitated to risk the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my
+way here, disguised, to tell you of the king's coming change of
+faith and of St. Quentin's certain defection. I demanded then my
+price, my marriage with mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You
+sent me back to Mantes to kill you St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have
+not killed him."</p>
+<p>Lucas reddened with ire.</p>
+<p>"I am no Jacques Cl&eacute;ment to stab and be massacred. You
+cannot buy such a service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's
+work for you I choose my own time and way. I brought the duke to
+Paris, delivered him up to you to deal with as it liked you. But
+you with your army at your back were afraid to kill him. You
+flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the onus of his death.
+Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to make his own
+son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke and ruin
+his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
+way&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my
+way; he was of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your
+way."</p>
+<p>"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he
+was a hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his
+ruin."</p>
+<p>"Something&mdash;not as much. I did not want him killed&mdash;I
+preferred him to Val&egrave;re."</p>
+<p>"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."</p>
+<p>"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some
+other who might appear?"</p>
+<p>"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas
+answered.</p>
+<p>Mayenne broke into laughter.</p>
+<p>"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille?
+Lorance and no lovers! Ho, ho!"</p>
+<p>"I mean none whom she favours."</p>
+<p>"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow,"
+Mayenne said. I had no idea whether he really thought it or only
+said it to annoy Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's
+brows were knotted; he spoke with an effort, like a man under
+stress of physical pain.</p>
+<p>"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she
+would not love him a parricide."</p>
+<p>"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker
+the villain the more they adore him."</p>
+<p>"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you
+have had successes."</p>
+<p>Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of
+Lorance; you must also have her love?"</p>
+<p>"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."</p>
+<p>"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how
+long would it last? <i>Souvent femme varie</i>&mdash;that is the
+only fixed fact about her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will
+love some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after
+to-morrow. It is not worth while disturbing yourself about it."</p>
+<p>"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.</p>
+<p>Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"You are very young, Paul."</p>
+<p>"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she
+shall not!"</p>
+<p>Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him
+out of his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a
+hundredfold. Lucas's face was seared with his passions as with the
+torture-iron; he clinched his hands together, breathing hard. On my
+side of the door I heard a sharp little sound in the darkness;
+mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.</p>
+<p>"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said,
+"since mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become
+so."</p>
+<p>"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would
+leap over the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the
+duke to take up his dagger.</p>
+<p>"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have
+not killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the
+scheme&mdash;my scheme&mdash;is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my
+scheme. I never advocated stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses
+and angered nephews and deceived sons and the rest of your cumbrous
+machinery. I would have had you stab him as he bent over his
+papers, and walk out of the house before they discovered him. But
+you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot and replot to
+make some one else do your work. Now, after months of intriguing
+and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed. Morbleu! is
+there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the gutter,
+as no true son of the valourous Le Balafr&eacute;?"</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to
+come around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did
+not move; and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an
+effort, he said:</p>
+<p>"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured
+harder or planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been
+clever. I have made my worst enemy my willing tool&mdash;I have
+made Monsieur's own son my cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no
+contingency unprovided for&mdash;and I am ruined by a freak of
+fate."</p>
+<p>"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's,"
+Mayenne returned.</p>
+<p>"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you
+like!" Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen,
+monsieur."</p>
+<p>He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to
+reconquer something of his old coolness.</p>
+<p>"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I
+spoke of. You said he had not been here?"</p>
+<p>"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I
+have something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's
+maids."</p>
+<p>"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to
+keep him. Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw
+him."</p>
+<p>He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought
+had travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of
+mademoiselle's affections.</p>
+<p>"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"</p>
+<p>It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low
+and hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it
+was no fear of listeners that kept his voice down&mdash;they had
+shouted at each other as if there was no one within a mile. I
+guessed that Lucas, for all his bravado, took little pride in his
+tale, nor felt happy about its reception. I could catch names now
+and then, Monsieur's, M. &Eacute;tienne's, Grammont's, but the hero
+of the tale was myself.</p>
+<p>"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.</p>
+<p>At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old
+defiance:</p>
+<p>"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the
+acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your
+lansquenets couldn't keep him out."</p>
+<p>"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with
+shut fingers over the table and then opening them.</p>
+<p>"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own
+h&ocirc;tel stuffed with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to
+do, alone in my enemy's house, when at the least suspicion of me
+they had broken me on the wheel."</p>
+<p>"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble
+with all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins
+than of accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be
+to-day&mdash;where would the Cause be&mdash;if my first care was my
+own peril?"</p>
+<p>"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a
+cold sneer. "You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the
+Church and the King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare
+of Charles of Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine,
+your humble nephew, lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I
+am toiling for no one but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should
+find it most inconvenient to get on without a head on my shoulders,
+and I shall do my best to keep it there."</p>
+<p>"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne
+answered. "You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time,
+Paul, you will do well to remember that your interest is to forward
+my interest."</p>
+<p>"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet.
+You need not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than
+any man in your ranks."</p>
+<p>"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."</p>
+<p>Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word
+of blame. He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M.
+le Duc's departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with
+a sharp oath.</p>
+<p>"What! by daylight?"</p>
+<p>"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at
+night."</p>
+<p>"He went out in broad day?"</p>
+<p>"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of
+his old nonchalance.</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true,
+if he got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that
+let him. I'll nail it over his own gate."</p>
+<p>"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If
+you did, how long would it avail? <i>Souvent homme trahie</i>; that
+is the only fixed fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day,
+they will pass some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the
+day after."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some
+deeper emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Souvent homme trahie,<br />
+Mal habile qui s'y fie,"</p>
+</div>
+<p>he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto
+of the house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good
+faith, as no man believed in theirs.</p>
+<p>"<i>Souvent homme trahie</i>," Mayenne said again, as if in the
+words he recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King
+Francis's version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."</p>
+<p>"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.</p>
+<p>I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne,
+because, for all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's
+and ability second to none, he dared trust no man&mdash;not the son
+of his body, not his brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in
+it, and there was no need to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured
+traitor, was farther from the goal of his desire than if we had
+slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne
+went on in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him
+once more as the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France,
+and feared and hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear
+lord &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Trust me for that."</p>
+<p>"Then came you here?"</p>
+<p>"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings
+at the Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came
+here and worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his
+presence. For I thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow
+he might be out of my reach. Well, it appears he had not the
+courage to come but he sent the boy. I was not sorry. I thought I
+could settle him more quietly at the inn. The boy went back once
+and almost ran into me in the court, but he did not see me. I
+entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool of a host put
+me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally declared
+the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no use.
+Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in
+front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But
+instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the
+cabaret."</p>
+<p>Mayenne burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"It was not your night, Paul."</p>
+<p>"No," said Lucas, shortly.</p>
+<p>"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put
+out of the inn."</p>
+<p>"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with
+whom Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all
+went our ways, forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was
+afraid some one else might find him and he might tell tales."</p>
+<p>"And will he tell tales?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."</p>
+<p>"How about your spy in the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas
+said easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And
+Grammont, you see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the
+thing but the boy Broux."</p>
+<p>"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for
+I have the boy."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+<h3><i>Mayenne's ward.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-l.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ucas sprang up.</p>
+<p>"You have him? Where?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing
+slowness.</p>
+<p>"Alive?"</p>
+<p>"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not
+done with him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the
+oratory there."</p>
+<p>"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of
+Mayenne's good faith to him struck his mind.</p>
+<p>"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might
+be in the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for
+that."</p>
+<p>"What will you do with him, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second
+bidding, hastened down the room.</p>
+<p>All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had
+neither stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin
+herself. But now she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my
+shoulder with an encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide
+just as Lucas reached the threshold.</p>
+<p>He recoiled as from a ghost.</p>
+<p>"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room.
+"What! Lorance!"</p>
+<p>He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back
+on the other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she
+lifted her head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no
+fear, but she had the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on
+the oratory floor she had been in a panic lest they find her. But
+in the moment of discovery she faced them unflinching.</p>
+<p>"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.</p>
+<p>"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was
+here first, as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as
+mine by you."</p>
+<p>His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her
+pale cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her
+indignant eyes.</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said.
+"You defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool
+of me in your cowardly schemes."</p>
+<p>"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I
+shall kill M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would
+pleasure you to have a word with him first."</p>
+<p>I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret
+the speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness
+and recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and
+vinegar in a sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an
+end, with skill and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern
+his own gusty tempers.</p>
+<p>"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer
+tone.</p>
+<p>"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved
+most bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into
+danger. Since Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand,
+and since this is not the man you wanted but only his servant, will
+you not let him go free?"</p>
+<p>"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne
+protested, smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I
+thought you would thank me for it."</p>
+<p>"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."</p>
+<p>She flushed red for very shame.</p>
+<p>"I was afraid&mdash;I knew you vexed with me," she faltered.
+"Oh, I have done ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring
+forgiveness. There was no need to ask.</p>
+<p>"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak
+before! Thank you, my cousin!"</p>
+<p>"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of
+impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."</p>
+<p>My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a
+craven that I had been overcome by groundless terror.</p>
+<p>"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle
+laughed out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall
+never meddle in your affairs again."</p>
+<p>"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to
+let the boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear
+what he should not, I have no choice but to silence him."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.</p>
+<p>"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have
+made it impossible."</p>
+<p>Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had
+my hands been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in
+his heart.</p>
+<p>"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept
+over me, and that is worth dying for."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first
+instant of consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in
+the land! You, the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the
+League, the commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in
+stooping to take vengeance on a stable-boy."</p>
+<p>"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he
+answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all,
+since absolute power is not obliged to give an account of
+itself.</p>
+<p>"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn
+it? In that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while
+there is yet time."</p>
+<p>He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no
+justification. He advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the
+damsels of my household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room.
+Permit me then to conduct you to the staircase."</p>
+<p>She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering
+me as with a shield.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."</p>
+<p>"Your hand, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in
+appeal.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always
+tried to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy
+because he was a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St.
+Quentin, at least, had gone over to the other side. I did not know
+what you would do with him, and I could not rest in my bed because
+it was through me he came here. Monsieur, if I was foolish and
+frightened and indiscreet, do not punish the lad for my
+wrong-doing."</p>
+<p>Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.</p>
+<p>"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the
+door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"</p>
+<p>"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile,
+"if you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"</p>
+<p>"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my
+white cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my
+little cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have
+made her cry her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying,
+gave her to me to guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable.
+I am sorry. I wish I had not done it.'"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your
+bed?"</p>
+<p>She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went
+on as if thinking aloud.</p>
+<p>"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and
+your brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You
+would ask my father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I
+would run in to kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I
+thought you the handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as
+indeed you were."</p>
+<p>"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said
+abruptly.</p>
+<p>"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of
+you," she returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for
+my cousin Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them
+one night in all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of
+Henri de Guise; God guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you
+make it hard for me to ask it for my cousin Charles."</p>
+<p>"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said
+curtly.</p>
+<p>"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With
+the door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and
+let him go. But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's
+business, mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him
+listen to my concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble
+for the tales of boys&mdash;you, the lord of half France. But if
+you must needs fear his tongue, why, even then you should set him
+free. He is but a serving-boy sent here with a message. It is
+wanton murder to take his life; it is like killing a child."</p>
+<p>"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose,
+mademoiselle," the duke retorted. "Since you have been
+eavesdropping, you have heard how he upset your cousin Paul's
+arrangements."</p>
+<p>"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved
+you the stain of a cowardly crime."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my
+brother?"</p>
+<p>"The Valois."</p>
+<p>"And his henchman, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He
+was revolted at the deed."</p>
+<p>"Did they teach you that at the convent?"</p>
+<p>"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri
+not to go to Blois."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin
+Charles."</p>
+<p>"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain
+and murderer," Mayenne returned.</p>
+<p>"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved
+from the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be
+glad."</p>
+<p>He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she
+went on:</p>
+<p>"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and
+turmoil that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I
+think you are more harassed and troubled than any man in France.
+You have Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces
+to fight in the field, and your own League to combat at home. You
+must make favour with each of a dozen quarrelling factions, must
+strive and strive to placate and loyalize them all. The leaders
+work each for his own end, each against the others and against you;
+and the truth is not in one of them, and their pledges are ropes of
+straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray till you know not which
+way to turn, and you curse the day that made you head of the
+League."</p>
+<p>"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly.
+"And that is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must
+do my all to lead it to success."</p>
+<p>"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success
+never yet lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how
+God dealt with him!"</p>
+<p>He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than
+her shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:</p>
+<p>"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur!"</p>
+<p>With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she
+dropped on her knees before him, kissing his hand.</p>
+<p>Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but
+stood looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the
+cockles of my heart to see.</p>
+<p>Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul.
+His mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the
+St. Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of
+it. Out of his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery,
+and cowardly murder. And in the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, as in the
+H&ocirc;tel de St. Quentin, his betrayal had come about through me.
+I was unwitting agent in both cases; but that did not make him love
+me the more. Could eyes slay, I had fallen of the glance he shot me
+over mademoiselle's bowed head; but when she rose he said to
+her:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's,
+since I got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."</p>
+<p>She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He
+made an eager pace nearer her.</p>
+<p>"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of
+your graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will
+not take me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de
+Mar. Is that any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March,
+when I was hiding here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar
+come airily in, day after day, to see and make love to you, was it
+any marvel that I swore to bring his proud head to the dust?"</p>
+<p>Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.</p>
+<p>"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did
+not approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been
+ready to defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed
+him your face; of course, had you, you could not have become his
+father's housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same
+blood runs in your veins and mine!"</p>
+<p>"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping
+his temper with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France
+in war-time, and not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for
+more than my own revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's
+commands, to aid our holy cause, for the preservation of the
+Catholic Church and the Catholic kingdom of France."</p>
+<p>"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were
+working for nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting
+him ever on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest
+of us. He hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against
+them to the best of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen,
+we are Leaguers; they fight for their side, and we fight for ours.
+If we plot against them, they plot against us; we murder lest we be
+murdered. We cannot scruple over our means. Nom de dieu,
+mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war is not a
+dancing-school."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any
+defence. "We have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of
+Christian gentlemen. And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's
+excuse that I was blinded in my zeal for the Cause. For I know and
+you know there is but one cause with me. I went to kill St. Quentin
+because I was promised you for it, as I would have gone to kill the
+Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did it to win you. There is no
+crime in God's calendar I would not commit for that."</p>
+<p>He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her,
+burning her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this
+last sentence I knew he spoke the truth.</p>
+<p>She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered
+pride in his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead,
+she eyed him with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape
+from his rampant desire.</p>
+<p>"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me,"
+she said.</p>
+<p>"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I
+love you so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain
+you; there is no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame
+so bitter, no danger so awful, that I would not face it for you.
+Nor is there any sacrifice I will not make to gain your good will.
+I hate M. de Mar above any living man because you have smiled on
+him; but I will let him go for your sake. I swear to you before the
+figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will drop all enmity to
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither move
+against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or
+manner, so help me God!"</p>
+<p>He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She
+retreated from him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.</p>
+<p>"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the
+truth," she said.</p>
+<p>"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May
+my tongue rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again
+curtsied to him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added.
+"I have no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more
+trouble for me than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to
+settle with St. Quentin. But I have no quarrel with the son. I will
+not molest him."</p>
+<p>"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her
+graceful obeisances.</p>
+<p>"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him,
+but not that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St.
+Quentins are Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I
+will let Mar alone; but if he come near you again, I will crush him
+as I would a buzzing fly."</p>
+<p>"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone.
+"While I live under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I
+am a Ligueuse and he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing
+between us. There shall be nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as
+Paul needs, because I have never lied to you."</p>
+<p>She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince
+under her stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de
+Montluc loved her enemies.</p>
+<p>"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.</p>
+<p>"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this
+for you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."</p>
+<p>"You have called me a good girl, cousin."</p>
+<p>"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so
+Friday-faced about it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give
+you another just as good."</p>
+<p>"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my
+looks belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to
+have ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."</p>
+<p>"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter
+whether your husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri
+was for getting himself into a monastery because he could not have
+his Margot. Yet in less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler
+with the Duchesse Katharine."</p>
+<p>"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she
+answered gently, if not merrily.</p>
+<p>"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But
+it is for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the
+credit."</p>
+<p>"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.</p>
+<p>"What use? He would not keep silence."</p>
+<p>"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of
+bright confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But
+Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will
+not so flatter yourself, Lorance."</p>
+<p>Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what
+I had seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.</p>
+<p>Mayenne took out his dagger.</p>
+<p>"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you
+shall be."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.</p>
+<p>"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."</p>
+<p>He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him
+against the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of
+the suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife
+and she cut my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a
+glance earnest, beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all
+she meant by it. The next moment she was making her deep curtsey
+before the duke.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I
+thank you for your long patience, and bid you good night."</p>
+<p>With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go.
+But Mayenne bade her pause.</p>
+<p>"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks,
+Lorance?"</p>
+<p>He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her
+cheeks.</p>
+<p>"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said,
+and taking her hand with stately politeness led her from the room.
+The light seemed to go from it with the gleam of her yellow
+gown.</p>
+<p>"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He
+stood glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue
+finding for once no way to better his sorry case. He was the
+picture of trickery rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him.
+Marking which, he burst out at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone,
+for Mayenne had not closed the door:</p>
+<p>"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh
+that wins; I shall have her yet."</p>
+<p>"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence
+I could muster.</p>
+<p>"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will
+never see daylight again."</p>
+<p>"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw
+dagger. I deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best
+of soldiers must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory,
+flinging the door to after me. He was upon it before I could get it
+shut, and the heavy oak was swung this way and that between us,
+till it seemed as if we must tear it off the hinges. I contrived
+not to let him push it open wide enough to enter; meantime, as I
+was unarmed, I thought it no shame to shriek for succour. I heard
+an answering cry and hurrying footsteps. Then Lucas took his weight
+from the door so suddenly that mine banged it shut. The next minute
+it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and panting, on the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side
+Lucas lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light.
+His right hand he held behind his back, while with his left he
+poked his dagger into the candle-flame.</p>
+<p>Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.</p>
+<p>"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now,
+Paul?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle's prot&eacute;g&eacute; is nervous," Lucas
+answered with a fine sneer. "When I drew out my knife to get the
+thief from the candle he screamed to wake the dead and took
+sanctuary in the oratory."</p>
+<p>I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from
+the darkness Mayenne commanded:</p>
+<p>"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."</p>
+<p>The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a
+moment I hesitated, burning to defend my valour before
+mademoiselle. Then, reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had
+previously done me, and that the path to freedom was now open
+before me, I said nothing. Nor had I need. For as I turned she
+flashed over to Lucas and said straight in his face:</p>
+<p>"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead
+wife."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+<h3><i>"I'll win my lady!"</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-l.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making.
+For when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first
+thing I saw was the morning sun.</p>
+<p>My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on
+Easter day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought
+but that it was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed
+from the gloomy house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean
+day. I ran along as joyously as if I had left the last of my
+troubles behind me, forgotten in some dark corner of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts when, after hours
+within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am afraid in
+houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man or any
+thing.</p>
+<p>Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should
+all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still
+snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed
+of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and
+there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked
+through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that
+here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the
+knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a
+strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois
+Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had
+pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a
+bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping
+on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into
+dreamless slumber.</p>
+<p>When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from
+near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in
+time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of
+my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.</p>
+<p>"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go
+up to M. le Comte."</p>
+<p>"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were
+not to be disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a
+sabot."</p>
+<p>It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face
+at the trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed
+and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him
+with dinner.</p>
+<p>"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.</p>
+<p>"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I
+was. F&eacute;lix, what has happened to you?"</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="216.jpg"></a> <a href="images/216.jpg"><img src=
+"images/216.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
+FED."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>I glanced at the serving-man; M. &Eacute;tienne ordered him at
+once from the room.</p>
+<p>"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from
+very richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is&mdash;" I
+paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.</p>
+<p>"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little
+slow-poke! You saw her? And she said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.</p>
+<p>"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I
+told him. "And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves
+you."</p>
+<p>"She does!" he cried, flushing. "F&eacute;lix, does she? You
+cannot know."</p>
+<p>"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she
+wouldn't have wept so much, just over me."</p>
+<p>"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she
+came down in the night with a candle and cried over me."</p>
+<p>"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that?
+Mayenne? What said she, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden
+remembrance of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And
+here is something you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de
+Lorraine, Henri de Guise's son."</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a
+Rochelais!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafr&eacute;. His mother was
+Rochelaise, I think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry.
+They were going to hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized
+him for a nephew. Since then he has been spying for them. Because
+Mayenne promised him Mlle. de Montluc in marriage."</p>
+<p>He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to
+swear.</p>
+<p>"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should
+have her when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is
+alive."</p>
+<p>"Great God!" said M. &Eacute;tienne, only half aloud, dropping
+down on the arm of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that
+had hung on a paltry handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself
+a little, he cried:</p>
+<p>"But she&mdash;mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said.
+"Mademoiselle hates him."</p>
+<p>"Does she know&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made
+answer. "Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from
+the beginning, or I shall never make it clear to you."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.</p>
+<p>He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his
+dinner as I talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every
+word I spoke he got deeper into the interest of my tale. I never
+talked so much in my life, me, as I did those few days. I was
+always relating a history, to Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M.
+&Eacute;tienne, to&mdash;well, you shall know.</p>
+<p>I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:</p>
+<p>"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a
+boy! Well do they call you F&eacute;lix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped
+in bed like a baby, while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie
+here with old Galen for all company, while you bandy words with the
+Generalissimo himself! And make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands
+of mademoiselle! But I'll stand it no longer. I'm done with lying
+abed and letting you have all the fun. No; to-day I shall take part
+myself."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur's arm&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch&mdash;it is
+nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out
+of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;" I began, but he broke in on me:</p>
+<p>"Nom de dieu, F&eacute;lix, are we to sit idle while
+mademoiselle is carried off by that beast Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur
+meant to do."</p>
+<p>"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.</p>
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, but how?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, if I knew!"</p>
+<p>He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but
+he found it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn
+down the room, and came back to seize me by the arm.</p>
+<p>"How are we to do it, F&eacute;lix?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:</p>
+<p>"Sais pas."</p>
+<p>He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with
+the declaration:</p>
+<p>"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."</p>
+<p>"He will only have her own dead body," I said.</p>
+<p>He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out
+with unseeing eyes. "Lorance&mdash;Lorance," he murmured to
+himself. I think he did not know he spoke aloud.</p>
+<p>"If I could get word to her&mdash;" he went on presently. "But I
+can't send you again. Should I write a letter&mdash;But letters are
+mischievous. They fall into the wrong hands, and then where are
+we?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands
+of Pierre, that lackey who befriended me&mdash;" But he shook his
+head.</p>
+<p>"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of
+these inn-men&mdash;if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang
+me if I don't think I'll go myself!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he
+would never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out
+of his way."</p>
+<p>"My faith, F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "you take a black view of
+mankind."</p>
+<p>"Not of mankind, M. &Eacute;tienne. Only of Lucas. Not of
+Monsieur, or you, or Vigo."</p>
+<p>"And of Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the
+worst of the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he
+did."</p>
+<p>"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"</p>
+<p>"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But
+Mayenne&mdash;sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and
+then again he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"He does not mean you shall," M. &Eacute;tienne returned. "Yet
+the key is not buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of
+good and bad."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I,
+for one, do not know it."</p>
+<p>"Ah, F&eacute;lix," he cried, "you may believe that till
+doomsday&mdash;you will&mdash;of Monsieur."</p>
+<p>His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that,
+besides his thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his
+father. He sat gravely silent. But of last night's bitter distress
+he showed no trace. Last night he had not been able to take his
+eyes from the miserable past; but to-day he saw the future. A
+future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but one which, however it
+turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and shames.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to
+eat my pride."</p>
+<p>I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I
+longed to; he went on:</p>
+<p>"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was
+mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went
+forever."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."</p>
+<p>"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were
+churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still
+maintain them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No,
+whatever Monsieur replies, I must go tell him I repent."</p>
+<p>I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like
+sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"</p>
+<p>"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped
+hound."</p>
+<p>"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the
+same thing."</p>
+<p>"I have heard M. l'Abb&eacute; read the story of the prodigal
+son," I said. "And he was a vaurien, if you like&mdash;no more
+monsieur's sort than Lucas himself. But it says that when his
+father saw him coming a long way off, he ran out to meet him and
+fell on his neck."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne looked not altogether convinced.</p>
+<p>"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is
+only decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should
+not go if it were not for mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry
+off mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand&mdash;well, I confess for the
+nonce that beats me."</p>
+<p>"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.</p>
+<p>"Aye, and we will! Come, F&eacute;lix, you may put your knife in
+my dish. We must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the
+wine warm, but never mind."</p>
+<p>I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at
+all. Once resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was
+not long before we were in the streets, bound for the H&ocirc;tel
+St. Quentin. He said no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me
+with questions about Mlle. de Montluc&mdash;not only as to every
+word she said, but as to every turn of her head and flicker of her
+eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf when I could not answer. But
+as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell silent, more Friday-faced
+than ever his lady looked. He had his fair allowance of pride, this
+M. &Eacute;tienne; he found his own words no palatable meal.</p>
+<p>However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he
+dropped, as one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure,
+and approached the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young
+gallant who had lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll
+he called to the sentry:</p>
+<p>"Hol&agrave;, squinting Charlot! Open now!"</p>
+<p>"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw
+the bolts. "Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into
+him, I could see, that his first greeting should be thus
+friendly.</p>
+<p>"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot
+volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night,
+after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us
+all blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time,
+nom d'un chien!"</p>
+<p>"Eh bien, I am found," M. &Eacute;tienne returned. "In time
+we'll get Lucas, too. Is Monsieur back?"</p>
+<p>"No, M. &Eacute;tienne, not yet."</p>
+<p>I think he was half sorry, half glad.</p>
+<p>"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."</p>
+<p>He went straight across the court and in at the door he had
+sworn never again to darken. Humility and repentance might have
+brought him there, but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him
+over the threshold without a falter.</p>
+<p>Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice
+against himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of
+us, agleam with excitement.</p>
+<p>"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M.
+l'&Eacute;cuyer?"</p>
+<p>"I think in the stables, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."</p>
+<p>He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the
+hall where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my
+duty to keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel
+came flying back to say Vigo was on his way. M. &Eacute;tienne
+thanked him, and he hung about, longing to pump me, and, in my
+lord's presence, not quite daring, till I took him by the shoulders
+and turned him out. I hate curiosity.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood behind the table, looking his
+haughtiest. He was unsure of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo;
+I read in his eyes a stern determination to set this insolent
+servant in his place.</p>
+<p>The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young
+lord's side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there
+had never been a hard word between them:</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the
+king himself."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He
+had been prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de
+haut en bas, shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the
+wind out of his sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then
+laughed. And then he held out his hand, saying simply:</p>
+<p>"Thank you, Vigo."</p>
+<p>Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand
+had itched to box his ears.</p>
+<p>"What became of you last night, M. &Eacute;tienne?" he
+inquired.</p>
+<p>"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."</p>
+<p>"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.</p>
+<p>"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on
+the cards that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I
+want every man I have if they do."</p>
+<p>"I understand that," M. &Eacute;tienne said, "but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo
+pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he
+will not return till the king comes in. But since you are
+impatient, M. le Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If
+<i>he</i> can get through the gates <i>you</i> can."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry,
+Vigo. There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would
+like me well to bear away my share. But&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He broke off, to begin again abruptly:</p>
+<p>"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that
+there was more cause of trouble between my father and me than the
+pistoles?"</p>
+<p>"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur.
+But you are cured of that."</p>
+<p>"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of
+it. If I hung around the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, it was not for
+politics; it was for petticoats."</p>
+<p>Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth
+twitched.</p>
+<p>"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you
+may as well know more. Step up, F&eacute;lix, and tell your
+tale."</p>
+<p>I did as I was bid, M. &Eacute;tienne now and then taking the
+words out of my mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both
+with grave attention. I had for the second time in my career the
+pleasure of startling him out of his iron composure when I told him
+the true name and condition of Lucas. But at the end of the
+adventure all the comment he made was:</p>
+<p>"A fool for luck."</p>
+<p>"Well," said M. &Eacute;tienne, impatiently, "is that all you
+have to say? What are we to do about it?"</p>
+<p>"Do? Why, nothing."</p>
+<p>"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And
+let that scoundrel have her?"</p>
+<p>"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help
+it."</p>
+<p>"I will help it!" M. &Eacute;tienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to
+let that traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de
+Montluc?"</p>
+<p>"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will
+surely get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"</p>
+<p>"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we
+storm the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the
+sea."</p>
+<p>"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my
+lord declared.</p>
+<p>But Vigo shook his head.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance.
+You have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a
+man ask in the world than that? Your father has been without it
+these three years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out.
+You have been without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts
+of mischief. But now all that is coming straight. King Henry is
+turning Catholic, so that a man may follow him without offence to
+God. He is a good fellow and a first-rate general. He's just out
+there, at St. Denis. There's your place, M. &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"Not to-day, Vigo."</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. &Eacute;tienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo
+said with his steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by
+staying here to drink up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your
+lady to you now than he would give her to F&eacute;lix. And you can
+no more carry her off than could F&eacute;lix. Mayenne will have
+you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat breakfast."</p>
+<p>"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you,
+Vigo."</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to
+die afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell
+fighting for Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve
+deep. But we should say it was well; we grudged not your life to
+the country and the king. While, if you fall in this fool
+affair&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I fall for my lady," M. &Eacute;tienne finished. "The bravest
+captain of them all does no better than that."</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her.
+And if you could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now
+on are a staunch Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this
+maggot in your brain this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go
+to St. Denis; take your troop among Biron's horse. That is the
+place for you. You will marry a maid of honour and die a marshal of
+France."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a
+smile.</p>
+<p>"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton
+waiting you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were
+alone and in peril, would you go off after glory?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would
+go."</p>
+<p>"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. &Eacute;tienne cried. "You would
+do nothing of the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years
+in that hole, St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."</p>
+<p>"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know
+what I shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change
+me."</p>
+<p>"What is your purpose, M. &Eacute;tienne?" Vigo asked.</p>
+<p>Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to
+us.</p>
+<p>"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle
+if I can contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her
+out of the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine&mdash;such feats have been
+accomplished before and may be again. Then I shall bring her here
+and hold her against all comers."</p>
+<p>"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.</p>
+<p>"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army
+after her."</p>
+<p>"Coward!" shouted M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and
+throw us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:</p>
+<p>"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to
+hold this house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it
+till the last man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to
+guard his h&ocirc;tel, his moneys, and his papers. I don't call it
+guarding to throw a firebrand among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece
+here would be worse than that."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!"
+M. &Eacute;tienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend
+the lady if every stone in this house is pulled from its
+fellow!'"</p>
+<p>A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.</p>
+<p>"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the
+marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne
+forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of
+sleeves."</p>
+<p>"Well, then," cried M. &Eacute;tienne, all good humour in a
+moment, "what more do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring
+pitch out of the windows on Mayenne's ruffians."</p>
+<p>"No, M. &Eacute;tienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here
+and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No
+one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I
+have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been
+in the business before now."</p>
+<p>"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you
+know, Monsieur would approve."</p>
+<p>"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I
+cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till
+Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I
+interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you
+please."</p>
+<p>"I should think not, forsooth!" M. &Eacute;tienne blazed out
+furiously.</p>
+<p>"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I
+could order the guard&mdash;and they would obey&mdash;to lock you
+up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I
+don't do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you."</p>
+<p>My lord was white with ire.</p>
+<p>"Who is master here, you or I?"</p>
+<p>"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys
+in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are
+very angry, M. &Eacute;tienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to
+bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me."</p>
+<p>"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. &Eacute;tienne cried.</p>
+<p>Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught
+to add or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was
+no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the
+flow of the Seine.</p>
+<p>"Very well." M. &Eacute;tienne swallowed his wrath. "It is
+understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the
+world with me save F&eacute;lix here. But for all that I'll win my
+lady!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+<h3><i>To the Bastille.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-b.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ut Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no
+countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself
+suggested M. &Eacute;tienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the
+least embarrassed or offended because he knew M. le Comte to be
+angry with him. He was no feather ruffled, serene in the
+consciousness that he was absolutely in the right. His position was
+impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule, nor abuse moved him one
+whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he was born to forward
+the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would forward them, if
+need were, over our bleeding corpses.</p>
+<p>On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most
+amiable to M. &Eacute;tienne, treating him with a calm assumption
+of friendliness that would have maddened a saint. Yet it was not
+hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did. He would not let
+him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good
+fortune in the world.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over
+Vigo's attitude, but he said little. He accepted the advance of
+money&mdash;"Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is
+yours," Vigo explained&mdash;and despatched me to settle his score
+at the Three Lanterns.</p>
+<p>I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had
+accomplished nothing by our return to the h&ocirc;tel. Nay, rather
+had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the
+cold water flung on our ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting
+whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and
+disobeying his heir. It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil
+Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo
+never disobeyed <i>him</i>, but stood by him in all things. But I
+imagined that, were M. &Eacute;tienne master, Vigo, for all his
+years of service, would be packed off the premises in short
+order.</p>
+<p>I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. &Eacute;tienne
+did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as
+vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had
+more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity
+not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no
+particular liking for H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine hospitality, I had
+very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a
+letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.</p>
+<p>"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better,
+F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the
+Trois Lanternes.</p>
+<p>The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few
+cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a
+stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black
+coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It
+aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare
+sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not
+a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the
+owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be
+an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.</p>
+<p>I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the
+horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether
+it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I
+was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his
+journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the
+little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly
+chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter
+off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his
+lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I
+was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with
+business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys
+might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.</p>
+<p>The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all
+about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace
+in the tale. "This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought.
+"Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused
+murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went
+through into the passage where the staircase was.</p>
+<p>Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen
+of the serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in
+tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed
+on the closed door of Ma&icirc;tre Menard's little counting-room,
+whence issued the shrill cry:</p>
+<p>"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I
+know nothing of his whereabouts."</p>
+<p>As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round
+to look at me in fresh dread.</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next
+second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out
+of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that
+made me think a panther had got me.</p>
+<p>"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was
+going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here
+and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to
+the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your
+throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"</p>
+<p>She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the
+door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect
+my senses.</p>
+<p>The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a
+strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and
+myself.</p>
+<p>The bureau stood by the window, with Ma&icirc;tre Menard's
+account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of
+dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room,
+amusing himself with the windpipe of Ma&icirc;tre Menard; the other
+was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into
+his, and I found his the gentler of the two.</p>
+<p>"I say I know not where he went," Ma&icirc;tre Menard was
+gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did
+not tell&mdash;I have no notion. Ah&mdash;" The breath failed him
+utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.</p>
+<p>"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are
+you?"</p>
+<p>He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of
+the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the
+night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois
+appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.</p>
+<p>"My name is F&eacute;lix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a
+bill&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"His servant," Ma&icirc;tre Menard contrived to murmur, the
+dragoon allowing him a breath.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you
+left your master?"</p>
+<p>"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.</p>
+<p>"Never you mind. I want him."</p>
+<p>"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke
+of Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly
+than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne.
+If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind
+bars very long. But I have the governor's warrant for his
+arrest."</p>
+<p>"On what charge?"</p>
+<p>"A trifle. Merely murder."</p>
+<p>"<i>Murder?</i>"</p>
+<p>"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."</p>
+<p>"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did
+not&mdash;"</p>
+<p>I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas&mdash;Paul de
+Lorraine killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it
+down. To fling wild accusations against a great man's man were no
+wisdom. By accident I had given the officer the impression that we
+were friends of Mayenne. I should do ill to imperil the delusion.
+"M. le Comte&mdash;" I began again, and again stopped. I meant to
+say that monsieur had never left the inn last night; he could have
+had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me that I had better not
+know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a very grand
+gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.</p>
+<p>"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.</p>
+<p>At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a
+witness was the last thing I desired.</p>
+<p>"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a
+very fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles.
+The Comte de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he
+engaged me as lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on
+him. I know not what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to
+carry a message for him to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin. I came into
+Paris but night before last, and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the
+Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he employed me to run his errands, and
+last night brought me here with him. But I had never seen him till
+this time yesterday. I know nothing about him save that he seemed a
+very free-handed, easy master."</p>
+<p>To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the
+captain only laughed at my patent fright.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your
+arrest. I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order
+says nothing about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."</p>
+<p>I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the
+insult, and merely answered:</p>
+<p>"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday
+I would have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my
+experiences were teaching me something.</p>
+<p>"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said
+impatiently. "Tell me where that precious master of yours is now.
+And be quicker about it than this old mule."</p>
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Menard, then, had told them nothing&mdash;staunch
+old loyalist. He knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and
+they had throttled him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should
+not lose by it.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not
+where. But I know he will be back here to supper."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken
+your memory."</p>
+<p>At the word the soldier who had attended to Ma&icirc;tre Menard
+came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to
+myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every
+time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black
+to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had
+done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was in the
+H&ocirc;tel St Quentin, still those fellows would have found it no
+easy job to take him. Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de
+Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet
+I would not yield before the choking Ma&icirc;tre Menard had
+withstood, and I stuck to my lie.</p>
+<p>Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head
+seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a
+captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see
+what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and
+resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed
+me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I
+struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall
+young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I
+saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the
+noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of triumph.</p>
+<p>"Oh, M. &Eacute;tienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had
+been for nothing. Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my
+amazed eyes beheld not my master, but&mdash;Lucas!</p>
+<p>"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me,
+knaves!" For the second soldier had seized his other arm.</p>
+<p>"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but
+he is wanted at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.</p>
+<p>He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed
+him. Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for
+another man.</p>
+<p>"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man,
+Pontou."</p>
+<p>He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I
+had been at three o'clock this morning.</p>
+<p>"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never
+seen him since."</p>
+<p>"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to
+me. "I am not trying you. The handcuffs, men."</p>
+<p>One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his
+captors' grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the
+other, calling down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they
+snapped the handcuffs on for all that.</p>
+<p>"If this is Mayenne's work&mdash;" he panted.</p>
+<p>The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but
+orders are orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de
+Belin."</p>
+<p>"At whose instigation?"</p>
+<p>"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught
+to do with it but to arrest you."</p>
+<p>"Let me see the warrant."</p>
+<p>"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your
+bluster."</p>
+<p>He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before
+Lucas's eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.</p>
+<p>"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it
+sooner."</p>
+<p>"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to
+my Lord Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de
+Guise?"</p>
+<p>"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He
+must have been cursing himself that he had not given his name
+sooner. "But I am his brother."</p>
+<p>"You take me for a fool."</p>
+<p>"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"</p>
+<p>"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of
+Guise's eldest brother is but seventeen&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I did not say I was legitimate."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could
+reel off the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I
+am not so simple as you think. You will come along with me to the
+Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas
+stormed. "I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak
+up, you old turnspit," he shouted to Ma&icirc;tre Menard. "Am I
+he?"</p>
+<p>Poor Ma&icirc;tre Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too
+limp and sick to know what was going on. He only stared
+helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"No," the ma&icirc;tre answered in low, faltering tones. He was
+at the last point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as
+he says. He is not the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Who is he, then?"</p>
+<p>"I know not," the ma&icirc;tre stammered. "He came here last
+night. But it is as he says&mdash;he is not the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're
+lying."</p>
+<p>I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to
+know otherwise, I had thought myself the ma&icirc;tre was
+lying.</p>
+<p>"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the
+captain said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass,
+before I cram your lie down your throat. And clear your people away
+from this door. I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack
+about his business, or it will be the worse for him. And every
+woman Jill, too."</p>
+<p>"M. le Capitaine," Ma&icirc;tre Menard quavered, rising
+unsteadily to his feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you
+mistake; this is not&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot.
+Ma&icirc;tre Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.</p>
+<p>A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given
+way to fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now
+alarm was born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake?
+This obstinate disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of
+all who could swear to his identity&mdash;was it not rather a plot
+for his ruin? He swallowed hard once or twice, fear gripping his
+throat harder than ever the dragoon's fingers had gripped mine.
+Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but then he was the man who
+had killed Pontou.</p>
+<p>"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have
+orders to arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de
+Lorraine, not of &Eacute;tienne de Mar."</p>
+<p>"The name of &Eacute;tienne de Mar will do," the captain
+returned; "we have no fancy for aliases at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.</p>
+<p>"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"</p>
+<p>"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.</p>
+<p>His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a
+plot he had done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled
+himself together; error or intention, he would act as if he knew it
+must be error.</p>
+<p>"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your
+shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows
+him well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask
+these inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask
+that boy there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."</p>
+<p>His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of
+challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie.
+But the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his
+sword-belt, spared me the necessity.</p>
+<p>"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the
+Comte right enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen
+this gentleman a score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that
+the captain burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's
+nephew&mdash;you are a nephew, are you not?&mdash;to explain how he
+comes to ride with the Duc de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no
+future for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out
+angrily:</p>
+<p>"He lies! I never rode out with M. de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come now. Really you waste a great deal of breath," the
+captain said. "I regret the cruel necessity of arresting you, M. de
+Mar; but there is nothing gained by blustering about it. I usually
+know what I am about."</p>
+<p>"You do not know! Nom de dieu, you do not know. F&eacute;lix
+Broux, speak up there. If you have told him behind my back that I
+am &Eacute;tienne de Mar, I defy you to say it to my face."</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about it, messieurs." I repeated my little
+refrain. "Monsieur captain, remember, if you please, I never saw
+him till yesterday; he may be Paul de Lorraine for all I know. But
+he did not call himself that yesterday."</p>
+<p>"You hell-hound!" Lucas cried.</p>
+<p>"Go tell Louis to drive up to the cabaret door, Gaspard," bade
+the captain.</p>
+<p>Lucas gazed at him as if to tear out of him the truth of the
+matter. I think he was still a prey to suspicion of a plot in this,
+and it paralyzed his tongue. He so reeked with intrigue that he
+smelled one wherever he went. He was much too clever to believe
+that this arresting officer was simply thick-witted.</p>
+<p>"I say no more," he cried. "You may spare yourself your lies,
+the whole crew of you. I go as your prisoner, but I go as Paul of
+Lorraine, son of Henry, Duke of Guise."</p>
+<p>He said it with a certain superbness; but the young captain,
+bourgeois of the bourgeois, did not mean to let himself be put down
+by any sprig of the noblesse.</p>
+<p>"Certainly, if it is any comfort to you," he retorted. "But you
+are very dull, monsieur, not to be aware that your identity is
+known perfectly to others besides your lackey here and my man. I
+did not come to arrest you without a minute description of you from
+M. de Belin himself."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" Lucas shouted. "I wrote the description. I myself
+lodged information against Mar. I came here to make sure you took
+him. Carry me before Belin; he will know me."</p>
+<p>I trembled lest the officer could not but see that the man spoke
+truth. But I had no need to fear; there is a combination of
+stupidity and vanity which nothing can move.</p>
+<p>"I have no orders to take you to M. de Belin," he returned
+calmly. "So you wrote the description, did you? Perhaps you will
+deny that it fits you?"</p>
+<p>He read from the paper:</p>
+<p>"'Charles-Andr&eacute;-&Eacute;tienne-Marie de St. Quentin,
+Comte de Mar. Age, three-and-twenty; figure, tall and slender; was
+dressed yesterday in black with a plain falling-band; carries his
+right arm in a sling&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Is my arm in a sling?" Lucas demanded.</p>
+<p>"No, in a handcuff," the captain laughed, at the same moment
+that his dragoon exclaimed, "His right wrist is bandaged,
+though."</p>
+<p>"That is nothing! It is a mere scratch. I did it myself last
+night by accident," Lucas shouted, striving with his hampered left
+hand to pull the folds apart to show it. But he could not, and fell
+silent, wide-eyed, like one who sees the net of fate drawing in
+about him. The captain went on reading from his little paper:</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="248.jpg"></a> <a href="images/248.jpg"><img src=
+"images/248.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"'Fair hair, gray eyes, aquiline nose'&mdash;I suppose you will
+still tell us, monsieur, that you are not the man?"</p>
+<p>"I am not he. The Comte de Mar and I are nothing alike. We are
+both young, tall, yes; but that is all. He is slashed all up the
+forearm; my wrist is but scratched with a knife-edge. He has yellow
+hair; mine is brown. His eyes&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"It is plain to me, monsieur," the officer interrupted, "that
+the description fits you in every particular." And so it did.</p>
+<p>I, who had heard M. &Eacute;tienne described twenty times, had
+yesterday mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both.
+It was the more remarkable because they actually looked no more
+alike than chalk and cheese. Lucas had set down his catalogue
+without a thought that he was drawing his own picture. If ever
+hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas was!</p>
+<p>"You lie!" he cried furiously. "You know I am not Mar. You lie,
+the whole pack of you!"</p>
+<p>"Gag him, Ravelle," the captain commanded with an angry
+flush.</p>
+<p>"I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!" Lucas shouted.</p>
+<p>The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his
+mouth.</p>
+<p>"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in
+time to aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."</p>
+<p>He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their
+prisoner. And this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not
+slip from his captors' fingers between the room and the street. He
+was deposited in the big black coach that had aroused my wonder.
+Louis cracked his whip and off they rumbled.</p>
+<p>I laughed all the way back to the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+<h3><i>To the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>found M. &Eacute;tienne sitting on the steps before the house.
+He had doffed his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his
+sword and poniard were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat,
+its white plume pinned in a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside
+him. He had discarded his sling and was engaged in tuning a
+lute.</p>
+<p>Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he
+asked at once:</p>
+<p>"What has happened, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Such a lark!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your
+trouble?"</p>
+<p>"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."</p>
+<p>I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain
+what was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed
+interest, which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to
+distress.</p>
+<p>"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I
+resemble that dirt&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could
+possibly mistake you for two of the same race. But there was
+nothing in his catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be
+sure, the right arm in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist
+bandaged. I think he cut himself last night when he was after me
+and I flung the door in his face, for afterward he held his hand
+behind his back. At any rate, there was the bandage; that was
+enough to satisfy the captain."</p>
+<p>"And they took him off?"</p>
+<p>"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged
+him off."</p>
+<p>"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize
+the event.</p>
+<p>"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer
+and his men. He may be there by this time."</p>
+<p>He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe
+the thing.</p>
+<p>"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent
+anything better; but it is true."</p>
+<p>"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half
+so good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit&mdash;" he broke
+off, laughing.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen
+their faces&mdash;the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the
+more the officer was sure he was."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you
+should go about no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid
+errand, and see what you get into!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas
+have been arrested for Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"He won't stay arrested long&mdash;more's the pity."</p>
+<p>"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."</p>
+<p>"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say
+that my face is not known at the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that
+he had never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he
+lay perdu. At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence
+of a Paul de Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his
+word already, if they are arresting you on this trumped-up charge,
+you must get out of the gates to-night."</p>
+<p>"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in
+Paris."</p>
+<p>"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I must go nowhere but to the H&ocirc;tel Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Why, look you, F&eacute;lix; it is the safest spot for me in
+all Paris; it is the last place where they will look for me.
+Besides, now that they think me behind bars, they will not be
+looking for me at all. I shall be as safe as the hottest Leaguer in
+the camp."</p>
+<p>"But in the h&ocirc;tel-"</p>
+<p>"Be comforted; I shall not enter the h&ocirc;tel. There is a
+limit to my madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in
+the side street under which I have often stood in the old days. She
+used to contrive to be in her chamber after supper."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"</p>
+<p>"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after
+my father&mdash;So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me
+to-night."</p>
+<p>"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.</p>
+<p>"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her
+to-night. And I think she will be at the window."</p>
+<p>The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet
+blanket in the house was enough.</p>
+<p>"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."</p>
+<p>"Then I propose supper."</p>
+<p>Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles
+mademoiselle had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed
+to what he was about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to
+see if it was dark enough to start. At length, when it was still
+between dog and wolf, he announced that he would delay no
+longer.</p>
+<p>"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.</p>
+<p>"But you are not to come!"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, you will need me. You will need some one to
+watch the street while you speak with mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"I can have no listener to-night," he replied immovably.</p>
+<p>"But I will not listen, monsieur! I shall stand out of ear-shot.
+But you must have some one to give you warning should the guard set
+on you."</p>
+<p>"I can manage my own affairs," he retorted haughtily; "I desire
+neither your advice nor your company."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!" I cried, almost in tears.</p>
+<p>"Enough!" he bade sharply. "Go send me Vigo."</p>
+<p>I went like one in whose face the doors of heaven had shut.</p>
+<p>Vigo came at once from the guard-room at my summons. It was on
+my tongue to tell him of M. le Comte's mad resolve to fare forth
+alone; to beg him to stop it. But I remembered how blameworthy I
+myself had held the equery for interfering with M. &Eacute;tienne,
+and I made up my mind that no word of cavil at my lord should ever
+pass my lips. I lagged across the court at Vigo's heels,
+silent.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was standing in the doorway.</p>
+<p>"Vigo," he said, without a change of countenance, "get
+F&eacute;lix a rapier, which he can use prettily enough. I cannot
+take him out to-night unarmed."</p>
+<p>Vigo hesitated a moment, saluted, and went.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried out, "you meant all the time to take
+me!"</p>
+<p>He gazed down on my heated visage and laughed and laughed.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he gasped, "you had your sport over there at the
+inn. But I have seen nothing this summer as funny as <i>your</i>
+face."</p>
+<p>Vigo came back with a sword and baldric for me, and a
+horse-pistol besides, but M. &Eacute;tienne would not let me have
+it.</p>
+<p>"Circumstances are such, Vigo, that I want no noisy
+weapons."</p>
+<p>The equery regarded him with a troubled countenance.</p>
+<p>"I wish I knew, monsieur, whether I do right to let you go."</p>
+<p>"We will not discuss that, an it please you."</p>
+<p>"I do not, monsieur. I have no right to curtail M. le Comte's
+liberties. But I let you go with a heavy heart."</p>
+<p>He looked after us with foreboding eyes as we went out of the
+great gate, alone, with not so much as a linkboy. But if his heart
+was heavy, our hearts were light. We paced along as merrily as
+though to a feast. M. &Eacute;tienne hung his lute over his neck
+and strummed it; and whenever we passed under a window whence
+leaned a pretty head, he sang snatches of love-songs. We were alone
+in the dark streets of a hostile city, bound for the house of a
+mighty foe; and one of us was wounded and one a tyro. Yet we
+laughed as we went; for there was Lucas languishing in prison, and
+here were we, free as air, steering our course for mademoiselle's
+window. One of us was in love, and the other wore a sword for the
+first time, and all the power of Mayenne daunted us not.</p>
+<p>We came at length within bow-shot of the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine, where M. &Eacute;tienne was willing to abate somewhat his
+swagger. We left the Rue St. Antoine, creeping around behind the
+house through a narrow and twisting alley&mdash;it was pitch-black,
+but he knew the way well&mdash;into a little street dim-lighted
+from the windows of the houses upon it. It was only a few rods
+long, running from the open square in front of the h&ocirc;tel to
+the network of unpaved alleys behind. On the farther side stood a
+row of high-gabled houses, their doors opening directly on the
+pavement; on this side was but one big pile, the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine. The wall was broken by few windows, most of them dark;
+this was not the gay side of the house. The overhanging turret on
+the low second story, under which M. &Eacute;tienne halted, was as
+dark as the rest, nor, though the casement was open wide, could we
+tell whether any one was in the room. We could hear nothing but the
+breeze crackling in the silken curtains.</p>
+<p>"Take your station at the corner there," he bade, "and shout if
+they seem to be coming for us. But I think we shall not be
+molested. My fingers are so stiff they will hardly recognize my
+hand on the strings."</p>
+<p>I went to my post, and he began singing, scarce loud enough for
+any but his lady above to mark him:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Fairest blossom ever grew<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Once she loosened from her
+breast.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.<br />
+<br />
+From her breast the rose she drew,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dole for me, her servant
+blest,</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>The music paused, and I turned from my watch of the shadowy
+figures crossing the square, in instant alarm lest something was
+wrong. But whatever startled him ceased, for in a moment he went on
+again, and as he sang his voice rang fuller:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Of my love the guerdon true,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Tis my bosom's only
+guest.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.<br />
+<br />
+Still to me 'tis bright of hue<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">As when first my kisses
+prest</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew.<br />
+<br />
+Sweeter than when gathered new<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Twas the sign her love
+confest.</span><br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>He stopped again and stood gazing up into the window, but
+whether he saw something or heard something I could not tell.
+Apparently he was not sure himself, for presently, a little
+tremulous, he added the four verses:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Askest thou of me a clue<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To that lady I love
+best?</span><br />
+Fairest blossom ever grew!<br />
+This I say, her eyes are blue.</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and
+waited, eager, hopeful. There was a little stir in the room that
+one thought was not the wind.</p>
+<p>I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the
+ardour of my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by
+the sound of men running round the corner behind me. One glance was
+enough; two abreast, swords in hand, they were charging us. I ran
+before them, drawing blade as I went and shouting to M.
+&Eacute;tienne. But even as I called an answering shout came from
+the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the darkness
+and at us.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the
+lute off his neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung
+it at the head of his nearest assailant, who received it full in
+the face, stopped, hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had
+come. But three foes remained, with the whole H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine behind them.</p>
+<p>We put our backs to the wall and set to. The remaining Spaniard
+engaged me; M. &Eacute;tienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure
+of a doorway, held at bay with his good left arm a pair of
+attackers. These were in the dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as
+if their cheeks blushed (well they might) for the deeds of their
+hands.</p>
+<p>A broad window in the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine was flung open; a
+man leaned far out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces
+bewildered our gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was
+about, and rammed my point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my
+blade.</p>
+<p>The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M.
+&Eacute;tienne, who, with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw
+everything, cried to me, "Here!"</p>
+<p>I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants
+finding that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather
+hampered each other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the
+cleverer swordsman. This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was
+shorter in the arm than my master and had the disadvantage of
+standing on the ground, whereas M. &Eacute;tienne was up one step.
+He could not force home any of his shrewd-planned thrusts; nor
+could he drive M. &Eacute;tienne out of his coign to where in the
+open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers clashed and
+parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again; and then
+before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his knees,
+with M. &Eacute;tienne's sword in his breast.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank
+backward, his mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had
+thought him&mdash;Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was ready for the second gentleman, but
+neither he nor the soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the
+window, with a shout, waved his arm toward the square. A mob of
+armed men hurled itself around the corner, a pikeman with lowered
+point in the van.</p>
+<p>This was not combat; it was butchery. M. &Eacute;tienne, with a
+little moan, lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant
+to the turret window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us
+give. Throwing my whole weight upon it, I seized M. &Eacute;tienne
+and pulled him over the threshold. Some one inside slammed the door
+to, just as the Spaniard hurled himself against it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+<h3><i>"On guard, monsieur."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-w.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>e found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a
+flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our
+preserver&mdash;a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in
+chuckling triumph against the shot bolts.</p>
+<p>She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and
+shrunken, a pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair
+was as white as her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment,
+furrowed with a thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like
+a girl's.</p>
+<p>"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she
+cried in a shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have
+listened to your singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad
+to-night to find the nightingale back again. When I saw that crew
+rush at you, I said I would save you if only you would put your
+back to my door. Monsieur, you are a young man of
+intelligence."</p>
+<p>"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M.
+&Eacute;tienne replied, with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet
+blade. "I owe you a debt of gratitude which is ill repaid in the
+base coin of bringing trouble to this house."</p>
+<p>"Not at all&mdash;not at all!" she protested with animation. "No
+one is likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M.
+Ferou."</p>
+<p>"Of the Sixteen?"</p>
+<p>"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with
+mischief. "In truth, if my son were within, you were little likely
+to find harbourage here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping
+with his Grace of Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to
+mass, leaving madame grand'm&egrave;re to shift for herself. No,
+no, my good friends; you may knock till you drop, but you won't get
+in."</p>
+<p>The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the
+door, shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes
+of the old lady glittered with new delight at every rap.</p>
+<p>"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M.
+Ferou's door! Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at
+finding you sanctuaried in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's
+jackal, Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; and Marc Latour."</p>
+<p>"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her
+sharpness. "It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old,
+but I knew them! And which of the ladies is it?"</p>
+<p>He could do no less than answer his saviour.</p>
+<p>"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once&mdash;but
+that is a long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she
+was not much given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she
+repeated briskly, "and now they think I am too old to do aught but
+tell my beads and wait for death. But I like to have a hand in the
+game."</p>
+<p>"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M.
+&Eacute;tienne assured her. "I like the way you play."</p>
+<p>She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by
+halves. No; I shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as
+to lift the lantern from the hook."</p>
+<p>I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like
+spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made
+no protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she
+paused, opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the
+left, but, passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot,
+suddenly she flung it wide.</p>
+<p>"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can
+make shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go
+first."</p>
+<p>I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady,
+gathering her petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty,
+but M. &Eacute;tienne was put to some trouble to bow his tall head
+low enough. We stood at the top of a flight of stone steps
+descending into blackness. The old lady unhesitatingly tripped down
+before us.</p>
+<p>At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway,
+slippery with lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall.
+Turning two corners, we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded
+door.</p>
+<p>"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have
+only to walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the
+rope once and wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and
+draw a crown with your finger in the air."</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, "I hope the day may come when
+I shall make you suitable acknowledgements. My name&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him.
+"I will call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for
+acknowledgments&mdash;pooh! I am overpaid in the sport it has
+been."</p>
+<p>"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's
+son!" she cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was
+not.</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne said, "I trust we shall meet again
+when I shall have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped
+on his knees before her, kissing both her hands.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored
+apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to
+die at your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and
+you too, you fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you
+well."</p>
+<p>"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."</p>
+<p>"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you,
+that I cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries,
+but get on your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber
+working my altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."</p>
+<p>Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly
+hustled us through.</p>
+<p>"Good-by&mdash;you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon
+us. We were in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of
+the dank, foul air, we heard bolts snap into place.</p>
+<p>"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M.
+&Eacute;tienne, cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it
+is to throw them off the scent should they track us."</p>
+<p>I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same
+thought which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam,
+with her beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our
+childhood days; she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.</p>
+<p>I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard,
+using it as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the
+fetid gloom, the passage being only wide enough to let us walk
+shoulder to shoulder. There was a whirring of wings about us, and a
+squeaking; once something swooped square into my face, knocking a
+cry of terror from me, and a laugh from him.</p>
+<p>"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, F&eacute;lix; they don't bite."
+But I would not go on till I had made sure, as well as I could
+without seeing, that the cursed thing was not clinging on me
+somewhere.</p>
+<p>We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our
+tread. We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of
+Paris; and I wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming
+and loving over our heads. M. &Eacute;tienne said at length:</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the
+Seine." But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere,
+I should not greatly mind the Seine.</p>
+<p>At this very moment M. &Eacute;tienne clutched my arm, jerking
+me to a halt. I bounded backward, trying in the blackness to
+discern a precipice yawning at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low,
+tense voice. I perceived, far before us in the gloom, a point of
+light, which, as we watched it, grew bigger and bigger, till it
+became an approaching lantern.</p>
+<p>"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread;
+naturally he did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him
+alone, but it was hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.</p>
+<p>He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing
+without becoming aware of me, but M. &Eacute;tienne's azure and
+white caught the lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped
+short, holding up the light between us and his face. We could make
+nothing of him, save that he was a large man, soberly clad.</p>
+<p>"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady.
+"Is it you, Ferou?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward
+into the clear circle of light.</p>
+<p>"No, M. de Mayenne; it is &Eacute;tienne de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with
+comical alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My
+master's came bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in
+silence, till Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry
+from him:</p>
+<p>"How the devil come you here?"</p>
+<p>"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. &Eacute;tienne
+answered. Mayenne still stared in thick amazement; after a moment
+my master added: "I must in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware
+that I am using this passage; he is, with madame his wife, supping
+with the Archbishop of Lyons."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling
+pleasantly, and waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne
+kept a nonplussed silence. The situation was indeed somewhat
+awkward. He could not come forward without encountering an agile
+opponent, whose exceeding skill with the sword was probably known
+to him. He could not turn tail, had his dignity allowed the course,
+without exposing himself to be spitted. He was in the predicament
+of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping at us less in fear, I
+think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I learned later, was
+one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter. Mayenne had as
+soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a foe. He
+cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a great
+prince's question must be answered:</p>
+<p>"How came you here?"</p>
+<p>"I don't ask," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "how it happens that M.
+le Duc is walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to
+make any explanation to him."</p>
+<p>"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready,
+will make adequate explanation."</p>
+<p>"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. &Eacute;tienne, "as
+it is evident that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience
+your Grace more than it will me."</p>
+<p>The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his
+lantern on a projecting stone.</p>
+<p>"On guard, sir," he answered.</p>
+<p>The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following
+him. He was alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state,
+but only a man with a sword, standing opposite another man with a
+sword. Nor was he in the pink of form. Though he gave the effect,
+from his clear colour and proud bearing, perhaps also from his
+masterful energy, of tremendous force and strength, his body was in
+truth but a poor machine, his great corpulence making him clumsy
+and scant of breath. He must have known, as he eyed his supple
+antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely said:</p>
+<p>"On guard, monsieur."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace,
+that I might not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring
+on him. M. &Eacute;tienne said slowly:</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor
+have I any wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be
+deprecated. Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must
+respectfully beg to be released from the obligation of fighting
+you."</p>
+<p>A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may,
+even as Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But
+if he insists on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must
+be a hothead indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant,
+feeling that he was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and
+should be still more ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his
+sword, only to lower it again, till at last his good sense came to
+his relief in a laugh.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are
+necessary. You think that in declining to fight you put me in your
+debt. Possibly you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I
+shall hand over Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken.
+Never, while I live, shall she marry into the king's camp. Now,
+monsieur, that we understand each other, I abide by your decision
+whether we fight or not."</p>
+<p>For answer, M. &Eacute;tienne put up his blade. The Duke of
+Mayenne, saluting with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you
+stood off from us, like a coquetting girl, for three years. At
+length, last May, you refused point-blank to join us. I do not
+often ask a man twice, but I ask you. Will you join the League
+to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"</p>
+<p>No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I
+believe now, he meant it. M. &Eacute;tienne believed he meant
+it.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am
+planted squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put
+your interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall
+not sign myself with the League."</p>
+<p>"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each
+continue on his way."</p>
+<p>"With all my heart, monsieur."</p>
+<p>Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a
+wary eye for daggers. Then M. &Eacute;tienne, laughing a little,
+but watching Mayenne like a lynx, started to go by. The duke,
+seeing the look, suddenly raised his hands over his head, holding
+them there while both of us squeezed past him.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Charles," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "I see that when I
+have married Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then,
+God have you ever in guard."</p>
+<p>"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."</p>
+<p>"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have
+submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have
+as delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will
+yet drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your
+good enemy. Fare you well, monsieur."</p>
+<p>He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire,
+returned the obeisance with all pomp. M. &Eacute;tienne took me by
+the arm and departed. Mayenne stood still for a space; then we
+heard his retreating footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly
+faded away.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="272.jpg"></a> <a href="images/272.jpg"><img src=
+"images/272.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M.
+&Eacute;tienne muttered.</p>
+<p>We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor
+which had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was
+that we stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force
+like to break our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran
+headlong up the stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel
+back on M. &Eacute;tienne, sweeping him off his feet, so that we
+rolled in a struggling heap on the stones of the passage. And for
+the minute the place was no longer dark; I saw more lightning than
+even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>"Are you hurt, F&eacute;lix?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, the first
+to disentangle himself.</p>
+<p>"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say
+it was a trap-door."</p>
+<p>We ascended the stairs a second time&mdash;this time most
+cautiously on our hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could
+feel, with upleaping of spirit, a wooden ceiling.</p>
+<p>"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.</p>
+<p>The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle
+somewhere above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked
+it but us, we heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being
+pulled about, and then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a
+silk-mercer's shop.</p>
+<p>"Faith, my man," said M. &Eacute;tienne to the little bourgeois
+who had opened to us, "I am glad to see you appear so
+promptly."</p>
+<p>He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.</p>
+<p>"You must have met&mdash;" he suggested with hesitancy.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said M. &Eacute;tienne; "but he did not object. We are,
+of course, of the initiated."</p>
+<p>"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny
+assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret
+of the passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty
+few mercers have a duke in their shop as often as I."</p>
+<p>We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with
+piles of stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying
+loose on the counter before us, as if the man had just been
+measuring them&mdash;gorgeous brocades and satins. Above us, a bell
+on the rafter still quivered.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said,
+following our glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from.
+And if I am not at liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on
+the floor&mdash;But they told you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he
+added, regarding M. &Eacute;tienne again a little uneasily.</p>
+<p>"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered, and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the
+password, "For the Cause."</p>
+<p>"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing
+in the air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the
+shopkeeper had felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who
+wore no hat, they vanished in its radiance.</p>
+<p>"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our
+faces."</p>
+<p>The man took up his candle to light us to the door.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over
+there?" he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M.
+le Duc has every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if
+monsieur should mention how quickly I let him out."</p>
+<p>"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. &Eacute;tienne
+promised him. "Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There
+is another man to come."</p>
+<p>Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked
+out into the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we
+took to our heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen
+streets between us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked
+along in breathless silence.</p>
+<p>Presently M. &Eacute;tienne cried out:</p>
+<p>"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should
+have changed the history of France!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+<h3><i>A chance encounter.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>he street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame.
+Few way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as
+placidly as if love-trysts and m&ecirc;l&eacute;es existed not, and
+tunnels and countersigns were but the smoke of a dream. It was a
+street of shops, all shuttered, while, above, the burghers'
+families went respectably to bed.</p>
+<p>"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a
+moment to take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of
+the Pierced Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We
+are close by the Halles&mdash;we must have come half a mile
+underground. Well, we'll swing about in a circle to get home. For
+this night I've had enough of the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.</p>
+<p>"They were wider awake than I thought&mdash;those Lorrainers.
+Pardieu! F&eacute;ix, you and I came closer quarters with death
+than is entirely amusing."</p>
+<p>"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.</p>
+<p>"A new saint in the calendar&mdash;la Sainte Ferou! But what a
+madcap of a saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance
+when Francis I was king!</p>
+<p>"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know
+that I was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated
+the enemy&mdash;worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near
+flinging away two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a
+lady's window."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."</p>
+<p>"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in
+the morning and find out."</p>
+<p>"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."</p>
+<p>"Not to-night, F&eacute;lix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home
+without passing near the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine, if we go outside
+the walls to do it. To-night I draw my sword no more."</p>
+<p>To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange
+city at night&mdash;Paris of all cities&mdash;is a labyrinth. I
+know that after a time we came out in some meadows along the
+river-bank, traversed them, and plunged once more into narrow,
+high-walled streets. It was very late, and lights were few. We had
+started in clear starlight, but now a rack of clouds hid even their
+pale shine.</p>
+<p>"The snake-hole over again," said M. &Eacute;tienne. "But we are
+almost at our own gates."</p>
+<p>But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner,
+we ran straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging
+along at as smart a pace as we.</p>
+<p>"A thousand pardons," M. &Eacute;tienne cried to his
+encounterer, the possessor of years and gravity but of no great
+size, whom he had almost knocked down. "I heard you, but knew not
+you were so close. We were speeding to get home."</p>
+<p>The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had
+knocked the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As
+he scanned M. &Eacute;tienne's open countenance and princely dress
+his alarm vanished.</p>
+<p>"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a
+lantern," he said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid
+it. I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. &Eacute;tienne
+asked with immense respect.</p>
+<p>"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied,
+delighted to impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense
+of his importance.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said M. &Eacute;tienne, with increasing solemnity,
+"perhaps monsieur had a hand in a certain decree of the 28th
+June?"</p>
+<p>The little man began to look uneasy.</p>
+<p>"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he
+stammered.</p>
+<p>"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. &Eacute;tienne
+rejoined, "most offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he
+fingered his sword.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his
+Grace, or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all
+these years of blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry;
+yet we believed that even he will come to see the matter in a
+different light&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne,"
+M. &Eacute;tienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street
+and down the street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched
+little deputy's teeth chattered.</p>
+<p>The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he
+seemed on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I
+thought it would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble
+home in the dark, so I growled out to the fellow:</p>
+<p>"Stir one step at your peril!"</p>
+<p>I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not;
+he only sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding
+deference. He knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the
+scabbard.</p>
+<p>The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M.
+&Eacute;tienne's example, but there was no help to be seen or
+heard. He turned to his tormentor with the valour of a mouse at
+bay.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain
+how he happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy
+hour?"</p>
+<p>"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I&mdash;we had a
+little con&mdash;that is, not to say a conference, but merely a
+little discussion on matters of no importance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. &Eacute;tienne, sternly,
+"of knowing where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this
+direction is not accounted for."</p>
+<p>"But I was going home&mdash;on my sacred honour I was! Ask
+Jacques, else. But as we went down the Rue de l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que
+we saw two men in front of us. As they reached the wall by M. de
+Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell on them. The two drew
+blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians were a
+dozen&mdash;a score. We ran for our lives."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne wheeled round to me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau,
+your decree is most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore,
+since he is my particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful
+night, is it not, sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."</p>
+<p>He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.</p>
+<p>At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to
+our ears. M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the
+direction of the sound.</p>
+<p>"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a
+mob! We know how it feels."</p>
+<p>The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled
+around a jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.</p>
+<p>"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne. "Shout,
+F&eacute;lix! Montjoie St. Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"</p>
+<p>We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at
+the top of our lungs.</p>
+<p>It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures,
+with every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light
+flashing out, to fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm.
+We could scarce tell which were the attackers, which the two
+comrades we had come to save.</p>
+<p>But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We
+shouted as boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter
+of their heels on the stones they could not count our feet. They
+knew not how many followers the darkness held. The group parted.
+Two men remained in hot combat close under the left wall. Across
+the way one sturdy fighter held off two, while a sixth man, crying
+on his mates to follow, fled down the lane.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne knew now what he was about, and at once took
+sides with the solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I
+started in pursuit of the flying figure. I had run but a few yards,
+however, when I tripped and fell prostrate over the body of a man.
+I was up in a moment, feeling him to find out if he were dead; my
+hands over his heart dipped into a pool of something wet and warm
+like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve as best I could, and
+hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need it now, and I
+did.</p>
+<p>When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows.
+M. &Eacute;tienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot
+in the gloom, had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven
+him, some rods up the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed,
+not knowing where to busy myself. M. &Eacute;tienne's side I could
+not reach past the two duels; and of the four men near me, I could
+by no means tell, as they circled about and about, which were my
+chosen allies. They were all sombrely clad, their faces blurred in
+the darkness. When one made a clever pass, I knew not whether to
+rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one who fenced,
+though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the rest; and
+I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and must
+certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of
+succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as
+his foe ran him through the arm.</p>
+<p>The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the
+wall to face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell
+from his loose fingers.</p>
+<p>"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late
+combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off,
+stumbling where I had.</p>
+<p>There had been little light toward the last in the court of the
+house in the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my
+sword solely by the feel of his against it, and I underwent
+chilling qualms lest presently, without in the least knowing how it
+got there, I should find his point sticking out of my back. I could
+hardly believe he was not hitting me; I began to prickle in half a
+dozen places, and knew not whether the stings were real or
+imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which Lucas had
+pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I fancied
+that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I was
+bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I
+had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment
+one of the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his
+weapon square through his vis-&agrave;-vis's breast.</p>
+<p>"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword
+snapped in two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay
+still, his face in the dirt.</p>
+<p>My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade,
+made off down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him
+depart in peace.</p>
+<p>The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's
+cry, and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and
+fainter. I deemed that the battle was over.</p>
+<p>The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his
+face and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He
+held a sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me
+hesitatingly, not sure whether friend or foe remained to him. I
+felt that an explanation was due from me, but in my ignorance as to
+who he was and who his foes were, and why they had been fighting
+him and why we had been fighting them, I stood for a moment
+confused. It is hard to open conversation with a shadow.</p>
+<p>He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:</p>
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+<p>"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting
+four&mdash;we came to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt,
+but he got away safe to fetch aid."</p>
+<p>The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying,
+"What&mdash;"</p>
+<p>But at the word M. &Eacute;tienne emerged from the shadows.</p>
+<p>"Who lives?" he called out. "You, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"</p>
+<p>"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to
+congratulate you, monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we
+did."</p>
+<p>The unknown said one word:</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne!"</p>
+<p>I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in
+the pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we
+had rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been
+content to mind our own business, had sheered away like the
+deputy&mdash;it turned me faint to think how long we had delayed
+with old Marceau, we were so nearly too late. I wanted to seize
+Monsieur, to convince myself that he was all safe, to feel him
+quick and warm.</p>
+<p>I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape
+stood between me and Monsieur&mdash;that horrible lying story.</p>
+<p>"Dieu!" gasped M. &Eacute;tienne, "Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur
+flung his sword over the wall.</p>
+<p>"Do your will, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>His son darted forward with a cry.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid
+not dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a
+hundred times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the
+honour of a St. Quentin I swear it."</p>
+<p>Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not
+know whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, catching at his breath, went on:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to
+you, unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter
+words. But I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me
+whipped from the house, still would I never have raised hand
+against you. I knew nothing of the plot. F&eacute;lix told you I
+was in it&mdash;small blame to him. But he was wrong. I knew naught
+of it."</p>
+<p>Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur
+could not but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The
+stones in the pavement must have known that he was uttering truth.
+But he in his eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun
+Monsieur with statements new and amazing to his ear.</p>
+<p>"My cousin Grammont&mdash;who is dead&mdash;was in the plot, and
+his lackey Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was
+Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Lucas," continued M. &Eacute;tienne. "Or, to give him his true
+title, Paul de Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."</p>
+<p>"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.</p>
+<p>"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a
+Lorraine&mdash;Mayenne's nephew, and for years Mayenne's spy. He
+came to you to kill you&mdash;for that object pure and simple. Last
+spring, before he came to you, he was here in Paris with Mayenne,
+making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot, no Kingsman. He is
+Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."</p>
+<p>"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck
+him, he fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that,
+I have no more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I
+was sure Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of
+bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the
+truth. Indeed it is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas <i>is</i>
+a Guise. Monsieur, you must listen to me. M. &Eacute;tienne, you
+must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble with my story to you,
+Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was telling the truth. I
+was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to the Rue
+Coupejarrets to kill your son&mdash;your murderer, I thought. And
+there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them
+sworn foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me
+because I had told, and M. &Eacute;tienne saved me. Lucas mocked
+him to his face because he had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it
+was his own scheme&mdash;that M. &Eacute;tienne was his dupe. Vigo
+will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme was to saddle M.
+&Eacute;tienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed what
+he told me&mdash;that the thing was a duel between Lucas and
+Grammont. You must believe it, Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, who had actually obeyed me,&mdash;me, his
+lackey,&mdash;turned to his father once again.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe F&eacute;lix. You
+believed him when he took away my good name. Believe him now when
+he restores it."</p>
+<p>"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>And he took his son in his arms.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+<h3><i>The signet of the king.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>lready a wan light was revealing the round tops of the
+plum-trees in M. de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the
+narrow alleyway beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no
+longer vague shapes, but were turning moment by moment, as if
+coming out of an enchantment, into their true forms. It really was
+Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet glint in his eyes as he kissed
+his boy.</p>
+<p>Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they
+said to each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a
+curve in the wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the
+eastern sky, in utter content. Never before had the world seemed to
+me so good a place. Since this misery had come right, I knew all
+the rest would; I should yet dance at M. &Eacute;tienne's
+wedding.</p>
+<p>I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to
+consider the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! F&eacute;lix! Where is the boy got to?"</p>
+<p>The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and
+wondered how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs
+came hand in hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering
+on Monsieur's burnished breastplate, on M. &Eacute;tienne's bright
+head, and on both their shining faces. Now that for the first time
+I saw them together, I found them, despite the dark hair and the
+yellow, the brown eyes and the gray, wonderfully alike. There was
+the same carriage, the same cock of the head, the same smile. If I
+had not known before, I knew now, the instant I looked at them,
+that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a deeper love of
+each other, it might never have been.</p>
+<p>I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.</p>
+<p>"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, F&eacute;lix?" M.
+&Eacute;tienne said. "But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what
+madness sent you traversing this back passage at two in the
+morning."</p>
+<p>"I might ask you that, &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:</p>
+<p>"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M.
+&Eacute;tienne cried out:</p>
+<p>"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle
+if I would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he
+would kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was
+why I tried."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the
+window?"</p>
+<p>He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that
+Mlle. de Montluc is not for you?"</p>
+<p>"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed
+says she is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."</p>
+<p>"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"</p>
+<p>"You! You'll help me?"</p>
+<p>"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think
+of you in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a
+Spaniard to the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it
+is a question of stealing the lady&mdash;well, I never prosed about
+prudence yet, thank God!"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.</p>
+<p>"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage
+while I thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you
+sacrifice your honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your
+life&mdash;that is different."</p>
+<p>"My life is a little thing."</p>
+<p>"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal&mdash;one's life. But
+one is not to guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life
+sweet."</p>
+<p>"Ah, you know how I love her!"</p>
+<p>"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I
+risk my life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For
+they who think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to
+procure it, why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when
+all is done, they have never really lived. And that is why they
+hate death so, these worthies. While I, who have never cringed to
+fear, I live like a king. I go my ways without any man's leave; and
+if death comes to me a little sooner for that, I am a poor creature
+if I do not meet him smiling. If I may live as I please, I am
+content to die when I must."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. &Eacute;tienne, "and if we live as we do not
+please, still we must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never
+to give over striving after my lady."</p>
+<p>"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's
+F&eacute;lix yawning his head off. Come, come."</p>
+<p>We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at
+their heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden
+anxiety.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I
+answered, remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.</p>
+<p>"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to
+get in," M. &Eacute;tienne said easily.</p>
+<p>But Monsieur asked of me:</p>
+<p>"Was he much hurt, F&eacute;lix?"</p>
+<p>"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am
+sure he was not hurt otherwise."</p>
+<p>We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M.
+&Eacute;tienne exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur!
+How many of the rascals were there?"</p>
+<p>"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."</p>
+<p>"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the
+dark?"</p>
+<p>"Why, what to do, &Eacute;tienne? I came in at the gate just
+after midnight. I could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is
+my time to enter Paris. The inns were shut&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered
+you."</p>
+<p>"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the
+Sixteen."</p>
+<p>"Tarigny is no craven."</p>
+<p>"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save
+you next time."</p>
+<p>"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed and said no more.</p>
+<p>"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If
+these fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a
+finger-tip of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here,
+when we were almost home."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne bent over and turned face up the man whom
+Monsieur had run through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow,
+one eye entirely closed by a great scar that ran from his forehead
+nearly to his grizzled mustache.</p>
+<p>"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him
+before, Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but
+he has done naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year.
+We used to wonder how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty
+work. Clisson employed him once, so I know something of him. With
+his one eye he could fence better than most folks with two. My
+congratulations to you, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.</p>
+<p>"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this
+one?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne shook his head over this other man, who lay
+face up, staring with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled
+in little rings about his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he
+looked no older than I.</p>
+<p>"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low
+voice. "I ran him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am
+glad it was dark. A boy like that!"</p>
+<p>"He had good mettle to run up first," M. &Eacute;tienne said.
+"And it is no disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let
+us go."</p>
+<p>But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his
+son and at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.</p>
+<p>On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.</p>
+<p>"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to
+M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by
+this red track."</p>
+<p>But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into
+the little street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin,
+as we turned the familiar corner under the walls of the house
+itself, we came suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward
+with a cry, for it was the squire Huguet.</p>
+<p>He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout
+as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat
+without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his
+defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had
+rained blows enough on this man of ours to kill twenty.</p>
+<p>Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite
+cold.</p>
+<p>"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about,"
+I said. "Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend
+himself."</p>
+<p>"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered. "And one of those who fled last came upon
+him helpless and did this."</p>
+<p>"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John
+o'dreams?" I cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I
+forgot Huguet."</p>
+<p>"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would
+not have forgotten me."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You
+could have saved him only by following when he ran. And that was
+impossible."</p>
+<p>"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his
+own door."</p>
+<p>We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.</p>
+<p>"I never lost a better man."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say
+that of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."</p>
+<p>He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only
+smile, I was content it should be at me.</p>
+<p>"Nay, F&eacute;lix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who
+compose your epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after
+poor Huguet."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix and I will carry him," M. &Eacute;tienne said, and
+we lifted him between us&mdash;no easy task, for he was a heavy
+fellow. But it was little enough to do for him.</p>
+<p>We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a
+sudden he turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn
+breast.</p>
+<p>"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.</p>
+<p>"My papers."</p>
+<p>We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to
+toe, stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted
+linen, prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed
+themselves.</p>
+<p>"What were they, Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.</p>
+<p>"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor,
+have lost."</p>
+<p>I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his
+hat on the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to
+its beginning, looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass;
+but no papers. In my desperation I even pulled about the dead man,
+lest the packet had been covered, falling from Huguet in the fray.
+The two gentlemen joined me in the search, and we went over every
+inch of the ground, but to no purpose.</p>
+<p>"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur
+groaned. "I knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the
+object of attack; I bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the
+papers."</p>
+<p>"And of course he would not."</p>
+<p>"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life
+perhaps, and lost me what is dearer than life&mdash;my honour."</p>
+<p>"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking
+the impossible."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur
+cried. "The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's
+officers pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had
+them for Lema&icirc;tre. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they
+spell the men's destruction. Huguet should have known that if I
+told him to desert me, I meant it."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne ventured no word, understanding well enough
+that in such bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc
+added after a moment:</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied
+than in blaming the dead&mdash;the brave and faithful dead. Belike
+he could not run, they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did
+go, and he went to his death. They were my charge, the papers. I
+had no right to put the responsibility on any other. I should have
+kept them myself. I should have gone to Tarigny. I should never
+have ventured myself through these black lanes. Fool! traitorous
+fool!"</p>
+<p>"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."</p>
+<p>"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen
+Rosny!" Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a
+lack-wit who rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can
+handle a sword, but I have no business to meddle in
+statecraft."</p>
+<p>"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to
+employ you," M. &Eacute;tienne said. "He is not unknown to fame,
+this Duke of St. Quentin; everybody knows how he goes about things.
+Monsieur, they gave you the papers because no one else would carry
+them into Paris. They knew you had no fear in you; and it is
+because of that that the papers are lacking. But take heart,
+Monsieur. We'll get them back."</p>
+<p>"When? How?"</p>
+<p>"Soon," M. &Eacute;tienne answered, "and easily, if you will
+tell me what they are like. Are they open?"</p>
+<p>"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and
+a fourth sheet, a letter&mdash;all in cipher."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but in that case&mdash;"</p>
+<p>Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.</p>
+<p>"But&mdash;Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Of course&mdash;I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"</p>
+<p>"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."</p>
+<p>"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne,
+and all is saved," M. &Eacute;tienne declared cheerfully. "These
+fellows can't read a cipher. If the packet be not open,
+Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the
+letters <i>St. Q.</i> in the corner. It was tied with red cord and
+bore the seal of a flying falcon, and the motto, <i>Je
+reviendrai</i>."</p>
+<p>"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur,
+to see the papers in an hour's time."</p>
+<p>"&Eacute;tienne, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur cried, "are you
+mad?"</p>
+<p>"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough.
+I told you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who
+lodged at an inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake
+ourselves thither, we may easily fall in with some comrades of his
+bosom who have not the misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane,
+who will know something of your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots;
+while they work for the League, they will lend a kindly ear to the
+chink of Kingsmen's florins."</p>
+<p>"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. &Eacute;tienne
+laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully
+as in the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."</p>
+<p>He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to
+prove his devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.</p>
+<p>"But," M. &Eacute;tienne added generously, "you may have the
+honour of paying the piper."</p>
+<p>"I give you carte blanche, my son. &Eacute;tienne, if you put
+that packet into my hand, it is more than if you brought the
+sceptre of France."</p>
+<p>"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."</p>
+<p>He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.</p>
+<p>The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the
+labours of the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour,
+for we ran no risk now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it
+behooves not a man supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself
+too liberally to the broad eye of the streets. Every time&mdash;and
+it was often&mdash;that we approached a person who to my nervous
+imagination looked official, I shook in my shoes. The way seemed
+fairly to bristle with soldiers, officers, judges; for aught I
+knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor Belin himself. It was a
+great surprise to me when at length we arrived without let or
+hindrance before the door of a mean little drinking-place, our
+goal.</p>
+<p>We went in, and M. &Eacute;tienne ordered wine, much to my
+satisfaction. My stomach was beginning to remind me that I had
+given it nothing for twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs
+hard.</p>
+<p>"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the
+landlord. We were his only patrons at the moment.</p>
+<p>"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"</p>
+<p>"The same."</p>
+<p>"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not
+mine. I but rent the ground floor for my purposes."</p>
+<p>"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"</p>
+<p>"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off
+the Rue Clichet."</p>
+<p>"But he comes here often?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings,
+too."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laid down the drink-money, and something
+more.</p>
+<p>"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"</p>
+<p>The man laughed.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll
+standing in my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he
+never chances to see me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good
+morning, Jean. Anything in the casks to-day?' He can no more get by
+my door than he'll get by Death's when the time comes."</p>
+<p>"No," agreed M. &Eacute;tienne; "we all stop there, soon or
+late. Those friends of M. Bernet, then&mdash;there is none you
+could put a name to?"</p>
+<p>"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this
+quarter. M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he
+lives here, it is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere
+for his friends."</p>
+<p>"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind
+the bar, eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed
+gallant. "Just round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court.
+The first house on the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur,
+only I cannot leave the shop alone, and the wife not back from
+market. But monsieur cannot miss it. The first house in the court.
+Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir, monsieur."</p>
+<p>In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little
+court stood an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse
+out of the passage.</p>
+<p>"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M.
+&Eacute;tienne murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can
+you tell me, friend, where I may find M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means
+ceasing his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.</p>
+<p>"Third story back," he said.</p>
+<p>"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"</p>
+<p>"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his
+dirty broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, coughing, pursued his inquiries:</p>
+<p>"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has
+a friend, then, in the building?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks
+in."</p>
+<p>"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M.
+&Eacute;tienne persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes
+often to see M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself,
+instead of chattering here all day."</p>
+<p>"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. &Eacute;tienne, lightly
+setting foot on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and
+come back to break your head, mon vieillard."</p>
+<p>We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door
+at the back, whereon M. &Eacute;tienne pounded loudly. I could not
+see his reason, and heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me
+a creepy thing to be knocking on a man's door when we knew very
+well he would never open it again. We knocked as if we fully
+thought him within, when all the while we knew he was lying a stone
+on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this
+time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried
+lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had
+come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank
+to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we
+innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
+suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show
+him pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the
+real creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.</p>
+<p>It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which
+opened, letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the
+doorway stood a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her
+skirts.</p>
+<p>"Madame," M. &Eacute;tienne addressed her, with the courtesy due
+to a duchess, "I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without
+result. Perhaps you could give me some hint as to his
+whereabouts?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
+regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look
+and manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do
+not believe he has been in since. He went out about nine&mdash;or
+it may have been later than that. Because I did not put the
+children to bed till after dark; they enjoy running about in the
+cool of the evening as much as anybody else, the little dears. And
+they were cross last night, the day was so hot, and I was a long
+time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it must have been after ten,
+because they were asleep, and the man stumbling on the stairs woke
+Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't you, my angel?"</p>
+<p>She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us.
+M. &Eacute;tienne asked:</p>
+<p>"What man?"</p>
+<p>"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."</p>
+<p>"And what sort of person was this?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common
+passage with a child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."</p>
+<p>"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"</p>
+<p>"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M.
+Bernet but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only
+been here a week."</p>
+<p>"I thank you, madame," M. &Eacute;tienne said, turning to the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>She ran out to the rail, babies and all.</p>
+<p>"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a
+point of seeing him when he comes in."</p>
+<p>"I will not burden you, madame," M. &Eacute;tienne answered from
+the story below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over
+the railing to call:</p>
+<p>"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are
+not so tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their
+rubbish out in the public way."</p>
+<p>The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and
+a big, brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:</p>
+<p>"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you
+slut?"</p>
+<p>We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives
+down the stair.</p>
+<p>The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom
+on the outer step.</p>
+<p>"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as
+much had you been civil enough to ask."</p>
+<p>I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. &Eacute;tienne
+drew two gold pieces from his pouch.</p>
+<p>"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M.
+Bernet went out last night?"</p>
+<p>"Who says he went out with anybody?"</p>
+<p>"I do," and M. &Eacute;tienne made a motion to return the coins
+to their place.</p>
+<p>"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little
+more," the old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his,
+but he goes by the name of Peyrot."</p>
+<p>"And where does he lodge?"</p>
+<p>"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my
+own lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."</p>
+<p>"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M.
+&Eacute;tienne said patiently, with a persuasive chink of his
+pouch. "Recollect now; you have been sent to this monsieur with a
+message."</p>
+<p>"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old
+carl spat out at last.</p>
+<p>"You are sure?"</p>
+<p>"Hang me else."</p>
+<p>"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a
+jelly with your own broom."</p>
+<p>"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of
+respect at last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles.
+You may beat me to a jelly if I lie."</p>
+<p>"It would do you good in any event," M. &Eacute;tienne told him,
+but flinging him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped
+upon them, gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in
+one movement. But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in
+the upper panel, and stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:</p>
+<p>"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be.
+I've told you what will profit you none."</p>
+<p>"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. &Eacute;tienne called over his
+shoulder. "Your information is entirely to my needs."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+<h3><i>The Chevalier of the Tournelles.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>t was a long walk to the Rue des Tournelles, which lay in our
+own quarter, not a dozen streets from the H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin
+itself. We found the Gilded Shears hung before a tailor's shop in
+the cellar of a tall, cramped structure, only one window wide. Its
+narrow door was inhospitably shut, but at our summons the concierge
+appeared to inform us that M. Peyrot did truly live here and,
+moreover, was at home, having arrived but half an hour earlier than
+we. He would go up and find out whether monsieur could see us.</p>
+<p>But M. &Eacute;tienne thought that formality unnecessary, and
+was able, at small expense, to convince the concierge of it. We
+went alone up the stairs and crept very quietly along the passage
+toward the door of M. Peyrot. But our shoes made some noise on the
+flags; had he been listening, he might have heard us as easily as
+we heard him. Peyrot had not yet gone to bed after the night's
+exertion; a certain clatter and gurgle convinced us that he was
+refreshing himself with supper, or breakfast, before reposing.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood still, his hand on the door-knob, eager,
+hesitating. Here was the man; were the papers here? If they were,
+should we secure them? A single false step, a single wrong word,
+might foil us.</p>
+<p>The sound of a chair pushed back came from within, and a young
+man's quick, firm step passed across to the far side of the room.
+We heard a box shut and locked. M. &Eacute;tienne nipped my arm; we
+thought we knew what went in. Then came steps again and a loud
+yawn, and presently two whacks on the floor. We knew as well as if
+we could see that Peyrot had thrown his boots across the room. Next
+a clash and jangle of metal, that meant his sword-belt with its
+accoutrements flung on the table. M. &Eacute;tienne, with the rapid
+murmur, "If I look at you, nab him," turned the door-handle.</p>
+<p>But M. Peyrot had prepared against surprise by the simple
+expedient of locking his door. He heard us, too, for he stopped in
+the very middle of a prolonged yawn and held himself absolutely
+still. M. &Eacute;tienne called out softly:</p>
+<p>"Peyrot!"</p>
+<p>"Who is it?"</p>
+<p>"I want to speak with you about something important."</p>
+<p>"Who are you, then?"</p>
+<p>"I'll tell you when you let me in."</p>
+<p>"I'll let you in when you tell me."</p>
+<p>"My name's Martin. I'm a friend of Bernet. I want to speak to
+you quietly about a matter of importance."</p>
+<p>"A friend of Bernet. Hmm! Well, friend of Bernet, it appears to
+me you speak very well through the door."</p>
+<p>"I want to speak with you about the affair of to-night."</p>
+<p>"What affair?"</p>
+<p>"To-night's affair."</p>
+<p>"To-night? I go to a supper-party at St. Germain. What have you
+to say about that?"</p>
+<p>"Last night, then," M. &Eacute;tienne amended, with rising
+temper. "If you want me to shout it out on your stairs, the St.
+Quentin affair."</p>
+<p>"Now, what may you mean by that?" called the voice from within.
+If Peyrot was startled by the name, he carried it off well.</p>
+<p>"You know what I mean. Shall I take the house into our
+confidence?"</p>
+<p>"The house knows as much of your meaning as I. See here, friend
+of Bernet, if you are that gentleman's mate, perhaps you have a
+password about you."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said M. &Eacute;tienne, readily. "This is it: twenty
+pistoles."</p>
+<p>No answer came immediately; I could guess Peyrot puzzled.
+Presently he called to us:</p>
+<p>"By the bones of St. Anne, I don't believe a word you've been
+saying. But I'll have you in and see what you look like."</p>
+<p>We heard him getting into his boots again and buckling on his
+baldric. Then we listened to the turning of a key; a lid was raised
+and banged down again, and the lock refastened. It was the box once
+more. M. &Eacute;tienne and I looked at each other.</p>
+<p>At length Peyrot opened the door and surveyed us.</p>
+<p>"What, two friends of Bernet, ventre bleu!" But he allowed us to
+enter.</p>
+<p>He drew back before us with a flourishing bow, his hand resting
+lightly on his belt, in which was stuck a brace of pistols. Any
+idea of doing violence on the person of M. Peyrot we dismissed for
+the present.</p>
+<p>Our eyes travelled from his pistols over the rest of him. He was
+small, lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling
+eyes. One moment's glance gave us to know that Peyrot was no
+fool.</p>
+<p>My lord closed the door after him and went straight to the
+point.</p>
+<p>"M. Peyrot, you were engaged last night in an attack on the Duke
+of St. Quentin. You did not succeed in slaying him, but you did
+kill his man, and you took from him a packet. I come to buy
+it."</p>
+<p>He looked at us a little dazed, not understanding, I deem, how
+we knew this. Certes, it had been too dark in the lane for his face
+to be seen, and he had doubtless made sure that he was not followed
+home. He said directly:</p>
+<p>"You are the Comte de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Even so, M. Peyrot. I did not care to have the whole stair know
+it, but to you I have no hesitation in confiding that I am M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>M. Peyrot swept a bow till his head almost touched the
+floor.</p>
+<p>"My poor apartment is honoured."</p>
+<p>As he louted low, I made a spring forward; I thought to pin him
+before he could rise. But he was up with the lightness of a bird
+from the bough and standing three yards away from me, where I
+crouched on the spring like a foiled cat. He grinned at me in open
+enjoyment.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur desired?" he asked sympathetically.</p>
+<p>"No, it is I who desire," said M. &Eacute;tienne, clearing
+himself a place to sit on the corner of the table. "I desire that
+packet, monsieur. You know this little expedition of yours to-night
+was something of a failure. When you report to the general-duke, he
+will not be in the best of humours. He does not like failures, the
+general; he will not incline to reward you dear. While I am in the
+very best humour in the world."</p>
+<p>He smiled to prove it. Nor do I think his complaisance
+altogether feigned. The temper of our host amused him.</p>
+<p>As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed. I thought it was
+because he had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had
+I viewed him with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his
+bewilderment genuine.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what
+monsieur is driving at?" he suggested. "Monsieur's remarks about
+his noble father and the general-duke are interesting, but humble
+Jean Peyrot, who does not move in court circles, is at a loss to
+translate them. In other words, I have no notion what you are
+talking about."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, "no shuffling, Peyrot. We
+know as well as you where you were before dawn."</p>
+<p>"Before dawn? Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the
+virtuous."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's
+self might have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an
+alcove, and disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow
+undisturbed. He turned with a triumphant grin on the owner, who
+showed all his teeth pleasantly in answer, no whit abashed.</p>
+<p>"For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners
+ever came inside these walls."</p>
+<p>M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour
+about the room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture,
+even to the dishes and tankards on the table. Peyrot, leaning
+against the wall by the window, regarded him steadily, with
+impassive face. At length M. &Eacute;tienne walked over to the
+chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately put his hand on the
+key.</p>
+<p>Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. &Eacute;tienne,
+turning, looked into his pistol-barrel.</p>
+<p>My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his
+fingers on the key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with
+raised, protesting eyebrows and laughing mouth. But though he
+laughed, he stood still.</p>
+<p>"If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot
+you as I would a rat. Your side is down and mine is up; I have no
+fear to kill you. It will be painful to me, but if necessary I
+shall do it."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably
+than ever.</p>
+<p>"Why&mdash;have I never known you before, Peyrot?"</p>
+<p>"One moment, monsieur." The nose of the pistol pointed around to
+me. "Go over there to the door, you."</p>
+<p>I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that
+pleased him.</p>
+<p>"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair
+over against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee.
+"Monsieur was saying?"</p>
+<p>Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he
+liked his present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of
+the noble into this business, realizing shrewdly that they would
+but hamper him, as lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless
+adventurer, living by his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a
+count no more than a hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference
+was more insulting than outright rudeness; but M. &Eacute;tienne
+bore it unruffled. Possibly he schooled himself so to bear it, but
+I think rather that he felt so easily secure on the height of his
+gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence merely tickled him.</p>
+<p>"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have
+dwelt in this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne,
+methinks."</p>
+<p>"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory
+bringing a deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you,
+monsieur? I was left a week-old babe on the monastery step; was
+reared up in holiness within its sacred walls; chorister at ten,
+novice at eighteen, full-fledged friar, fasting, praying, and
+singing misereres, exhorting dying saints and living sinners, at
+twenty."</p>
+<p>"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."</p>
+<p>"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
+leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
+Paris. And never regretted it, neither."</p>
+<p>He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the
+ceiling, and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a
+lark's:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Piety and Grace and Gloom,<br />
+For such like guests I have no room!<br />
+Piety and Gloom and Grace,<br />
+I bang my door shut in your face!<br />
+Gloom and Grace and Piety,<br />
+I set my dog on such as ye!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on
+the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not
+have twitched a finger without his noting it. M. &Eacute;tienne
+rose and leaned across the table toward him.</p>
+<p>"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in
+wealth, of course?"</p>
+<p>Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and
+making a mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own
+rusty clothing.</p>
+<p>"Do I look it?" he answered.</p>
+<p>"Oh," said M. &Eacute;tienne, slowly, as one who digests an
+entirely new idea, "I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a
+Lombard, he is so cold on the subject of turning an honest
+penny."</p>
+<p>Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.</p>
+<p>"Say on," he permitted lazily.</p>
+<p>"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at
+dawn from the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."</p>
+<p>"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M.
+&Eacute;tienne had been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and
+demands a fair answer. Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves
+success. I will look about a bit this morning among my friends and
+see if I can get wind of your packet. I will meet you at
+dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."</p>
+<p>"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are
+risen earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for
+five minutes while you consult your friends."</p>
+<p>Peyrot grinned cheerfully.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I
+know nothing whatever of this affair."</p>
+<p>"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."</p>
+<p>Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such
+as he might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could
+not be convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so
+misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do
+solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this
+affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that
+Monsieur, your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I
+pained to hear it. These be evil days when such things can happen.
+As for your packet, I learn of it only through your word, having no
+more to do with this deplorable business than a babe unborn."</p>
+<p>I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged
+him. But M. &Eacute;tienne gauged him otherwise.</p>
+<p>"Your words please me," he began.</p>
+<p>"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn
+lips, in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."</p>
+<p>"You have boasted," M. &Eacute;tienne went on, "that your side
+was up and mine down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be
+up and yours down, you would hardly be at such pains to deny that
+you ever bared blade against the Duke of St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses,
+far too honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on
+the duke," Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of
+course it is possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the
+scent of your packet. Twenty pistoles, though. That is not
+much."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table,
+not pleased with the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better
+it. Had we been sure of our suspicions, we would have charged him,
+pistol or no pistol, trusting that our quickness would prevent his
+shooting, or that the powder would miss fire, or that the ball
+would fly wide, or that we should be hit in no vital part;
+trusting, in short, that God was with us and would in some fashion
+save us. But we could not be sure that the packet was with Peyrot.
+What we had heard him lock in the chest might have been these very
+pistols that he had afterward taken out again. Three men had fled
+from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of knowing whether
+this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had
+encountered, or he who had engaged M. &Eacute;tienne. And did we
+know, that would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and
+plundered Huguet. Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know
+who had it, or he might be in honest ignorance of its existence. If
+he had it, it were a crying shame to pay out honest money for what
+we might take by force; to buy your own goods from a thief were a
+sin. But supposing he had it not? If we could seize upon him,
+disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him, rack him, would
+he&mdash;granted he knew&mdash;reveal its whereabouts? Writ large
+in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of
+cowardice. He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while
+the papers went to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the
+business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other
+knave mayhap worse than this.</p>
+<p>Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to
+his lead.</p>
+<p>"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this
+day at eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M.
+&Eacute;tienne said.</p>
+<p>"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur
+forgets the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must
+be reimbursed for that."</p>
+<p>"Conscience, quotha!"</p>
+<p>"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in
+yours. I have never been false to the hand that fed me. If,
+therefore, I divert to you a certain packet which of rights goes
+elsewhere, my sin must be made worth my while. My conscience will
+sting me sorely, but with the aid of a glass and a lass I may
+contrive to forget the pain.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth, my love, and Folly dear,<br />
+Baggages, you're welcome here!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le
+Comte. Fifty in all will bring the packet to your hand."</p>
+<p>It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the
+fellow's face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers
+for Monsieur, and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld
+him.</p>
+<p>"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven.
+You may do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my
+fifty pistoles."</p>
+<p>"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"</p>
+<p>"The word of a St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Sufficient, of course."</p>
+<p>The scamp rose with a bow.</p>
+<p>"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I
+give you the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius,
+that he and the packet will be there. This has been a delightful
+call, monsieur, and I am loath to let you go. But it is time I was
+free to look for that packet."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's eyes went over to the chest.</p>
+<p>"I wish you all success in your arduous search."</p>
+<p>"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot
+sighed. "My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my
+task difficult indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall
+question every man in Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone
+unturned."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne still pensively regarded the chest.</p>
+<p>"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the
+purpose."</p>
+<p>"You appear yet to nurse the belief that I have the packet. But
+as a matter of fact, monsieur, I have not."</p>
+<p>I studied his grave face, and could not for the life of me make
+out whether he were lying. M. &Eacute;tienne said merely:</p>
+<p>"Come, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"You'll drink a glass before you go?" Peyrot cried hospitably,
+running to fill a goblet muddy with his last pouring. But M.
+&Eacute;tienne drew back.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't blame you. I wouldn't drink it myself if I were a
+count," Peyrot said, setting the draught to his own lips. "After
+this noon I shall drink it no more all summer. I shall live like a
+king.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Kiss me, Folly; hug me, Mirth:<br />
+Life without you's nothing worth!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>Monsieur, can I lend you a hat?"</p>
+<p>I had already opened the door and was holding it for my master
+to pass, when Peyrot picked up from the floor and held out to him a
+battered and dirty toque, with its draggled feather hanging
+forlornly over the side. Chafed as he was, M. &Eacute;tienne could
+not deny a laugh to the rascal's impudence.</p>
+<p>"I cannot rob monsieur," he said.</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte need have no scruple. I shall buy me better out of
+his fifty pistoles."</p>
+<p>But M. &Eacute;tienne was out in the passage, I following,
+banging the door after me. We went down the stair in time to
+Peyrot's lusty carolling:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly,<br />
+While Folly's sure to linger by!</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>"Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling
+to let this dog set the terms."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I cried, "perhaps he'll not stir out at once. I'll
+run home for Vigo and his men, and we'll make the rascal
+disgorge."</p>
+<p>"Now are you more zealous than honest, boy."</p>
+<p>I was silent, abashed, and he added:</p>
+<p>"I had not been afraid to try conclusions with him, pistols or
+not, were I sure that he had the packet. I believe he has, yet
+there is the chance that, after all, in this one particular he
+speaks truth. I cannot take any chances; I must get those papers
+for Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Yes, we could not have done otherwise, M. &Eacute;tienne. But,
+monsieur, will you dare go to this inn? M. le Comte is a man in
+jeopardy; he may not keep rendezvous of the enemy's choosing."</p>
+<p>"I might not keep one of Lucas's choosing. Though," he added,
+with a smile, "natheless, I think I should. But it is not likely
+this fellow knows of the warrant against me. Paris is a big place;
+news does not travel all over town as quickly as at St. Quentin. I
+think friend Peyrot has more to gain by playing fair than playing
+false, and appointing the cabaret of the Bonne Femme has a very
+open, pleasing sound. Did he mean to brain me he would scarce have
+set that place."</p>
+<p>"It was not Peyrot alone I meant. But monsieur is so well known.
+In the streets, or at the dinner-hour, some one may see you who
+knows Mayenne is after you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, of that I must take my chance," he made answer, no whit
+troubled by the warning. "I go home now for the ransom, and I will
+e'en be at the pains to doff this gear for something darker."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I pleaded, "why not stay at home to get your dues of
+sleep? Vigo will bring the gold; he and I will put the matter
+through."</p>
+<p>"I ask not your advice," he cried haughtily; then with instant
+softening: "Nay, this is my affair, F&eacute;lix. I have taken it
+upon myself to recover Monsieur his papers. I must carry it through
+myself to the very omega."</p>
+<p>I said no more, partly because it would have done no good,
+partly because, in spite of the strange word, I understood how he
+felt.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you should go home and sleep," he suggested
+tenderly.</p>
+<p>"Nay," cried I. "I had a cat-nap in the lane; I'm game to see it
+through."</p>
+<p>"Then," he commanded, "you may stay here-abouts and watch that
+door. For I have some curiosity to know whether he will need to
+fare forth after the treasure. If he do as I guess, he will spend
+the next hours as you counsel me, making up arrears of sleep, and
+you'll not see him till a quarter or so before eleven. But whenever
+he comes out, follow him. Keep your safe distance and dog him if
+you can."</p>
+<p>"And if I lose him?"</p>
+<p>"Come back home. Station yourself now where he won't notice you.
+That arch there should serve."</p>
+<p>We had been standing at the street corner, sheltered by a
+balcony over our heads from the view of Peyrot's window.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I said, "I do wish you would bring Vigo back with
+you."</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "you are the worst courtier I ever
+saw."</p>
+<p>I crossed the street as he told me, glancing up at the third
+story of the house of the Gilded Shears. No watcher was visible.
+From the archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I
+could well command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M.
+&Eacute;tienne nodded to me and walked off whistling, staring full
+in the face every one he met.</p>
+<p>I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot
+to be doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep. But I was sternly
+determined to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater
+comfort&mdash;cold enough comfort it was&mdash;I sat me down on the
+paving-stones, yet I kept my eyelids propped open, my eyes on
+Peyrot's door. I was helped in carrying out my virtuous resolve by
+the fact that the court was populous and my carcass in the entrance
+much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that full half of them
+swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The hard part was
+that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on Peyrot's
+door.</p>
+<p>He delayed so long and so long that I feared with shamed
+misgiving I must have let him slip, when at length, on the very
+stroke of eleven, he sauntered forth. He was yawning prodigiously,
+but set off past my lair at a smart pace. I followed at goodly
+distance, but never once did he glance around. He led the way
+straight to the sign of the Bonne Femme.</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="324.jpg"></a> <a href="images/324.jpg"><img src=
+"images/324.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>AT THE "BONNE FEMME."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>I entered two minutes after him, passing from the cabaret, where
+my men were not, to the dining-hall, where, to my relief, they
+were. At two huge fireplaces savoury soups bubbled, juicy rabbits
+simmered, fat capons roasted; the smell brought the tears to my
+eyes. A concourse of people was about: gentles and burghers seated
+at table, or passing in and out; waiters running back and forth
+from the fires, drawers from the cabaret. I paused to scan the
+throng, jostled by one and another, before I descried my master and
+my knave. M. &Eacute;tienne, the prompter at the rendezvous, had,
+like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had deserted it now and
+stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their elbows on the
+deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up suddenly
+to Peyrot's side, making him jump.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's you, my little gentleman!" he exclaimed, smiling to
+show all his firm teeth, as white and even as a court beauty's. He
+looked in the best of humours, as was not wonderful, considering
+that he was engaged in fastening up in the breast of his doublet
+something hard and lumpy. M. &Eacute;tienne held up a packet for me
+to see, before Peyrot's shielding body; it was tied with red cord
+and sealed with a spread falcon over the tiny letters, <i>Je
+reviendrai</i>. In the corner was written very small, <i>St. Q.</i>
+Smiling, he put it into the breast of his doublet.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," my scamp said to him with close lips that the room
+might not hear, "you are a gentleman. If there ever comes a day
+when You-know-who is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to
+serve you as well as I have served him."</p>
+<p>"I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M.
+&Eacute;tienne answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than
+ever.</p>
+<p>"I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have
+served him. Bear me in mind, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Come, F&eacute;lix," was all my lord's answer.</p>
+<p>Peyrot sprang forward to detain us.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, will you not dine with me? Both of you, I beg. I will
+have every wine the cellar affords."</p>
+<p>"No," said M. &Eacute;tienne, carelessly, not deigning to anger;
+"but there is my dinner for you, an you like. I have paid for it,
+but I have other business than to eat it."</p>
+<p>Bidding a waiter serve M. Peyrot, he walked from the room
+without other glance at him. A slight shade fell over the reckless,
+scampish face; he was a moment vexed that we scorned him. Merely
+vexed, I think; shamed not at all; he knew not the feel of it. Even
+in the brief space I watched him, as I passed to the door, his
+visage cleared, and he sat him down contentedly to finish M.
+&Eacute;tienne's veal broth.</p>
+<p>My lord paced along rapidly and gladly, on fire to be before
+Monsieur with the packet. But one little cloud, transient as
+Peyrot's, passed across his lightsome countenance.</p>
+<p>"I would that knave were of my rank," he said. "I had not left
+him without slapping a glove in his face."</p>
+<p>That Peyrot had come off scot-free put me out of patience, too,
+but I regretted the gold we had given him more than the wounds we
+had not. The money, on the contrary, troubled M. &Eacute;tienne no
+whit; what he had never toiled for he parted with lightly.</p>
+<p>We came to our gates and went straightway up the stairs to
+Monsieur's cabinet. He sprang to meet us at the door, snatching the
+packet from his son's eager hand.</p>
+<p>"Well done, &Eacute;tienne, my champion! An you brought me the
+crown of France I were not so pleased!"</p>
+<p>The flush of joy at generous praise of good work kindled on M.
+&Eacute;tienne's cheek; it were hard to say which of the two
+messieurs beamed the more delightedly on the other.</p>
+<p>"My son, you have brought me back my honour," spoke Monsieur,
+more quietly, the exuberance of his delight abating, but leaving
+him none the less happy. "If you had sinned against me&mdash;which
+I do not admit, dear lad&mdash;it were more than made up for
+now."</p>
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born
+for. Now I know it was for this morning."</p>
+<p>"For this and many more mornings, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur made
+gay answer, laying a hand on his son's shoulder. "Courage, comrade.
+We'll have our lady yet."</p>
+<p>He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his
+writing-table. For all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more
+interested in his papers than in Mlle. de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"I'll get this off my hands at once," he went on, with the
+effect of talking to himself rather than to us. "It shall go
+straight off to Lema&icirc;tre. You'd better go to bed, both of
+you. My faith, you've made a night of it!"</p>
+<p>"Won't you take me for your messenger, Monsieur? You need a
+trusty one."</p>
+<p>"A kindly offer, &Eacute;tienne. But you have earned your rest.
+And you, true as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I
+have, God be thanked. Gilles will take this straight from my hand
+to Lema&icirc;tre's."</p>
+<p>He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a
+thought striking him, he took it out again.</p>
+<p>"I'd best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the
+president's papers. I'll scratch out my initial, too. The cipher
+tells nothing."</p>
+<p>"He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No, but this time we'll provide for every chance. We'll take
+all the precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute."</p>
+<p>He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to
+scrape the wax away. It slipped and severed the cords. Of its own
+accord the stiff paper of the flap unfolded.</p>
+<p>"The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if
+I were in danger of forgetting it," Monsieur said idly. "The truth
+is&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet,
+slapping it wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet. Each was
+absolutely blank!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+<h3><i>The Florentines.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>. &Eacute;tienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers
+from his father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to
+believe his senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one
+moment from flowery lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he
+did.</p>
+<p>"But the seal!" he stammered.</p>
+<p>"The seal was genuine," Monsieur answered, startled as he. "How
+your fellow could have the king's signet&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"See," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, scratching at the fragments.
+"This is it. Dunce that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is
+a layer of paper embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out,
+smeared hot wax on the false packet, pressed in the seal, and
+curled the new wax over the edge. It was cleverly done; the seal is
+but little thicker, little larger than before. It did not look
+tampered with. Would you have suspected it, Monsieur?" he demanded
+piteously.</p>
+<p>"I had no thought of it. But this Peyrot&mdash;it may not yet be
+too late&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I will go back," M. &Eacute;tienne cried, darting to the door.
+But Monsieur laid forcible hands on him.</p>
+<p>"Not you, &Eacute;tienne. You were hurt yesterday; you have not
+closed your eyes for twenty-four hours. I don't want a dead son. I
+blame you not for the failure; not another man of us all would have
+come so near success."</p>
+<p>"Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M.
+&Eacute;tienne cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I
+did not think to doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in
+the inn, but it was Lema&icirc;tre's sealed packet. However, Peyrot
+sat down to my dinner: I can be back before he has finished his
+three kinds of wine."</p>
+<p>"Stop, &Eacute;tienne," Monsieur commanded. "I forbid you. You
+are gray with fatigue. Vigo shall go."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze
+in his eyes flickered out, and he made obedient salute.</p>
+<p>"So be it. Let him go. I am no use; I bungle everything I touch.
+But he may accomplish something."</p>
+<p>He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his
+face in his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened. A statue-maker
+might have copied him for a figure of Defeat.</p>
+<p>"Go find Vigo," Monsieur bade me, "and then get you to bed."</p>
+<p>I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.</p>
+<p>I too smarted, but mine was the private's disappointment, not
+the general's who had planned the campaign. The credit of the
+rescue was none of mine; no more was the blame of failure. I need
+not rack myself with questioning, Had I in this or that done
+differently, should I not have triumphed? I had done only what I
+was told. Yet I was part of the expedition; I could not but share
+the grief. If I did not wet my pillow with my tears, it was because
+I could not keep awake long enough. Whatever my sorrows, speedily
+they slipped from me.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then
+wondered whether, after all, I had waked. Here, to be sure, was
+Marcel's bed, on which I had lain down; there was the high
+gable-window, through which the westering sun now poured. There was
+the wardrobe open, with Marcel's Sunday suit hanging on the peg;
+here were the two stools, the little image of the Virgin on the
+wall. But here was also something else, so out of place in the
+chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure it was real.
+At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign wood,
+beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man. It was
+about as large as my lord's despatch-box, bound at the edges with
+shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of
+leaves and flowers. Beside the box were set three shallow trays,
+lined with blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith's
+work-glittering chains, linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of
+yellow snakes with green eyes, buckles with ivory teeth,
+glove-clasps thick with pearls, ear-rings and finger-rings with
+precious stones.</p>
+<p>I stared bedazzled from the display to him who stood as showman.
+This was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller,
+with a shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face,
+very boyish and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois
+fashion; yet there was about him and his apparel something, I could
+not tell what, unfamiliar, different from us others.</p>
+<p>He, meeting my eye, smiled in the friendliest way, like a child,
+and said, in Italian:</p>
+<p>"Good day to you, my little gentleman."</p>
+<p>I had still the uncertain feeling that I must be in a dream, for
+why should an Italian jeweller be displaying his treasures to me, a
+penniless page? But the dream was amusing; I was in no haste to
+wake.</p>
+<p>I knew my Italian well enough, for Monsieur's confessor, the
+Father Francesco, who had followed him into exile, was Florentine;
+and as he always spoke his own tongue to Monsieur, and I was always
+at the duke's heels, I picked up a deal of it. After Monsieur's
+going, the father, already a victim, poor man, to the
+falling-sickness, of which he died, stayed behind with us, and I
+found a pricking pleasure in talking with him in the speech he
+loved, of Monsieur's Roman journey, of his exploits in the war of
+the Three Henrys. Therefore the words came easily to my lips to
+answer this lad from over the Alps:</p>
+<p>"I give you good day, friend."</p>
+<p>He looked somewhat surprised and more than pleased, breaking at
+once into voluble speech:</p>
+<p>"The best of greetings to you, young sir. Now, what can I sell
+you this fine day? I have not been half a week in this big city of
+yours, yet already I have but one boxful of trinkets left. They are
+noble, open-handed customers, these gallants of Paris. I have not
+to show them my wares twice, I can tell you. They know what key
+will unlock their fair mistresses' hearts. And now, what can I sell
+you, my little gentleman, to buy your sweetheart's kisses?"</p>
+<p>"Nay, I have no sweetheart," I said, "and if I had, she would
+not wear these gauds."</p>
+<p>"She would if she could get them, then," he retorted. "Now, let
+me give you a bit of advice, my friend, for I see you are but
+young: buy this gold chain of me, or this ring with this little
+dove on it,&mdash;see, how cunningly wrought,&mdash;and you'll not
+lack long for a sweetheart."</p>
+<p>His words huffed me a bit, for he spoke as if he were vastly my
+senior.</p>
+<p>"I want no sweetheart," I returned with dignity, "to be bought
+with gold."</p>
+<p>"Nay," he cried quickly, "but when your own valour and prowess
+have inflamed her with passion, you should be willing to reward her
+devotion and set at rest her suspense by a suitable gift."</p>
+<p>I looked at him uneasily, for I had a suspicion that he might be
+making fun of me. But his countenance was as guileless as a
+kitten's.</p>
+<p>"Well, I tell you again I have no sweetheart and I want no
+sweetheart," I said; "I have no time to bother with girls."</p>
+<p>At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making
+naught by it.</p>
+<p>"The messer is very much occupied?" he asked with exceeding
+deference. "The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he
+is occupied with great matters? Oh, that can I well believe, and I
+cry the messer's pardon. For when the mind is taken up with affairs
+of state, it is distasteful to listen even for a moment to light
+talk of maids and jewels."</p>
+<p>Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly
+unconscious, was sorting over his treasures. I made up my mind his
+queer talk was but the outlandish way of a foreigner. He looked at
+me again, serious and respectful.</p>
+<p>"The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous
+encounters. Is it not so? Then he will do well to carry ever over
+his heart the sacred image of our Lord."</p>
+<p>He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended
+a crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon
+it. Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin,
+was nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in
+the palm of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it,
+and I crossed myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had
+trampled on my crucifix; the stranger all unwittingly had struck a
+bull's-eye. I had committed grave offence against God, but perhaps
+if, putting gewgaws aside, I should give my all for this cross, he
+would call the account even. I knew nothing of the value of a
+carving such as this, but I remembered I was not moneyless, and I
+said, albeit somewhat shyly:</p>
+<p>"I cannot take the rosary. But I should like well the crucifix.
+But then, I have only ten pistoles."</p>
+<p>"Ten pistoles!" he repeated contemptuously. "Corpo di Bacco! The
+workmanship alone is worth twenty." Then, viewing my fallen visage,
+he added: "However, I have received fair treatment in this house,
+beshrew me but I have! I have made good sales to your young count.
+What sort of master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, there's nobody like him," I answered, "except, of course,
+M. le Duc."</p>
+<p>"Ah, then you have two masters?" he inquired curiously, yet with
+a certain careless air. It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that
+he was a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman. But
+he should gain nothing from me.</p>
+<p>"This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin," I said. "Surely
+you could not come in at the gate without discovering that?"</p>
+<p>"He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?"</p>
+<p>"Assuredly," I replied cautiously.</p>
+<p>"More of a man than the Comte de Mar?"</p>
+<p>I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been
+for my hopes of the crucifix. If he planned to sell it to me cheap,
+thereby hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I
+should not buy it at his price&mdash;and withhold the information.
+So I made civil answer:</p>
+<p>"They are both as gallant gentlemen as any living. About this
+cross, now&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes," he answered at once, accepting with
+willingness&mdash;well feigned, I thought&mdash;the change of
+topic. "You can give me ten pistoles, say you? 'Tis making you a
+present of the treasure. Yet, since I have received good treatment
+at the hands of your master, I will e'en give it to you. You shall
+have your cross."</p>
+<p>With suspicions now at point of certainty, I drew out my pouch
+from under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces
+which were my store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it
+when I shattered the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it
+together for me with a thread, and it served very well. The Italian
+unhooked the delicate carving from the silver chain and hung it on
+my wooden one, which I threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my
+new possession. Marcel's Virgin was a botch compared with it. I
+remembered that mademoiselle, who had given me half my wealth, the
+half that won me the rest, had bidden me buy something in the marts
+of Paris; and I told myself with pride that she could not fail to
+hold me high did she know how, passing by all vanities, I had spent
+my whole store for a holy image. Few boys of my age would be
+capable of the like. Certes, I had done piously, and should now
+take a further pious joy, my purchase safe on my neck, in thwarting
+the wiles of this serpent. I would play with him awhile, tease and
+baffle him, before handing him over in triumph to Vigo.</p>
+<p>Sure enough, he began as I had expected:</p>
+<p>"This M. de Mar down-stairs, he is a very good master, I
+suppose?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," I said, without enthusiasm.</p>
+<p>"He has always treated you well?"</p>
+<p>I bethought myself of the trick I had played successfully with
+the officer of the burgess guard.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, I suppose so. I have only known him two days."</p>
+<p>"But you have known him well? You have seen much of him?" he
+demanded with ill-concealed eagerness.</p>
+<p>"But not so very much," I made tepid answer. "I have not been
+with him all the time of these two days. I have seen really very
+little of him."</p>
+<p>"And you know not whether or no he be a good master?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, pretty good. So-so."</p>
+<p>He sprang forward to deal me a stinging box on the ear.</p>
+<p>I was out of bed at one bound, scattering the trinkets in a
+golden rain and rushing for him. He retreated before me. It was to
+save his jewels, but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of
+me. I dashed at him, all headlong confidence; the next I knew he
+had somehow twisted his foot between mine, and tripped me before I
+could grapple. Never was wight more confounded to find himself on
+the floor.</p>
+<p>I was starting up again unhurt when I saw something that made me
+to forget my purpose. I sat still where I was, with dropped jaw and
+bulging eyes. For his hair, that had been black, was golden.</p>
+<p>"Ventre bleu!" I said.</p>
+<p>"And so you know not you little villain, whether you have a good
+master or not?"</p>
+<p>"But how was I to dream it was monsieur?" I cried, confounded.
+"I knew there was something queer about him&mdash;about you, I
+mean&mdash;about the person I took you for, that is. I knew there
+was something wrong about you&mdash;that is to say, I mean, I
+thought there was; I mean I knew he wasn't what he seemed&mdash;you
+were not. And Peyrot fooled us, and I didn't want to be fooled
+again."</p>
+<p>"Then I am a good master?" he demanded truculently, advancing
+upon me.</p>
+<p>I put up my hands to my ears.</p>
+<p>"The best, monsieur. And monsieur wrestled well, too."</p>
+<p>"I can't prove that by you, F&eacute;lix," he retorted, and
+laughed in my nettled face. "Well, if you've not trampled on my
+jewels, I forgive your contumacy."</p>
+<p>If I had, my bare toes had done them no harm. I crawled about
+the floor, gathering them all up and putting them on the bed, where
+I presently sat down myself to stare at him, trying to realize him
+for M. le Comte. He had seated himself, too, and was dusting his
+trampled wig and clapping it on again.</p>
+<p>He had shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and
+the whole look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke
+of the razor; he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He
+had stained his face so well that it looked for all the world as
+though the Southern sun had done it for him; his eyebrows and,
+lashes were dark by nature. His wig came much lower over his
+forehead than did his own hair, and altered the upper part of his
+face as much as the shaving of the lower. Only his eyes were the
+same. He had had his back to the window at first, and I had not
+noted them; but now that he had turned, his eyes gleamed so light
+as to be fairly startling in his dark face&mdash;like stars in a
+stormy sky.</p>
+<p>"Well, then, how do you like me?"</p>
+<p>"Monsieur confounds me. It's witchery. I cannot get used to
+him."</p>
+<p>"That's as I would have it," he returned, coming over to the
+bedside to arrange his treasures. "For if I look new to you, I
+think I may look so to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur goes to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine as a jeweller?" I
+cried, enlightened.</p>
+<p>"Aye. And if the ladies do not crowd about me&mdash;" he broke
+off with a gesture, and put his trays back in his box.</p>
+<p>"Well, I wondered, monsieur. I wondered if we were going to sell
+ornaments to Peyrot."</p>
+<p>He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn
+Peyrot. He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him
+eating, cursed him drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting;
+cursed him summer, cursed him winter; cursed him young, cursed him
+old; living, dying, and dead. I inferred that the packet had not
+been recovered.</p>
+<p>"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne
+Femme, but Peyrot had vanished. So he galloped round to the Rue
+Tournelles, whither he had sent two of our men before him, but the
+bird was flown. He had been home half an hour before,&mdash;he left
+the inn just after us,&mdash;had paid his arrears of rent,
+surrendered his key, and taken away his chest, with all his worldly
+goods in it, on the shoulders of two porters, bound for parts
+unknown. Gilles is scouring Paris for him. Mordieu, I wish him
+luck!"</p>
+<p>His face betokened little hope of Gilles. We both kept chagrined
+silence.</p>
+<p>"And we thought him sleeping!" presently cried he.</p>
+<p>"Well," he added, rising, "that milk's spilt; no use crying over
+it. Plan a better venture; that's the only course. Monsieur is gone
+back to St. Denis to report to the king. Marry, he makes as little
+of these gates as if he were a tennis-ball and they the net. Time
+was when he thought he must plan and prepare, and know the captain
+of the watch, and go masked at midnight. He has got bravely over
+that now; he bounces in and out as easily as kiss my hand. I pray
+he may not try it once too often."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne dare not touch him."</p>
+<p>"What Mayenne may dare is not good betting. Monsieur thinks he
+dares not. Monsieur has come through so many perils of late, he is
+happily convinced he bears a charmed life. F&eacute;lix, do you
+come with me to the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur!" I cried, bethinking myself that I had forgotten
+to dress.</p>
+<p>"Nay, you need not don these clothes," he interposed, with a
+look of wickedness which I could not interpret. "Wait; I'm back
+anon."</p>
+<p>He darted out of the room, to return speedily with an armful of
+apparel, which he threw on the bed.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I gasped in horror, "it's woman's gear!"</p>
+<p>"Verily."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! you cannot mean me to wear this!"</p>
+<p>"I mean it precisely."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"Why, look you, F&eacute;lix," he laughed, "how else am I to
+take you? You were at pains to make yourself conspicuous in M. de
+Mayenne's salon; they will recognize you as quickly as me."</p>
+<p>"Oh, monsieur, put me in a wig, in cap and bells, an you like! I
+will be monsieur's clown, anything, only not this!"</p>
+<p>"I never heard of a jeweller accompanied by his clown. Nor have
+I any party-colour in my armoires. But since I have exerted myself
+to borrow this toggery,&mdash;and a fine, big lass is the owner, so
+I think it will fit,&mdash;you must wear it."</p>
+<p>I was like to burst with mortification; I stood there in dumb,
+agonized appeal.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, then you need not go at all. If you go, you go as
+F&eacute;licie. But you may stay at home, if it likes you
+better."</p>
+<p>That settled me. I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner
+than not go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself
+sullenly and clumsily in the murrain petticoats.</p>
+<p>There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and
+a white apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back
+collar, and a scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green
+tongue. I was soon in such a desperate tangle over these divers
+garments, so utterly muddled as to which to put on first, and which
+side forward, and which end up, and where and how by the grace of
+God to fasten them, that M. &Eacute;tienne, with roars of laughter,
+came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted on stuffing the whole of my
+jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the proper curves, and to
+make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I was like to
+suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so that
+every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces
+from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and
+again, and the more it happened the more we laughed and the less he
+could dress me. I ached in every rib, and the tears were running
+down his cheeks, washing little clean channels in the stain.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix, this will never do," he gasped when at length he
+could speak. "Never after a carouse have I been so maudlin. Compose
+yourself, for the love of Heaven. Think of something serious; think
+of me! Think of Peyrot, think of Mayenne, think of Lucas. Think of
+what will happen to us now if Mayenne know us for ourselves."</p>
+<p>"Enough, monsieur," I said. "I am sobered."</p>
+<p>But even now that I held still we could not draw the last holes
+in the bodice-point nearly together.</p>
+<p>"Nay, monsieur, I can never wear it like this," I panted, when
+he had tied it as tight as he could. "I shall die, or I shall burst
+the seams." He had perforce to give me more room; he pulled the
+apron higher to cover gaps, and fastened a bunch of keys and a
+pocket at my waist. He set a brown wig on my head, nearly covered
+by a black mortier, with its wide scarf hanging down my back.</p>
+<p>"Hang me, but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried,
+proud of me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "F&eacute;lix,
+you've no notion how handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the
+world when you contrived to be born a boy."</p>
+<p>"I thank my stars I was born a boy," I declared. "I wouldn't get
+into this toggery for any one else on earth. I tell monsieur that,
+flat."</p>
+<p>"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails
+spoil all."</p>
+<p>I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot.</p>
+<p>"Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?"</p>
+<p>"Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned.</p>
+<p>"No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make
+him writhe to lend them.</p>
+<p>"Constant's best," he promised, disappearing. It was as good as
+a play to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot,
+after a month in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages
+existed; or, more likely, he did not care to take the household
+into his confidence. He was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose,
+and shoes of red morocco, the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he
+brought a hand-mirror, for me to look on my beauty.</p>
+<p>"Nay, monsieur," I said with a sulk that started anew his
+laughter. "I'll not take it; I want not to see myself. But monsieur
+will do well to examine his own countenance."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! I should say so," he cried. "I must e'en go repair
+myself; and you, F&eacute;lix,&mdash;F&eacute;licie,&mdash;must be
+fed."</p>
+<p>I was in truth as hollow as a drum, yet I cried out that I had
+rather starve than venture into the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"You flatter yourself," he retorted. "You'd not be known. Old
+Jumel will give you the pick of the larder for a kiss," he roared
+in my sullen face, and added, relenting: "Well, then, I will send
+one of the lackeys up with a salver. The lazy beggars have naught
+else to do."</p>
+<p>I bolted the door after him, and when the man brought my tray,
+bade him set it down outside. He informed me through the panels
+that he would go drown himself before he would be content to lie
+slugabed the livelong day while his betters waited on him. I
+trembled for fear in his virtuous scorn he should take his fardel
+away again. But he had had his orders. When, after listening to his
+footsteps descending the stairs, I reached out a cautious arm, the
+tray was on the floor. The generous meat and wine put new heart
+into me; by the time my lord returned I was eager for the
+enterprise.</p>
+<p>"Have you finished?" he demanded. "Faith, I see you have. Then
+let us start; it grows late. The shadows, like good Mussulmans, are
+stretching to the east. I must catch the ladies in their chambers
+before supper. Come, we'll take the box between us."</p>
+<p>"Why, monsieur, I carry that on my shoulders."</p>
+<p>"What, my lass, on your dainty shoulders? Nay, 'twould make the
+townsfolk stare."</p>
+<p>I gnawed my lip in silence; he exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"Now, never have I seen a maid fresh from the convent blush so
+prettily. I'd give my right hand to walk you out past the
+guard-room."</p>
+<p>I shrank as a snail when you touch its horns. He cried:</p>
+<p>"Marry, but I will, though!"</p>
+<p>Now I, unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take
+refuge in; I might writhe, but I could not defend myself.</p>
+<p>"As you will, monsieur," I said, setting my teeth hard.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I dare not. Those fellows would follow us laughing to the
+doors of Lorraine House itself. I've told none of this prank; I
+have even contrived to send all the lackeys out of doors on fools'
+errands. We'll sneak out like thieves by the postern. Come, tread
+your wariest."</p>
+<p>On tiptoe, with the caution of malefactors, we crept from stair
+to stair, giggling under our breath like the callow lad and saucy
+lass we looked to be. We won in safety to the postern, and came out
+to face the terrible eye of the world.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+<h3><i>A double masquerade.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/quote-f.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>&eacute;lix, we are speaking in our own tongue. It is such
+lapses as these bring men to the gallows. Italian from this word,
+my girl."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I have no notion how to bear myself, what to say," I
+answered uneasily.</p>
+<p>"Say as little as you can. For, I confess, your voice and your
+hands give me pause; otherwise I would take you anywhere for a
+lass. Your part must be the shy maiden. My faith, you look the
+r&ocirc;le; your cheeks are poppies! You will follow docile at my
+heels while I tell lies for two. I have the hope that the ladies
+will heed me and my jewels more than you."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, could we not go safelier at night?"</p>
+<p>"I have thought of that. But at night the household gathers in
+the salon; we should run the gantlet of a hundred looks and
+tongues. While now, if we have luck, we may win to mademoiselle's
+own chamber&mdash;" He broke off abruptly, and walked along in a
+day-dream.</p>
+<p>"Well," he resumed presently, coming back to the needs of the
+moment, "let us know our names and station. I am Giovanni Rossini,
+son of the famous goldsmith of Florence; you, Giulietta, my sister.
+We came to Paris in the legate's train, trade being dull at home,
+the gentry having fled to the hills for the hot month. Of course
+you've never set foot out of France,
+F&eacute;&mdash;Giulietta?"</p>
+<p>"Never out of St. Quentin till I came hither. But Father
+Francesco has talked to me much of his city of Florence."</p>
+<p>"Good; you can then make shift to answer a question or two if
+put to it. Your Italian, I swear, is of excellent quality. You
+speak French like the Picard you are, but Italian like a
+gentleman&mdash;that is to say, like a lady."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," I bemoaned miserably, "I shall never come through it
+alive, never in the world. They will know me in the flick of an eye
+for a boy; I know they will. Why, the folk we are passing can see
+something wrong; they all are staring at me."</p>
+<p>"Of course they stare," he answered tranquilly. "I should think
+some wrong if they did not. Can your modesty never understand, my
+Giulietta, what a pretty lass you are?"</p>
+<p>He fell to laughing at my discomfort, and thus, he full of gay
+confidence, I full of misgiving, we came before the doors of the
+H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</p>
+<p>"Courage," he whispered to me. "Courage will conquer the devil
+himself. Put a good face on it and take the plunge." The next
+moment he was in the archway, deluging the sentry with his rapid
+Italian.</p>
+<p>"Nom d'un chien! What's all this? What are you after?" the man
+shouted at us, to make us understand the better. "Haven't you a
+word of honest French in your head?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, tapping his box, very brokenly, very
+laboriously stammered forth something about jewels for the
+ladies.</p>
+<p>"Get in with you, then."</p>
+<p>We were not slow to obey.</p>
+<p>The courtyard was deserted, nor did we see any one in the
+windows of the house, against which the afternoon sun struck hotly.
+To keep out his unwelcome rays, the house door was pushed almost
+shut. We paused a moment on the step, to listen to the voices of
+gossiping lackeys within, and then M. &Eacute;tienne boldly
+knocked.</p>
+<p>There was a scurrying in the hall, as if half a dozen idlers
+were plunging into their doublets and running to their places. Then
+my good friend Pierre opened the door. In the row of underlings at
+his back I recognized the two who had taken part in my flogging.
+The cold sweat broke out upon me lest they in their turn should
+know me.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne looked from one to another with the childlike
+smile of his bare lips, demanding if any here spoke Italian.</p>
+<p>"I," answered Pierre himself. "Now, what may your errand
+be?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's soon told," M. &Eacute;tienne cried volubly, as one
+delighted to find himself understood. "I am a jeweller from
+Florence; I am selling my wares in your great houses. I have but
+just sold a necklace to the Duchesse de Joyeuse; I crave permission
+to show my trinkets to the fair ladies here. But take me up to
+them, and they'll not make you repent it."</p>
+<p>"Go tell madame," Pierre bade one of his men, and turning again
+to us gave us kindly permission to set down our burden and
+wait.</p>
+<p>For incredible good luck, the heavy hangings were drawn over the
+sunny windows, making a soft twilight in the room. I sidled over to
+a bench in the far corner and was feeling almost safe, when
+Pierre&mdash;beshrew him!&mdash;called attention to me.</p>
+<p>"Now, that is a heavy box for a maid to help lug. Do you make
+the lasses do porters' work, you Florentines?"</p>
+<p>"But I am a stranger here," M. &Eacute;tienne explained. "Did I
+hire a porter, how am I to tell an honest one? Belike he might run
+off with all my treasures, and where is poor Giovanni then?
+Besides, it were cruel to leave my little sister in our lodging,
+not a soul to speak to, the long day through. There is none where
+we lodge knows Italian, as you do so like an angel, Sir Master of
+the Household."</p>
+<p>Now, Pierre was no more ma&icirc;tre d'h&ocirc;tel than I was,
+but that did not dampen his pleasure to be called so. He sat down
+on the bench by M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"How came you two to be in Paris?" he asked.</p>
+<p>My lord proceeded to tell him I know not what glib and
+convincing farrago, with every excellence, I made no doubt, of
+accent and gesture. But I could not listen; I had affairs of my own
+by this time. The lackeys had come up close round me, more
+interested in me than in my brother, and the same Jean who had held
+me for my beating, who had wanted my coat stripped off me that I
+might be whacked to bleed, now said:</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant you're hot and tired and thirsty, mademoiselle,
+for all you look as fresh as cress. Will you drink a cup of wine if
+I fetch it?"</p>
+<p>I had kept my eyes on the ground from the first moment of
+encounter, in mortal dread to look these men in the face; but now,
+gaining courage, I raised my glance and smiled at him bashfully,
+and faltered that I did not understand.</p>
+<p>He understood the sense, if not the words, of my answer, and
+repeated his offer, slowly, loudly. I strove to look as blank as
+the wall, and shook my head gently and helplessly, and turned an
+inquiring gaze to the others, as if beseeching them to interpret.
+One of the fellows clapped Jean on the shoulder with a roar of
+laughter.</p>
+<p>"A fall, a fall!" he shouted. "Here's the all-conquering Jean
+Marchand tripped up for once. He thinks nothing that wears
+petticoats can withstand him, but here's a maid that hasn't a word
+to throw at him."</p>
+<p>"Pshaw! she doesn't understand me," Jean returned, undaunted,
+and promptly pointed a finger at my mouth and then raised his fist
+to his own, with sucks and gulps. I allowed myself to comprehend
+then. I smiled in as coquettish a fashion as I could contrive, and
+glanced on the ground, and slowly looked up again and nodded.</p>
+<p>The men burst into loud applause.</p>
+<p>"Good old Jean! Jean wins. Well played, Jean! Vive Jean!"</p>
+<p>Jean, flushed with triumph, ran off on his errand, while I
+thought of Margot, the steward's daughter, at home, and tried to
+recollect every air and grace I had ever seen her flaunt before us
+lads. It was not bad fun, this. I hid my hands under my apron and
+spoke not at all, but sighed and smiled and blushed under their
+stares like any fine lady. Once in one's life, for one hour, it is
+rather amusing to be a girl. But that is quite long enough, say
+I.</p>
+<p>Jean came again directly with a great silver tankard.</p>
+<p>"Burgundy, pardieu!" cried one of his mates, sticking his nose
+into the pot as it passed him, "and full! Ciel, you must think your
+lass has a head."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I shall drink with her," Jean answered.</p>
+<p>I put out my hand for the tankard, running the risk of my big
+paw's betraying me, resolved that he should not drink with me of
+that draught, when of a sudden he leaned over to snatch a kiss. I
+dodged him, more frightened than the shyest maid. Though in this
+half-light I might perfectly look a girl, I could not believe I
+should kiss like one. In a panic, I fled from Jean to my master's
+side.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, wheeling about, came near to laughing out in
+my face, when he remembered his part and played it with a zeal that
+was like to undo us. He sprang to his feet, drawing his dagger.</p>
+<p>"Who insults my sister?" he shouted. "Who is the dog does
+this!"</p>
+<p>They were on him, wrenching the knife from his hand, wrenching
+his lame arm at the same time so painfully that he gasped. I was
+scared chill; I knew if they mishandled him they would brush the
+wig off.</p>
+<p>"Mind your manners, sirrah!" Jean cried.</p>
+<p>Monsieur's ardour vanished; a gentle, appealing smile spread
+over his face.</p>
+<p>"I cry your pardon, sir," he said to Jean; then turning to
+Pierre, "This messer does not understand me. But tell him, I beg
+you, I crave his good pardon. I was but angered for a moment that
+any should think to touch my little sister. I meant no harm."</p>
+<p>"Nor he," Pierre retorted. "A kiss, forsooth! What do you expect
+with a handsome lass like that? If you will take her
+about&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Madame says the jeweller fellow is to come up," our messenger
+announced, returning.</p>
+<p>My lord besought Pierre:</p>
+<p>"My knife? I may have my knife? By the beard of St. Peter, I
+swear to you, I meant no harm with it. I drew it in jest."</p>
+<p>Now, this, which was the sole true statement he had made since
+our arrival, was the only one Pierre did not quite believe. He took
+the knife from Jean, but he hesitated to hand it over to its
+owner.</p>
+<p>"No," he said; "you were angry enough. I know your Italian
+temper. I'm thinking I'll keep this little toy of yours till you
+come down."</p>
+<p>"Very well, Sir Majordomo," M. &Eacute;tienne rejoined
+indifferently, "so be it you give it to me when I go." He grasped
+the handle of the box, and we followed our guide up the stair, my
+master offering me the comforting assurance:</p>
+<p>"It really matters not in the least, for if we be caught the
+dagger's not yet forged can save us."</p>
+<p>We were ushered into a large, fair chamber hung with arras, the
+carpet under our feet deep and soft as moss. At one side stood the
+bed, raised on its dais; opposite were the windows, the
+dressing-table between them, covered with scent-bottles and boxes,
+brushes and combs, very glittering and grand. Fluttering about the
+room were some half-dozen fine dames and demoiselles, brave in
+silks and jewels. Among them I was quick to recognize Mme. de
+Mayenne, and I thought I knew vaguely one or two other faces as
+those I had seen before about her. I started presently to discover
+the little Mlle. de Tavanne: that night she had worn sky-colour and
+now she wore rose, but there was no mistaking her saucy face.</p>
+<p>We set our box on a table, as the duchess bade us, and I helped
+M. &Eacute;tienne to lay out its contents, which done, I retired to
+the background, well content to leave the brunt of the business to
+him. It was as he prophesied: they paid me no heed whatever. He was
+smoothly launched on the third relating of his tale; I trow by this
+time he almost believed it himself. Certes, he never faltered, but
+rattled on as if he had two tongues, telling in confidential tone
+of our father and mother, our little brothers and sisters at home
+in Florence; our journey with the legate, his kindness and care of
+us (I hoped that dignitary would not walk in just now to pay his
+respects to madame la g&eacute;n&eacute;rale); of our arrival in
+Paris, and our wonder and delight at the city's grandeur, the like
+of which was not to be found in Italy; and, last, but not least, he
+had much to say, with an innocent, wide-eyed gravity, in praise of
+the ladies of Paris, so beautiful, so witty, so generous! They were
+all crowding around him, calling him pretty boy, laughing at his
+compliments, handling and exclaiming over his trinkets, trying the
+effect of a buckle or a bracelet, preening and cooing like
+bright-breasted pigeons about the corn-thrower. It was as pretty a
+sight as ever I beheld, but it was not to smile at such that we had
+risked our heads. Of Mlle. de Montluc there was no sign.</p>
+<p>No one was marking me, and I wondered if I might not slip out
+unseen and make my way to mademoiselle's chamber. I knew she lodged
+on this story, near the back of the house, in a room overlooking
+the little street and having a turret-window. But I was somewhat
+doubtful of my skill to find it through the winding corridors of a
+great palace. I was more than likely to meet some one who would
+question my purpose, and what answer could I make? I scarce dared
+say I was seeking mademoiselle. I am not ready at explanations,
+like M. le Comte.</p>
+<p>Yet here were the golden moments flying and our cause no further
+advanced. Should I leave it all to M. &Eacute;tienne, trusting that
+when he had made his sales here he would be permitted to seek out
+the other ladies of the house? Or should I strive to aid him? Could
+I win in safety to mademoiselle's chamber, what a feat!</p>
+<p>It so irked me to be doing nothing that I was on the very point
+of gingerly disappearing when one of the ladies, she with the
+yellow curls, the prettiest of them all, turned suddenly from the
+group, calling clearly:</p>
+<p>"Lorance!"</p>
+<p>Our hearts stood still&mdash;mine did, and I can vouch for
+his&mdash;as the heavy window-curtain swayed aside and she came
+forth.</p>
+<p>She came listlessly. Her hair sweeping against her cheek was
+ebony on snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were
+dark rings, like the smears of an inky finger. M. &Eacute;tienne
+let fall the bracelet he was holding, staring at her oblivious of
+aught else, his brows knotted in distress, his face afire with love
+and sympathy. He made a step forward; I thought him about to catch
+her in his arms, when he recollected himself and dropped on his
+knees to grope for the fallen trinket.</p>
+<p>"You wanted me, madame?" she asked Mme. de Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"No," said the duchess, with a tartness of voice she seemed to
+reserve for Mlle. de Montluc; "'twas Mme. de Montpensier."</p>
+<p>"It was I," the fair-haired beauty answered in the same breath.
+"I want you to stop moping over there in the corner. Come look at
+these baubles and see if they cannot bring a sparkle to your eye.
+Fie, Lorance! The having too many lovers is nothing to cry about.
+It is an affliction many and many a lady would give her ears to
+undergo."</p>
+<p>"Take heart o' grace, Lorance!" cried Mlle. de Tavanne. "If you
+go on looking as you look to-day, you'll not long be troubled by
+lovers."</p>
+<p>She made no answer to either, but stood there passively till it
+might be their pleasure to have done with her, with a patient
+weariness that it wrung the heart to see.</p>
+<p>"Here's a chain would become you vastly, Lorance," Mme. de
+Montpensier went on, friendlily enough, in her brisk and careless
+voice. "Let me try it on your neck. You can easily coax Paul or
+some one to buy it for you."</p>
+<p>She fumbled over the clasp. M. &Eacute;tienne, with a "Permit
+me, madame," took it boldly from her hand and hooked it himself
+about mademoiselle's neck. He delayed longer than he need over the
+fastening of it, looking with burning intentness straight into her
+face. She lifted her eyes to his with a quick frown of displeasure,
+drawing herself back; then all at once the colour waved across her
+face like the dawn flush over a gray sky. She blushed to her very
+hair, to her very ruff. Then the red vanished as quickly as it had
+come; she clutched at her bosom, on the verge of a swoon.</p>
+<p>He threw out his arms to catch her. Instantly she stepped aside,
+and, turning with a little unsteady laugh to the lady at whose
+elbow she found herself, asked:</p>
+<p>"Does it become me, madame?"</p>
+<p>The little scene had passed so quickly that it seemed none had
+marked it. Mademoiselle had stood a little out of the group,
+monsieur with his back to it, and the ladies were busy over the
+jewels. She whom mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed,
+loud-voiced lady, older than any of the others, answered her
+bluntly:</p>
+<p>"You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for
+anything to become you."</p>
+<p>"What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly
+demanded. "Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at
+your son's bedside."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest,
+a sort of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne
+bade sharply, "Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger,
+flamed out on her and Mlle. de Montluc equally:</p>
+<p>"You impudent minxes! 'Tis enough that one of you should bring
+my son to his death, without the other making a mock of it."</p>
+<p>"He's not dying," began the irrepressible Blanche de Tavanne,
+her eyes twinkling with mischief; but whatever naughty answer was
+on her tongue, our mademoiselle's deeper voice overbore her:</p>
+<p>"I am guiltless of the charge, madame. It was through no wish of
+mine that your son, with half the guard at his back, set on one
+wounded man."</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant it was not," muttered Mlle. Blanche.</p>
+<p>"Mar has turned traitor, and deserves nothing so well as to be
+spitted in the dark," Mme. de Brie cried out.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle waited an instant, with flashing eyes meeting
+madame's. She had spoken hotly before, but now, in the face of the
+other's passion, she held herself steady.</p>
+<p>"Your charge is as false, madame, as your wish is cruel. Do you
+go to vespers and come home to say such things? M. de Mar is no
+traitor; he was never pledged to us, and may go over to Navarre
+when he will."</p>
+<p>It was quietly spoken, but the blue lightning of her eyes was
+too much for Mme. de Brie. She opened her mouth to retort,
+faltered, dropped her eyes, and finally turned away, yet seething,
+to feign interest in the trinkets. It was a rout.</p>
+<p>"Then you are the traitor, Lorance," chimed the silvery tones of
+Mme. de Montpensier. "It is not denied that M. de Mar has gone over
+to the enemy; therefore are you the traitor to have intercourse
+with him."</p>
+<p>She spoke without heat, without any appearance of ill feeling.
+Hers was merely the desire, for the fun of it, to keep the flurry
+going. But mademoiselle answered seriously, with the fleetingest
+glance at M. le Comte, where he, forgetting he knew no French,
+feasted his eyes recklessly on her, pitying, applauding, adoring
+her. I went softly around the group to pull his sleeve; we were
+lost if any turned to see him.</p>
+<p>"Madame," mademoiselle addressed her cousin of Montpensier,
+speaking particularly clearly and distinctly, "I mean ever to be
+loyal to my house. I came here a penniless orphan to the care of my
+kinsman Mayenne; and he has always been to me generous and
+loving&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"If not madame," murmured Mile. Blanche to herself.</p>
+<p>"&mdash;as I in my turn have been loving and obedient. It was
+only two nights ago he told me M. de Mar must be as dead to me.
+Since then I have held no intercourse with him. Last night he came
+under my window; I was not in my chamber, as you know. I knew
+naught of the affair till M. de Brie was brought in bleeding. It
+was not by my will M. de Mar came here&mdash;it was a misery to me.
+I sent him word by his boy that other night to leave Paris; I
+implored him to leave Paris. If, instead, he comes here, he racks
+my heart. It is no joy to me, no triumph to me, but a bitter
+distress, that any honest gentleman should risk his life in a vain
+and empty quest. M. de Mar must go his ways, as I must go mine.
+Should he ever make attempt to reach me again, and could I speak to
+him, I should tell him just what I have said now to you."</p>
+<p>I pressed monsieur's hand in the endeavour to bring him back to
+sense; he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's
+earnestness had drawn all eyes.</p>
+<p>"Pshaw, Lorance! banish these tragedy airs!" Mme. de Montpensier
+rejoined, her lightness little touched. A wounded bird falls by the
+rippling water, but the ripples tinkle on. "M. de Mar is not likely
+ever to venture here again; he had too warm a welcome last night.
+My faith, he may be dead by this time&mdash;dead to all as well as
+to you. After he vanished into Ferou's house, no one seems to know
+what happened. Has Charles told you, my sister?"</p>
+<p>"Ferou gave him up, of course," Mme. de Mayenne answered.
+"Monsieur has done what seemed to him proper."</p>
+<p>"You are darkly mysterious, sister."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Mayenne raised her eyebrows and smiled, as one solemnly
+pledged to say no more. She could not, indeed, say more, knowing
+nothing whatever about it. Our mademoiselle spoke in a low voice,
+looking straight before her:</p>
+<p>"If Heaven willed that he escaped last night, I pray he may
+leave the city. I pray he may never try to see me more. I pray he
+may depart instantly&mdash;at once."</p>
+<p>"I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more
+of him," Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she
+herself had started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but
+all this solemn prating about him is duller than a sermon." She
+raised a dainty hand behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames,
+let us get back to our purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these jeweller
+folk know no French."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne was himself again, all smiles and quick
+pleasantries. I slipped off to my post in the background, trying to
+get out of the eye of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me
+the last five minutes in a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so
+suspicious, so probing, was it. On my retreat she did indeed move
+her gaze from me, but only to watch M. le Comte as a hound watches
+a thicket. It was a miracle that none had pounced on him before, so
+reckless had he been. I perceived with sickening certainty that
+Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss. She fairly bristled
+with suspicion, with knowledge. I waited from breathless moment to
+moment for announcement. There was nothing to be done; she held us
+in the hollow of her hand. We could not flee, we could not fight.
+We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then
+submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.</p>
+<p>Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak. Hope flowed
+back to me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape. I wondered
+how high were the windows from the ground.</p>
+<p>As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached
+herself from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.</p>
+<p>It was thirty feet to the stones below&mdash;sure death that
+way. But she had given us a respite; something might yet be done. I
+seized M. &Eacute;tienne's arm in a grip that should tell him how
+serious was our pass. Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue,
+I bespoke him:</p>
+<p>"Brother, it grows late. We must go. It will soon be dark. We
+must go now&mdash;now!"</p>
+<p>He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could
+answer, Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh:</p>
+<p>"And do you fear the dark, wench? Marry, you look as if you
+could take care of yourself."</p>
+<p>"Nay, madame," I protested, "but the box. Come, Giovanni. If we
+linger, we may be robbed in the dark streets."</p>
+<p>"Why, my sister, where are your manners?" he retorted, striving
+to shake me off. "The ladies have not yet dismissed me."</p>
+<p>"We shall be robbed of the box," I persisted; "and the night air
+is bad for your health, my Nino. If you stay longer you will have
+trouble in the throat."</p>
+<p>He looked at me hard. I tried to make my eyes tell him that my
+fear was no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril
+here and now. He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme.
+de Montpensier:</p>
+<p>"Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves
+the maid. I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells
+also a beautiful young captain&mdash;beautiful as the day. It's
+little of his time he spends at home, but we have observed that he
+comes every evening to array himself grandly for supper at some
+one's palace. We count our day lost an we cannot meet him, by
+accident, on the stairs."</p>
+<p>They all laughed. I, with my cheeks burning like any silly
+maid's, set to work to put up our scattered wares. But despair
+weighed me down; if we had to remember ceremony we were lost. The
+ladies were protesting, declaring they had not made their bargains,
+and monsieur was smirking and bowing, as if he had the whole night
+before him. Our one chance was to bolt; to charge past the sentry
+and flee as from the devil. I pulled monsieur's arm again, and
+muttered in his ear:</p>
+<p>"She knows us; she's gone to tell. We must run for it."</p>
+<p>At this moment there arose from down the corridor piercing
+shriek on shriek, the howls of a young child frantic with rage and
+terror. At the same time sounded other different cries, wild,
+outlandish chattering.</p>
+<p>"The baby! It's Toto! Oh, ciel!" Mme. de Mayenne gasped. "Help,
+mesdames!" She rushed from the room, Mme. de Montpensier at her
+heels, all the rest following after.</p>
+<p>All, that is, but one. Mlle. de Montluc started as the rest, but
+at the threshold paused to let them pass. She flung the door to
+behind them, and ran back to monsieur, her face drawn with terror,
+her hand outstretched.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, monsieur!" she panted. "Go! you must go!"</p>
+<p>He seized her hand in both of his.</p>
+<p>"O Lorance! Lorance!"</p>
+<p>She laid her left hand on his for emphasis.</p>
+<p>"Go! go! An you love me, go!"</p>
+<p>For answer he fell on his knees before her, covering those sweet
+hands with kisses.</p>
+<p>The door was flung open; Mlle. de Tavanne stood on the
+threshold. They started apart, monsieur leaping to his feet,
+mademoiselle springing back with choking cry. But it was too late;
+she had seen us.</p>
+<p>She was rosy with running, her little face brimming over with
+mischief. She flitted into the room, crying:</p>
+<p>"I knew it! I knew it was M. de Mar! The gray eyes! M. le Duc
+has done with him as he thought proper, forsooth! Well, I have done
+as I thought proper. I unchained Mme. de Montpensier's monkey and
+threw him into the nursery, where he's scared the baby nearly into
+spasms. Toto carried the cloth-of-gold coverlet up on top of the
+tester, where he's picking it to pieces, the darling! They won't be
+back&mdash;you're safe for a while, my children. I'll keep watch
+for you. Make good use of your time. Kiss her well, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you are an angel."</p>
+<p>"No, she is the angel," Mlle. Blanche laughed back at him. "I'm
+but your warder. Have no fear; I'll keep good watch. Here, you in
+the petticoats, that were a boy the other night, go to the farther
+door. Mme. de Nemours takes her nap in the second room beyond. You
+watch that door; I'll watch the corridor. Farewell, my children!
+Peste! think you Blanche de Tavanne is so badly off for lovers that
+she need grudge you yours, Lorance?"</p>
+<p>She danced out of the door, while I ran across to my station,
+Mlle. de Montluc standing bewildered, ardent, grateful, half
+laughing, half in tears.</p>
+<p>"Lorance, Lorance!" M. &Eacute;tienne murmured tremulously. "She
+said I should kiss you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>I put my fingers in my ears and then took them out again, for if
+my ears were sealed, how was I to hear Mme. de Nemours approaching?
+But I admit I should have kept my eyes glued to the crack of the
+door; that I ever turned them is my shame. I have no business to
+know that mademoiselle bowed her face upon her lover's shoulder,
+her hand clasping his neck, silent, motionless. He pressed his
+cheek against her hair, holding her close; neither had any will to
+move or speak. It seemed they were well content to stand so the
+rest of their lives.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle was the first to stir; she raised her head and
+strove to break away from his locked arms.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! monsieur! This is madness! You must go!"</p>
+<p>"Are you sorry I came?" he demanded vibrantly. "Are you sorry,
+Lorance?"</p>
+<p>His eyes held hers; she threw pretence to the winds.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; I am glad. For if we never meet again, we have
+had this."</p>
+<p>"Aye. If I die to-night, I have had to-day."</p>
+<p>Their voices were like the rune of the heart of the forest, like
+the music of deep streams. I turned away my head ashamed, and
+strove to think of nothing but the waking of Mme. de Nemours.</p>
+<p>"I thought you dead," she moaned, her voice muffled against his
+cheek. "No one would tell me what happened last night. I could not
+devise any way of escape for you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"There is a tunnel from Ferou's house to the Rue de la Soierie.
+His mother&mdash;merciful angel&mdash;let me through."</p>
+<p>"And you were not hurt?"</p>
+<p>"Not a scratch, ma mie."</p>
+<p>"But the wound before? F&eacute;lix said&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I was put out of combat the night I got it," he explained
+earnestly, troubled even now because he had not obeyed her summons.
+"I was dizzy; I could not walk."</p>
+<p>"But now, monsieur? Does it heal?"</p>
+<p>"It is well&mdash;almost. 'Twas but a slash on the arm."</p>
+<p>"Oh, then have I no anxiety," she murmured, with a smile that
+twinkled across her lips and was gone. "I cannot perceive you to be
+disabled, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"My sweeting!" he laughed out. "If I cannot hold a sword yet, I
+can hold my love."</p>
+<p>"But you must not, monsieur," she cried, fear, that had slept a
+moment, springing on her again. "You must go, and this instant,
+while the others are yet away. I knew you, Blanche knew you; some
+other will. Oh, go, go, I implore you!"</p>
+<p>"If you will come with me."</p>
+<p>She made no answer, save to look at him as at a madman.</p>
+<p>"Nay, I mean not now, past the sentry. I am not so crazy as
+that. But you will slip out, you will find a way, and come to
+me."</p>
+<p>Silently, sadly, she shook her head. His arms loosened, and she
+freed herself from him. But instantly he was close on her
+again.</p>
+<p>"But you must! you will, you must! Ah, Lorance, my father is won
+over. He bids me win you. He has sworn to welcome you; when he sees
+you he will be your slave."</p>
+<p>"But my cousin Mayenne is not won over."</p>
+<p>"Devil fly away with your cousin Mayenne!" M. &Eacute;tienne
+retorted with a vehemence that made me shudder, lest the walls have
+ears.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you are free to say that, monsieur, but I am not. I am of
+his blood, and dwell in his house, and eat at his board."</p>
+<p>He was looking at her with a passionate ardour, grasping her
+actual words less than their import of refusal.</p>
+<p>"Are you afraid?" he cried. "Are you frightened, heart-root of
+mine? You need not be, mignonne. You can contrive to slip from the
+house&mdash;Mlle. de Tavanne will help you. Once in the street, I
+will meet you; I will carry you home to hold you against all the
+world."</p>
+<p>"It is not that," she answered.</p>
+<p>"Am I your fear?" he cried quickly. "Ah, Lorance, my Lorance,
+you need not. I love you as I love the Queen of Heaven."</p>
+<p>"Ah, hush!"</p>
+<p>"As I love the Queen of Heaven. I will as soon do sacrilege
+toward her as ill to you."</p>
+<p>He dropped on his knees before her, kissing the hem of her gown.
+She stood looking down on his bowed head with a tenderness that
+seemed to infold him as with a mantle.</p>
+<p>He raised his eyes to hers, still kneeling at her feet.</p>
+<p>"Lorance, will you come with me?"</p>
+<p>She was silent a moment, with heaving breast and face
+a-quiver.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I am sworn. That night when F&eacute;lix came, when I
+was in deadly terror for him and for you, &Eacute;tienne, I
+promised my lord, an he would lift his hand from you, to obey him
+in all things. He bade me never again to hold intercourse with
+you&mdash;alack, I am already forsworn! But I cannot&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He leaped to his feet, crying out:</p>
+<p>"Lorance, he was the first forsworn! For he did move against
+me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"He told you&mdash;the warning went through
+F&eacute;lix&mdash;that if you tried to reach me he would crush you
+as a buzzing fly. Oh, monsieur, I implored you to leave Paris! You
+are not kind to me, you are cruel, when you venture here."</p>
+<p>"You are cruel to me, Lorance."</p>
+<p>Sighing, she turned from him, hiding her face in her hands.</p>
+<p>"Mayenne has not kept faith with you!" monsieur went on
+vehemently. "He has broken his oath. I mean not last night. I had
+my warning; the attack was provoked. But yesterday in the
+afternoon, before I made the attempt to see you, he sent to arrest
+me for the murder of the lackey Pontou."</p>
+<p>"Paul's deed!" she cried in white surprise. "He spoke of
+it&mdash;we heard, F&eacute;lix and I. What, monsieur! sent to
+arrest you? But you are here."</p>
+<p>"They missed me. They took by mistake Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"He was not here last night!" she cried. "Mayenne was demanding
+him of me."</p>
+<p>"Then he slept pleasantly in the Bastille. May he never look on
+the outside of its walls again!"</p>
+<p>"But he will, he does. He must be free by this time; they cannot
+keep Mayenne's nephew in the Bastille. And oh, if he hated you
+before, how he will hate you now! Oh, &Eacute;tienne, if you love
+me, go! Go to your own camp, your own side, at St. Denis. There are
+you safe. Here in Paris you may not draw a tranquil breath."</p>
+<p>"And shall I flee my dangers? Shall I run, in the face of my
+peril?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is
+more to me than tongue can tell."</p>
+<p>"My love, my love!" He snatched her into his arms; she held away
+from him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching
+hands on his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you will go! you will go!"</p>
+<p>"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way!
+Only to meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates
+together&mdash;leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at
+St. Denis keep our honeymoon."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne
+offered a month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster
+of the League. Is that true?"</p>
+<p>"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack
+of love for you. I swear to you&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."</p>
+<p>"Lorance!"</p>
+<p>"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take
+me. Your house stands against us; you would not desert your house.
+Am I then to be false to mine?"</p>
+<p>"A woman belongs to her husband's house."</p>
+<p>"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you
+are full of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father
+before me, in the shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine
+princes our kinsmen, our masters, our friends. When I was orphaned
+young, and penniless because King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched
+our lands away, I came here to my cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in
+kindness and love as a daughter of the house. Am I to turn traitor
+now?"</p>
+<p>"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne
+bounded in.</p>
+<p>"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"</p>
+<p>She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her
+lips to monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his
+arms. I was at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets,
+he with shaking fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.</p>
+<p>The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de
+Montpensier alone conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's
+face was hot and angry, and bore marks of tears. Not in this room
+only had a combat raged.</p>
+<p>"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying
+vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she
+had not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither
+again."</p>
+<p>"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the
+ladies. "You have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too
+forbearing, too patient under many presumptions. One would suppose
+the mistress here to be Mme. de Montpensier."</p>
+<p>"I will show who is mistress here," the Duchesse de Mayenne
+retorted. Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way
+softly to the door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon
+her:</p>
+<p>"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to
+the rescue of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be
+eaten by the beasts for aught you care, while you prink over
+trinkets."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the
+whirl of her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little
+Tavanne came gallantly to the rescue:</p>
+<p>"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely
+safe; Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."</p>
+<p>Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's
+rich accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her
+belongings.</p>
+<p>"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said
+with relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite
+right, Lorance."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2>
+<h3><i>Within the spider's web.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts
+with her. Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier
+wished than accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of
+bargaining. Mme. de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet,
+Mme. de Brie wanted a vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of
+shoe-buckles. M. &Eacute;tienne developed a recklessness about
+prices that would have whitened the hair of a goldsmith father; I
+thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious of such
+prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the quick
+settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with
+longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme.
+de Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that
+no one was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine
+enough for a coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking
+madame for her reminder, with the gratitude of victims snatched
+from an awful fate. We were commanded to bundle out, which with all
+alacrity we did.</p>
+<p>Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I
+had been coming in. As we passed, lackey-led, through the long
+corridors, I had ease enough of mind to enable me to take my
+bearings, and to whisper to my master, "That door yonder is the
+door of the council-room, where I was." Even as I spoke the door
+opened, two gentlemen appearing at the threshold. One was a
+stranger; the other was Mayenne.</p>
+<p>Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood
+a moment or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his
+farewells, and went off down the staircase.</p>
+<p>Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up
+the passage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of
+merchandise:</p>
+<p>"What have you there, Louis?"</p>
+<p>"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just
+dismissed him."</p>
+<p>He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at
+length said to M. le Comte:</p>
+<p>"I will look at your wares."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing
+his Highness that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.</p>
+<p>"How came you in Paris, then?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne for the fourth time went through with his
+tale. I think this time he must have trembled over it. My Lord
+Mayenne had not the reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we
+knew, he might be informed of the name and condition of every
+person who had entered Paris this year. He might, as he listened
+stolid-faced, be checking off to himself the number of monsieur's
+lies. But if M. &Eacute;tienne trembled in his soul, his words
+never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At its finish
+Mayenne said:</p>
+<p>"Come in here."</p>
+<p>The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his
+Grace of Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the
+window where he had sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my
+teeth to keep them from chattering together. Not Grammont's
+brutality, not Lucas's venom, not Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant
+suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly as did Mayenne's
+amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I entered the
+tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I could
+not see. Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a
+way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over
+the edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look
+through iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see
+clearly that Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as
+placid as a summer day, turning over the contents of the box,
+showing little interest in us, much in our wares, every now and
+then speaking a generous word of praise or asking a friendly
+question. He was the very model of the gracious prince; the humble
+tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have worshipfully loved
+him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew us; that he
+was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he would
+walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab
+us.</p>
+<p>Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I
+should have braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would
+have been bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the
+uncertainty that was so heart-shaking&mdash;like crossing a morass
+in the dark. We might be on the safe path; we might with every step
+be wandering away farther and farther into the treacherous bog;
+there was no way to tell. Mayenne was quite the man to be kindly
+patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich present for a friend. He
+was also the man to sit in the presence of his enemy, unbetraying,
+tranquil, assured, waiting. It seemed to me that in a few minutes
+more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I am
+F&eacute;lix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"</p>
+<p>But before I had verily come to this, something happened to
+change the situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the
+door after him, Lucas.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into
+the embrasure of the window, where we stood in plain sight but with
+our faces blotted out against the light. Mayenne looked up from two
+rings he was comparing, one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came
+rapidly across the room.</p>
+<p>"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost
+believe myself back in night before last."</p>
+<p>"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting
+half from hurry, half from wrath.</p>
+<p>"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on
+indifferently, his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you
+have used your time profitably."</p>
+<p>"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly,
+arming himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a
+moment he had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily
+into the room. He was once more the Lucas who had entered that
+other night, nonchalant, mocking.</p>
+<p>"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a
+bracelet from the tray.</p>
+<p>The close kinship of these men betrayed itself in nothing so
+sharply as in their unerring instinct for annoying each other. Had
+Lucas volunteered explanation for his absence, Mayenne would not
+have listened to it; but as he withheld it, the duke demanded
+brusquely:</p>
+<p>"Well, do you give an account of yourself? You had better."</p>
+<p>Lucas repeated the tactics which he had found such good
+entertainment before. He looked with raised eyebrows toward us.</p>
+<p>"You would not have me speak before these vermin, uncle?"</p>
+<p>"These vermin understand no French," Mayenne made answer. "But
+do as it likes you. It is nothing to me."</p>
+<p>My master pinched my hand. Mayenne did not know us! After all,
+he was what M. &Eacute;tienne had called him&mdash;a man, neither
+god nor devil. He could make mistakes like the rest of us. For once
+he had been caught napping.</p>
+<p>Lucas leaned back in his chair with a meditative air, as if idly
+wondering whether to speak or not. In his place I should not have
+wondered one moment. Had Mayenne assured me in that quiet tone that
+he cared nothing whether I spoke, I should scarce have been able to
+utter my words fast enough. But there was so strange a twist in
+Lucas's nature that he must sometimes thwart his own interests,
+value his caprice above his prosperity. Also, in this case his
+story was no triumphant one. But at length he did begin it:</p>
+<p>"I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house
+in the Rue Coupejarrets."</p>
+<p>"Was that your errand?" Mayenne said, looking up in slow
+surprise. "My faith! your oaths to Lorance trouble you little."</p>
+<p>Lucas started forward sharply. "Do you tell me you did not know
+my purpose?"</p>
+<p>"I knew, of course, that you were up to some warlockry," Mayenne
+answered; "I did not concern myself to discover what."</p>
+<p>"There speaks the general! There speaks the gentleman!" Lucas
+cried out. "A general hangs a spy, yet he profits by spying. The
+spy runs the risks, incurs the shames; the general sits in his
+tent, his honour untarnished, pocketing all the glory. Faugh, you
+gentlemen! You will not do dirty work, but you will have it done
+for you. You sit at home with clean hands and eyes that see not,
+while we go forth to serve you. You are the Duke of Mayenne. I am
+your bastard nephew, living on your favour. But you go too far when
+you sneer at my smirches."</p>
+<p>He was on his feet, standing over Mayenne, his face blazing. M.
+&Eacute;tienne made an instinctive step forward, thinking him about
+to knife the duke. But Mayenne, as we well knew, was no craven.</p>
+<p>"Be a little quieter, Paul," he said, unmoved. "You will have
+the guard in, in a moment."</p>
+<p>Lucas held absolutely still for a second. So did Mayenne. He
+knew that Lucas, standing, could stab quicker than he defend. He
+sat there with both hands on the table, looking composedly up at
+his nephew. Lucas flung away across the room.</p>
+<p>"I shall have dismissed these people directly," Mayenne
+continued. "Then you can tell me your tale."</p>
+<p>"I can tell it now in two words," Lucas answered, coming
+abruptly back. "Belin signed the warrant, and sent a young ass of
+the burgher guard after Mar. I attended to some affairs of my own.
+Then after a time I went round to the Trois Lanternes to see if
+they had got him. He was not there&mdash;only that cub of a boy of
+his. When I came in, he swore, the innkeeper swore, the whole crew
+swore, I was Mar. The fool of an officer arrested me."</p>
+<p>I expected Mayenne to burst out laughing in Lucas's chagrined
+face. But instead he seemed less struck with his nephew's
+misfortunes than with some other aspect of the affair. He said
+slowly:</p>
+<p>"You told Belin this arrest was my desire?"</p>
+<p>"I may have implied something of the sort."</p>
+<p>"You repeated it to the arresting officer before Mar's boy!"</p>
+<p>"I had no time to say anything before they hustled me off,"
+Lucas exclaimed. "Mille tonnerres! Never had any man such luck as
+I. It's enough to make me sign papers with the devil."</p>
+<p>"Mar would believe I had broken faith with him?"</p>
+<p>"I dare say. One isn't responsible for what Mar believes," Lucas
+answered carelessly.</p>
+<p>Mayenne was silent, with knit brows, drumming his hand on the
+table. Lucas went on with the tale of his woes:</p>
+<p>"At the Bastille, I ordered the commissary to send to you. He
+did not; he sent to Belin. Belin was busy, didn't understand the
+message, wouldn't be bothered. I lay in my cell like a mouse in a
+trap till an hour agone, when at last he saw fit to
+appear&mdash;damn him!"</p>
+<p>Mayenne fell to laughing. Lucas cried out:</p>
+<p>"When they arrested me my first thought was that this was your
+work."</p>
+<p>"In that case, how should you be free now?"</p>
+<p>"You found you needed me."</p>
+<p>"You are twice wrong, Paul. For I knew nothing of your arrest.
+Nor do I think I need you. Pardieu! you succeed too badly to give
+me confidence."</p>
+<p>Lucas stood glowering, gnawing his lip, picturing the chagrin,
+the angry reproaches, the justifications he did not utter. I am
+certain he pitied himself as the sport of fate and of tyrants, the
+most shamefully used of mortal men. And so long as he aspired to
+the hand of Mayenne's ward, so long was he helpless under Mayenne's
+will.</p>
+<p>"'Twas pity," Mayenne said reflectively, "that you thought best
+to be absent last night. Had you been here, you had had sport. Your
+young friend Mar came to sing under his lady's window."</p>
+<p>"Saw she him?" Lucas cried sharply.</p>
+<p>"How should I know? She does not confide in me."</p>
+<p>"You took care to find out!" Lucas cried, knowing he was being
+badgered, yet powerless to keep himself from writhing.</p>
+<p>"I may have."</p>
+<p>"Did she see him?" Lucas demanded again, the heavy lines of
+hatred and jealousy searing his face.</p>
+<p>"No credit to you if she did not. You accomplish singularly
+little to harass M. de Mar in his love-making. You deserve that she
+should have seen him. But, as a matter of fact, she did not. She
+was in the chapel with madame."</p>
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+<p>"Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie&mdash;now there is a youngster, Paul,"
+Mayenne interrupted himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of
+your cleverness; but he has the advantage of being on the spot when
+needed. Desiring a word with mademoiselle, he betook himself to her
+chamber. She was not there, but Mar was warbling under the
+window."</p>
+<p>"Brie?"</p>
+<p>"Brie bestirred himself. He sent two of the guard round behind
+the house to cut off the retreat, while he and Latour attacked from
+the front."</p>
+<p>"Mar's killed?" Lucas cried. "He's killed!"</p>
+<p>"By no means," answered Mayenne. "He got away."</p>
+<p>Before he could explain further,&mdash;if he meant to,&mdash;the
+door opened, and Mlle. de Montluc came in.</p>
+<p>Her eyes travelled first to us, in anxiety; then with relief to
+Mayenne, sitting over the jewels; last, to Lucas, with startlement.
+She advanced without hesitation to the duke.</p>
+<p>"I am come, monsieur, to fetch you to supper."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, Lorance!" Mayenne exclaimed, "you show me a different
+face from that of dinner-time." Indeed, so she did, for her eyes
+were shining with excitement, while the colour that M.
+&Eacute;tienne had kissed into them still flushed her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"If I do," she made quick answer, "it is because, the more I
+think on it, the surer I grow that my loving cousin will not break
+my heart."</p>
+<p>"I want a word with you, Lorance," Mayenne said quietly.</p>
+<p>"As many as you like, monsieur," she replied promptly. "But will
+you not send these creatures from the room first?"</p>
+<p>"Do you include your cousin Paul in that term?"</p>
+<p>"I meant these jewellers. But since you suggest it, perhaps it
+would be as well for Paul to go."</p>
+<p>"You hear your orders, Paul."</p>
+<p>"Aye, I hear and I disobey," Lucas retorted. "Mademoiselle, I
+take too much joy in your presence to be willing to leave it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said to the duke, ignoring her cousin Paul with
+a coolness that must have maddened him, "will you not dismiss your
+tradespeople? Then can we talk comfortably."</p>
+<p>"Aye," answered Mayenne, "I will. I am more gallant than Paul.
+If you command it, out they go, though I have not half had time to
+look their wares over. Here, master jeweller," he addressed M.
+&Eacute;tienne, slipping easily into Italian, "pack up your wares
+and depart."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, bursting into rapid thanks to his Highness
+for his condescension in noticing the dirt of the way, set about
+his packing. Mayenne turned to his lovely cousin.</p>
+<p>"Now for my word to you, mademoiselle. You wept so last night,
+it was impossible to discuss the subject properly. But now I
+rejoice to see you more tranquil. Here is the beginning and the
+middle and the end of the matter: your marriage is my affair, and I
+shall do as I like about it."</p>
+<p>She searched his face; before his steady look her colour slowly
+died. M. &Eacute;tienne, whether by accident or design, knocked his
+tray of jewels off the table. Murmuring profuse apologies, he
+dropped on his knees to grope for them. Neither of the men heeded
+him, but kept their eyes steadily on the lady.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," Mayenne deliberately went on, "I have been
+over-fond with you. Had I followed my own interests instead of
+bowing to your whims, you had been a wife these two years. I have
+indulged you, mademoiselle, because you were my ally Montluc's
+daughter, because you came to me a lonely orphan, because you were
+my little cousin whose baby mouth I kissed. I have let you cavil at
+this suitor and that, pout that one was too tall and one too short,
+and a third too bold and a fourth not bold enough. I have been
+pleased to let you cajole me. But now, mademoiselle, I am at the
+end of my patience."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she cried, "I never meant to abuse your kindness.
+You let me cajole you, as you say, else I could not have done it.
+You treated my whims as a jest. You let me air them. But when you
+frowned, I have put them by. I have always done your will."</p>
+<p>"Then do it now, mademoiselle. Be faithful to me and to your
+birth. Cease sighing for the enemy of our house."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur," she said, "when you first brought him to me, he was
+not the enemy of our house. When he came here, day after day,
+season after season, he was not our enemy. When I wrote that
+letter, at Paul's dictation, I did not know he was our enemy. You
+told me that night that I was not for him. I promised you
+obedience. Did he come here to me and implore me to wed with him, I
+would send him away."</p>
+<p>Mayenne little imagined how truly she spoke; but he could not
+look in her eyes and doubt her honesty.</p>
+<p>"You are a good child, Lorance," he said. "I could wish your
+lover as docile."</p>
+<p>"He will not come here again," she cried. "He knows I am not for
+him. He gives it up, monsieur&mdash;he takes himself out of Paris.
+I promise you it is over. He gives me up."</p>
+<p>"I have not his promise for that," Mayenne said dryly; "but the
+next time he comes after you, he may settle with your husband."</p>
+<p>She uttered a little gasp, but scarce of surprise&mdash;almost
+of relief that the blow, so long expected, had at last been
+dealt.</p>
+<p>"You will marry me, monsieur?" she murmured. "To M. de
+Brie?"</p>
+<p>"You are shrewd, mademoiselle. You know that it will be a good
+three months before Fran&ccedil;ois de Brie can stand up to be wed.
+You say to yourself that much may happen in three months. So it
+may. Therefore will your bridegroom be at hand to-morrow
+morning."</p>
+<p>She made no rejoinder, but her eyes, wide like a hunted
+animal's, moved fearsomely, loathingly, to Lucas. Mayenne uttered
+an abrupt laugh.</p>
+<p>"No; Paul is not the happy man. Besides bungling the St. Quentin
+affair, he has seen fit to make free with my name in an enterprise
+of his own. Therefore, Paul, you will dance at Lorance's wedding a
+bachelor. Mademoiselle, you marry in the morning Se&ntilde;or el
+Conde del Rondelar y Saragossa of his Majesty King Philip's court.
+After dinner you will depart with your husband for Spain."</p>
+<p>Lucas sprang forward, hand on sword, face ablaze with furious
+protest. Mayenne, heeding him no more than if he had not been
+there, rose and went to Mlle de Montluc.</p>
+<p>"Have I your obedience, cousin?"</p>
+<p>"You know it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>She was curtseying to him when he folded her in his arms,
+kissing both her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"You are as good as you are lovely, and that says much, ma mie.
+We will talk a little more about this after supper. Permit me,
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>He took her hand and led her in leisurely fashion out of the
+room.</p>
+<p>It wondered me that Lucas had not killed him. He looked murder.
+Haply had the duke disclosed by so much as a quivering eyelid a
+consciousness of Lucas's rage, of danger to himself, Lucas had
+struck him down. But he walked straight past, clad in his composure
+as in armour, and Lucas made no move. I think to stab was the
+impulse of a moment, gone in a moment. Instantly he was glad he had
+not killed the Duke of Mayenne, to be cut himself into dice by the
+guard. After the duke was gone, Lucas stood still a long time, no
+less furious, but cogitating deeply.</p>
+<p>We had gathered up our jewels and locked our box, and stood
+holding it between us, waiting our chance to depart. We might have
+gone a dozen times during the talking, for none marked us; but M.
+&Eacute;tienne, despite my tuggings, refused to budge so long as
+mademoiselle was in the room. Now was he ready enough to go, but
+hesitated to see if Lucas would not leave first. That worthy,
+however, showed no intention of stirring, but remained in his pose,
+buried in thought, unaware of our presence. To get out, we had to
+walk round one end or the other of the table, passing either before
+or behind him. M. le Comte was for marching carelessly before his
+face, but I pulled so violently in the other direction that he gave
+way to me. I think now that had we passed in front of him, Lucas
+would have let us go by without a look. As it was, hearing steps at
+his back, he wheeled about to confront us. If the eye of love is
+quick, so is the eye of hate. He cried out instantly:</p>
+<p>"Mar!"</p>
+<p>We dropped the box, and sprang at him. But he was too quick for
+us. He leaped back, whipping out his sword.</p>
+<p>"I have you now, Mar!" he cried.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne grabbed up the heavy box in both hands to
+brain him. Lucas retreated. He might run through M. &Eacute;tienne,
+but only at the risk of having his head split. After all, it suited
+his book as well to take us alive. Shouting for the guards, he
+retreated toward the door.</p>
+<p>But I was there before him. As he ran at M. &Eacute;tienne, I
+had dashed by, slammed the door shut, and bolted it. If we were
+caught, we would make a fight for it. I snatched up a stool for
+weapon.</p>
+<p>He halted. Then he darted over to the chimney, and pulled
+violently the bell-rope hanging near. We heard through the closed
+door two loud peals somewhere in the corridor.</p>
+<p>We both ran for him. Even as he pulled the rope, M.
+&Eacute;tienne struck the box over his sword, snapping it. I
+dropped my stool, as he his box, and we pinned Lucas in our
+arms.</p>
+<p>"The oratory!" I gasped. With a strength born of our
+desperation, we dragged him kicking and cursing across the room,
+heaved him with all our force into the oratory, and bolted the door
+on him.</p>
+<p>"Your wig!" cried M. &Eacute;tienne, running to recover his box.
+While I picked it up and endeavoured with clumsy fingers to put it
+on properly, he set on its legs the stool I had flung down, threw
+the pieces of Lucas's sword into the fireplace, seized his box,
+dashed to me and set my wig straight, dashed to the outer door, and
+opened it just as Pierre came up the corridor.</p>
+<p>"Well, what do you want?" the lackey demanded. "You ring as if
+it was a question of life and death."</p>
+<p>"I want to be shown out, if the messer will be so kind. His
+Highness the duke, when he went to supper, left me here to put up
+my wares, but I know not my way to the door."</p>
+<p>It was after sunset, and the room, back from the windows, was
+dusky. The lackey seemed not to mark our flushed and rumpled looks,
+and to be quite satisfied with M. &Eacute;tienne's explanation,
+when of a sudden Lucas, who had been stunned for the moment by the
+violent meeting of his head and the tiles, began to pound and kick
+on the oratory door.</p>
+<p>He was shouting as well. But the door closed with absolute
+tightness; it had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us muffled
+and inarticulate.</p>
+<p>"Corpo di Bacco!" M. &Eacute;tienne exclaimed, with a face of
+childlike surprise. "Some one is in a fine hurry to enter! Do you
+not let him in, Sir Master of the Household?"</p>
+<p>"I wonder who he's got there now," Pierre muttered to himself in
+French, staring in puzzled wise at the door. Then he answered M.
+&Eacute;tienne with a laugh:</p>
+<p>"No, my innocent; I do not let him in. It might cost me my neck
+to open that door. Come along now. I must see you out and get back
+to my trenchers."</p>
+<p>We met not a soul on the stairs, every one, served or servants,
+being in the supper-room. We passed the sentry without question,
+and round the corner without hindrance. M. &Eacute;tienne stopped
+to heave a sigh of thanksgiving.</p>
+<p>"I thought we were done for that time!" he panted. "Mordieu!
+another scored off Lucas! Come, let us make good time home! 'Twere
+wise to be inside our gates when he gets out of that closet."</p>
+<p>We made good time, ever listening for the haro after us. But we
+heard it not. We came unmolested up the street at the back, of the
+H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin, on our way to the postern. Monsieur took
+the key out of his doublet, saying as we walked around the corner
+tower:</p>
+<p>"Well, it appears we are safe at home."</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. &Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>Even as I uttered the words, three men from the shadow of the
+wall sprang out and seized us.</p>
+<p>"This is he!" one cried. "M. le Comte de Mar, I have the
+pleasure of taking you to the Bastille."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2>
+<h3><i>The countersign.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-i.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>nstantly two more men came running from the postern arch. The
+five were upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while
+another gagged me. Two held M. &Eacute;tienne, a third stopping his
+mouth.</p>
+<p>"Prettily done," quoth the leader. "Not a squeal! Morbleu! I
+wasn't anxious to have old Vigo out disputing my rights."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's wrists were neatly trussed by this time. At
+a word from the leader, our captors turned us about and marched us
+up the lane by Mirabeau's garden, where Bernet's blood lay rusty on
+the stones. We offered no resistance whatever; we should only have
+been prodded with a sword-point for our pains. I made out, despite
+the thickening twilight, the familiar uniform of the burgher guard;
+M. de Belin, having bagged the wrong bird once, had now caught the
+right one.</p>
+<p>The captain bade one of the fellows go call the others off; I
+could guess that the job had been done thoroughly, every approach
+to the house guarded. I gnashed my teeth over the gag, that I had
+not suspected the danger. The truth was, both of us had our heads
+so full of mademoiselle, of Mayenne, and of Lucas, that we had
+forgotten the governor and his preposterous warrant.</p>
+<p>They led us into the Rue de l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que, where was
+waiting the same black coach that had stood before the Oie d'Or,
+the same Louis on the box. Its lamps were lighted; by their glimmer
+our captors for the first time saw us fairly.</p>
+<p>"Why, captain," cried the man at M. &Eacute;tienne's elbow,
+"this is no Comte de Mar! The Comte de Mar is fair-haired; I've
+seen him scores of times."</p>
+<p>"The Comte de Mar answers to the name of &Eacute;tienne, and so
+does this fellow," the captain answered. He took the candle from
+one of the lamps and held it in M. &Eacute;tienne's face. Then he
+put out a sudden hand, and pulled the wig off.</p>
+<p>"Good for you, captain!" cried the men. We were indeed
+unfortunate to encounter an officer with brains.</p>
+<p>"We'll take your gag off too, M. le Comte, in the coach," the
+captain told him.</p>
+<p>"Will you bring the lass along, captain?"</p>
+<p>"Not exactly," the leader laughed. "A fine prison it would be,
+could a felon have his bonnibel at his side. No, I'll leave the
+maid; but she needn't give the alarm yet. Do you stay awhile with
+her, L'Estrange; you'll not mind the job. Keep her a quarter of an
+hour, and then let her go her ways."</p>
+<p>They bundled my lord into the coach, box and all, the captain
+and two men with him. The fourth clambered up beside Louis as he
+cracked his whip and rattled smartly down the street.</p>
+<p>My guardian stole a loving arm around my waist and marched me
+down the quiet lane between the garden walls. He was clutching my
+right wrist, but my left hand was free, and I fumbled at my gag. In
+the middle of the deserted lane he halted.</p>
+<p>"Now, my beauty, if you'll be good I'll take that stopper off.
+But if you make a scream, by Heaven, it'll be your last!"</p>
+<p>I shook my head and squeezed his hand imploringly, while he,
+holding me tight in one sinewy arm, plucked left-handedly at the
+knot. I waited, meek as Griselda, till the gag was off, and then I
+let him have it. Volleying curses, I hammered him square in the
+eye.</p>
+<p>It was a mad course, for he was armed, I not. But instead of
+stabbing, he dropped me like a hot coal, gasping in the blankest
+consternation:</p>
+<p>"Thousand devils! It's a boy!"</p>
+<p>A second later, when he recollected himself, I was tearing down
+the lane.</p>
+<p>I am a good runner, and then, any one can run well when he runs
+for his life. Despite the wretched kirtle tying up my legs, I
+gained on him, and when I had reached the corner of our house, he
+dropped the pursuit and made off in the darkness. I ran full tilt
+round to the great gate, bellowing for the sentry to open. He came
+at once, with a dripping torch, to burst into roars of laughter at
+the sight of me. My wig was somewhere in the lane behind me; he
+knew me perfectly in my silly toggery. He leaned against the wall,
+helpless with laughing, shouting feebly to his comrades to come
+share the jest. I, you may well imagine, saw nothing funny about
+it, but kicked and shook the grilles in my rage and impatience. He
+did open to me at length, and in I dashed, clamouring for Vigo. He
+had appeared in the court by this, as also half a dozen of the
+guard, who surrounded me with shouts of astonished mockery; but I,
+little heeding, cried to the equery:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, M. le Comte is arrested! He's in the Bastille!"</p>
+<p>Vigo grasped my arm, and lifted rather than led me in at the
+guard-room door, slamming it in the soldiers' faces.</p>
+<p>"Now, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"M. &Eacute;tienne!" I gasped&mdash;"M. &Eacute;tienne is
+arrested! They were lying in wait for him at the back of the house,
+by the tower. They've taken him off in a coach to the
+Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Who have?"</p>
+<p>"The governor's guard. You'll saddle and pursue? You'll rescue
+him?"</p>
+<p>"How long ago?"</p>
+<p>"About ten minutes. The coach was standing in the Rue de
+l'&Eacute;v&ecirc;que. They left a man guarding me, but I broke
+away."</p>
+<p>"It can't be done," Vigo said. "They'll be out of the quarter by
+now. If I could catch them at all, it would be close by the
+Bastille. No good in that; no use fighting four regiments. What the
+devil are they arresting him for, F&eacute;lix? I understand
+Mayenne wants his blood, but what has the city guard to do with
+it?"</p>
+<p>"It's Lucas's game," I said. Then I remembered that we had not
+confided to him the tale of the first arrest. I went on to tell of
+the adventure of the Trois Lanternes, and, reflecting that he might
+better know just how the land lay with us, I made a clean breast of
+everything&mdash;the fight before Ferou's house, the rescue, the
+rencounter in the tunnel, to-day's excursion, and all that befell
+in the council-room. I wound up with a second full account of our
+capture under the very walls of the house, our garroting before we
+could cry on the guards to save us. Vigo said nothing for some
+time; at length he delivered himself:</p>
+<p>"Monsieur wouldn't have a patrol about the house. He wouldn't
+publish to the mob that he feared any danger whatever. Of course no
+one foresaw this. However, the arrest is the best thing could have
+happened."</p>
+<p>"Vigo!" I gasped in horror. Was Vigo turned traitor? The solid
+earth reeled beneath my feet.</p>
+<p>"He'd never rest till he got himself killed," Vigo went on.
+"Monsieur's hot enough, but M. &Eacute;tienne's mad to bind. If
+they hadn't caught him to-night he'd have been in some worse pickle
+to-morrow; while, as it is, he's safe from swords at least."</p>
+<p>"But they can murder as well in the Bastille as elsewhere!" I
+cried.</p>
+<p>Vigo shook his head.</p>
+<p>"No; had they meant murder, they'd have settled him here in the
+alley. Since they lugged him off unhurt, they don't mean it. I know
+not what the devil they are up to, but it isn't that."</p>
+<p>"It was Lucas's game in the first place," I repeated. "He's too
+prudent to come out in the open and fight M. &Eacute;tienne. He
+never strikes with his own hand; his way is to make some one else
+strike for him. So he gets M. &Eacute;tienne into the Bastille.
+That's the first step. I suppose he thinks Mayenne will attend to
+the second."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne dares not take the boy's life," Vigo answered. "He
+could have killed him, an he chose, in the streets, and nobody the
+wiser. But now that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille,
+Mayenne dares not kill him there, by foul play or by law&mdash;the
+Duke of St. Quentin's son. No; all Mayenne can do is to confine him
+at his good pleasure. Whence presently we will pluck him out at
+King Henry's good pleasure."</p>
+<p>"And meantime is he to rot behind bars?"</p>
+<p>"Unless Monsieur can get him out. But then," Vigo went on, "a
+month or two in a cell won't be a bad thing for him, neither. His
+head will have a chance to cool. After a dose of Mayenne's purge he
+may recover of his fever for Mayenne's ward."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur! You will send to Monsieur?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. You will go. And Gilles with you to keep you out of
+mischief."</p>
+<p>"When? Now?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Vigo. "You will go clothe yourself in breeches first,
+else are you not likely to arrive anywhere but at the mad-house.
+And then eat your supper. It's a long road to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>I ran at once, through a fusillade of jeers from soldiers,
+grooms, and house-men, across the court, through the hall, and up
+the stairs to Marcel's chamber. Never was I gladder of anything in
+my life than to doff those swaddling petticoats. Two minutes, and I
+was a man again. I found it in my heart to pity the poor things who
+must wear the trappings their lives long.</p>
+<p>But for all my joy in my freedom, I choked over my supper and
+pushed it away half tasted, in misery over M. &Eacute;tienne. Vigo
+might say comfortably that Mayenne dared not kill him, but I
+thought there were few things that gentleman dared not do. Then
+there was Lucas to be reckoned with. He had caught his fly in the
+web; he was not likely to let him go long undevoured. At best, if
+M. &Eacute;tienne's life were safe, yet was he helpless, while
+to-morrow our mademoiselle was to marry. Vigo seemed to think that
+a blessing, but I was nigh to weeping into my soup. The one ray of
+light was that she was not to marry Lucas. That was something.
+Still, when M. &Eacute;tienne came out of prison, if ever he
+did,&mdash;I could scarce bring myself to believe it,&mdash;he
+would find his dear vanished over the rocky Pyrenees.</p>
+<p>Vigo would not even let me start when I was ready. Since we were
+too late to find the gates open, we must wait till ten of the
+clock, at which hour the St. Denis gate would be in the hands of a
+certain Brissac, who would pass us with a wink at the word St.
+Quentin.</p>
+<p>I was so wroth with Vigo that I would not stay with him, but
+went up-stairs into M. &Eacute;tienne's silent chamber, and flung
+myself down on the window-bench his head might never touch again,
+and wondered how he was faring in prison. I wished I were there
+with him. I cared not much what the place was, so long as we were
+together. I had gone down the mouth of hell smiling, so be it I
+went at his heels. Mayhap if I had struggled harder with my
+captors, shown my sex earlier, they had taken me too. Heartily I
+wished they had; I trow I am the only wight ever did wish himself
+behind bars. And promptly I repented me, for if Vigo had proved but
+a broken reed, there was Monsieur. Monsieur was not likely to sit
+smug and declare prison the best place for his son.</p>
+<p>The slow twilight faded altogether, and the dark came. The city
+was very still. Once in a while a shout or a sound of bell was
+borne over the roofs, or infrequent voices and footsteps sounded in
+the street beyond our gate. The men in the court under my window
+were quiet too, talking among themselves without much raillery or
+laughter; I knew they discussed the unhappy plight of the heir of
+St. Quentin. The chimes had rung some time ago the half-hour after
+nine, and I was fidgeting to be off, but huffed as I was with him,
+I could not lower myself to go ask Vigo's leave to start. He might
+come after me when he wanted me.</p>
+<p>"F&eacute;lix! F&eacute;lix!" Marcel shouted down the corridor.
+I sprang up; then, remembering my dignity, moved no further, but
+bade him come in to me.</p>
+<p>"Where are you mooning in the dark?" he demanded, stumbling over
+the threshold. "Oh, there you are. Dame! you'd come down-stairs
+mighty quick if you knew what was there for you?"</p>
+<p>"What?" I cried, divided between the wild hope that it was
+Monsieur and the wilder one that it was M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Don't you wish I'd tell you? Well, you're a good boy, and I
+will. It's the prettiest lass I've seen in a month of
+Sundays&mdash;you in your petticoats don't come near her."</p>
+<p>"For me?" I stuttered.</p>
+<p>"Aye; she asked for M. le Duc, and when he wasn't here, for you.
+I suppose it's some friend of M. &Eacute;tienne's."</p>
+<p>I supposed so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my
+borrowed plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had
+not returned it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my
+eyes out because I had lost the cap&mdash;whether I could find it
+if I went to look with a light. None too eagerly I descended to
+her.</p>
+<p>She was standing against the wall in the archway. Two or three
+of the guardsmen were about her, one with a flambeau, by which they
+were all surveying her. She wore the coif and blouse, the black
+bodice and short striped skirt, of the country peasant girl, and,
+like a country girl, she showed a face flushed and downcast under
+the soldiers' bold scrutiny. She looked up at me as at a rescuing
+angel. It was Mlle. de Montluc!</p>
+<p>I dashed past the torch-bearer, nearly upsetting him in my
+haste, and snatched her hand.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle! Come into the house!"</p>
+<p>She clutched me with fingers as cold as marble, which trembled
+on mine.</p>
+<p>"Where is M. de St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>"At St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"You must take me there to-night."</p>
+<p>"I was going," I stammered, bewildered; "but you,
+mademoiselle&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"You knew of M. de Mar's arrest?"</p>
+<p>"Aye."</p>
+<p>"What coil is this, F&eacute;lix?" demanded Vigo, coming up. He
+took the torch from his man, and held it in mademoiselle's face,
+whereupon an amazing change came over his own. He lowered the
+light, shielding it with his hand, as if it were an impertinent
+eye.</p>
+<p>"You are Vigo," she said at once.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and I know not what noble lady mademoiselle can be,
+save&mdash;will it please her to come into the house?"</p>
+<p>He led the way with his torch, not suffering himself to look at
+her again. He had his foot on the staircase, when she called to
+him, as if she had been accustomed to addressing him all her
+life:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, this will do. I will speak to you here."</p>
+<p>"As mademoiselle wishes. I thought the salon fitter. My cabinet
+here will be quieter than the hall, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>He opened the door, and she entered. He pushed me in next,
+giving me the torch and saying:</p>
+<p>"Ask mademoiselle, F&eacute;lix, whether she wants me." He
+amazed me&mdash;he who always ordered.</p>
+<p>"I want you, Vigo," mademoiselle answered him herself. "I want
+you to send two men with me to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"To-morrow?"</p>
+<p>"No; to-night."</p>
+<p>"But mademoiselle cannot go to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I can, and I must."</p>
+<p>"They will not let a horse-party through the gate at night,"
+Vigo began.</p>
+<p>"We will go on foot."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," Vigo answered, as if she had proposed flying to
+the moon, "you cannot walk to St. Denis."</p>
+<p>"I must!" she cried.</p>
+<p>I had put the flambeau in a socket on the wall. Now that the
+light shone on her steadily, I saw for the first time, though I
+might have known it from her presence here, how rent with emotion
+she was, white to the lips, with gleaming eyes and stormy breast.
+She had spoken low and quietly, but it was a main-force composure,
+liable to snap like glass. I thought her on the very verge of
+passionate tears. Vigo looked at her, puzzled, troubled, pitying,
+as on some beautiful, mad creature. She cried out on him suddenly,
+her rich voice going up a key:</p>
+<p>"You need not say 'cannot' to me, Vigo! You know not how I came
+here. I was locked in my chamber. I changed clothes with my Norman
+maid. There was a sentry at each end of the street. I slid down a
+rope of my bedclothes; it was dark&mdash;they did not see me. I
+knocked at Ferou's door&mdash;thank the saints, it opened to me
+quickly! I told M. Ferou&mdash;God forgive me!&mdash;I had business
+for the duke at the other end of the tunnel. He took me through,
+and I came here."</p>
+<p>"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.</p>
+<p>"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my
+hands on the ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn
+cruelly from her delicate palms and the inside of her fingers.
+Little threads of blood marked the scores. "Then I came here," she
+repeated. "In all my life I have never been in the streets
+alone&mdash;not even for one step at noonday. Now will you tell me,
+M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, it is yours to say what you can do."</p>
+<p>As for me, I dropped on my knees and laid my lips to her
+fingers, softly, for fear even their pressure might hurt her
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle!" I cried in pure delight. "Mademoiselle, that you
+are here!"</p>
+<p>She flushed under my words.</p>
+<p>"Ah, it is no little thing brought me. You knew M. de Mar was
+arrested?"</p>
+<p>We assented; she went on, more to me than to Vigo, as if in
+telling me she was telling M. &Eacute;tienne. She spoke low, as if
+in pain.</p>
+<p>"After supper M. de Mayenne went back to his cabinet and let out
+Paul de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"I wish we had killed him," I muttered. "We had no time or
+weapons."</p>
+<p>"M. de Mayenne sent for me then," she went on, wetting her lips.
+"I have never seen him so angry. He was furious because M. de Mar
+had been before his face and he had not known it. He felt he had
+been made a mock of. He raged against me&mdash;I never knew he
+could be so angry. He said the Spanish envoy was too good for me; I
+should marry Paul de Lorraine to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>"That was not it. I had borne that!" she cried. "Mayhap I
+deserved it. But while my lord thundered at me, word came that M.
+de Mar was taken. My lord swore he should die. He swore no man ever
+set him at naught and lived to boast of it."</p>
+<p>"Will&mdash;"</p>
+<p>She swept on unheeding:</p>
+<p>"He said he should be tried for the murder of Pontou&mdash;he
+should be tortured to make him confess it."</p>
+<p>She dropped down on her knees, hiding her face in her arms on
+the table, shaking from head to foot as in an ague. Vigo swore to
+himself, loudly, violently: "If Mayenne do that, by the throne of
+Heaven, I'll kill him!"</p>
+<p>She sprang to her feet, dry-eyed, fierce as a young lioness.</p>
+<p>"Is that all you can say? Mayenne may torture him and be killed
+for it?"</p>
+<p>"I shall send to the duke&mdash;" Vigo began.</p>
+<p>"Aye! I shall go to the duke! I can say who killed Pontou. I
+know much besides to tell the king. I was Mayenne's cousin, but if
+he would save his secrets he must give up M. de Mar. Mother of God!
+I have been his obedient child; I have let him do so with me as he
+would. I sent my lover away. I consented to the Spanish marriage.
+But to this I will not submit. He shall not torture and kill
+&Eacute;tienne de Mar!"</p>
+<p>Vigo took her hand and kissed it.</p>
+<p>"Shall we start, Vigo? Once at St. Denis, I am hostage for his
+safety. The king can tell Mayenne that if Mar is tortured he will
+torture me! Mayenne may not tender me greatly, but he will not
+relish his cousin's breaking on the wheel."</p>
+<p>"Mayenne won't torture M. &Eacute;tienne," Vigo said, patting
+her hand in both of his, forgetting she was a great lady, he an
+equery. "Fear not! you will save him, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Let us go!" she cried feverishly. "Let us go!"</p>
+<p>Gilles was in the court waiting, stripped of his livery, dressed
+peaceably as a porter, but with a mallet in his hand that I should
+not like to receive on my crown. I thought we were ready, but Vigo
+bade us wait. I stood on the house-steps with mademoiselle, while
+he took aside Squinting Charlot for a low-voiced, emphatic
+interview.</p>
+<p>"Must we wait?" mademoiselle urged me, quivering like the arrow
+on the bow-string. "They may discover I am gone. Need we wait?"</p>
+<p>"Aye," I answered; "if Vigo bids us. He knows."</p>
+<p>We waited then. Vigo disappeared presently. Mademoiselle and I
+stood patient, with, oh! what impatience in our hearts, wondering
+how he could so hinder us. Not till he came back did it dawn on me
+for what we had stayed. He was dressed as an under-groom, not a tag
+of St. Quentin colours on him.</p>
+<p>"I beg a thousand pardons, mademoiselle. I had to give my
+lieutenant his orders. Now, if you will give the word, we go."</p>
+<p>"Do you go, M. Vigo?" She breathed deep. It was easy to see she
+looked upon him as a regiment.</p>
+<p>"Of course," Vigo answered, as if there could be no other
+way.</p>
+<p>I said in pure devilry, to try to ruffle him:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, you said you were here to guard Monsieur's interests-his
+house, his goods, his moneys. Do you desert your trust?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle turned quickly to him:</p>
+<p>"Vigo, you must not let me take you from your rightful post.
+F&eacute;lix and your man here will care for me&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The boy talks silliness, mademoiselle," Vigo returned
+tranquilly. "Mademoiselle is worth a dozen h&ocirc;tels. I go with
+her."</p>
+<p>He walked beside her across the court, I following with Gilles,
+laughing to myself. Only yesterday had Vigo declared that never
+would he give aid and comfort to Mlle. de Montluc. It was no marvel
+she had conquered M. &Eacute;tienne, for he must needs have been in
+love with some one, but in bringing Vigo to her feet she had won a
+triumph indeed.</p>
+<p>We had to go out by the great gate, because the key of the
+postern was in the Bastille. But as if by magic every guardsman and
+hanger-about had disappeared&mdash;there was not one to stare at
+the lady; though when we had passed some one locked the gates
+behind us. Vigo called me up to mademoiselle's left. Gilles was to
+loiter behind, far enough to seem not to belong to us, near enough
+to come up at need. Thus, at a good pace, mademoiselle stepping out
+as brave as any of us, we set out across the city for the Porte St.
+Denis.</p>
+<p>Our quarter was very quiet; we scarce met a soul. But afterward,
+as we reached the neighbourhood of the markets, the streets grew
+livelier. Now were we gladder than ever of Vigo's escort; for
+whenever we approached a band of roisterers or of gentlemen with
+lights, mademoiselle sheltered herself behind the equery's broad
+back, hidden as behind a tower. Once the gallant M. de Champfleury,
+he who in pink silk had adorned Mme. de Mayenne's salon, passed
+close enough to touch her. She heaved a sigh of relief when he was
+by. For her own sake she had no fear; the midnight streets, the
+open road to St. Denis, had no power to daunt her: but the dread of
+being recognized and turned back rode her like a nightmare.</p>
+<p>Close by the gate, Vigo bade us pause in the door of a shop
+while he went forward to reconnoiter. Before long he returned.</p>
+<p>"Bad luck, mademoiselle. Brissac's not on. I don't know the
+officer, but he knows me, that's the worst of it. He told me this
+was not St. Quentin night. Well, we must try the Porte Neuve."</p>
+<p>But mademoiselle demurred:</p>
+<p>"That will be out of our way, will it not, Vigo? It is a longer
+road from the Porte Neuve to St. Denis?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; but what to do? We must get through the walls."</p>
+<p>"Suppose we fare no better at the Porte Neuve? If your Brissac
+is suspected, he'll not be on at night. Vigo, I propose that we
+part company here. They will not know Gilles and F&eacute;lix at
+the gate, will they?"</p>
+<p>"No," Vigo said doubtfully; "but&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Then can we get through!" she cried. "They will not stop us,
+such humble folk! We are going to the bedside of our dying mother
+at St. Denis. Your name, Gilles?"</p>
+<p>"Forestier, mademoiselle," he stammered, startled.</p>
+<p>"Then are we all Forestiers&mdash;Gilles, F&eacute;lix, and
+Jeanne. We can pass out, Vigo; I am sure we can pass out. I am
+loath to part with you, but I fear to go through the city to the
+Porte Neuve. My absence may be discovered&mdash;I must place myself
+without the walls speedily.</p>
+<p>"Well, mademoiselle may try it," Vigo gave reluctant consent.
+"If you are refused, we can fall back on the Porte Neuve. If you
+succeed&mdash;Listen to me, you fellows. You will deliver
+mademoiselle into Monsieur's hands, or answer to me for it. If any
+one touches her little finger&mdash;well, trust me!"</p>
+<p>"That's understood," we answered, saluting together.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle need have no doubts of them," Vigo said.
+"F&eacute;lix is M. le Comte's own henchman. And Gilles is the best
+man in the household, next to me. God speed you, my lady. I am
+here, if they turn you back."</p>
+<p>We went boldly round the corner and up the street to the gate.
+The sentry walking his beat ordered us away without so much as
+looking at us. Then Gilles, appointed our spokesman, demanded to
+see the captain of the watch. His errand was urgent.</p>
+<p>But the sentry showed no disposition to budge. Had we a
+passport? No, we had no passport. Then we could go about our
+business. There was no leaving Paris to-night for us. Call the
+captain? No; he would do nothing of the kind. Be off, then!</p>
+<p>But at this moment, hearing the altercation, the officer himself
+came out of the guard-room in the tower, and to him Gilles at once
+began his story. Our mother at St. Denis had sent for us to come to
+her dying bed. He was a street-porter; the messenger had had
+trouble to find him. His young brother and sister were in service,
+kept to their duties till late. Our mother might even now be
+yielding up the ghost! It was a pitiful case, M. le Capitaine;
+might we not be permitted to pass?</p>
+<p>The young officer appeared less interested in this moving tale
+than in the face of mademoiselle, lighted up by the flambeau on the
+tower wall.</p>
+<p>"I should be glad to oblige your charming sister," he returned,
+smiling, "but none goes out of the city without a passport. Perhaps
+you have one, though, from my Lord Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of
+Mayenne?" quoth Gilles.</p>
+<p>"It seems improbable," the officer smiled, pleased with his wit.
+"Sorry to discommode you, my dear. But perhaps, lacking a passport,
+you can yet oblige me with the countersign, which does as well.
+Just one little word, now, and I'll let you through."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="408.jpg"></a> <a href="images/408.jpg"><img src=
+"images/408.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY."</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>"If monsieur will tell me the little word?" she asked
+innocently.</p>
+<p>He burst into laughter.</p>
+<p>"No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl."</p>
+<p>"Oh, come, monsieur captain," Gilles urged, "many and many a
+fellow goes in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a
+net to stop big fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do
+to my Lord Mayenne, or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness
+to let three poor servants through to their dying mother?"</p>
+<p>"It desolates me to hear of her extremity," the captain
+answered, with a fine irony, "but I am here to do my duty. I am
+thinking, my dear, that you are some great lady's maid?"</p>
+<p>He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to
+protest:</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer's
+wife."</p>
+<p>"And perhaps you serve in the shop?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur," she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard
+against a trap. "No, monsieur; I am never in the shop. I am far too
+busy with my work. Monsieur does not seem to understand what a
+servant-lass has to do."</p>
+<p>For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light,
+revealing all its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.</p>
+<p>"I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either."</p>
+<p>With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in
+the folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror. He
+softened somewhat at sight of her distress.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's none of my business if a lady chooses to be
+masquerading round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey.
+I don't know what your purpose is&mdash;I don't ask to know. But
+I'm here to keep my gate, and I'll keep it. Go try to wheedle the
+officer at the Porte Neuve."</p>
+<p>In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned
+away&mdash;to face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel's
+shoulder-straps. With a dragoon at his back, he had come so softly
+out of a side alley that not even the captain had marked him.</p>
+<p>"What's this, Guilbert?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir. I've just
+turned them away."</p>
+<p>"What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?"</p>
+<p>"I said they could go see how that gate is kept. I showed them
+how this is."</p>
+<p>"Why must you pass through at this time of night?" said the
+commanding officer, civilly. Gilles once again bemoaned the dying
+mother. The young captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted
+him:</p>
+<p>"I believe that's a fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer
+about these people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and
+has hands like a duchess's."</p>
+<p>The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor
+unfriendly. He said in a perfectly neutral manner:</p>
+<p>"It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a
+duchess&mdash;has a mother or not. The point is whether these
+people have the countersign. If they have it, they can pass,
+whoever they are."</p>
+<p>"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you
+would do well, sir, to demand the lady's name."</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the
+superior officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the
+word, she pronounced distinctly her name:</p>
+<p>"Lorance&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through,
+Guilbert."</p>
+<p>The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than
+we.</p>
+<p>"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"</p>
+<p>"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They
+have the countersign; pass them through."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+<h3><i>St. Denis&mdash;and Navarre!</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-a.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>s the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short
+in his tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:</p>
+<p>"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on
+the St. Denis road?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to
+herself as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us
+out for friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale.
+Mayenne always gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a
+marvel, it was mine!"</p>
+<p>I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis.
+The road was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday
+night's rain. Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they
+were only bushes or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This
+was not now a wolf country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and
+as dangerous. The hangers-on of the army&mdash;beggars, feagues,
+and footpads&mdash;hovered, like the cowardly beasts of prey they
+were, about the outskirts of the city. Did a leaf rustle, we
+started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine for alms, we made
+ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
+concealment&mdash;his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere&mdash;a
+brace of pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking
+care, whenever a rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes,
+seemed to follow us, to talk loud and cheerfully of common things,
+the little interests of a humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy,
+or the pistol-barrels shining in the faint starlight, none molested
+us, though we encountered more than one mysterious company. We
+never passed into the gloom under an arch of trees without the
+resolution to fight for our lives. We never came out again into the
+faint light of the open road without wondering thanks to the
+saints&mdash;silent thanks, for we never spoke a word of any fear,
+Gilles and I. I trow mademoiselle knew well enough, but she spoke
+no word either. She never faltered, never showed by so much as the
+turn of her head that she suspected any danger, but, eyes on the
+distant lights of St. Denis, walked straight along, half a step
+ahead of us all the way. Stride as we might, we two strong fellows
+could never quite keep up with her.</p>
+<p>The journey could not at such pace stretch out forever.
+Presently the distant lights were no longer distant, but near,
+nearer, close at hand&mdash;the lights of the outposts of the camp.
+A sentinel started out from the quoin of a wall to stop us, but
+when we had told our errand he became as friendly as a brother. He
+went across the road into a neighbouring tournebride to report to
+the officer of the guard, and came back presently with a torch and
+the order to take us to the Duke of St. Quentin's lodging.</p>
+<p>It was near an hour after midnight, and St. Denis was in bed.
+Save for a drowsy patrol here and there, we met no one. Fewer than
+the patrols were the lanterns hung on ropes across the streets;
+these were the only lights, for the houses were one and all as dark
+as tombs. Not till we had reached the middle of the town did we
+see, in the second story of a house in the square, a beam of light
+shining through the shutter-chink.</p>
+<p>"Some one in mischief." Gilles pointed.</p>
+<p>"Aye," laughed the sentry, "your duke. This is where he lodges,
+over the saddler's."</p>
+<p>He knocked with the butt of his musket on the door. The shutter
+above creaked open, and a voice&mdash;Monsieur's voice&mdash;asked,
+"Who's there?"</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle was concealed in the embrasure of the doorway;
+Gilles and I stepped back into the street where Monsieur could see
+us.</p>
+<p>"Gilles Forestier and F&eacute;lix Broux, Monsieur, just from
+Paris, with news."</p>
+<p>"Wait."</p>
+<p>"Is it all right, M. le Duc?" the sentry asked, saluting.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Monsieur answered, closing the shutter.</p>
+<p>The soldier, with another salute to the blank window, and a nod
+of "Good-by, then," to us, went back to his post. Left in darkness,
+we presently heard Monsieur's quick step on the flags of the hall,
+and the clatter of the bolts. He opened to us, standing there fully
+dressed, with a guttering candle.</p>
+<p>"My son?" he said instantly.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle, crouching in the shadow of the door-post, pushed
+me forward. I saw I was to tell him.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, he was arrested and driven to the Bastille to-night
+between seven and eight. Lucas&mdash;Paul de Lorraine&mdash;went to
+the governor and swore that M. &Eacute;tienne killed the lackey
+Pontou in the house in the Rue Coupejarrets. It was Lucas killed
+him&mdash;Lucas told Mayenne so. Mlle. de Montluc heard him, too.
+And here is mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>At the word she came out of the shadow and slowly over the
+threshold.</p>
+<p>Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the
+H&ocirc;tel St. Quentin as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf. She had come
+without thought of herself, without pause, without fear. But now
+the first heat of her impulse was gone. Her long tramp had left her
+faint and weary, and here she had to face not an equery and a page,
+hers to command, but a great duke, the enemy of her house. She came
+blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes dirty from the common road,
+hair ruffled by the night winds, to show herself for the first time
+to her lover's father, opposer of her hopes, thwarter of her
+marriage. Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill and stood a
+moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird whom the
+least movement would startle into flight.</p>
+<p>But Monsieur made none. He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as
+she, looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence
+real. Then as the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten
+her more than the harsh speech she may have feared; with a
+desperate courage she raised her eyes to his face.</p>
+<p>The spell was broken. Monsieur stepped forward at once to
+her.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you have come a journey. You are tired. Let me
+give you some refreshment; then will you tell me the story."</p>
+<p>It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of
+unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his
+escort down the passage. But as she went, she flung me an imploring
+glance; I was to come too. Gilles bolted the door again, and sat
+down to wait on the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden
+me, followed him and mademoiselle. It troubled me that she should
+so dread him&mdash;him, the warmest-hearted of all men. But if she
+needed me to give her confidence, here I was.</p>
+<p>Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the
+passage. It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of
+leather. It was doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the
+saddler's family. Monsieur set his candle down on the big table in
+the middle; then, on second thought, took it up again and lighted
+two iron sconces on the wall.</p>
+<p>"Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest," he bade, for she was
+starting up in nervousness from the chair where he had put her. "I
+will return in a moment."</p>
+<p>When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating,
+yet eagerly:</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was
+good cause for fear. But now there is nothing to dread."</p>
+<p>She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for
+something. I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not,
+for she passed the three doors and came back to her place with an
+air of disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.</p>
+<p>"I never before went anywhere unmasked," she murmured.</p>
+<p>Monsieur entered with a salver containing a silver cup of wine
+and some Rheims biscuit. He offered it to her formally; she
+accepted with scarcely audible thanks, and sat, barely touching the
+wine to her lips, crumbling the biscuit into bits with restless
+fingers, making the pretence of a meal serve as excuse for her
+silence. Monsieur glanced at her, puzzled-wise, waiting for her to
+speak. Had the Infanta Isabella come to visit him, he could not
+have been more surprised. It seemed to him discourteous to press
+her; he waited for her to explain her presence.</p>
+<p>I wanted to shake mademoiselle. With a dozen swift words, with a
+glance of her blue eyes, she could sweep Monsieur off his feet as
+she had swept Vigo. And instead, she sat there, not daring to look
+at him, like a child caught stealing sweets. She had found words to
+defend herself from the teasing tongues at the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine, to plead for me, to lash Lucas, to move Mayenne himself;
+but she could not find one syllable for the Duke of St. Quentin.
+She had been to admiration the laughing coquette, the stout
+champion, the haughty great lady, the frank lover; but now she was
+the shy child, blushing, stammering, constrained.</p>
+<p>Had Monsieur attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded
+of her up and down what had brought her this strange road at such
+amazing hour and in such unfitting company, she must needs have
+answered, and, once started, she would quickly have kindled her
+fire again. Had he, on other part, with a smile, an encouraging
+word, given her ever so little a push, she had gone on easily
+enough. But he did neither. He was courteous and cold. Partly was
+his coldness real; he could not look on her as other than the
+daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who had schemed to
+kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to disaster.
+Partly was it mere absence; M. &Eacute;tienne's plight was more to
+him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently
+to me.</p>
+<p>"Tell me, F&eacute;lix, all about it."</p>
+<p>Before I could answer him the door behind us opened to admit two
+gentlemen, shoulder to shoulder. They were dressed much alike,
+plainly, in black. One was about thirty years of age, tall,
+thin-faced, and dark, and of a gravity and dignity beyond his
+years. Living was serious business to him; his eyes were
+thoughtful, steady, and a little cold. His companion was some ten
+years older; his beard and curling hair, worn away from his
+forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled with gray.
+He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as a
+hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him
+seemed to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we
+were no shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny
+candles before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel
+when she recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common
+lout, never heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in
+the flick of an eye that this was Henri Quatre.</p>
+<p>I was hot and cold and trembling, my heart pounding till it was
+like to choke me. I had never dreamed of finding myself in the
+presence. I had never thought to face any man greater than my duke.
+For the moment I was utterly discomfited. Then I bethought me that
+not for God alone were knees given to man, and I slid down quietly
+to the floor, hoping I did right, but reflecting for my comfort
+that in any case I was too small to give great offence.</p>
+<p>Mademoiselle started out of her chair and swept a curtsey almost
+to the ground, holding the lowly pose like a lady of marble. Only
+Monsieur remained standing as he was, as if a king was an every-day
+affair with him. I always thought Monsieur a great man, but now I
+knew it.</p>
+<p>The king, leaving his companion to close the door, was across
+the room in three strides.</p>
+<p>"I am come to look after you, St. Quentin," he cried, laughing.
+"I cannot have my council broken up by pretty grisettes. The
+precedent is dangerous."</p>
+<p>With the liveliest curiosity and amusement he surveyed the top
+of mademoiselle's bent head, and Monsieur's puzzled, troubled
+countenance.</p>
+<p>"This is no grisette, Sire," Monsieur answered, "but a very
+high-born demoiselle indeed&mdash;cousin to my Lord Mayenne."</p>
+<p>Astonishment flashed over the king's mobile face; his manner
+changed in an instant to one of utmost deference.</p>
+<p>"Rise, mademoiselle," he begged, as if her appearance were the
+most natural and desirable thing in the world. "I could wish it
+were my good adversary Mayenne himself who was come to treat with
+us; but be assured his cousin shall lack no courtesy."</p>
+<p>She swayed lightly to her feet, raising her face to the king's.
+Into his countenance, which mirrored his emotions like a glass,
+came a quick delight at the sight of her. The colour waxed and
+waned in her cheeks; her breath fluttered uncertainly; her eyes,
+anxious, eager, searched his face.</p>
+<p>"I cry your Majesty's good pardon," she faltered. "I had urgent
+business with M. de St. Quentin&mdash;I did not guess he was with
+your Majesty&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"The king's business is glad to step aside for yours,
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She curtseyed, blushing, hiding her eyes under their sooty
+lashes; thinking as I did, I made no doubt, here was a king indeed.
+His Majesty went on:</p>
+<p>"I can well believe, mademoiselle, 'tis no trifling matter
+brings you at midnight to our rough camp. We will not delay you
+further, but be at pains to remember that if in anything Henry of
+France can aid you he stands at your command."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="422.jpg"></a> <a href="images/422.jpg"><img src=
+"images/422.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS.</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>He made her a noble bow and took her hand to kiss, when she,
+like a child that sees itself losing a protector, clutched his hand
+in her little trembling fingers, her wet eyes fixed imploringly on
+his face. He beamed upon her; he felt no desire whatever to be
+gone.</p>
+<p>"Am I to stay?" he asked radiantly; then with grave gentleness
+he added: "Mademoiselle is in trouble. Will she bring her trouble
+to the king? That is what a king is for&mdash;to ease his subjects'
+burdens."</p>
+<p>She could not speak; she made him her obeisance with a look out
+of the depths of her soul.</p>
+<p>"Then are you my subject, mademoiselle?" he demanded slyly.</p>
+<p>She shook the tears from her lashes, and found her voice and her
+smile to answer his:</p>
+<p>"Sire, I was a true Ligueuse this morning. But I came here half
+Navarraise, and now I swear I am wholly one."</p>
+<p>"Now, that is good hearing!" the king cried. "Such a recruit
+from Mayenne! Also is it heartening to discover that my conversion
+is not the only sudden one in the world. It has taken me five
+months to turn my coat, but here is mademoiselle turns hers in a
+day."</p>
+<p>He had glanced over his shoulder to point this out to his
+gentleman, but now he faced about in time to catch his recruit
+looking triste again.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," he said, "you are beautiful, grave; but, as you
+had the graciousness to show me just now, still more beautiful,
+smiling. Now we are going to arrange matters so that you will smile
+always. Will you tell me what is the trouble, my child?"</p>
+<p>"Gladly, Sire," she answered, and dropped down a moment on her
+knees before him, to kiss his hand.</p>
+<p>I marvelled that Mayenne and all his armies had been able to
+keep this man off his throne and in his saddle four long years. It
+was plain why his power grew stronger every day, why every hour
+brought him new allies from the ranks of the League. You had only
+to see him to adore him. Once get him into Paris, the struggle
+would be over. They would put up with no other for king.</p>
+<p>"Sire," mademoiselle said with hesitancy, "I shall tire you with
+my story."</p>
+<p>"I am greatly in dread of it," the king answered, ceremoniously
+placing her in a chair before seating himself to listen. Then, to
+give her a moment, I think, to collect herself, he turned to his
+companion:</p>
+<p>"Here, Rosny, if you ache to be grubbing over your papers, do
+not let us delay you."</p>
+<p>"I am in no haste, Sire," his gentleman answered, unmoving.</p>
+<p>"Which is to say, you dare not leave me alone," the king laughed
+out. "I tell you, St. Quentin, if I am not dragooned into a staid,
+discreet, steady-paced monarch, 'twill be no lapse of Whip-King
+Rosny's. I am listening, mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>She began at once, eager and unfaltering. All her confusion was
+gone. It had been well-nigh impossible to tell the story to M. de
+St. Quentin, impossible to tell it to this impassive M. de Rosny.
+But to the King of France and Navarre it was as easy to talk as to
+one's playfellow.</p>
+<p>"Sire, I am Lorance de Montluc. My grandfather was the Marshal
+Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Were to-day next Monday, I could pray, 'God rest his soul,'"
+the king rejoined. "But even a heretic may say that he was a
+gallant general, an honour to France. He married a sister of
+Fran&ccedil;ois le Balafr&eacute;? And mademoiselle is orphaned
+now, and my friend Mayenne's ward?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Sire. I came here, Sire, to tell M. de St. Quentin
+concerning his son. And though I am talking of myself, it is all
+the same story. Three years ago, after the king died, M. de Mayenne
+was endeavouring with all his might to bring the Duke of St.
+Quentin into the League. He offered me to him for his son, M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>"And you are still Mlle. de Montluc?"</p>
+<p>She turned to Monsieur with the prettiest smile in the
+world.</p>
+<p>"M. de St. Quentin, though he has not fought for you, Sire, has
+ever been whole-heartedly loyal."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris!" the king exclaimed. "He is either an
+incredible loyalist or an incredible ass!"</p>
+<p>Even the grave Rosny smiled, and the victim laughed as he
+defended himself.</p>
+<p>"That my loyalty may be credible, Sire, I make haste to say that
+I had never seen mademoiselle till this hour."</p>
+<p>"I know not whether to think better of you for that, or worse,"
+the king retorted. "Had I been in your place, beshrew me but I
+should have seen her."</p>
+<p>Monsieur smiled and was silent, with anxious eyes on
+mademoiselle.</p>
+<p>"M. de St. Quentin withdrew to Picardie, Sire, but M. de Mar
+stayed in Paris. And my cousin Mayenne never gave up entirely the
+notion of the marriage. He is very tenacious of his plans."</p>
+<p>"Aye," said the king, with a grimace. "Well I know."</p>
+<p>"He blew hot and cold with M. de Mar. He favoured the marriage
+on Sunday and scouted it on Wednesday and discussed it again on
+Friday."</p>
+<p>"And what were M. de Mar's opinions?"</p>
+<p>She met his probing gaze blushing but candid.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, Sire, favoured it every day in the week."</p>
+<p>"I'll swear he did!" the king cried.</p>
+<p>"When M. le Duc came back to Paris," mademoiselle went on, "and
+it was known he had espoused your cause, Sire, Mayenne was so loath
+to lose the whole house of St. Quentin to you that he offered to
+marry me out of hand to M. de Mar. And he refused."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris!" Henry cried. "We will marry you to a king's
+son. On my honour, mademoiselle&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Sire," she pleaded, "you promised to hear me."</p>
+<p>"That I will, then. But I warn you I am out of patience with
+these St. Quentins."</p>
+<p>"Then you are out of patience with devotion to your cause,
+Sire."</p>
+<p>"What! you speak for the recreants?"</p>
+<p>"I assure you, Sire, you have no more loyal servant than M. de
+Mar."</p>
+<p>"Strange I cannot recollect the face of my so loyal servant,"
+the king said dryly.</p>
+<p>But she, with a fine scorn of argument, made the audacious
+answer:</p>
+<p>"When you see it, you will like it, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Not half so well as I like yours, mademoiselle, I promise you!
+But he comes to me well commended, since you vouch for him. Or
+rather, he does not come. What is this ardent follower doing so
+long away from me? Where the devil does this eager partizan keep
+himself? St. Quentin, where is your son?"</p>
+<p>"He had been with you long ago, Sire, but for the bright eyes of
+a lady of the League. And now she comes to tell me&mdash;my page
+tells me&mdash;he is in the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris! And how has that calamity befallen?"</p>
+<p>She hesitated a moment, embarrassed by her very wealth of
+matter, confused between her longing to set the whole case before
+the king, and her fear of wearying his patience. But his glance
+told her she need have no misgiving. Had she come to present him
+Paris, he could not have been more interested.</p>
+<p>In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his
+words.</p>
+<p>"Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle? Last night, for the first
+time in a month, I saw my son. He was just returned from an
+adventure under her window. Mayenne's guard had set on him, and he
+was escaped by the skin of his teeth. He declared to me that never
+till he was slain should he cease endeavour to win Mlle. de
+Montluc. And I? Marry, I ate my words in humblest fashion. After
+three years I made my surrender. Since you are his one desire,
+mademoiselle, then are you my one desire. I bade him
+God-speed."</p>
+<p>She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her
+lashes.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends. And I have so
+many!"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king cried in the same breath, "fear not. I
+will get you your lover if I sell France for him."</p>
+<p>She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.</p>
+<p>"I have no fear, Sire. With you and M. de St. Quentin to save
+him, I can have no fear. But he is in desperate case. Has M. de St.
+Quentin told you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de
+Lorraine?"</p>
+<p>"Aye," said the king, "it is a dolourous topic&mdash;very
+painful! Eh, Rosny?"</p>
+<p>"I do not shrink from my pains, Sire," M. de Rosny answered
+quietly. "I hold myself much to blame in this matter. I thought I
+knew the Lucases root and branch&mdash;I did not discover that a
+daughter of the house had ever been a friend to Henri de
+Guise."</p>
+<p>"And how should you discover it?" the king demanded. He had made
+the attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself
+to the defence. "How were you to dream it? Henri de Guise's side
+was the last place to look for a girl of the Religion. But I
+forgive him. If he stole a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep: we
+have stolen the flower of Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Paul Lucas&mdash;Paul de Lorraine," she went on eagerly, "was
+put into M. le Duc's house to kill him. He went all the more
+willingly that he believed M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor. He
+tried to draw M. de Mar into the scheme, to ruin him. He failed.
+And the whole plot came to naught."</p>
+<p>"I have learned that," the king said. "I have been told how a
+country boy stripped his mask off."</p>
+<p>He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed.
+He was so quick that he grasped everything at half a word.
+Instantly he had turned to the lady again. "Pray continue, dear
+mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>"Afterward&mdash;that is, yesterday&mdash;Paul went to M. de
+Belin and swore against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in
+his house in the Rue Coupejarrets. The lackey was murdered there,
+but Paul de Lorraine did it. The man knew the plot; Paul killed him
+to stop his tongue. I heard him confess it to M. de Mayenne. I and
+this F&eacute;lix Broux were in the oratory and heard it."</p>
+<p>"Then M. de Mar was arrested?"</p>
+<p>"Not then. The officers missed him. To-day he came to our house,
+dressed as an Italian jeweller, with a case of trinkets to sell.
+Madame admitted him; no one knew him but me and my chamber-*mate.
+On the way out, Mayenne met him and kept him while he chose a
+jewel. Paul de Lorraine was there too. I was like to die of fear. I
+went in to M. de Mayenne; I begged him to come out with me to
+supper, to dismiss the tradespeople that I might talk with him
+there&mdash;anything. But it availed not. M. de Mayenne spoke
+freely before them, as one does before common folk. Presently he
+led me to supper. Paul was left alone with M. de Mar and the boy.
+He recognized them. He was armed, and they were not, but they
+overbore him and locked him up in the closet."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu, mademoiselle! I was to rescue M. de Mar for your sake,
+but now I will do it for his own. I find him much to my liking. He
+came away clear, mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, to be seized in the street by the governor's men. When M.
+de Mayenne found how he had been tricked, Sire, he blazed with
+rage."</p>
+<p>"I'll warrant he did!" the king answered, suppressing, however,
+in deference to her distress, his desire to laugh.
+"Ventre-saint-gris, mademoiselle! forgive me if this amuses me here
+at St. Denis. I trow it was not amusing in the H&ocirc;tel de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"He sent for me, Sire," she went on, blanching at the memory;
+"he accused me of shielding M. de Mar. It was true. He called me
+liar, traitor, wanton. He said I was false to my house, to my
+bread, to my honour. He said I had smiling lips and a
+Judas-heart&mdash;that I had kissed him and betrayed him. I had
+given him my promise never to hold intercourse with M. de Mar
+again, I had given my word to be true to my house. M. de Mar came
+by no will of mine. I had no inkling of such purpose till I beheld
+him before madame and her ladies. He came to entreat me to
+fly&mdash;to wed him. I denied him, Sire. I sent him away. But was
+I to say to the guard, 'This way, gentlemen. This is my
+lover'?"</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king exclaimed, "good hap that you have
+turned your back on the house of Lorraine. Here, if we are but
+rough soldiers, we know how to tender you."</p>
+<p>"It was not for myself I came," she said more quietly. "My lord
+had the right to chasten me. I am his ward, and I did deceive him.
+But while he foamed at me came word of M. de Mar's capture. Then
+Mayenne swore he should pay for this dear. He said he should be
+found guilty of the murder. He said plenty of witnesses would swear
+to it. He said M. de Mar should be tortured to make him
+confess."</p>
+<p>With an oath Monsieur sprang forward.</p>
+<p>"Aye," she cried, starting up, "he swore M. de Mar should suffer
+the preparatory and the previous, the estrapade and the
+brodekins!"</p>
+<p>"He dare not," the king shouted. "Mordieu, he dare not!"</p>
+<p>"Sire," she cried, "you can promise him that for every blow he
+strikes &Eacute;tienne de Mar you will strike me two. Mar is in his
+hands, but I am in yours. For M. de Mar, unhurt, you will deliver
+him me, unhurt. If he torture Mar, you will torture me."</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle," the king cried, "rather shall he torture every
+chevalier in France than I touch a hair of your head!"</p>
+<p>"Sire&mdash;" the word died away in a sigh; like a snapt rose
+she fell at his feet.</p>
+<p>The king was quick, but Monsieur quicker. On his knees beside
+her, raising her head on his arm, he commanded me:</p>
+<p>"Up-stairs, F&eacute;lix! The door at the back&mdash;bid Dame
+Verney come instantly."</p>
+<p>I flew, and was back to find him risen, holding mademoiselle in
+his arms. Her hair lay loose over his shoulder like a rippling
+flag; her lashes clung to her cheeks as they would never lift
+more.</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin," his Majesty was saying, "I would have married her
+to a prince. But since she wants your son she shall have him,
+ventre-saint-gris, if I storm Paris to-morrow!" And as Monsieur was
+carrying her from the room, the king bent over and kissed her.</p>
+<p>"Mademoiselle has dropped a packet from her dress," M. de Rosny
+said. "Will you take it, St. Quentin?"</p>
+<p>The king, who was nearest, turned to pass it to him; at the
+sight of it he uttered his dear "ventre-saint-gris!" It was a flat,
+oblong packet, tied about with common twine, the seal cut out. The
+king twitched the string off, and with one rapid glance at the
+papers put them into Monsieur's hand.</p>
+<p>"Take them, St. Quentin; they are yours."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2>
+<h3><i>The two dukes.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-m.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands,
+Gilles and I were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the
+saddler's shop. Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see
+the crack of light under the door at the back and hear, between
+Gilles's snores, the murmur of voices. The king and his gentlemen
+were planning to save my master; I went to sleep in perfect
+peace.</p>
+<p>At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur
+routed us out.</p>
+<p>"I'm off for Paris, lads. F&eacute;lix comes with me. Gilles
+stays to guard mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle
+knew best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the
+sting passed quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more
+exciting than St. Denis.</p>
+<p>The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway
+mounted the two nags that a sunburnt B&eacute;arn pikeman had
+brought to the door. As we walked them gently across the square,
+which at this rath hour we alone shared with the twittering birds,
+we saw coming down one of the empty streets the hurrying figure of
+M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.</p>
+<p>"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called.
+"I deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to
+wish you God-speed."</p>
+<p>"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his
+hand. "The more that you don't approve me."</p>
+<p>Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day.
+Another man's embrace would have meant less.</p>
+<p>"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly
+see you putting your head into the lion's jaws."</p>
+<p>"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no
+worse off than my son."</p>
+<p>"Your death makes your son's no easier."</p>
+<p>"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle
+the lady? Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"</p>
+<p>"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me
+better to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not
+ripe for us yet. You know my plan&mdash;to send to Villeroi. I
+believe he could manage this thing."</p>
+<p>"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration
+of M. de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what
+he can or will do, uncertain. &Eacute;tienne de Mar is not
+Villeroi's son; he is mine."</p>
+<p>"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take
+your way."</p>
+<p>"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that
+once or twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness
+has served."</p>
+<p>Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.</p>
+<p>"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity
+you are a scamp of a heretic!"</p>
+<p>"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good
+fortune to be born in the Religion."</p>
+<p>Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As
+we turned the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as
+we had left him, gazing soberly after us.</p>
+<p>The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn
+over it. By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great
+danger, he contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden
+all his life with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now.
+As we cantered steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he
+already pictured M. &Eacute;tienne released. However mad he
+acknowledged his errand to be, I think he was scarce visited by a
+doubt of its success. It was impossible to him that his son should
+not be saved.</p>
+<p>We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way
+without hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the
+guard spring on us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by
+gathered in knots, the tradesmen and artisans ran out of their
+shops to cheer St. Quentin, to cheer France, to cheer peace, to
+cheer to the echo the Catholic king.</p>
+<p>"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his
+hat to a big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving
+impudently in the eye of all the world the white flag of the
+king.</p>
+<p>We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in
+other streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out
+for men with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe,
+none stopped us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of
+the H&ocirc;tel de Lorraine.</p>
+<p>They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the
+house, while I led the horses to the stables, where three or four
+grooms at once volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump
+their guardian. But before the fellows had had time to get much out
+of me came Jean Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors.
+I followed him in delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it
+had seemed to me when the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might
+never see him more. Jean ushered me into the well-remembered
+council-room, where Monsieur stood alone, surprised at the sight of
+me.</p>
+<p>"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we
+shut up Lucas."</p>
+<p>I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.</p>
+<p>It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that
+Mayenne could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and
+smiling, whatever emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival
+not only buried, but with a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted
+his guest with all the courteous ease of an unruffled conscience
+and a kindly heart. Not till his glance fell on me did he show any
+sign of discomposure.</p>
+<p>"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.</p>
+<p>"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.</p>
+<p>"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I
+sent for him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M.
+de St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
+appearance of truth. "You may go, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves
+the purpose as well as another."</p>
+<p>He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he
+had kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play
+fair. I began to feel somewhat heartened.</p>
+<p>"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly. You have come to join the League."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed out.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to
+join the King."</p>
+<p>"That was a waste of horse-flesh."</p>
+<p>"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will
+come over."</p>
+<p>"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the
+League dead."</p>
+<p>"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de gr&acirc;ce o' Sunday,
+when the king goes to mass."</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such
+case that nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel
+to Henry, be assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my
+game."</p>
+<p>"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur.
+Be assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to
+his Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will
+never go back to him if I choose to stop you!"</p>
+<p>Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the
+unsuavity.</p>
+<p>"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered
+the gate. I shall never leave this house if you will
+otherwise."</p>
+<p>"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I
+shall not treat you as your late master treated my brother."</p>
+<p>"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good
+sense."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he
+broke into a laugh.</p>
+<p>"One permits the insolences of the court jester."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick
+flush passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.</p>
+<p>Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke
+made a step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect
+seriousness.</p>
+<p>"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this
+morning. There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my
+course has been offensive to you&mdash;your nephew proved me that.
+I know also that you do not care to meddle with me openly. At
+least, you have not meddled. Whether you will change your
+method&mdash;but I venture to believe not. I am popular just now in
+Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning than have met
+your ears for many a month. You have a great name for prudence, M.
+de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."</p>
+<p>I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence.
+But then, as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne
+returned, with chilling calm:</p>
+<p>"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."</p>
+<p>"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on
+his timidity, but on his judgment."</p>
+<p>"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted
+your death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."</p>
+<p>"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday.
+His party is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a
+blunder to kill me; on Friday it is three days worse a
+blunder."</p>
+<p>"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in
+mind ever since your master killed my brother."</p>
+<p>"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take
+a leaf from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained
+singularly little when he slew Guise to make you head of the
+League."</p>
+<p>Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the
+flattery. But I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the
+less because he knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:</p>
+<p>"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."</p>
+<p>"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a
+little. You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."</p>
+<p>"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him
+there."</p>
+<p>"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."</p>
+<p>"If he choose."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an
+amiable discussion.</p>
+<p>"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of
+course he did not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real
+offence is making love to your ward."</p>
+<p>"Well, do you deny it?"</p>
+<p>"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much
+worse than dispose of the lady to my heir."</p>
+<p>"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is
+all you have to say."</p>
+<p>"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I have no wish to carry it further."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my
+heir."</p>
+<p>"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."</p>
+<p>"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have
+come to see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne.
+It is for you to choose where among the king's forces you will
+marry mademoiselle."</p>
+<p>A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept
+into Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay
+challenge, and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:</p>
+<p>"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>"Why, to be sure."</p>
+<p>Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.</p>
+<p>"What mean you?"</p>
+<p>"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is
+your ward, M. de Mayenne?"</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! Have you found her?"</p>
+<p>"You speak sooth."</p>
+<p>"In your h&ocirc;tel&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow
+her."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of
+seeking a weapon, of summoning his soldiers.</p>
+<p>"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"</p>
+<p>"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."</p>
+<p>Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:</p>
+<p>"St. Denis! But how&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never
+walked two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But
+she tramped to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at
+one in the morning."</p>
+<p>Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.</p>
+<p>"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"</p>
+<p>"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"</p>
+<p>"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who
+lets them. I left a staunch man in charge&mdash;I have no doubt of
+him."</p>
+<p>"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath
+coming short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.</p>
+<p>"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
+Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
+heart."</p>
+<p>"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be
+hostages for her safe return."</p>
+<p>"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at
+his best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress,
+is eager for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did
+not favour my venture here; he called it a silly business. He said
+you would clap me in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life
+out there before he would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."</p>
+<p>"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"</p>
+<p>"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out
+of the way, there is Val&egrave;re, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The
+king loses little."</p>
+<p>"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"</p>
+<p>"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to
+sanity."</p>
+<p>I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his
+soldiers. But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again
+in his arm-chair.</p>
+<p>"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"</p>
+<p>"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle
+without a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a
+hostile army cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her
+delicately, tenderly, for that?"</p>
+<p>Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell
+whether the shot hit. Monsieur went on:</p>
+<p>"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but
+you must answer for it to the people of Paris."</p>
+<p>Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table.
+Finally he said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him
+against his will:</p>
+<p>"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The
+arrest was not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it
+to keep him awhile out of my way&mdash;only that. I threatened my
+cousin otherwise in heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I
+shall not kill him."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill
+brooked to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed
+that he did not see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what
+you can with it."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me&mdash;knightly
+generosity. It is to that generosity I appeal."</p>
+<p>"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my
+prudence."</p>
+<p>"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence
+point the same path!"</p>
+<p>It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of
+Monsieur's. Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate,
+he suffered it to warm him. He regained of a sudden all the
+amiability with which he had greeted his guest. Smiling and calm,
+he answered:</p>
+<p>"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your
+cajoleries. They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care
+for my sweet cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you
+have the whiphand."</p>
+<p>Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent,
+waiting.</p>
+<p>"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover.
+Lo! she had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was
+in the streets myself till dawn."</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself
+to our torture did you torture Mar."</p>
+<p>"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.</p>
+<p>"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show
+you to what the maid was strung."</p>
+<p>"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
+slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
+befitted her station&mdash;I thought she would be happy enough. And
+she was good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was
+docile till I drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are
+fortunate in your daughter, St. Quentin."</p>
+<p>Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne
+added, with his cool smile:</p>
+<p>"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing.
+I laugh at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind
+bars, to say to your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get
+him out.'"</p>
+<p>"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more
+than ever."</p>
+<p>He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the
+chief delayed taking it.</p>
+<p>"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St.
+Quentin, the Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand
+certain little concessions for myself."</p>
+<p>"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."</p>
+<p>My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne
+perceived with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing
+that I could ask of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could
+halve, what I give. Still, that the knightliness may not be, to
+your mortification, all on one side, I have thought of something
+for you to grant."</p>
+<p>"Name it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed,
+with his usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had
+come to spread them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet,
+just arrived, which I was told belonged to you. When I had time to
+think of it again, it had vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later
+it occurred to me that Mlle. de Montluc, arming for battle, had
+purloined it."</p>
+<p>"Your shrewdness does you credit."</p>
+<p>"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no
+prowess of your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I
+want."</p>
+<p>"Even to half my fortune&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"No, not your gear. Save that for your B&eacute;arnais's itching
+palm."</p>
+<p>"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in
+the League."</p>
+<p>"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne
+went on at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you;
+it had certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders
+to avenge, I have changed my mind about beginning with yours."</p>
+<p>"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless
+creature."</p>
+<p>Mayenne laughed.</p>
+<p>"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine
+me. Did I let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might
+in time annoy me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in
+Paris you stay out."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't like that!"</p>
+<p>The na&iuml;vet&eacute; amazed while it amused Mayenne.</p>
+<p>"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of
+my court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers,
+straight to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour
+to make no attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is
+mine."</p>
+<p>Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
+condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his
+dangers, his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the
+League. To be killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled
+away from it to inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a
+moment he actually hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own
+hesitation.</p>
+<p>"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the
+lion's den and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept
+yours, M. de Mayenne, especially since, do I refuse, you will none
+the less pack me off."</p>
+<p>"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of
+your days with me."</p>
+<p>"In the Bastille?"</p>
+<p>"Or in the League."</p>
+<p>"The former is preferable."</p>
+<p>"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third
+alternative is given you."</p>
+<p>"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince
+indeed. Be assured the St. Quentins will not forget."</p>
+<p>"Every one forgets."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have
+had time to forget."</p>
+<p>"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my
+head my course is run!"</p>
+<p>"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court
+jester."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne
+laughed too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length
+of the table to his host:</p>
+<p>"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept
+back but one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come
+over to us sooner or later. Come now!"</p>
+<p>The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered
+coldly:</p>
+<p>"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."</p>
+<p>"Better his than Spain's."</p>
+<p>Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.</p>
+<p>"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."</p>
+<p>Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.</p>
+<p>"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French
+king, a Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends,
+friendly to old foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the
+looms humming, the mills clacking, wheat growing thick on the
+battle-fields."</p>
+<p>Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.</p>
+<p>"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My
+compliments to your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from
+me that when I submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender,
+from that hour forth am I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and
+obey him. Till then, let him beware of my teeth! While I have one
+pikeman to my back, one sou in my pouch, I fight my cause."</p>
+<p>"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at
+Henry's court to pull you up out of the mire."</p>
+<p>"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their
+offices," Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud
+and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night
+at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king.
+Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord
+Mayenne. When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great
+moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the
+general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.</p>
+<p>"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to
+windward."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2>
+<h3><i>My young lord settles scores with two foes at once.</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-o.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>ccupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our
+several stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I
+awaited in a shady corner of the court the conclusion of
+formalities. I had just declared that King Henry would be in Paris
+within a week, and was on the point of getting my crown cracked for
+it, when, as if for the very purpose&mdash;save the mark!&mdash;of
+rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas. He approached rapidly,
+eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no whit; but all the
+loungers turned to stare at him. Even then he paid no heed, passing
+us without a glance. But the tall d'Auvray bespoke him.</p>
+<p>"M. de Lorraine! Any news?"</p>
+<p>He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he
+had not known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now.
+He was both pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye
+all night.</p>
+<p>"Any news here?" he made Norman answer.</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information. We have heard
+nothing."</p>
+<p>"And the woman?"</p>
+<p>"Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word."</p>
+<p>Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of
+us, as if he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he
+was not in the least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a
+full minute before he awoke to my identity.</p>
+<p>"You!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, M. de Lorraine," I said, with all the respectfulness I
+could muster, which may not have been much. Considering our
+parting, I was ready for any violence. But after the first moment
+of startlement he regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way,
+while he inquired without apparent resentment how I came there.</p>
+<p>"With M. le Duc de St. Quentin," I grinned at him. "We and M. de
+Mayenne are friends now."</p>
+<p>I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed. But he
+turned abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet
+shown.</p>
+<p>"You've not told this fellow?"</p>
+<p>"We understand our orders, monsieur," d'Auvray answered, a bit
+huffed.</p>
+<p>Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but
+of course I could not.</p>
+<p>"They had no need to tell me, M. de Lorraine. I know quite well
+what the trouble is. I know rather more about it than you do
+yourself."</p>
+<p>He confronted me now with all the fire I could ask.</p>
+<p>"What mean you, whelp?"</p>
+<p>"I mean mademoiselle. What else should I mean?"</p>
+<p>"What do you know?"</p>
+<p>"Everything."</p>
+<p>"Her whereabouts?"</p>
+<p>"Her whereabouts."</p>
+<p>He had his hand to his knife by this. I abated somewhat of my
+drawl to say, still airily:</p>
+<p>"Go ask M. de St. Quentin. He's here. He'll be so glad to see
+you."</p>
+<p>"Here?"</p>
+<p>"Certes. He's closeted now with M. de Mayenne. They're thicker
+than brothers. Go see for yourself, M.&mdash;Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Where is mademoiselle?"</p>
+<p>"Safe. She's to marry the Comte de Mar to-morrow."</p>
+<p>He stared at me for one moment, weighing whether this could be
+true; then without further parley he shot into the house.</p>
+<p>"Is that true?" d'Auvray demanded.</p>
+<p>Their tongues loosened now, they flooded me with questions
+concerning mademoiselle, which I answered warily as I could,
+heartily repenting me by this of baiting Lucas. No good could come
+of it. He might even turn Mayenne from his bargain, upset all our
+triumph. I hardly heard what the soldiers said to me; I was almost
+nervous enough, wild enough, to dash up-stairs after him. But that
+was no help. I stayed where I was, fevered with anxiety.</p>
+<p>At the end of five minutes he came out of the house again, and,
+without a glance at us, went straight through the gate with the
+step and air of a man who knows what he is about. I was no easier
+in my mind though I saw him gone.</p>
+<p>Soon on his steps came a lackey to order M. de St. Quentin's
+horses and two musketeers to mount and ride with him. On reaching
+the door with the nags, I discovered I was not to be of the party;
+our second steed must carry gear of mademoiselle's and her
+handwoman, a hard-faced peasant, silent as a stone. Though the men
+quizzed her, asking if she were glad to get to her mistress again,
+whether she had known all this time the lady's whereabouts, she
+answered no single word, but busied herself seeing the horse loaded
+to her notion. Presently, in the guidance of Pierre, Monsieur
+appeared.</p>
+<p>"You stay, F&eacute;lix, and go to the Bastille for your master.
+Then you will wait at the St. Denis gate for Vigo, with
+horses."</p>
+<p>"Is all right, Monsieur?" I had to ask, as I held his stirrup.
+"Is all right? Lucas&mdash;"</p>
+<p>His face had been a little clouded as he came down the stairs,
+and now it darkened more, but he answered:</p>
+<p>"Quite right, Achates. M. de Mayenne stands to his word. Lucas
+availed nothing."</p>
+<p>He stood a moment frowning, then his countenance cleared up.</p>
+<p>"My faith! I have enough to gladden me without fretting that
+Lucas is alive. Fare you well, F&eacute;lix. You are like to reach
+St. Denis as soon as I. My son's horse will not lag."</p>
+<p>He sprang to the saddle with a smiling salute to his guardians,
+and the little train clattered off.</p>
+<p>Pierre came to my elbow with an open paper&mdash;the order
+signed and sealed for M. de Mar's release.</p>
+<p>"Here, my young cockerel, you and d'Auvray are to take this to
+the Bastille, and it will be strange if your master does not walk
+free again. His Grace bids you tell M. de Mar he remembers
+Wednesday night, underground."</p>
+<p>"And I remember Tuesday night in the council-room, Pierre," I
+was beginning, but he cut me short. Even now that I was in favour,
+he risked no mention of his disobedience. He packed me off with
+d'Auvray on the instant; I had no chance to ask him whether he
+suspected us yesterday. Sometimes I have thought he did, but I am
+bound to say he gave us no look to show it.</p>
+<p>D'Auvray and I walked straight across Paris to the many-towered
+Bastille. It seemed a little way. Before the potent name of Mayenne
+bars flew open; a sentry on guard in the court led us into a small
+room all stone, floor, walls, ceiling, where sat at the table some
+high official, perhaps the governor of the prison himself. He was
+an old campaigner, grizzled and weather-beaten, his right sleeve
+hanging empty. An interesting figure, no doubt, but I paid him
+scant attention, for at his side stood Lucas.</p>
+<p>"I come on M. de Mayenne's business," he was expostulating,
+vehement, yet civil. "I suppose he did not think it necessary to
+write the order, since you know me."</p>
+<p>"The regulations, M. de Lorraine&mdash;" The officer broke off
+to demand of our escort, "Well, what now?"</p>
+<p>I went straight up to him, not waiting permission, and held out
+my paper.</p>
+<p>"An order, if it please you, monsieur, for the Comte de Mar's
+release."</p>
+<p>Lucas's hand went out to snatch and crumple it; then his
+clenched fist dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would
+blacken the paper with their fire.</p>
+<p>"Just that&mdash;the requisition for M. de Mar's release," the
+officer told him, looking up from it. "All perfectly regular and in
+order. In five minutes, M. de Lorraine, the Comte de Mar shall be
+before you. You may have all the conversation you wish."</p>
+<p>Lucas's face was as blank as the wall.</p>
+<p>"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," the
+officer went on to explain, evidently not caring to offend the
+general's nephew. "Without the written order I could not admit your
+brother of Guise. But now you can have all the conversation you
+desire with M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of
+his brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his
+Grace," and, barely bowing, went from the room.</p>
+<p>"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard.
+That Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of
+seeing the Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me.
+I knew he had come to stab M. &Eacute;tienne in his cell. It was
+his last chance, and he had missed it. I feared him no longer, for
+I believed in Mayenne's faith. My master once released, Lucas could
+not hurt him.</p>
+<p>What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of
+Mayenne's good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room,
+where we caught sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk
+or two behind them, and in a moment appeared again with a key.</p>
+<p>"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office
+myself," he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.</p>
+<p>This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his
+way to pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go
+with you?"</p>
+<p>He looked at me a moment, surprised.</p>
+<p>"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you
+like."</p>
+<p>So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the
+Comte de Mar.</p>
+<p>We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of
+heavy-barred doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the
+fonder I grew of my friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of
+these doors would shut on me. We climbed at last a steep turret
+stair winding about a huge fir trunk, lighted by slits of windows
+in the four-foot wall, and at the top turned down a dark passage to
+a door at the end, the bolts of which, invisible to me in the
+gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.</p>
+<p>The cell was small, with one high window through which I could
+see naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a
+stool, a bench that might serve as table. M. &Eacute;tienne stood
+at the window, his arm crooked around the iron bars, gazing out
+over the roofs of Paris.</p>
+<p>He wheeled about at the door's creaking.</p>
+<p>"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me
+behind the keeper.</p>
+<p>"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set you
+free."</p>
+<p>I dashed in past the officer, snatching my lord's hand to
+kiss.</p>
+<p>"It's true, monsieur! You're free! It's all settled with
+Mayenne. Monsieur's seen him; he sets you free. He said, 'In
+recognizance of Wednesday night.'"</p>
+<p>Incredulous joy flashed over his face, to give way to belief
+without joy.</p>
+<p>"Now I know she's married."</p>
+<p>"Nothing of the sort!" I fairly shouted at him, dancing up and
+down in my eagerness. "She's to marry M. le Comte. She's at St.
+Denis with Monsieur. She's to marry you. It's all arranged. Mayenne
+consents&mdash;the king&mdash;everybody. It's all settled. She
+marries you."</p>
+<p>Preposterous as it seemed, he could not discredit my fervour. He
+followed us out of the cell and through the fortress in a radiant
+daze. He half believed himself dreaming, I think, and feared to
+speak lest his happiness should melt. I fancied even that he walked
+lightly and gingerly, as if the slightest unwary movement might
+break the spell. Not till we were actually in the open door of the
+court, face to face with freedom, did he rouse himself to
+acknowledge the thing real. With a joyous laugh, he turned to the
+keeper:</p>
+<p>"M. de La Motte, you should employ your leisure in writing down
+your reflections, like the Chevalier de Montaigne. You could give
+us a trenchant essay on the Ingratitude of Man. Here are you host
+of the biggest inn in Paris&mdash;a pile more imposing than the
+Louvre itself. Your hospitality is so eager that you insist on
+entertaining me, so lavish that you lodge me for nothing, would
+keep me without a murmur till the end of my life. Yet I, ingrate
+that I am, depart without a thank you!"</p>
+<p>"They don't leave in such case that they can very well thank me,
+most of my guests," La Motte answered, with a dry smile. "You are a
+fortunate man, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"M. le Comte, will you come quietly with me to the St. Denis
+gate?" d'Auvray asked him. "Or must I borrow a guard from M. de La
+Motte?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne's whole face was smiling; not his lips alone,
+but his eyes. Even his skin and hair seemed to have taken on a
+brighter look. He glanced at d'Auvray in surprise at the absurd
+question.</p>
+<p>"I will come like a lamb, M. le Mousquetaire."</p>
+<p>We saluted La Motte and walked merrily out into the Place
+Bastille. I think I never felt so grand as when I passed through
+the noble sally-port, the soldiers making no motion to hinder us,
+but all saluting as if we owned the place. It had its advantage,
+this making friends with Mayenne.</p>
+<p>The first thing my lord did, still in the shadow of the prison,
+was to come to terms with d'Auvray.</p>
+<p>"See here, my friend, why must you put yourself to the fatigue
+of escorting me to the gate?"</p>
+<p>"Orders, monsieur. The general-duke wants to know that you get
+into no mischief between here and the gate. You are banished, you
+understand, from Paris."</p>
+<p>"I pledge you my word I shall make no attempt to elude my fate.
+I go straight to the gate. But, with all politeness to you, Sir
+Musketeer, I could dispense with your company."</p>
+<p>"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed,"
+d'Auvray quoted the keeper's words, which seemed to have impressed
+him. "However, M. le Comte, if I had something to look at, I could
+walk ten paces behind you and look at it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, if it is a question of something to play with!" M.
+&Eacute;tienne laughed.</p>
+<p>D'Auvray was provided with toys, and M. &Eacute;tienne linked
+arms with me, the soldier out of ear-shot behind us. He followed
+till we were in the Rue St. Denis, when, waving his hand in
+farewell, he turned his steps with the pious consciousness of duty
+done. Only I looked back to see it; monsieur had forgotten his
+existence.</p>
+<p>"I am not proud; I don't mind being marched through the streets
+by a musketeer," M. &Eacute;tienne explained as we started; "but I
+can't talk before him. Tell me, F&eacute;lix, the story, if you
+would have me live."</p>
+<p>And I told him, till we almost ran blindly into the tower of the
+St. Denis gate.</p>
+<p>We learned of the warder that M. de St. Quentin had recently
+passed out, but that nothing had been seen of his equery. No steeds
+were here for us.</p>
+<p>"Well, then, we'll go have a glass. But if Vigo doesn't come
+soon, by my faith, I'll walk to St. Denis!"</p>
+<p>But that promised glass was never drunk, nor were we to set out
+at once for St. Denis; for in the door of the wine-shop we met
+Lucas.</p>
+<p>I had dismissed him from thought, as something out of the
+reckoning, dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken
+sword. I thought him gone out of our lives when he went out of
+prison&mdash;gone forever, like last year's snow. And here within
+the hour we encountered him, a naked sword in his hand, a smile on
+his lips. He said, in the flower of his easy insolence:</p>
+<p>"Tuesday I told you our hour would come. It is here."</p>
+<p>"At your service," quoth my lord.</p>
+<p>"Then it needs not to slap your face?"</p>
+<p>"You insult me safely, Lucas. You have but one life. That is
+forfeit, be you courteous."</p>
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+<p>"I know it."</p>
+<p>Lucas held out the bare sword, hilt toward us.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur had a box for weapon yesterday, but as I prefer to
+fight in the established way, I ventured to provide him with a
+sword."</p>
+<p>"Thoughtful of you, Lucas. Is this the make of sword you elect
+to be killed with?"</p>
+<p>He was bending the blade to try its temper. Lucas unsheathed his
+own.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar may have his choice."</p>
+<p>M. de Mar professed himself satisfied with the blade given
+him.</p>
+<p>"Have you summoned your seconds, Lucas?"</p>
+<p>Lucas raised his eyebrows.</p>
+<p>"Is that necessary? I thought we might settle our affairs
+without delay. I confess myself impatient."</p>
+<p>"Your sentiments for once are mine."</p>
+<p>"It is understood you bring your spaniel with you. He will watch
+that I do not spring on you before you are ready," Lucas said, with
+a fine sneer.</p>
+<p>"And who is to watch me?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are
+unnecessary. It is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy
+spot."</p>
+<p>"The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting
+place for you to die."</p>
+<p>"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas
+amended.</p>
+<p>Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on
+our way to that of the Coupejarrets.</p>
+<p>Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul
+play. I had suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord,
+who knew, had accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I
+had felt sure of a trap. But his inviting my presence at the place
+of our choice smelt like honesty.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne remarked casually to me:</p>
+<p>"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you
+thought you saw there&mdash;Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What
+ails you, lad? Footsteps on your grave?"</p>
+<p>But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of
+his. For of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not
+Lucas, but M. &Eacute;tienne. What if the vision were, after all,
+the thing I had at first believed it&mdash;a portent? An appearance
+not of those who had died by steel, but of those who must. One,
+two, and now the third.</p>
+<p>Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I
+had seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no
+omen, but a mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?</p>
+<p>And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress
+as a Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this
+house lay under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save
+to our tombs.</p>
+<p>We entered the well-remembered little passage, the
+well-remembered court, where shards of glass still strewed the
+pavement. Some one&mdash;the gendarmes, I fancy, when they took
+away Pontou&mdash;had put a heavy padlock on the door Lucas and
+Grammont left swinging.</p>
+<p>"We go in by your postern, F&eacute;lix," my master said. "M.
+Lucas, I confess I prefer that you go first."</p>
+<p>Lucas put his back to the wall.</p>
+<p>"Why go farther, M. le Comte?"</p>
+<p>"Do you long for interruption'?"</p>
+<p>"We were not noticed coming in. The street was quiet."</p>
+<p>He crossed the court abruptly and went down the alley to look
+into the street.</p>
+<p>"Not a soul in sight," he said, coming back. "I think we shall
+not be interrupted. Still, it is wise to use every care. We will
+fight, if you like, in the house."</p>
+<p>He opened with his knife the fastened shutter, and leaped
+lightly in. Monsieur followed. I, the last, was for closing the
+shutter, but he stopped me.</p>
+<p>"No; leave it wide. I have no fancy for a walk in pitch-darkness
+with M. Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Do we fight here?" Lucas asked, facing us in the wide, square
+hall. "We can let in more light."</p>
+<p>"You seem anxious, my friend, to call attention to your
+whereabouts. As I am host, I designate the fighting-ground.
+Up-stairs, if you please."</p>
+<p>"I suppose you insist on my walking first," Lucas sneered.</p>
+<p>"I request it, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"With all the willingness in the world," his rogue-ship
+answered, setting foot straightway on the stair and mounting
+steadily, never turning to see how near we followed, or what we did
+with our hands. His trust made me ashamed of our lack of it. I
+almost believed we did him injustice. Yet at heart I could not
+bring myself to credit him with any fair dealing.</p>
+<p>We went up one flight, up two. We had left behind us the
+twilight of the lower story, had not reached dawn again at the top.
+We walked in blackness. Suddenly I halted.</p>
+<p>"Monsieur!"</p>
+<p>"What?"</p>
+<p>"I heard a noise."</p>
+<p>"Of course you did. The place is full of rats."</p>
+<p>"It was no rat. It was footsteps."</p>
+<p>We all three held still.</p>
+<p>"There, monsieur. Don't you hear?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing, F&eacute;lix; your teeth are chattering. Cross
+yourself and come on."</p>
+<p>But I could not stand it.</p>
+<p>"I'll go back and see, monsieur."</p>
+<p>"No," Lucas said, striding back from the foot of the next
+flight. "I will go."</p>
+<p>We saw a glint in the gloom, monsieur's bared sword.</p>
+<p>"You will go neither one of you. Hush! If we show ourselves,
+there'll be no duel to-day."</p>
+<p>We kept still, all three leaning over the banister, peering down
+to where the white tiles picked themselves out of the floor of the
+hall far beneath. We could see them better than we could see one
+another. All was silent. Not so much as a rustle came up from
+below. Suddenly Lucas made a step or two, as if to pass us. M.
+&Eacute;tienne wheeled about, raising his sword toward the spot
+where from his footfalls we supposed Lucas to be.</p>
+<p>"You show an eagerness to get away from me, M. de Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"Not in the least, M. de Mar. This alarm is but F&eacute;lix's
+poltroonery, yet it prompts me to go down and close the
+shutter."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary, you will go up with me. F&eacute;lix will
+close the shutter."</p>
+<p>They confronted each other, vague shapes in the darkness, each
+with drawn sword. Then Lucas raised his in salute.</p>
+<p>"As you will; so be some one sees to it."</p>
+<p>"Go, F&eacute;lix."</p>
+<p>Lucas first, they mounted the last flight of stairs, and their
+footsteps passed along the corridor to the room at the back. I, as
+I was ordered, set my face down the stairs.</p>
+<p>They might mock me as they liked, but I could not get it out of
+my head that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping
+heart, I stole from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the
+flight. I heard plainly the sound of moving above me, and of
+voices; but below not a whisper, not a creak. It must have been my
+silly fears. Resolved to choke them, I planted my feet boldly on
+the next flight, and descended humming, to prove my ease, the
+rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch. Suddenly, from not three feet off,
+came the soft singing:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>Mirth, my love, and Folly dear</i>&mdash;</p>
+</div>
+<p>My knees knocked together, and the breath fluttered in my
+throat. It seemed the darkness itself had given tongue. Then came a
+low laugh and the muttered words:</p>
+<p>"Here we are, M. de Lorraine. Are you ready?"</p>
+<p>There was a stir of feet on the landing before me, behind the
+voice. The house, then, was full of Lucas's cutthroats, the first
+of them Peyrot. In the height of my terror, I remembered that M.
+&Eacute;tienne's life, too, depended on my wits, and I kept them. I
+whispered, for whispering voices are hard to tell apart:</p>
+<p>"Not yet. The two of them are up there. Keep quiet, and I'll
+send the boy down. When you've finished him, come up."</p>
+<p>"As you say, monsieur. It is your job."</p>
+<p>I turned, scarce able to believe my luck, and, not daring to
+run, walked up-stairs again. Prick my ears as I might, I heard no
+movement after me. Actually, I had fooled Peyrot. I had gone down
+to meet my death, and a tune had saved me.</p>
+<p>When I reached the uppermost landing, I rushed along the passage
+and into the room, flinging the door shut, locking and bolting
+it.</p>
+<p>They had not begun to fight, but had busied themselves clearing
+the space of all obstacles. The table was pushed against the wall
+in the corner by the door; the chairs were heaped one on another at
+the end of the room. Both shutters were wide open. M.
+&Eacute;tienne, bareheaded, in his shirt, stood at guard. Lucas was
+kneeling on the floor, picking up with scrupulous care some bits of
+a broken plate. He sprang to his feet at sight of me.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" cried M. &Eacute;tienne.</p>
+<p>"Cutthroats. They'll be here in a minute."</p>
+<p>Even as I spoke, I heard tramping on the stairs below. My slam
+of the door had warned them that something was wrong.</p>
+<p>"Was that your delay?" M. &Eacute;tienne shouted, springing at
+his foe.</p>
+<p>"I play to win!" Lucas answered, smiling.</p>
+<p>The blades met; the men circled about and about. Lucas, though
+he preferred to murder, knew how to duel.</p>
+<p>We were doomed. With monsieur's sword for only weapon, we could
+never hope to pass the gang. In another minute they would be here
+to batter the door down and end us. Our consolation lay in killing
+Lucas first. Yet as I watched, I feared that M. &Eacute;tienne, in
+the brief moments that remained to him, could not conquer him, so
+shrewd and strong was Lucas's fence. Must the scoundrel win? I
+started forward to play Pontou's trick. Lucas sought to murder us.
+Why not we him?</p>
+<p>One flash from my lord's eyes, and I retreated in despair. For I
+knew that did I touch Lucas, M. &Eacute;tienne would let fall his
+sword, let Lucas kill him. And the bravos were on the last
+flight.</p>
+<p>Was there no escape? There were three doors in the room. One led
+to the passage, one to the closet, the third&mdash;I dashed through
+to find myself in a large empty chamber, a door wide open giving on
+the passage. Through it I could see the dusky figures of four men
+running up the stairs.</p>
+<p>I was across the room like an arrow, and got the door shut and
+bolted before they could reach the landing. The next moment some
+one flung against it. It stood firm. Delaying only a moment to
+shake it, three of the four I could hear run to the farther door,
+whence issued the noise of the swords.</p>
+<p>I, inside the wall, ran back too. The combat still raged.
+Neither, that I could see, had gained the least advantage. Outside,
+the murderers dashed themselves upon the door.</p>
+<p>I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed
+myself, pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the
+panels a little firmer.</p>
+<p>Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second
+chamber. Its shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no
+other door to the room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but
+spanned a foot above the fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest
+sweep that ever wielded broom could not have squeezed between
+them.</p>
+<p>In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it
+was, I thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I
+stuck my head out. It was the same window where I had stood when
+Grammont seized me. There, not ten feet away, eight at the most,
+but a little above me, was the casement of my garret in the Amour
+de Dieu. Would it be possible to jump and catch the sill? If I did,
+I could scarce pull myself in.</p>
+<p>I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu.
+And there beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me.
+There was no mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my
+lungs:</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques!"</p>
+<p>He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite
+his amazement, I saw that he knew me.</p>
+<p>"Ma&icirc;tre Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out!
+Help us for the love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the
+window there!"</p>
+<p>For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the
+inn.</p>
+<p>I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of
+steel. White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn,
+unflagging, ungaining.</p>
+<p>Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and
+rending, blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were
+fighting out there, that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I
+learned better. Despairing of kicking down the door, they were
+tearing out a piece of stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not
+long stand against that.</p>
+<p>I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost,
+lost!</p>
+<p>Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's
+victory, he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the
+back room. But it was Lucas who lay prone.</p>
+<p>"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would
+not till with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de
+gr&acirc;ce.</p>
+<p>Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great
+splinter six inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the
+opening. A hand came through to wrench it away.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife
+through the hand, nailing it to the wood. On the instant he
+recognized its owner.</p>
+<p>"Good morning, Peyrot. We've recovered the packet."</p>
+<p>Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed
+him into the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the
+oaths of the bravos a good spur. And, St. Quentin be thanked, there
+in the garret window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a
+ladder to us.</p>
+<p>"Go, monsieur! There are four behind us. Go!"</p>
+<p>"You first!"</p>
+<p>But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran
+back to guard the door. He had the sense to see there was no good
+arguing. Crying, "Quick after me, F&eacute;lix!" he crawled out on
+the ladder.</p>
+<p>Peyrot was released. Another blow from the ram, and the door
+fell to finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over
+a dam. I darted to the window. M. &Eacute;tienne was in the garret,
+helping hold the ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too
+eagerly. Like a lath it snapped.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2>
+<h3><i>"The very pattern of a king."</i></h3>
+<div class="par"><img src="images/letter-t.png" width="30%" alt=""
+title="" /></div>
+<p>he next world appeared to be strangely like this. I found myself
+lying on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting
+comfortably on some one's shoulder, while some one else poured wine
+down my gullet. Presently I discovered that Ma&icirc;tre Jacques's
+was the ministering hand, M. &Eacute;tienne's the shoulder. After
+all, this was not heaven, but still Paris.</p>
+<p>I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's
+best Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he
+stopped, and I said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and
+quavery:</p>
+<p>"What happened?"</p>
+<p>"Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"</p>
+<p>My lord's voice was as unsteady as mine.</p>
+<p>"But the ladder?" I murmured.</p>
+<p>"The ladder broke. But you had hold beyond the break. You hung
+on till we seized you. And then you swooned."</p>
+<p>"What a baby!" I said, getting to my feet. "But the men,
+monsieur? Peyrot?"</p>
+<p>"I think we've seen the last of those worthies. They took to
+their heels when you escaped them."</p>
+<p>"But, monsieur, they've gone to inform! You'll be taken for
+killing Lucas."</p>
+<p>"I doubt it. Themselves smell too strong of blood to dare bruit
+the matter. Natheless, if you can walk now, we'll make good time to
+the gate."</p>
+<p>But for all his haste, he would not start till I had had some
+bread and soup down in the kitchen.</p>
+<p>"We must take good care of you, boy F&eacute;lix," he said. "For
+where the St. Quentins would be without you, I tremble to
+think."</p>
+<p>I set out a new man. In three steps, it seemed to me, we had
+reached the city gate, to find the way blocked by a company of
+twenty or thirty horse, the St. Quentin uniform flaunting gay in
+the sun. The nearest trooper set up a shout at sight of us, when
+Vigo, coming out suddenly from behind a nag, took M. le Comte in
+his big embrace. He released him immediately, looking immensely
+startled at his own demonstration.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne laughed out at him.</p>
+<p>"Be more careful, I beg you, Vigo! You will make me imagine
+myself of some importance."</p>
+<p>"I thought you swallowed up," Vigo growled. "You had been
+here&mdash;I couldn't get a trace of you."</p>
+<p>"I was killing Lucas."</p>
+<p>"Sacr&eacute;! He's dead?"</p>
+<p>"Dead."</p>
+<p>"That's the best morning's work ever you did, M.
+&Eacute;tienne."</p>
+<p>"Have you horse for us, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"Of course. Some of the men will walk. I suppose we're leaving
+Paris to buy you out of the Bastille?"</p>
+<p>"Not worth it, eh, Vigo?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Vigo, gravely&mdash;"yes, M. &Eacute;tienne. You are
+worth it."</p>
+<p>Vigo's troop was but slow-moving, as some of the horses carried
+double, some were loaded with chattels. M. &Eacute;tienne and I, on
+the duke's blood-chargers, soon left the cavalcade behind us.
+Before I knew it, we were halted at the outpost of the camp. My
+lord gave his name.</p>
+<p>"To be sure!" cried the sentry. "We've orders about you. You
+dine with the king, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Mordieu! I do?"</p>
+<p>"You do. Orders are to take you to him out of hand.
+Captain!"</p>
+<p>The officer lounged out of the tavern door.</p>
+<p>"Captain, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Oh, aye!" cried the captain, coming forward with brisk
+interest. "M. de Mar, you're the child of luck. You dine with the
+king."</p>
+<p>"I am the child of bewilderment, captain."</p>
+<p>"And you've not too much time to recover from it, M. le Comte.
+You are to go straight to the king."</p>
+<p>"I may go to M. de St. Quentin's lodgings first?"</p>
+<p>"No, monsieur; straight to the king."</p>
+<p>"What! in my shirt?"</p>
+<p>"I can't help it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the
+king did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order
+was to fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our
+king's no stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to
+lack for a coat."</p>
+<p>"I might wash my face, then."</p>
+<p>"Certainly. No harm in that."</p>
+<p>So M. &Eacute;tienne went into the tournebride and washed his
+face. And that was all the toilet he made for audience with the
+greatest king in the world.</p>
+<p>"You'll ride to Monsieur's," he commanded me, when the captain
+answered:</p>
+<p>"No; he goes with you, monsieur, if he's the boy Choux, Troux,
+whatever it is."</p>
+<p>"Broux&mdash;F&eacute;lix Broux!" I cried, a-quiver.</p>
+<p>"That's it. You go to the king, too. Another luck-child."</p>
+<p>I thought so indeed. We followed the sentry through the town in
+a waking dream, content to let him do with us as he would. He did
+the talking, explained to the grandees in the king's hall our names
+and errand. One of them led us up the stairs and knocked at a
+closed door.</p>
+<p>"Enter!"</p>
+<p>It was Henry's own voice. I pinched monsieur's hand to tell him.
+Our guide opened the door a crack.</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, Sire, and his servant."</p>
+<p>"Good, La Force. Let them enter."</p>
+<p>M. La Force fairly pushed us over the sill, so abashed were we,
+and shut the door upon us.</p>
+<p>The king was alone. But before this simple gentleman in the
+rusty black, M. &Eacute;tienne caught his breath as he had not done
+before a court in full pomp. He had seen courts, but he had never
+seen the first soldier of Europe. He advanced three steps into the
+room, and forgot to kneel, forgot to lower his gaze in the
+presence, but merely stared wide-eyed at majesty, as majesty stared
+at him. Thus they stood surveying each other from top to toe in the
+frankest curiosity, till at length the king spoke:</p>
+<p>"M. de Mar, you look less like a carpet-knight than I
+expected."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne came to himself, to kneel at once.</p>
+<p>"Sire, I blush for my looks. But your zealous soldiers would not
+let me from their clutches. I am just come from killing Paul de
+Lorraine."</p>
+<p>"What! the spy Lucas?"</p>
+<p>"Himself. And when I left the spot by way of the window in some
+haste, I was not expecting this honour, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Nor do I think you deserve it, ventre-saint-gris!" the king
+cried. "Though you come hatless and coat-less to-day, you have been
+a long time on the road, M. de Mar."</p>
+<p>"Aye, Sire."</p>
+<p>"You might as well have stayed away as come at this hour. Marry,
+all's over! Go hang yourself, my breathless follower! We have
+fought all our great battles, and you were not there!"</p>
+<p>Scarlet under the lash, M. &Eacute;tienne, kneeling, bent his
+eyes on the ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he
+felt it incumbent to stammer something:</p>
+<p>"That is my life's misfortune, Sire."</p>
+<p>"Misfortune, sirrah? Misfortune you call it? Let me hear you say
+fault."</p>
+<p>"I dare not, Sire," M. &Eacute;tienne murmured. "It was of
+course your Majesty's fault. We cannot serve heretics, we St.
+Quentins."</p>
+<p>"Ventre-saint-gris! You think well of yourself, young Mar."</p>
+<p>"I must, Sire, when your Majesty invites me to dinner."</p>
+<p>The king burst into laughter, and his temper, which I believe
+was all a play, vanished to the winds.</p>
+<p>"Pardieu! you're a glib fellow, Mar. But I didn't invite you to
+dinner for your own sake, little as you can imagine it. So you
+would have joined my flag four years ago, had I not been a stinking
+heretic?"</p>
+<p>"Aye, Sire, I needs must have. Therefore am I everlastingly
+beholden to your Majesty for remaining so long a Huguenot."</p>
+<p>"How now, cockerel?"</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne faltered a moment. He was not burdened by
+shyness, but before the king's sharp glance he underwent a cold
+terror lest he had been too free with his tongue. However, there
+was naught to do but go on.</p>
+<p>"Sire, had I fought under your banner like a man, at Dieppe and
+Arques and Ivry, M. de Mayenne had never dreamed of marrying his
+ward to me. I had never known her."</p>
+<p>"The loveliest demoiselle I ever saw!" the king cried. "I shall
+marry her to one of my staunchest supporters."</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<a name="478.jpg"></a> <a href="images/478.jpg"><img src=
+"images/478.jpg" width="45%" alt="" title="" /></a><br />
+<b>THE MEETING.</b>
+<br /></div>
+<p>The smile was washed from M. &Eacute;tienne's lips. He turned as
+white as linen. In one moment his youth seemed to go from him. The
+king, unnoting, picked a parchment off the table.</p>
+<p>"To one of my bravest captains. Here's his commission, my
+lad."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne stared up from the writing into the king's
+laughing face.</p>
+<p>"I, Sire? I?"</p>
+<p>"You, Mar, you. You are my staunch supporter, perhaps?"</p>
+<p>"Your horse-boy, an you ask it, Sire!"</p>
+<p>He pressed his lips to the king's hand, great, helpless tears
+dripping down upon it.</p>
+<p>"If I ever desert you, I am a dog, Sire! But the fighting is not
+all done. I will capture you a flag yet."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps. I much fear me there's life in Mayenne still."</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne, not venturing to rise, yet lifted beseeching
+eyes to the king's.</p>
+<p>"What! you want to get away from me, ventre-saint-gris!"</p>
+<p>My lord, who wanted precisely that, had no choice but to protest
+that nothing was farther from his thoughts.</p>
+<p>"Stuff!" the king exclaimed. "You're in a sweat to be gone, you
+unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with
+the king, and your one itch is to escape the tedium!"</p>
+<p>"Sire&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Peace! You are guilty, sirrah. Take your punishment!"</p>
+<p>He darted across the room, and throwing open an inner door,
+called gently, "Mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, Sire," she answered, coming to the threshold.</p>
+<p>The peasant lass was gone forever. The great lady, regal in
+satins, stood before us. She bent on the king a little, eager,
+questioning glance; then she caught sight of her lover. Faith, had
+the sun gone out, the room would have been brilliant with the light
+of her face.</p>
+<p>M. &Eacute;tienne sprang up and toward her. And she, pushing by
+the king as if he had been the door-post, went to him. They stood
+before each other, neither touching nor speaking, but only looking
+one at the other like two blind folk by a heavenly miracle restored
+to sight.</p>
+<p>"How now, children? Am I not a model monarch? Do you swear by me
+forever? Do you vouch me the very pattern of a king?"</p>
+<p>Answer he got none. They heard nothing, knew nothing, but each
+other. The slighted king chuckled and, beckoning me, withdrew to
+his cabinet.</p>
+<p>So here an end. For if Henry of France leave them, you and I may
+not stay.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,14678 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Helmet of Navarre
+
+Author: Bertha Runkle
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2004 [EBook #14219]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELMET OF NAVARRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover]
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+Bertha Runkle.
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+[Illustration: THE FLORENTINES IN THE HOTEL DE MAYENNE]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+BY BERTHA RUNKLE
+
+
+THE HELMET OF
+
+NAVARRE
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRE CASTAIGNE
+
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+NEW YORK 1901
+
+
+
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+     Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war,
+     And be your oriflamme to-day the Helmet of Navarre.
+
+                             LORD MACAULAY'S "IVRY."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+     I  A FLASH OF LIGHTNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
+    II  AT THE AMOUR DE DIEU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
+   III  M. LE DUC IS WELL GUARDED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
+    IV  THE THREE MEN IN THE WINDOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
+     V  RAPIERS AND A VOW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  37
+    VI  A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  51
+   VII  A DIVIDED DUTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  62
+  VIII  CHARLES-ANDRE-ETIENNE-MARIE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  74
+    IX  THE HONOUR OF ST. QUENTIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  85
+     X  LUCAS AND "LE GAUCHER" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  96
+    XI  VIGO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
+   XII  THE COMTE DE MAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
+  XIII  MADEMOISELLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
+   XIV  IN THE ORATORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
+    XV  MY LORD MAYENNE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
+   XVI  MAYENNE'S WARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
+  XVII  "I'LL WIN MY LADY!". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
+ XVIII  TO THE BASTILLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
+   XIX  TO THE HOTEL DE LORRAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
+    XX  "ON GUARD, MONSIEUR" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
+   XXI  A CHANCE ENCOUNTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
+  XXII  THE SIGNET OF THE KING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
+ XXIII  THE CHEVALIER OF THE TOURNELLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
+  XXIV  THE FLORENTINES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
+   XXV  A DOUBLE MASQUERADE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
+  XXVI  WITHIN THE SPIDER'S WEB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
+ XXVII  THE COUNTERSIGN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
+XXVIII  ST. DENIS--AND NAVARRE!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
+  XXIX  THE TWO DUKES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
+   XXX  MY YOUNG LORD SETTLES SCORES WITH TWO FOES AT ONCE . . . . 440
+  XXXI  "THE VERY PATTERN OF A KING" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+THE FLORENTINES IN THE HOTEL DE MAYENNE. . . . . . . .  _Frontispiece_
+"WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  87
+"IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE ALLEY". . . 117
+"I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY". . . . . . . . 149
+MLLE. DE MONTLUC AND FELIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY. . . . . . . . . . 169
+"SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE FED". . . . . . 205
+"HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH". . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
+"WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP" . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
+AT THE "BONNE FEMME" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
+"IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY" . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
+ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
+THE MEETING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE
+
+
+
+
+THE HELMET OF NAVARRE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_A flash of lightning._
+
+
+At the stair-foot the landlord stopped me. "Here, lad, take a candle.
+The stairs are dark, and, since I like your looks, I would not have you
+break your neck."
+
+"And give the house a bad name," I said.
+
+"No fear of that; my house has a good name. There is no fairer inn in
+all Paris. And your chamber is a good chamber, though you will have
+larger, doubtless, when you are Minister of Finance."
+
+This raised a laugh among the tavern idlers, for I had been bragging a
+bit of my prospects. I retorted:
+
+"When I am, Maitre Jacques, look out for a rise in your taxes."
+
+The laugh was turned on mine host, and I retired with the honours of
+that encounter. And though the stairs were the steepest I ever climbed,
+I had the breath and the spirit to whistle all the way up. What mattered
+it that already I ached in every bone, that the stair was long and my
+bed but a heap of straw in the garret of a mean inn in a poor quarter? I
+was in Paris, the city of my dreams!
+
+I am a Broux of St. Quentin. The great world has never heard of the
+Broux? No matter; they have existed these hundreds of years, Masters of
+the Forest, and faithful servants of the dukes of St. Quentin. The great
+world has heard of the St. Quentins? I warrant you! As loudly as it has
+of Sully and Villeroi, Tremouille and Biron. That is enough for the
+Broux.
+
+I was brought up to worship the saints and M. le Duc, and I loved and
+revered them alike, by faith, for M. le Duc, at court, seemed as far
+away from us as the saints in heaven. But the year after King Henry III
+was murdered, Monsieur came to live on his estate, to make high and low
+love him for himself.
+
+In that bloody time, when the King of Navarre and the two Leagues were
+tearing our poor France asunder, M. le Duc found himself between the
+devil and the deep sea. He was no friend to the League; for years he had
+stood between the king, his master, and the machinations of the Guises.
+On the other hand, he was no friend to the Huguenots. "To seat a heretic
+on the throne of France were to deny God," he said. Therefore he came
+home to St. Quentin, where he abode in quiet for some three years, to
+the great wonderment of all the world.
+
+Had he been a cautious man, a man who looked a long way ahead, his
+compeers would have understood readily enough that he was waiting to see
+how the cat would jump, taking no part in the quarrel lest he should
+mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's
+character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was
+known to all as a hotspur--a man who acted quickly and seldom counted
+the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of
+the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist
+his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too
+deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a
+pretty word. If he could not find his cause honest, he would not draw
+his sword, though all the curs in the land called him coward.
+
+Thus he stayed alone in the chateau for a long, irksome three years.
+Monsieur was not of a reflective mind, content to stand aside and watch
+while other men fought out great issues. It was a weary procession of
+days to him. His only son, a lad a few years older than I, shared none
+of his father's scruples and refused point-blank to follow him into
+exile. He remained in Paris, where they knew how to be gay in spite of
+sieges. Therefore I, the Forester's son, whom Monsieur took for a page,
+had a chance to come closer to my lord and be more to him than a mere
+servant, and I loved him as the dogs did. Aye, and admired him for a
+fortitude almost more than human, in that he could hold himself passive
+here in farthest Picardie, whilst in Normandie and Ile de France battles
+raged and towns fell and captains won glory.
+
+At length, in the opening of the year 1593, M. le Duc began to have a
+frequent visitor, a gentleman in no wise remarkable save for that he was
+accorded long interviews with Monsieur. After these visits my lord was
+always in great spirits, putting on frisky airs, like a stallion when he
+is led out of the stable. I looked for something to happen, and it was
+no surprise to me when M. le Duc announced one day, quite without
+warning, that he was done with St. Quentin and would be off in the
+morning for Mantes. I was in the seventh heaven of joy when he added
+that he should take me with him. I knew the King of Navarre was at
+Mantes--at last we were going to make history! There was no bound to my
+golden dreams, no limit to my future.
+
+But my house of cards suffered a rude tumble, and by no hand but my
+father's. He came to Monsieur, and, presuming on an old servitor's
+privilege, begged him to leave me at home.
+
+"I have lost two sons in Monsieur's service," he said: "Jean, hunting in
+this forest, and Blaise, in the fray at Blois. I have never grudged them
+to Monsieur. But Felix is all I have left."
+
+Thus it came about that I was left behind, hidden in the hay-loft, when
+my duke rode away. I could not watch his going.
+
+Though the days passed drearily, yet they passed. Time does pass, at
+length, even when one is young. It was July. The King of Navarre had
+moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most folk thought he
+would never win the city, the hotbed of the League. Of M. le Duc we
+heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller, putting up at the inn
+in the village, told a startling tale. The Duke of St. Quentin, though
+known to have been at Mantes and strongly suspected of espousing
+Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly into Paris and opened his hotel! It
+was madness--madness sheer and stark. Thus far his religion had saved
+him, yet any day he might fall under the swords of the Leaguers.
+
+My father came, after hearing this tale, to where I was lying on the
+grass, the warm summer night, thinking hard thoughts of him for keeping
+me at home and spoiling my chances in life. He gave me straightway the
+whole of the story. Long before it was over I had sprung to my feet.
+
+"Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?" he said.
+
+"Father!" was all I could gasp.
+
+"Then you shall go," he answered. That was not bad for an old man who
+had lost two sons for Monsieur!
+
+I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart. I can tell
+naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end of it lay
+Paris. I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered without a
+passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly so strict as
+Mayenne supposed. I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry, in no guise to
+present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no farther that night
+than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue des Coupejarrets.
+
+Far below my garret window lay the street--a trench between the high
+houses. Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the house
+opposite. To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it seemed the
+desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the rabbits in a warren.
+So ingenious were they at contriving to waste no inch of open space
+that the houses, standing at the base but a scant street's width apart,
+ever jutted out farther at each story till they looked to be fairly
+toppling together. I could see into the windows up and down the way; see
+the people move about within; hear opposite neighbours call to each
+other. But across from my aery were no lights and no people, for that
+house was shuttered tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as
+expressionless as a blind face. I marvelled how it came to stand empty
+in that teeming quarter.
+
+Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and was
+asleep before I could shut my eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Crash! Crash! Crash!
+
+I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was bombarding
+Paris. Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the noise was thunder.
+
+From the window I peered into floods of rain. The peals died away.
+Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in
+astonishment. For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid
+vision of three men in the window.
+
+Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.
+
+I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next flash.
+When it came it showed me the window barred as before. Flash followed
+flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain. The shutter
+remained closed as if it had never been opened. Sleep rolled over me in
+a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_At the Amour de Dieu._
+
+
+When I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the room,
+glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared at them,
+sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the thunder-storm and the
+open shutter and the three men. I jumped up and ran to the window. The
+shutters opposite were closed; the house just as I had seen it first,
+save for the long streaks of wet down the wall. The street below was one
+vast puddle. At all events, the storm was no dream, as I half believed
+the vision to be.
+
+I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was deserted save
+for Maitre Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of me whether I took myself
+for a prince, that I lay in bed till all decent folk had been hours
+about their business, and then expected breakfast. However, he brought
+me a meal, and I made no complaint that it was a poor one.
+
+"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.
+
+He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed over on
+the table.
+
+"What neighbours?"
+
+"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep them
+open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said airily. "Last
+night I saw three men in the window opposite mine."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is how you
+came to see visions."
+
+"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for that,
+let me tell you, Maitre Jacques."
+
+"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no one has
+lived in that house these twenty years."
+
+Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head over
+night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So, with a
+fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:
+
+"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"
+
+He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see that no one
+was by, leaned across the table, up to me.
+
+"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you
+first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted."
+
+"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.
+
+"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre--you know naught of that:
+you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy. But I was
+here, and I know. A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day. The
+gutters ran blood."
+
+"And that house--what happened in that house?"
+
+"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Bethune," he
+answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice. "They were
+all put to the sword--the whole household. It was Guise's work. The Duc
+de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was
+going on. Parbleu! that was a day."
+
+"Mon dieu! yes."
+
+"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different tone.
+"One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen now. But
+the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house.
+No one will live there."
+
+"And have others seen as well as I?"
+
+"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises. Folk
+might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis another matter
+with you, though, since you have had the vision."
+
+"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre dress--"
+
+"M. de Bethune and his cousins. What further? Did you hear shrieks?"
+
+"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for the
+space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute the
+shutters were closed again."
+
+"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has disturbed
+them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have lost their
+leader."
+
+I stared at him blankly, and he added:
+
+"Their Henry of Navarre."
+
+"But he is not lost. There has been no battle."
+
+"Lost to them," said Maitre Jacques, "when he turns Catholic."
+
+"Oh!" I cried.
+
+"Oh!" he mocked. "You come from the country; you don't know these
+things."
+
+"But the King of Navarre is too stiff-necked a heretic!"
+
+"Bah! Time bends the stiffest neck. Tell me this: for what do the
+learned doctors sit in council at Mantes?"
+
+"Oh," said I, bewildered, "you tell me news, Maitre Jacques."
+
+"If Henry of Navarre be not a Catholic before the month is out, spit me
+on my own jack," he answered, eying me rather keenly as he added:
+
+"It should be welcome news to you."
+
+Welcome was it; it made plain the reason Monsieur's change of base. Yet
+it was my duty to be discreet.
+
+"I am glad to hear of any heretic coming to the faith," I said.
+
+"Pshaw!" he cried. "To the devil with pretences! 'Tis an open secret
+that your patron has gone over to Navarre."
+
+"I know naught of it."
+
+"Well, pardieu! my Lord Mayenne does, then. If when he came to Paris M.
+de St. Quentin counted that the League would not know his parleyings, he
+was a fool."
+
+"His parleyings?" I echoed feebly.
+
+"Aye, the boy in the street knows he has been with Navarre. For, mark
+you, all France has been wondering these many months where St. Quentin
+was coming out. His movements do not go unnoted like a yokel's. But, i'
+faith, he is not dull; he understands that well enough. Nay, 'tis my
+belief he came into the city in pure effrontery to show them how much he
+dared. He is a bold blade, your duke. And, mon dieu! it had its effect.
+For the Leaguers have been so agape with astonishment ever since that
+they have not raised a finger against him."
+
+"Yet you do not think him safe?"
+
+"Safe, say you? Safe! Pardieu! if you walked into a cage of lions, and
+they did not in the first instant eat you, would you therefore feel
+safe? He was stark mad to come to Paris. There is no man the League
+hates more, now they know they have lost him, and no man they can afford
+so ill to spare to King Henry. A great Catholic noble, he would be meat
+and drink to the Bearnais. He was mad to come here."
+
+"And yet nothing has happened to him."
+
+"Verily, fortune favours the brave. No, nothing has happened--yet. But I
+tell you true, Felix, I had rather be the poor innkeeper of the Amour de
+Dieu than stand in M. de St. Quentin's shoes."
+
+"I was talking with the men here last night," I said. "There was not one
+but had a good word for Monsieur."
+
+"Aye, so they have. They like his pluck. And if the League kills him it
+is quite on the cards that the people will rise up and make the town
+lively. But that will not profit M. de St. Quentin if he is dead."
+
+I would not be dampened, though, by an old croaker.
+
+"Nay, maitre, if the people are with him, the League will not dare--"
+
+"There you fool yourself, my springald. If there is one thing which the
+nobles of the League neither know nor care about it is what the people
+think. They sit wrangling over their French League and their Spanish
+League, their kings and their princesses, and what this lord does and
+that lord threatens, and they give no heed at all to us--us, the people.
+But they will find out their mistake. Some day they will be taught that
+the nobles are not all of France. There will come a reckoning when more
+blood will flow in Paris than ever flowed on St. Bartholomew's day. They
+think we are chained down, do they? Pardieu! there will come a day!"
+
+I scarcely knew the man; his face was flushed, his eyes sparkling as if
+they saw more than the common room and mean street. But as I stared the
+glow faded, and he said in a lower tone:
+
+"At least, it will happen unless Henry of Navarre comes to save us from
+it. He is a good fellow, this Navarre."
+
+"They say he can never enter Paris."
+
+"They say lies. Let him but leave his heresies behind him and he can
+enter Paris to-morrow."
+
+"Mayenne does not think so."
+
+"No; but Mayenne knows little of what goes on. He does not keep an inn
+in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+He stated the fact so gravely that I had to laugh.
+
+"Laugh if you like; but I tell you, Felix Broux, my lord's
+council-chamber is not the only place where they make kings. We do it,
+too, we of the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Well," said I, "I leave you, then, to make kings. I must be off to my
+duke. What's the scot, maitre?"
+
+He dropped the politician, and was all innkeeper in a second.
+
+"A crown!" I cried in indignation. "Do you think I am made of crowns?
+Remember, I am not yet Minister of Finance."
+
+"No, but soon will be," he grinned. "Besides, what I ask is little
+enough, God knows. Do you think food is cheap in a siege?"
+
+"Then I pray Navarre may come soon and end it."
+
+"Amen to that," said old Jacques, quite gravely. "If he comes a Catholic
+it cannot be too soon."
+
+I counted out my pennies with a last grumble.
+
+"They ought to call this the Rue Coupebourses."
+
+He laughed; he could afford to, with my silver jingling in his pouch. He
+embraced me tenderly at parting, and hoped to see me again at his inn. I
+smiled to myself; I had not come to Paris--I--to stay in the Rue
+Coupejarrets!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_M. le Duc is well guarded._
+
+
+I stepped out briskly from the inn, pausing now and again to inquire my
+way to the Hotel St. Quentin, which stood, I knew, in the Quartier
+Marais, where all the grand folk lived. Once I had found the broad,
+straight Rue St. Denis, all I need do was to follow it over the hill
+down to the river-bank; my eyes were free, therefore, to stare at all
+the strange sights of the great city--markets and shops and churches and
+prisons. But most of all did I gape at the crowds in the streets. I had
+scarce realized there were so many people in the world as passed me that
+summer morning in the Town of Paris. Bewilderingly busy and gay the
+place appeared to my country eyes, though in truth at that time Paris
+was at its very worst, the spirit being well-nigh crushed out of it by
+the sieges and the iron rule of the Sixteen.
+
+I knew little enough of politics, and yet I was not so dull as not to
+see that great events must happen soon. A crisis had come. I looked at
+the people I passed who were going about their business so tranquilly.
+Every one of them must be either Mayenne's man, or Navarre's. Before a
+week was out these peaceable citizens might be using pikes for tools and
+exchanging bullets for good mornings. Whatever happened, here was I in
+Paris in the thick of it! My feet fairly danced under me; I could not
+reach the hotel soon enough. Half was I glad of Monsieur's danger, for
+it gave me chance to show what stuff I was made of. Live for him, die
+for him--whatever fate could offer I was ready for.
+
+The hotel, when at length I arrived before it, was no disappointment.
+Here one did not wait till midday to see the sun; the street was of
+decent width, and the houses held themselves back with reserve, like the
+proud gentlemen who inhabited them. Nor did one here regret his
+possession of a nose, as he was forced to do in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+Of all the mansions in the place, the Hotel St. Quentin was, in my
+opinion, the most imposing; carved and ornamented and stately, with
+gardens at the side. But there was about it none of that stir and
+liveliness one expects to see about the houses of the great. No visitors
+passed in or out, and the big iron gates were shut, as if none were
+looked for. Of a truth, the persons who visited Monsieur these days
+preferred to slip in by the postern after nightfall, as if there had
+never been a time when they were proud to be seen in his hall.
+
+Beyond the grilles a sentry, in the green and scarlet of Monsieur's
+men-at-arms, stood on guard, and I called out to him boldly.
+
+He turned at once; then looked as if the sight of me scarce repaid him.
+
+"I wish to enter, if you please," I said. "I am come to see M. le Duc."
+
+"You?" he ejaculated, his eye wandering over my attire, which, none of
+the newest, showed signs of my journey.
+
+"Yes, I," I answered in some resentment. "I am one of his men."
+
+He looked me up and down with a grin.
+
+"Oh, one of his men! Well, my man, you must know M. le Duc is not
+receiving to-day."
+
+"I am Felix Broux," I told him.
+
+"You may be Felix anybody for all it avails; you cannot see Monsieur."
+
+"Then I will see Vigo." Vigo was Monsieur's Master of Horse, the
+staunchest man in France. This sentry was nobody, just a common fellow
+picked up since Monsieur left St. Quentin, but Vigo had been at his side
+these twenty years.
+
+"Vigo, say you! Vigo does not see street boys."
+
+"I am no street boy," I cried angrily. "I know Vigo well. You shall
+smart for flouting me, when I have Monsieur's ear."
+
+"Aye, when you have! Be off with you, rascal. I have no time to bother
+with you."
+
+"Imbecile!" I sputtered. But he had turned his back on me and resumed
+his pacing up and down the court.
+
+"Oh, very well for you, monsieur," I cried out loudly, hoping he could
+hear me. "But you will laugh t'other side of your mouth by and by. I'll
+pay you off."
+
+It was maddening to be halted like this at the door of my goal; it made
+a fool of me. But while I debated whether to set up an outcry that
+would bring forward some officer with more sense than the surly sentry,
+or whether to seek some other entrance, I became aware of a sudden
+bustle in the courtyard, a narrow slice of which I could see through the
+gateway. A page dashed across; then a pair of flunkeys passed. There was
+some noise of voices and, finally, of hoofs and wheels. Half a dozen
+men-at-arms ran to the gates and swung them open, taking their stand on
+each side. Clearly, M. le Duc was about to drive out.
+
+A little knot of people had quickly collected--sprung from between the
+stones of the pavement, it would seem--to see Monsieur emerge.
+
+"He is a bold man," I heard one say, and a woman answer, "Aye, and a
+handsome," ere the heavy coach rolled out of the arch.
+
+I pushed myself in close to the guardsmen, my heart thumping in my
+throat now that the moment had come when I should see my Monsieur. At
+the sight of his face I sprang bodily up on the coach-step, crying, all
+my soul in my voice, "Oh, Monsieur! M. le Duc!"
+
+Monsieur looked at me coldly, blankly, without a hint of recognition.
+The next instant the young gentleman beside him sprang up-and struck me
+a blow that hurled me off the step. I fell where the ponderous wheels
+would have ended me had not a guardsman, quick and kind, pulled me out
+of the way. Some one shouted, "Assassin!"
+
+"I am no assassin," I cried; "I only sought to speak with Monsieur."
+
+"He deserves a hiding, the young cur," growled my foe, the sentry.
+"He's been pestering me this half-hour to let him in. He was one of
+Monsieur's men, he said. Monsieur would see him. Well, we have seen how
+Monsieur treats him!"
+
+"Faith, no," said another. "We have only seen how our young gentleman
+treats him. Of course he is too proud and dainty to let a common man so
+much as look at him."
+
+They all laughed; the young gentleman seemed no favourite.
+
+"Parbleu! that was why I drew him from the wheels, because _he_ knocked
+him there," said my preserver. "I don't believe there's harm in the boy.
+What meant you, lad?"
+
+"I meant no harm," I said, and turned sullenly off up the street. This,
+then, was what I had come to Paris for--to be denied entrance to the
+house, thrown under the coach-wheels, and threatened with a drubbing
+from the lackeys!
+
+For three years my only thought had been to serve Monsieur. From waking
+in the morning to sleep at night, my whole life was Monsieur's. Never
+was duty more cheerfully paid. Never did acolyte more throw his soul
+into his service than I into mine. Never did lover hate to be parted
+from his mistress more than I from Monsieur. The journey to Paris had
+been a journey to Paradise. And now, this!
+
+Monsieur had looked me in the face and not smiled; had heard me beseech
+him and not answered--not lifted a finger to save me from being mangled
+under his very eyes. St. Quentin and Paris were two very different
+places, it appeared. At St. Quentin Monsieur had been pleased to take
+me into the chateau and treat me to more intimacy than he accorded to
+the high-born lads, his other pages. So much the easier, then, to cast
+me off when he had tired of me. My heart seethed with rage and
+bitterness against Monsieur, against the sentry, and, more than all,
+against the young Comte de Mar, who had flung me under the wheels.
+
+I had never before seen the Comte de Mar, that spoiled only son of M. le
+Duc's, who was too fine for the country, too gay to share his father's
+exile. Maybe I was jealous of the love his father bore him, which he so
+little repaid. I had never thought to like him, St. Quentin though he
+were; and now that I saw him I hated him. His handsome face looked ugly
+enough to me as he struck me that blow.
+
+I went along the Paris streets blindly, the din of my own thoughts
+louder than all the noises of the city. But I could not remain in this
+trance forever, and at length I woke to two unpleasant facts: first, I
+had no idea where I was, and, second, I should be no better off if I
+knew.
+
+Never, while there remained in me the spirit of a man, would I go back
+to Monsieur; never would I serve the Comte de Mar. And it was equally
+obvious that never, so long as my father retained the spirit that was
+his, could I return to St. Quentin with the account of my morning's
+achievements. It was just here that, looking at the business with my
+father's eyes, I began to have a suspicion that I had behaved like an
+insolent young fool. But I was still too angry to acknowledge it.
+
+Remained, then, but one course--to stay in Paris, and keep from
+starvation as best I might.
+
+My thrifty father had not seen fit to furnish me any money to throw away
+in the follies of the town. He had calculated closely what I should need
+to take me to Monsieur, with a little margin for accidents; so that,
+after paying Maitre Jacques, I had hardly two pieces to jingle together.
+
+For three years I had browsed my fill in the duke's library; I could
+write a decent letter both in my own tongue and in Italian, thanks to
+Father Francesco, Monsieur's Florentine confessor, and handle a sword
+none so badly, thanks to Monsieur; and I felt that it should not be hard
+to pick up a livelihood. But how to start about it I had no notion, and
+finally I made up my mind to go and consult him whom I now called my one
+friend in Paris, Jacques the innkeeper.
+
+'Twas easier said than done. I had strayed out of the friendly Rue St.
+Denis into a network of dark and narrow ways that might have been laid
+out by a wily old stag with the dogs hot on him, so did they twist and
+turn and double on themselves. I could make my way only at a snail's
+pace, asking new guidance at every corner. Noon was long past when at
+length I came on laggard feet around the corner by the Amour de Dieu.
+
+Yet was it not fatigue that weighted my feet, but pride. Though I had
+resolved to seek out Maitre Jacques, still 'twas a hateful thing to
+enter as suppliant where I had been the patron. I had paid for my
+breakfast like a lord, but I should have to beg for my dinner. I had
+bragged of Monsieur's fondness, and I should have to tell how I had been
+flung under the coach-wheels. My pace slackened to a stop. I could not
+bring myself to enter the door. I tried to think how to better my story,
+so to tell it that it should redound to my credit. But my invention
+stuck in my pate.
+
+As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found myself
+gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my thoughts
+shifted back to my vision.
+
+Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had appeared to
+me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I had beheld them
+but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up their faces like
+those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was small, pale, with
+pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The second man was conspicuously
+big and burly, black-haired and-bearded. The third and youngest--all
+three were young--stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
+was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
+gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain; the
+next they had vanished like a dream.
+
+It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
+fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from their
+unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son of the
+Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen? Maitre Jacques had
+hinted at further terrors, and said no one dared enter the place. Well,
+grant me but the opportunity, and I would dare.
+
+Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance into that
+banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to do whatever mad
+mischief presented itself. Here was the house just across the street.
+
+Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in the
+row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the
+door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it did, for
+there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the
+Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side street, and after
+exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small
+square court bounded on three sides by a tall house with shuttered
+windows.
+
+Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two doors were
+both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor were small, high,
+and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters swung half open, but I
+could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did not despair; I was not
+without experience of shutters. I selected one closed not quite tight,
+leaving a crack for my knife-blade. I found the hook inside, got my
+dagger under it, and at length drove it up. The shutter creaked shrilly
+open.
+
+A few good blows knocked in the casement. I followed.
+
+I found myself in a small room bare of everything but dust. From this,
+once a porter's room, I fancied, I passed out into a hallway dimly
+lighted from the open window behind me. The hall was large, paved with
+black and white marbles; at the end a stately stairway mounted into
+mysterious gloom.
+
+My heart jumped into my mouth and I cringed back in terror, a choked cry
+rasping my throat. For, as I crossed the hall, peering into the dimness,
+I descried, stationed on the lowest stair with upraised bludgeon, a man.
+
+For a second I stood in helpless startlement, voiceless, motionless,
+waiting for him to brain me. Then my half-uttered scream changed to a
+quavering laugh, as my eyes, becoming used to the gloom, discovered my
+bogy to be but a figure carved in wood, holding aloft a long since
+quenched flambeau.
+
+I blushed with shame, yet I cannot say that now I felt no fear. I
+thought of the panic-stricken women, the doomed men, who had fled at the
+sword's point up these very stairs. The silence seemed to shriek at me,
+and I half thought I saw fear-maddened eyes peering out from the
+shadowed corners. Yet for all that--nay, because of that--I would not
+give up the adventure. I went back into the little room and carefully
+closed the shutter, lest some other meddler should spy my misdeed. Then
+I set my feet on the stair.
+
+If the half-light before had been full of eery terror, it was naught to
+the blackness now. My hand on the rail was damp. Yet I mounted steadily.
+
+Up one flight I climbed, groped in the hot dark for the foot of the next
+flight, and went on. Suddenly, above, I heard a noise. I came to an
+instant halt. All was as still as the tomb. I listened; not a breath
+broke the silence. It never occurred to me to imagine a rat in this
+house of the dead, and the noise shook me. With a sick feeling about my
+heart I went on again.
+
+On the next floor it was lighter. Faint outlines of doors and passages
+were visible. I could not stand the gloom a moment longer; I strode into
+the nearest doorway and across the room to where a gleam of brightness
+outlined the window. My shaking fingers found the hook of the shutter
+and flung it wide, letting in a burst of honest sunshine. I leaned out
+into the free air, and saw below me the Rue Coupejarrets and the sign of
+the Amour de Dieu.
+
+The next instant a cloth fell over my face and was twisted tight; strong
+arms pulled me back, and a deep voice commanded:
+
+"Close the shutter."
+
+Some one pushed past me and shut it with a clang.
+
+"Devil take you! You'll rouse the quarter," cried my captor, fiercely,
+yet not loud. "Go join monsieur." With that he picked me up in his arms
+and walked across the room.
+
+The capture had been so quick I had no time for outcry. I fought my best
+with him, half strangled as I was by the cloth. I might as well have
+struggled against the grip of the Maiden. The man carried me the length
+of the house, it seemed; flung me down upon the floor, and banged a door
+on me.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_The three men in the window_
+
+
+I tore the cloth from my head and sprang up. I was in pitch-darkness. I
+dashed against the door to no avail. Feeling the walls, I discovered
+myself to be in a small, empty closet. With all my force I flung myself
+once more upon the door. It stood firm.
+
+"Dame! but I have got into a pickle," I thought.
+
+They were no ghosts, at all events. Scared as I was, I rejoiced at that.
+I could cope with men, but who can cope with the devil? These might be
+villains--doubtless were, skulking in this deserted house,--yet with
+readiness and pluck I could escape them.
+
+It was as hot as a furnace in my prison, and as still as the grave. The
+men, who seemed by their footsteps to be several, had gone cautiously
+down the stairs after caging me. Evidently I had given them a fine
+fright, clattering through the house as I had, and even now they were
+looking for my accomplices.
+
+It seemed hours before the faintest sound broke the stillness. If ever
+you want to squeeze away a man's cheerfulness like water from a rag,
+shut him up alone in the dark and silence. He will thank you to take him
+out into the daylight and hang him. In token whereof, my heart welcomed
+like brothers the men returning.
+
+They came into the room, and I thought they were three in number. I
+heard the door shut, and then steps approached my closet.
+
+"Have a care now, monsieur; he may be armed," spoke the rough voice of a
+man without breeding.
+
+"Doubtless he carries a culverin up his sleeve," sneered the deep tones
+of my captor.
+
+Some one else laughed, and rejoined, in a clear, quick voice:
+
+"Natheless, he may have a knife. I will open the door, and do you look
+out for him, Gervais."
+
+I had a knife and had it in my hand, ready to charge for freedom. But
+the door opened slowly, and Gervais looked out for me--to the effect
+that my knife went one way and I another before I could wink. I reeled
+against the wall and stayed there, cursing myself for a fool that I had
+not trusted to fair words instead of to my dagger.
+
+"Well done, my brave Gervais!" cried he of the vivid voice--a tall
+fair-haired youth, whom I had seen before. So had I seen the stalwart
+blackbeard, Gervais. The third man was older, a common-looking fellow
+whose face was new to me. All three were in their shirts on account of
+the heat; all were plain, even shabby, in their dress. But the two young
+men wore swords at their sides.
+
+The half-opened shutters, overhanging the court, let plenty of light
+into the room. It had two straw beds on the floor and a few old chairs
+and stools, and a table covered with dishes and broken food and
+wine-bottles. More bottles, riding-boots, whips and spurs, two or three
+hats and saddle-bags, and various odds and ends of dress littered the
+floor and the chairs. Everything was of mean quality except the bearing
+of the two young men. A gentleman is a gentleman even in the Rue
+Coupejarrets--all the more, maybe, in the Rue Coupejarrets. These two
+were gently born.
+
+The low man, with scared face, held off from me. He whose name was
+Gervais confronted me with an angry scowl. Yeux-gris alone--for so I
+dubbed the third, from his gray eyes, well open under dark
+brows--Yeux-gris looked no whit alarmed or angered; the only emotion to
+be read in his face was a gay interest as the blackavised Gervais put me
+questions.
+
+"How came you here? What are you about?"
+
+"No harm, messieurs," I made haste to protest, ruing my stupidity with
+that dagger. "I climbed in at a window for sport. I thought the house
+was deserted."
+
+He clutched my shoulder till I could have screamed for pain.
+
+"The truth, now. If you value your life you will tell the truth."
+
+"Monsieur, it is the truth. I came in idle mischief; that was the whole
+of it. I had no notion of breaking in upon you or any one. They said the
+house was haunted."
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+"Maitre Jacques, at the Amour de Dieu."
+
+He stared at me in surprise.
+
+"What had you been asking about this house?"
+
+Yeux-gris, lounging against the table, struck in:
+
+"I can tell you that myself. He told Jacques he saw us in the window
+last night. Did you not?"
+
+"Aye, monsieur. The thunder woke me, and when I looked out I saw you
+plain as day. But Maitre Jacques said it was a vision."
+
+"I flattered myself I saw you first and got that shutter closed very
+neatly," said Yeux-gris. "Dame! I am not so clever as I thought. So old
+Jacques called us ghosts, did he?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur. He told me this house belonged to M. de Bethune, who was
+a Huguenot and killed in the massacre."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into joyous laughter.
+
+"He said my house belonged to the Bethunes! Well played, Jacques! You
+owe that gallant lie to me, Gervais, and the pains I took to make him
+think us Navarre's men. He is heart and soul for Henri Quatre. Did he
+say, perchance, that in this very courtyard Coligny fell?"
+
+"No," said I, seeing that I had been fooled and had had all my terrors
+for naught, and feeling much chagrined thereat. "How was I to know it
+was a lie? I know naught about Paris. I came up but yesterday from St.
+Quentin."
+
+"St. Quentin!" came a cry from the henchman. With a fierce "Be quiet,
+fool!" Gervais turned to me and demanded my name.
+
+"Felix Broux."
+
+"Who sent you here?"
+
+"Monsieur, no one."
+
+"You lie."
+
+Again he gripped me by the shoulder, gripped till the tears stood in my
+eyes.
+
+"No one, monsieur; I swear it."
+
+"You will not speak! I'll make you, by Heaven."
+
+He seized my thumb and wrist to bend one back on the other, torture with
+strength such as his. Yeux-gris sprang off the table.
+
+"Let alone, Gervais! The boy's honest."
+
+"He is a spy."
+
+"He is a fool of a country boy. A spy in hobnailed shoes, forsooth! No
+spy ever behaved as he has. I said when you first seized him he was no
+spy. I say it again, now I have heard his story. He saw us by chance,
+and Maitre Jacques's bogy story spurred him on instead of keeping him
+off. You are a fool, my cousin."
+
+"Pardieu! it is you who are the fool," growled Gervais. "You will bring
+us to the rope with your cursed easy ways. If he is a spy it means the
+whole crew are down upon us."
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Pardieu! is it nothing?"
+
+Yeux-gris returned with a touch of haughtiness:
+
+"It is nothing. A gentleman may live in his own house."
+
+Gervais looked as if he remembered something. He said much less
+boisterously:
+
+"And do you want Monsieur here?"
+
+Yeux-gris flushed red.
+
+"No," he cried. "But you may be easy. He will not trouble himself to
+come."
+
+Gervais regarded him silently an instant, as if he thought of several
+things he did not say. What he did say was: "You are a pair of fools,
+you and the boy. Whatever he came for, he has spied on us now. He shall
+not live to carry the tale of us."
+
+"Then you have me to kill as well!"
+
+Gervais turned on him snarling. Yeux-gris laid a hand on his sword-hilt.
+
+"I will not have an innocent lad hurt. I was not bred a ruffian," he
+cried hotly. They glared at each other. Then Yeux-gris, with a sudden
+exclamation, "Ah, bah, Gervais!" broke into laughter.
+
+Now, this merriment was a heart-warming thing to hear. For Gervais was
+taking the situation with a seriousness that was as terrifying as it was
+stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I could not but think the end
+of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's laugh said the very notion was
+ridiculous; I was innocent of all harmful intent, and they were
+gentlemen, not cutthroats.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "I swear by the blessed saints I am what I told
+you. I am no spy, and no one sent me here. Who you are, or what you do,
+I know no more than a babe unborn. I belong to no party and am no man's
+man. As for why you choose to live in this empty house, it is not my
+concern and I care no whit about it. Let me go, messieurs, and I will
+swear to keep silence about what I have seen."
+
+"I am for letting him go," said Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais looked doubtful, the most encouraging attitude toward me he had
+yet assumed. He answered:
+
+"If he had not said the name--"
+
+"Stuff!" interrupted Yeux-gris. "It is a coincidence, no more. If he
+were what you think, it is the very last name he would have said."
+
+This was Greek to me; I had mentioned no names but Maitre Jacques's and
+my own. And he was their friend.
+
+"Messieurs," I said, "if it is my name that does not please you, why, I
+can say for it that if it is not very high-sounding, at least it is an
+honest one and has ever been held so down where we live."
+
+"And that is at St. Quentin," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. My father, Anton Broux, is Master of the Forest to the
+Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+He started, and Gervais cried out:
+
+"Voila! who is the fool now?"
+
+My nerves, which had grown tranquil since Yeux-gris came to my rescue,
+quivered anew. The common man started at the very word St. Quentin, and
+the masters started when I named the duke. Was it he whom they had
+spoken of as Monsieur? Who and what were they? There was more in this
+than I had thought at first. It was no longer a mere question of my
+liberty. I was all eyes and ears for whatever information I could
+gather.
+
+Yeux-gris spoke to me, for the first time gravely:
+
+"This is not a time when folks take pleasure-trips to Paris. What
+brought you?"
+
+"I used to be Monsieur's page down at St. Quentin," I answered, deeming
+the straight truth best. "When we learned that he was in Paris, my
+father sent me up to him. I reached the city last night, and lay at the
+Amour de Dieu. This morning I went to the duke's hotel, but the guard
+would not let me in. Then, when Monsieur drove out I tried to get speech
+with him, but he would have none of me."
+
+The bitterness I felt over my rebuff must have been in my voice and
+face, for Gervais spoke abruptly:
+
+"And do you hate him for that?"
+
+"Nay," said I, churlishly enough. "It is his to do as he chooses. But I
+hate the Comte de Mar for striking me a foul blow."
+
+"The Comte de Mar!" exclaimed Yeux-gris.
+
+"His son."
+
+"He has no son."
+
+"But he has, monsieur. The Comte de--"
+
+"He is dead," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"Why, we knew naught--" I was beginning, when Gervais broke in:
+
+"You say the fellow's honest, when he tells such tales as this! He saw
+the Comte de Mar--!"
+
+"I thought it must be he," I protested. "A young man who sat by
+Monsieur's side, elegant and proud-looking, with an aquiline face--"
+
+"That is Lucas, that is his secretary," declared Yeux-gris, as who
+should say, "That is his scullion."
+
+Gervais looked at him oddly a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and
+demanded of me:
+
+"What next?"
+
+"I came away angry."
+
+"And walked all the way here to risk your life in a haunted house?
+Pardieu! too plain a lie."
+
+"Oh, I would have done the like; we none of us fear ghosts in the
+daytime," said Yeux-gris.
+
+"You may believe him; I am no such fool. He has been caught in two lies;
+first the Bethunes, then the Comte de Mar. He is a clumsy spy; they
+might have found a better one. Not but what that touch about
+ill-treatment at Monsieur's hand was well thought of. That was
+Monsieur's suggestion, I warrant, for the boy has talked like a dolt
+else."
+
+"I am no liar," I cried hotly. "Ask Jacques whether he did not tell me
+about the Bethunes. It is his lie, not mine. I did not know the Comte de
+Mar was dead, and this Lucas of yours is handsome enough for a count. I
+came here, as I told you, in curiosity concerning Maitre Jacques's
+story. I had no idea of seeing you or any living man. It is the truth,
+monsieur."
+
+"I believe you," Yeux-gris answered. "You have an honest face. You came
+into my house uninvited. Well, I forgive it, and invite you to stay. You
+shall be my valet."
+
+"He shall be nobody's valet," Gervais cried.
+
+The gray eyes flashed, but their owner rejoined lightly:
+
+"You have a man; surely I should have one, too. And I understand the
+services of M. Felix are not engaged."
+
+"Mille tonnerres! you would take this spy--this sneak--"
+
+"As I would take M. de Paris, if I chose," responded Yeux-gris, with a
+cold hauteur that smacked more of a court than of this shabby room. He
+added lightly again:
+
+"You think him a spy, I do not. But in any case, he must not blab of us.
+Therefore he stays here and brushes my clothes. Marry, they need it."
+
+Easily, with grace, he had disposed of the matter. But I said:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+"What!" he cried, as if the clothes-brush itself had risen in rebellion,
+"what! you will not."
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"And why not?" he demanded, plainly thinking me demented.
+
+"Because I know you are against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+Whatever they had thought me, neither expected that speech.
+
+"I am no spy or sneak," said I. "It is true I came here by chance; it is
+true Monsieur turned me off this morning. But I was born on his land and
+I am no traitor. I will not be valet or henchman for either of you, if I
+die for it."
+
+I was like to die for it. For Gervais whipped out his sword and sprang
+for me. I thought I saw Yeux-gris's out, too, when Gervais struck me
+over the head with his sword-hilt. The rest was darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_Rapiers and a vow._
+
+
+I came to my senses slowly, to hear loud, angry voices. As I opened my
+eyes and stirred, the room reeled from me and all was blank again.
+Awhile after, I grew aware of a clashing of steel. I lay wondering
+thickly what it was and why it had to be going on while my head ached
+so, till at length it dawned on my dull brain that swords were crossing.
+I opened my eyes again, then.
+
+They were fighting each other, Yeux-gris and Gervais. The latter was
+almost trampling on me, Yeux-gris had pressed him so close to the wall.
+Then he forced his way out, and they drove each other round in a circle
+till the room seemed to spin once more.
+
+I crawled out of the way and watched them, bewildered, absorbed. I had
+more reason to thrill over the contest than the mere excellence of
+it,--which was great,--since I was the cause of the duel, and my very
+life, belike, hung on its issue.
+
+They were both admirable swordsmen, yet it was clear from the first
+where the palm lay. Anything nimbler, lighter, easier than the
+sword-play of Yeux-gris I never hope to see in this imperfect world.
+The heavier adversary was hot, angry, breathing hard. A smile hovered
+over Yeux-gris's lips; already a red disk on Gervais's shirt showed
+where his cousin's sword had been and would soon go again, and deeper. I
+had forgotten my bruise in my interest and delight, when, of a sudden,
+one whom we all had ignored took a hand in the game. Gervais's lackey
+started forward and knocked up Yeux-gris's arm. His sword flew wide, and
+Gervais slashed his arm from wrist to elbow.
+
+With a smothered cry, Yeux-gris caught at his wound. Gervais, ablaze
+with rage, sprang past him on his creature. The man gaped with
+amazement; then, for there was no time for parley, leaped for the door.
+It was locked. He turned, and with a look of deathly terror fell on his
+knees, crouched up against the door-post. Gervais lunged. His blade
+passed clean through the man's shoulders and pinned him to the door. His
+head fell heavily forward.
+
+"Have you killed him?" cried Yeux-gris.
+
+"By my faith! I meant to," came the answer. Gervais was bending over the
+man. With an abrupt laugh he called out: "Killed him, pardieu! He has
+come off cheap."
+
+He raised the fellow's limp head, and we saw that the sword had passed
+just over his shoulder, piercing the linen, not the flesh. He had
+swooned from sheer terror, being in truth not so much as scratched.
+
+Gervais turned to his cousin.
+
+"I never meant that foul trick. It was no thought of mine. I would have
+turned the blade if I could. I will kill Pontou now, if you say the
+word."
+
+"Nay," answered the other, faintly; "help me."
+
+The blood was pouring from his arm; he was half swooning. Gervais and I
+ran to him and, between us, bathed the cut, bandaged it with strips torn
+from a shirt, and made a sling of a scarf. The wound was long, but not
+deep, and when we had poured some wine down his throat he was himself
+again.
+
+"You will not bear me malice for that poltroon's work, Etienne?" Gervais
+asked, more humbly than I ever thought to hear him speak. "That was a
+foul cut, but it was no fault of mine. I am no blackguard; I fight fair.
+I will kill the knave, if you like."
+
+"You are ungrateful, Gervais; he saved you when you needed saving,"
+Yeux-gris laughed. "Faith! let him live. I forgive him. You will pay me
+for my hurt by yielding me Felix."
+
+Gervais looked at me. While we had worked side by side over Yeux-gris he
+seemed to have forgotten that he was my enemy. But now all the old
+suspicion and dislike came into his face again. However, he answered:
+
+"Aye, you would have been the victor had it not been for Pontou. You
+shall do what you like with your boy. I promise you that."
+
+"Now that is well said, Gervais," returned Yeux-gris, rising, and
+picking up his sword, which he sheathed. "That is very well said. For if
+you did not feel like promising it, why, I should have to begin over
+again with my left hand."
+
+"Oh, I give you the boy," Gervais repeated rather sullenly, turning away
+to pour himself some wine.
+
+I could not but wonder at Yeux-gris, at his gaiety and his
+steadfastness. He had hardly looked grave through the whole affair; he
+had fought with a smile on his lips and had taken a cruel wound with a
+laugh. Withal, he had been the constant champion of my innocence, even
+to drawing his sword on his cousin for me. Now, with his bloody arm in
+its sling, he was as debonair and careless as ever. I had been stupid
+enough to imagine the big Gervais the leader of the two, and I found
+myself mistaken. I dropped on my knee and kissed my saviour's hand in
+all gratitude.
+
+"Aha," said Yeux-gris, "what think you now of being my valet?"
+
+Verily, I was hard pushed.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I owe you much more than I can ever pay. If you
+were any man's enemy but my duke's, I would serve you on my knees. But I
+was born on the duke's land and I cannot be disloyal. You may kill me
+yourself, if you like."
+
+"No," he answered gravely, "that is not my metier."
+
+Gervais laughed.
+
+"Make me that offer, and I accept."
+
+Yeux-gris turned to him with that little hauteur he assumed
+occasionally.
+
+"You are helpless, my cousin. You have passed your word."
+
+"Aye. I leave him to you."
+
+His sullen eyes told me it was no new-born tenderness for me that
+prompted his surrender. Nor had I, truth to tell, any great faith in the
+sacredness of his word. Yet I believed he would let me be. For it was
+borne in upon me that, despite his passion and temper, he had no wish to
+quarrel with Yeux-gris. Whether at bottom he loved him or in some way
+dreaded him, I could not tell; but of this my fear-sharpened wits were
+sure: he had no desire to press an open breach. He was honestly ashamed
+of his henchman's low deed; yet even before that his judgment had
+disliked the quarrel. Else why had he struck me with the hilt of the
+sword?
+
+"I leave him to you," he repeated. "Do as you choose. If you deem his
+life a precious thing, cherish it. When did you learn a taste for
+insolence, Etienne? Time was when you were touchy on that score."
+
+"Time never was when I did not love courage."
+
+"Oh, it is courage!" With a sneer he turned away.
+
+"Gervais," said Yeux-gris, "have the kindness to unlock the door."
+
+Gervais wheeled around, his face an angry question.
+
+Yeux-gris answered it with cold politeness:
+
+"That Felix Broux may pass out."
+
+"By Heaven, he shall not!"
+
+"You gave your word you would leave him to me. Did you lie?"
+
+"I do leave him to you!" Gervais thundered. "I would slit his impudent
+throat; but since you love him, you may have him to eat out of your
+plate and sleep in your bosom. I will put up with it. But go out of
+that door till the thing is done, sang dieu! he shall not!"
+
+"If he goes straight to the duke, what then? He will say he found us
+living in my house. What harm? We are no felons. Let him say it."
+
+"And put Lucas on his guard?" returned Gervais. He was angry, yet he
+spoke with evident attempt at restraint. "Put Lucas on the trail? He is
+wary as a cat. Let him get wind of us here, and he will never let us
+catch him."
+
+"Well," said Yeux-gris, reluctantly, "it is true. And though I will not
+have the boy harmed, he shall stay here. I will not put a spoke in the
+wheel. We will take no risks till Lucas is shent. The boy shall be held
+prisoner. And afterward--"
+
+"I will come myself and let him out," said Gervais, and laughed.
+
+I glanced at my protector, not liking to think of that moment, whenever
+it might be, "afterward." He went up to Gervais.
+
+"My cousin, are we friends or foes? For, faith! you treat me strangely
+like a foe."
+
+"We are friends."
+
+"I am your friend, since it is in your cause that I am here. I have
+stood at your shoulder like a brother--you cannot deny it."
+
+"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,--my one friend in that
+house,--as I was yours. I stood at your shoulder in the Montluc
+affair--you cannot deny that. I have been your ally, your servant, your
+messenger to mademoiselle, your envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my
+power to win you your lady."
+
+A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face.
+
+"That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais."
+
+He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a sudden as far
+away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue Coupejarrets. He
+shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on Gervais's shoulder:
+"It's beyond you, cousin."
+
+Gervais brought him back to the point.
+
+"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me when you
+let loose a spy to warn Lucas."
+
+"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder than I
+when that knave is dead. But I will not have Felix Broux suffer because
+he dared speak for the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you keep
+him from Lucas."
+
+Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great
+that the words came out of themselves:
+
+"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"
+
+Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him:
+
+"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"
+
+Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me
+nothing I might ask, exclaimed:
+
+"Why, Lucas!"
+
+He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that
+the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight,
+and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair.
+
+A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing
+wet-handed by me.
+
+"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so
+much this Lucas who struck you?"
+
+"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke."
+
+"Did you take us for Leaguers?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself right in my
+eyes.
+
+"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen with a
+grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we have the
+Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to me; I am not
+putting either on the throne. So if you have got it into your head that
+we are plotting for the League, why, get it out again."
+
+"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"
+
+He answered me slowly:
+
+"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his way
+unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man, skulks behind
+the bars of the Hotel st. Quentin and will not face my cousin's sword.
+So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do you believe me?"
+
+I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my defence,
+and I could not but believe him.
+
+"Yes, monsieur," I said.
+
+He regarded me curiously.
+
+"The duke's life seems much to you."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I am a Broux."
+
+"And could not be disloyal to save your life?"
+
+"My life! Monsieur, the Broux would not seek to save their souls if M.
+le Duc preferred them damned."
+
+I expected he would rebuke me for the outburst, but he did not; he
+merely said:
+
+"And Lucas?"
+
+"Oh, Lucas!" I said. "I know nothing of him. He is new with the duke
+since my time. I do not owe him anything, save a grudge for that blow
+this morning. Mon dieu, monsieur, I am thankful to you for befriending
+me. Dying for Monsieur is all in a day's work; we expect to do that.
+But, my faith, if I had died just now, it would have been for Lucas."
+
+At this moment a long groan came from the end of the room. We turned;
+the lackey was waking from his swoon, under the ministration of Gervais.
+He opened his eyes; their glance was dull till they fell upon his
+master. And then at once they looked venomous.
+
+Gervais kicked him into fuller consciousness.
+
+"Get up, hound. It is time to meet Martin."
+
+The wretch scrambled shakily to his feet, and stood clutching the
+door-jamb and eying Gervais, terror writ large on his chalky
+countenance. Yet there was more than terror in his face; there was the
+look you see in the eyes of a trapped animal that watches its chance to
+bite. Yeux-gris cried out:
+
+"You dare not send that man, Gervais."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because the moment he is clear of the house he will betray you. Look at
+his face."
+
+"He shall swear on the cross!"
+
+"Aye. But you cannot trust the oath of such as he."
+
+"What would you? We must send."
+
+"As you will. But you are mad if you send him."
+
+Gervais pondered a moment, his slower wits taking in the situation. Then
+he seized the man by the collar, fairly flung him across the room into
+the closet, and bolted the door upon him.
+
+"I will settle with him later. But you are right. We cannot send him."
+
+Yeux-gris burst into laughter.
+
+"My faith! we could not have more trouble if we were heads of the League
+than this little duel of yours is giving us. Why, what if we are seen? I
+will go."
+
+Gervais started.
+
+"No; that will not do."
+
+"Eh, bien, then, what will you propose?"
+
+But it was some one else who proposed. I said to Yeux-gris:
+
+"Monsieur, if all your purpose is against Lucas and no other, I am your
+man. I will go."
+
+"What, my stubborn-neck, you?"
+
+"Why, monsieur, I owe you a great debt. While I thought you meant ill to
+M. le Duc, I could not serve you. But this Lucas is another pair of
+sleeves. I owe him no allegiance. Moreover, he nearly killed me this
+morning. Therefore I am quite at your disposal."
+
+"Now, I wonder if you are lying," said Gervais.
+
+"I do not think he is lying," Yeux-gris said. "I trow, Gervais, we have
+got our messenger."
+
+"You tell me to beware of Pontou because he hates me, and then would
+have me trust this fellow?" Gervais demanded with some acumen.
+
+I said: "Monsieur, you do not seem to understand how I come to make this
+offer."
+
+"To get out of the house with a whole skin."
+
+I had a joy in daring him, being sure of Yeux-gris.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I should be glad to leave this house with my skin
+whole or broken, so long as I left on my own feet. But you have
+mentioned the very reason why I shall not betray you. I do not love you
+and I do not love Lucas. Therefore, if you and M. Lucas are to fight, I
+ask nothing better than to help the quarrel on."
+
+He stared at me with an air more of bewilderment than aught else, but
+Yeux-gris's ready laughter rang out.
+
+"Bravo, Felix! I am proud of you. That is an idea worthy of Caesar! You
+would set your enemies to exterminate each other. And I asked you to be
+my valet!"
+
+"Which do you wish to see slain?" demanded the black Gervais.
+
+I answered quite truthfully:
+
+"Monsieur, I shall be pleased either way."
+
+I know not how he relished the answer, for Yeux-gris cried out at once:
+
+"Bravo, Felix, you are a paragon! I have not wit enough to know whether
+you are as simple as sunshine or as deep as a well, but I love you."
+
+"Monsieur," I answered, as I think, very neatly, "if I am a well, truth
+lies at the bottom."
+
+"Well, Gervais?" demanded Yeux-gris.
+
+Gervais bent his lowering brows on his cousin.
+
+"Do you say, trust him?"
+
+"Aye, I would trust him. For never yet did villain turn honest, nor
+honest man false, in one short hour. When he was asked to serve against
+the duke he showed his stuff. He was no traitor; he was no coward; he
+was no liar. I think he is not those now."
+
+Gervais was still doubtful.
+
+"It is a risk. If he betrays--"
+
+"What is life without risks?" cried Yeux-gris. "I thought you too good a
+gambler, Gervais, to falter before a risk."
+
+"Well," Gervais consented, "I leave it to you. Do as you like."
+
+Yeux-gris said at once to me:
+
+"This Lucas, as I told you, is too cowardly to meet my cousin in open
+fight. Since he got the challenge he has never stuck his nose out of
+doors without two or three of the duke's guard about him. Therefore we
+have the right to get at him as we can. We have paid a man in the house
+to tell of his movements. He is to fare out secretly at night on a
+mission for M. le Duc, with one comrade only. M. Gervais and I will
+interrupt that little journey."
+
+"Very good, monsieur. And I?"
+
+"You will meet our spy and learn the hour of the expedition. Last night,
+when he told us of the plan, it had not been decided."
+
+"Then he will be the other man I saw in the window? I shall know him."
+
+"You have sharp eyes and a sharp brain, youngster. But he will not know
+you. Therefore you can say you come from the shuttered house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. You will meet him in the little alley to the north of the
+Hotel St. Quentin. Do you know your way to the hotel? Well, then, you
+are to go down the passageway between the house and M. de Portreuse's
+garden--you cannot mistake it, for on two sides of the house is the
+street, on the third the garden, and on the fourth the alleyway.
+Half-way down the alley is an arch with a small door. In that arch our
+man, Louis Martin, will meet you. Do you understand?"
+
+I repeated the directions.
+
+"You have learned your lesson. You will ask him the hour--only that."
+
+"And you will take oath not to betray us," commanded Gervais.
+
+I took out the cross that hung on my rosary. I was ready to swear.
+Gervais prompted:
+
+"I swear to go and come straight, and speak no word to any but Martin."
+
+With all solemnity I swore it on my cross.
+
+"That oath will be kept," said Yeux-gris. He held out a sudden hand for
+the cross, which I gave him, wondering.
+
+"I swear that we mean no harm whatsoever to the Duke of St. Quentin." He
+kissed the cross and flung the chain back over my neck.
+
+At last I saw the door unlocked. Yeux-gris even returned to me my knife.
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs."
+
+Gervais, sullen to the last, vouchsafed no answer, but Yeux-gris called
+out cheerily, "Au revoir."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_A matter of life and death._
+
+
+Nothing in life can be so sweet as freedom after captivity, safety after
+danger. When I gained the open street once more and breathed the open
+air, no one molesting or troubling me, I could have sung with joy. I
+fairly hugged myself for my cleverness in getting out of my plight. As
+for the combat I was furthering, my only doubt about that was lest the
+skulking Lucas should not prove good sword enough to give trouble to M.
+Gervais. It was very far from my wish that he should come out of the
+attempt unscathed.
+
+But as I went along and had more time to ponder the matter, other doubts
+forced themselves into my reluctant mind. Put it as I pleased, the
+affair smacked too much of secrecy to be quite savoury. It was curious,
+to say the least, that an honest encounter should require so much
+plotting. Also, Lucas, coward and rascal though he might be, was
+Monsieur's man, doing Monsieur's errand, and for me to mix myself up in
+a plot against him was scarcely in keeping with my vaunted loyalty to
+the house of St. Quentin. My friend Gervais's quarrel might be just;
+his manner of procedure, even, might be just, and yet I have no right to
+take part in it.
+
+And yet Monsieur had signified plainly enough that he was no longer my
+patron. For my birth's sake I might never work against him, but I was
+free to do whatever else I chose. Monsieur himself had made it necessary
+for me to take another master, and assuredly I owed something to
+Yeux-gris. I had reason to feel confidence in his honour; surely I might
+reckon that he would not be in the affair unless it were honest. Lucas
+was like enough a scoundrel of whom Monsieur would be well rid. And
+lastly and finally and above all, I was sworn, so there was no use
+worrying about it. I had taken oath, and could not draw back.
+
+I hurried along to the rendezvous, only pausing one moment at the
+street-corner to buy sausages hot from the brazier, which I crammed into
+my mouth as I ran. But after all was there no need of haste; the little
+arch, when I panted up to it, was all deserted.
+
+No better place for a tryst could have been found in the heart of busy
+Paris. Only the one door opened into the alley; M. de Portreuse's high
+garden wall, forming the other side of the passage, was unbroken by a
+gate, and no curious eyes from the house could look into the deep arch
+and see the narrow nail-studded door at the back where I awaited the
+rat-faced Martin.
+
+I stood there long, first on one foot and then on the other, fearful
+every moment lest some one of Monsieur's true men should come along to
+demand my business. No one appeared, either foe or friend, for so long
+that I began to think Yeux-gris had tricked me and sent me here on a
+fool's errand, when, all at once, a low voice said close to my ear:
+
+"What seek you here?"
+
+I jumped on finding at my side a little, pale, sharp-faced man--the man
+of the vision. He had slipped through the door so suddenly and quietly
+that I was once more tempted to take him for a ghost. He eyed me for a
+bare second; then his eyes dropped before mine.
+
+"I am come to learn the hour," said I.
+
+"Did you not hear the chimes ring five?"
+
+"Oh, no need for disguise. I am come from the two in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. They bade me ask the hour."
+
+He favoured me with another of his shifty glances.
+
+"What hour meant they?"
+
+I said bluntly, in a louder tone:
+
+"The hour when M. Lucas sets out on his secret mission."
+
+"Hush!" he cried. "Hush! Don't say names aloud--his or the other's."
+
+"Well," I said crossly, "you have kept me waiting already more time than
+I care to lose. How much longer before you will tell me what I came to
+know?"
+
+He looked at me sharply for another brief instant before his eyes slunk
+away from mine.
+
+"You should have a password."
+
+"They gave me none. They told me to say I came from the shuttered house
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, and that would be enough."
+
+"How came you into this business?"
+
+"By a back window."
+
+He gave me another suspicious glance, but making nothing by it, he
+rejoined:
+
+"Eh bien, I trust you. I will tell you."
+
+He clutched my arm and drew me to the back of the arch, where the
+afternoon shadows were already gathered.
+
+"What have you for me?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing. What should I have?"
+
+"No gold?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He promised me ten pistoles to-day. He did not give them to you?"
+
+"I tell you, no."
+
+"You are a thief! You have them!"
+
+He stepped forward menacingly; so did I. He then fell back as abruptly.
+
+"Nay, it was a jest; I know you are honest. But he promised me ten
+pistoles."
+
+"He did not give them to me," I said. "Perhaps he was not so convinced
+of my honesty. He will doubtless pay you afterward."
+
+"Afterward!" he retorted in a high key. "By our Lady, he shall pay me
+afterward! The gutters will run gold then, will they? Pardieu! I will
+see that a good stream flows my way. But one cannot play to-day with
+to-morrow's coin. He said I should have ten pistoles when I let him know
+the hour."
+
+"I cannot mend that. It lies between you and him. I have not seen or
+heard of any money."
+
+Martin edged up close to the door of retreat and waxed defiant.
+
+"Then all I have to say is, he may go whistle for his news."
+
+Now, had I but thought of it, here was an easy road out of a bad
+business. If Martin would not tell the hour of rendezvous, Lucas was
+saved, Monsieur's interests not endangered, yet at the same time I was
+not forsworn. But touch pitch and be defiled. You cannot go hand and
+glove with villains and remain an honest man. I returned directly:
+
+"As you choose. But M. Gervais carries a long sword."
+
+He started at that and made no instant reply, seeming to be balancing
+considerations. Then he gave his decision.
+
+"I will tell you. But your M. Gervais is wrong if he thinks I can be
+slighted and robbed of my dues. I know enough to make trouble for him,
+and I know where to take my knowledge. He will not find it easy to shut
+my mouth afterward, except with good broad gold pieces."
+
+"Enfin, are you telling me the hour?" I said impatiently. I was ill at
+ease; my only wish was to get the errand done and be gone.
+
+He laid a hand on my shoulder and made me bend to him, and even then
+spoke so low I could scarce catch the words.
+
+"They have fixed positively on to-night. They will leave by this door
+and take the route I described last night to M. Gervais. They will start
+as soon as the streets are quiet, sometime between ten and eleven. They
+must allow an hour to reach the gate, and the man goes off at twelve. In
+all likelihood they will not set out before a quarter of eleven; M. le
+Duc does not care to be recognized."
+
+So they planned to kill Lucas at Monsieur's side? Yeux-gris had not
+dared to tell me that. But he had looked me straight in the face and
+sworn on the cross no harm was meant to M. le Duc. Natheless, the thing
+looked ugly. My heart leaped up at the next words:
+
+"Also Vigo will go."
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Not so loud! You will have the guard on us! Yes, he is to go. At first
+Monsieur did not tell even him, he desired to keep this visit to the
+king so secret. But this morning he took Vigo into his confidence, and
+nothing would serve the man but to go. He watches over Monsieur like a
+hen over a chick."
+
+"Then it will be three to three," I said. I thought of Gervais,
+Yeux-gris, and Pontou, for of course I would take no part in it.
+
+"Three to two; Lucas will not fight."
+
+Lucas must be a poltroon, indeed!
+
+"But Vigo and Monsieur--" I began.
+
+"Aye, they are quick enough with their swords. Your side must be
+quicker, that's all. If you are sudden enough you can easily kill the
+duke before he can draw."
+
+Talk of words like thunderbolts! All the thunder of heaven could not
+have whelmed me like those words. Yeux-gris and his oaths! It _was_ the
+duke, after all!
+
+I could not speak. I looked I know not how. But it was dusky in the
+arch.
+
+"It sounds simple," he went on. "But, three of you as you are, you will
+have trouble with Vigo. That is all. I have told you all. I must get
+back before I am missed. Good luck to the enterprise."
+
+Still I stood like a block of wood.
+
+"Tell M. Gervais to remember me," he said, and opening the door, passed
+in. I heard him lock and bolt it after him, and his footsteps hurrying
+down the passageway.
+
+Then I came to myself and sprang to the door and beat upon it furiously.
+But if he heard he was afraid to respond. After a futile moment that
+seemed an hour I rushed out of the arch and around to the great gate.
+
+The grilles were closed as before, but the sentry's face, luckily, was
+strange to me.
+
+"Open! open!" I shouted, breathless. "I must see M. le Duc!"
+
+"Who are you?" he demanded, staring.
+
+"My name is Broux. I have news for M. le Duc. Let me in. It is a matter
+of life and death."
+
+"Why, I suppose, then, I must let you in," that good fellow answered,
+drawing back the bolts. "But you must wait here till--"
+
+The gate was open. I took base advantage of him by sliding under his arm
+and shooting across the court up the steps to the house. The door stood
+open, and a couple of lackeys lounged on a bench in the hall.
+
+"M. le Duc!" I cried. "I must see him."
+
+They jumped up, the picture of bewilderment.
+
+"Who are you? How came you here?" cried the quicker-tongued of the two.
+
+"The sentry opened for me. Where am I to find M. le Duc? I must see him!
+I have news!"
+
+"M. le Duc sees no one to-day," the second lackey announced pompously.
+
+"But I must see him, I tell you," I repeated. I had completely lost what
+little head I ever had; it seemed to me that if I could not see M. le
+Duc on the instant I should find him weltering in his gore. "I must see
+him," I cried, parrot-like. "It is a matter of life and death."
+
+"From whom do you come?"
+
+"That's my affair. Enough that I come with news of the highest moment.
+You will be sorry if I you do not get me quickly to M. le Duc."
+
+They looked at each other, somewhat impressed.
+
+"I will go for M. Constant," said the one who had spoken first.
+
+Constant was Master of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited him with
+the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake. He was old,
+fussy, and self-important, and withal no friend to me.
+
+"I had rather you fetched Vigo," I said.
+
+"Oh, Vigo will not come. He is with Monsieur. If I bring M. Constant, it
+is the best I can do for you."
+
+I had recovered myself sufficiently by this time to remember the nature
+of lackeys, and gave the messenger the last silver piece I had in the
+world. He regarded it contemptuously, but pocketed it and departed in
+leisurely fashion up the stairs.
+
+The other was not too grand to cross-examine me.
+
+"What sort of news have you? Do you come from the king?" he asked in a
+lowered voice.
+
+"No."
+
+"From M. de Valere?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then who the devil are you?"
+
+"Felix Broux of St. Quentin."
+
+"Ah, St. Quentin," he said, as if he found that rather tame. "You bring
+news from there?"
+
+"No, I do not. Think you I shall tell you? This news is for Monsieur."
+
+"It won't reach Monsieur unless you learn politeness toward the
+gentlemen of his household," he retorted.
+
+We were getting into a lively quarrel when Constant appeared on the
+stairway--Constant and the lackey who had fetched him, and two more
+lackeys, and a page, all of whom had somehow scented that something was
+in the wind. They came flocking about us as I said:
+
+"Ah, M. Constant! You know me, Felix Broux of St. Quentin. I must see M.
+le Duc."
+
+Constant's face of surprise at me changed to one of malice. Down at St.
+Quentin he had suffered much from us pages, as a slow, peevish old
+dotard must. I had played many a prank on him, but I had not thought he
+would revenge himself at such time as this. He looked at me with a
+spiteful grin, and said to the men:
+
+"He lies. I do not know him. I never saw him."
+
+"Never saw me, Felix Broux!" I cried, completely taken aback.
+
+"No," maintained Constant. "You are an impostor."
+
+"Impostor! Nonsense!" I cried out. "Constant, you know me as well as you
+know yourself. I say I must see the duke; his life is in danger!"
+
+Constant was paying off old scores with interest.
+
+"An impostor," he yelled shrilly, "or else a madman--or an assassin."
+
+"That is the truth," said some one, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder.
+
+I turned; two men of the guard had come up, my friend of just now and my
+foe of the morning. It was the latter who held me and said:
+
+"This is the very rascal who sprang on Monsieur's coach-step in the
+morning. M. Lucas threw him off, else he might have stabbed Monsieur. We
+were fools enough to let him go free. But this time he shall not get off
+so easy."
+
+"I am innocent of all thought of harm," I cried. "I am M. le Duc's loyal
+servant. I meant no harm this morning, and I mean none now. I am here to
+save Monsieur's life."
+
+"He is here to kill Monsieur; he is an assassin!" screamed Constant.
+"Flog him, men; he will own the truth then!"
+
+"I am no assassin!" I shouted, struggling in their grasp. "Let me go,
+villains, let me go! I tell you, Monsieur's life is at stake--Monsieur's
+very life, I tell you!"
+
+They paid me no heed. Not one of them--save hat lying knave
+Constant--knew me as other than the shabby fellow who had acted
+suspiciously in the morning. They were dragging me to the door in spite
+of my shouts and struggles, when suddenly a ringing voice spoke from
+above:
+
+"What is this rumpus? Who talks of Monsieur's life?"
+
+The guards halted dead, and I cried out joyfully:
+
+"Vigo!"
+
+"Yes, I am Vigo," the big man answered, striding down the stairs. "Who
+are you?"
+
+I wanted to shout, "Felix Broux, Monsieur's page," but a sort of
+nightmare dread came over me lest Vigo, too, should disclaim me, and my
+voice stuck in my throat.
+
+"Whoever you are, you will be taught not to make a racket in M. le Duc's
+hall. By the saints! it's the boy Felix."
+
+At the friendliness in his voice the guards dropped their hands from me.
+
+"M. Vigo," I said, "I have news for Monsieur of the gravest moment. I am
+come on a matter of life and death. And I am stopped in the hall by
+lackeys."
+
+He looked at me sternly.
+
+"This is not one of your fooleries, Felix?"
+
+"No, M. Vigo."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_A divided duty._
+
+
+That was Vigo's way. The toughest snarl untangled at his touch. He had
+more sense and fewer airs than any other, he saw at once that I was in
+earnest; and Constant's voluble protests were as so much wind. The title
+does not make the man. Though Constant was Master of the Household and
+Vigo only Equery, yet Vigo ruled every corner of the establishment and
+every man in it, save only Monsieur, who ruled him.
+
+He said no word to me as we climbed the broad stair; neither reproved me
+for the fracas nor questioned me about my coming. He would not pry into
+Monsieur's business; and, save as I concerned Monsieur, he had no
+interest in me whatsoever. He led the way straight into an antechamber,
+where a page sprang up to bar our passage.
+
+"No one may enter, M. Vigo, not even you. M. le Duc has ordered it. Why,
+Felix! You in Paris!"
+
+"I enter," said Vigo; and, sweeping Marcel aside, he knocked loudly.
+
+"I came last night," I found time to say under my breath to my old
+comrade before the door was opened.
+
+The handsome secretary whom I had taken for the count stood in the
+doorway looking askance at us. He knew me at once and wondered.
+
+"You cannot enter, Vigo. M. le Duc is occupied."
+
+He made to shut the door, but Vigo's foot was over the sill.
+
+"Natheless, I must enter," he answered unabashed and pushed his way into
+the room.
+
+"Then you must answer for it," returned the secretary, with a scowl that
+sat ill on his delicate face.
+
+"_You_ shall answer for it if it turns out a mare's nest," said Vigo, in
+a low, meaning voice to me. But I hardly heard him. I passed him and
+Lucas, and flew down the long room to Monsieur.
+
+M. le Duc was seated before a table heaped with papers. He had been
+watching the scene at the door in surprise and anger. He looked at me
+with a sharp frown, while the deer-hound at his feet rose on its
+haunches growling.
+
+"Roland!" I said. The dog sprang up and came to me.
+
+"Felix Broux!" Monsieur exclaimed, with his quick, warm smile--a smile
+no man in France could match for radiance.
+
+I had no thought of kneeling, of making obeisance, of waiting permission
+to speak.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, half choked, "there is a plot--a vile plot to
+murder you!"
+
+"Where? At St. Quentin?"
+
+"No, Monsieur. Here in Paris. In the streets to-night, when you go to
+the king."
+
+Monsieur sprang to his feet, his hand on his sword. Lucas turned white.
+Vigo swore. Monsieur cried:
+
+"How, in God's name, know you that?"
+
+"You have been betrayed, Monsieur. Your plan is known. You leave the
+house to-night, near a quarter of eleven, to go in secret to the king.
+You leave by the little door in the alley--"
+
+"Diable!" breathed Vigo.
+
+"They set on you on your way--three of them--to run you through before
+you can draw."
+
+"But, ventre bleu! Monsieur is not alone."
+
+"No; he walks between you and M. Lucas."
+
+Not one of them spoke. They stared at me as if I were something uncanny.
+I, a raw country boy, disclosing a perfect knowledge of their most
+intimate plans!
+
+"How know you this?" Monsieur demanded of me. But he was not looking at
+me. His keen glance went first to Lucas, then to Vigo, the two men who
+had shared his confidence. The secretary cried out:
+
+"You cannot think, Monsieur, that I betrayed you?"
+
+Vigo said nothing. His steady eyes never left Monsieur's face.
+
+"No," answered Monsieur to Lucas, "I cannot think it." And to Vigo he
+said: "I shall accuse you when I accuse myself. But--none knew this
+thing save our three selves." And his gaze went back to Lucas.
+
+"It is not likely to be he," I said, impelled to be just to him though I
+did not like him, "for they meant to kill him as well."
+
+Lucas started, then instantly recovered himself.
+
+"A comprehensive plot, Monsieur," he said, with a smile.
+
+"Then who was it?" cried Monsieur to me. "You know. Speak."
+
+"There is a spy in the house--an eavesdropper," I said, and then paused.
+
+"Aye?" said Monsieur. "Who?"
+
+Now the answer to this was easy, yet I flinched before it; for I knew
+well enough what Monsieur would do. He feared no man, and waited on no
+man's advice. And if he was a good lover, he was a good hater. He would
+not inform the governor, and await the tardy course of justice, that
+would probably accomplish--nothing. Nor would he consider the troubled
+times and the danger of his position, and ignore the affair, as many
+would have deemed best. He would not stop to think what the Sixteen
+might have to say to it. No; he would call out his guards and slay the
+plotters in the Rue Coupejarrets like the wolves they were. It was right
+he should, but--I owed my life to Yeux-gris.
+
+"His name, man, his name!" Monsieur was crying.
+
+"Monsieur," I returned, flushing hot, "Monsieur--"
+
+"Do you know his name?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, I know his name, but--"
+
+Monsieur looked at me in surprise and frowning, impatience. Quickly
+Lucas struck in:
+
+"Monsieur, I have grave doubts of the boy's honesty."
+
+"Doubts!" cried Monsieur, with a sudden laugh. "It is not a case for
+doubts. The boy states facts."
+
+He seated himself in his chair, his face growing stern again. The little
+action seemed to make him no longer merely my questioner, but my judge.
+
+"Now, Felix Broux, let us get to the bottom of this."
+
+"Monsieur," I began, struggling to put the case clearly, "I learned of
+the plot by accident. I did not guess for a long time it was you who
+were the victim. When I found out that, I came straight here to you.
+Monsieur, there are four men in the plot, and one of them has stood my
+friend."
+
+"And my assassin!"
+
+"He is a black-hearted villain!" I acknowledged. "For he swore no harm
+was meant to you. He swore it was only a private grudge against M.
+Lucas. But when one of them let out the truth I came straight to you."
+
+"That is likely true," said Vigo, "for he was ready to kill the men who
+barred his way."
+
+"You were in a plot to kill my secretary!"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried.
+
+"You--Felix Broux!"
+
+I curled with shame.
+
+"M. Lucas had struck me," I muttered; "I thought the fight was fair
+enough. And they threatened my life."
+
+Monsieur's contemptuous eyes shrivelled me as flame shrivels a leaf.
+
+"You--a Broux of St. Quentin!"
+
+Lucas, who had watched me close all the while, as they all three did,
+said now:
+
+"I believe he is a cheat, Monsieur. There is no plot. He has learned of
+your plan through the eavesdropper he speaks of and thinks to make
+credit out of a trumped-up tale of murder."
+
+"No," answered Monsieur. "You may think that, Lucas, for he is a
+stranger to you. But I know him. He was a fool sometimes, but he was
+never dishonest. You used to be fond of me, Felix. What has happened to
+make you consort with my enemies?"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I love you. I have always loved you," I cried. "I am not
+lying now, nor cheating you. There is a plot. I learned it and came
+straight to you, though I was under oath not to betray them."
+
+"Then, in Heaven's name, Felix," burst out Vigo, "which side are you
+on?"
+
+Monsieur began to laugh.
+
+"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can make
+nothing of it."
+
+"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him a
+trickster now."
+
+Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.
+
+"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to get
+some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we have not
+yet fathomed."
+
+"Will Monsieur let me speak?"
+
+"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past," he
+answered dryly.
+
+"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin with
+you, three months back. But at length he said I should come, and I
+reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an inn. This
+morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let me enter. I was
+so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove out I sprang up on your
+coach-step--"
+
+"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was you,
+Felix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters. And Lucas
+took you for a miscreant. Now I _am_ sorry."
+
+If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology. But at
+once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you in all good
+faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save me, you turn
+traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him! I had
+believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."
+
+"Monsieur, I was wrong--a thousand times wrong. I knew that as soon as I
+had sworn. And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath
+or no oath."
+
+"There spoke the Broux!" cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile. "Now
+you are Felix. Who are my would-be murderers?"
+
+We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before,
+and here we stuck again.
+
+"Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten--tell you
+their names, their whereabouts, everything--were it not for one man who
+stood my friend."
+
+The duke's eyes flashed.
+
+"You call him that--my assassin!"
+
+"He is an assassin," I was forced to answer; "even Monsieur's
+assassin--and a perjurer. But--but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the
+other, at the risk of his own. How can I pay him back by betraying him?"
+
+"According to your own account, he betrayed you."
+
+"Aye, he lied to me," I said brokenly. "Yet Monsieur, if it were your
+own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the gutter,
+would you send him to his death?"
+
+"To whom do you owe your first duty?"
+
+"Monsieur, to you."
+
+"Then speak."
+
+But I could not do it. Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain, yet he had
+saved my life.
+
+"Monsieur, I cannot."
+
+The duke cried out:
+
+"This to me!"
+
+There was a silence. I stood with hanging head, the picture of a
+shame-faced knave. Shame so filled me that I could not look up to meet
+Monsieur's sentence. But when I had remembered the good hater in
+Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover. Monsieur had
+been fond of me at St. Quentin. As I waited for the lightning to strike,
+he said with utmost gentleness:
+
+"Felix, let me understand you. In what manner did this man save your
+life?"
+
+Now that was like my lord. Though a hot man, he loved fairness and ever
+strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the finer that it was
+not his nature. His leniency fired me with a sudden hope.
+
+"Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot. But one cannot be as vile
+as the others, since he saved my life. Monsieur, if I tell you, will you
+let that one go?"
+
+"I shall do as I see fit," he answered, all the duke. "Felix, will you
+speak?"
+
+"If Monsieur will promise to let him go--"
+
+"Insolence, sirrah! I do not bargain with my servants."
+
+His words were like whips. I flinched before his proud anger, and for
+the second time stood with hanging head awaiting his sentence. And again
+he did what I could not guess. He cried out:
+
+"Felix, you are blind, besotted, mad. You know not what you do. I am in
+constant danger. The city is filled with my enemies. The Leagues hate me
+and are ever plotting mischief against me. Every day their mistrust and
+hatred grow. I did a bold thing in coming to Paris, but I had a great
+end to serve--to pave a way into the capital for the Catholic king and
+bring the land to peace. For that, I live in hourly jeopardy, and risk
+my life to-night on foot in the streets. If I am killed, more than my
+life is lost. The Church may lose the king, and this dear France of ours
+be harried to a desert in the civil wars!"
+
+I had braced myself to bear Monsieur's anger, but this unlooked-for
+appeal pierced me through and through. All the love and loyalty in
+me--and I had much, though it may not have seemed so--rose in answer to
+Monsieur's call. I fell on my knees before him, choked with sobs.
+
+Monsieur's hand lay on my head as he said quietly:
+
+"Now, Felix, speak."
+
+I answered huskily:
+
+"Would Monsieur have me turn Judas?"
+
+"Judas betrayed his _master_."
+
+It was my last stand. My last redoubt had fallen. I raised my head to
+tell him all.
+
+Maybe it was the tears in my eyes, but as I lifted them to M. le Duc, I
+saw--not him, but Yeux-gris--Yeux-gris looking at me with warm good
+will, as he had looked when he was saving me from Gervais. I saw him, I
+say, plain before my eyes. The next instant there was nothing but
+Monsieur's face of rising impatience.
+
+I rose to my feet, and said:
+
+"Kill me, Monsieur; I cannot tell."
+
+"Nom de dieu!" he shouted, springing up.
+
+I shut my eyes and waited. Had he slain me then and there it were no
+more than my deserts.
+
+"Monsieur," said Vigo, immovably, "shall I go for the boot?"
+
+I opened my eyes then. Monsieur stood quite still, his brow knotted, his
+hands clenched as if to keep them off me.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "send for the boot, the thumbscrew, whatever you
+please. I deserve it, and I will bear it. Monsieur, it is not that I
+will not tell. It is something stronger than I. I _cannot_."
+
+He burst into an angry laugh.
+
+"Say you are possessed of a devil, and I will believe it. My faith!
+though you are a low-born lad and I Duke of St. Quentin, I seem to be
+getting the worst of it."
+
+"There is the boot, Monsieur."
+
+Monsieur laughed again, no less angrily.
+
+"That does not help me, my good Vigo. I cannot torture a Broux."
+
+"There Monsieur is wrong. The lad has been disloyal and insolent, if he
+is a Broux."
+
+"Granted, Vigo," said M. le Duc. But he did not add, "Fetch the boot."
+
+Vigo went on with steady persistence. "He has not been loyal to Monsieur
+and his interests in refusing to tell what he knows. And if he goes
+counter to Monsieur's interests he is a traitor, Broux or no Broux. He
+has no claim to be treated as other than an enemy. These are serious
+times. Monsieur does not well to play with his dangers. The boy must
+tell what he knows. Am I to go for the boot, Monsieur?"
+
+M. le Duc was silent for a moment, while the hot flush that had sprung
+to his face died away. Then he answered Vigo:
+
+"Nevertheless, it is owing to Felix that I shall not walk out to meet my
+death to-night."
+
+The secretary had stood silent for a long time, fingering nervously the
+papers on the table. I had forgotten his presence, when now he stepped
+forward and said:
+
+"If I might be permitted a suggestion, Monsieur--"
+
+Monsieur silenced him with a sharp gesture.
+
+"Felix Broux," he said to me, "you have been following a bad plan. No
+man can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You are either my
+loyal servant or my enemy, one thing or the other. Now I am loath to
+hurt you. You have seen how I am loath to hurt you. I give you one more
+chance to be honest. Go and think it over. If in half an hour you have
+decided that you are my true man, well and good. If not, by St. Quentin,
+we will see what a flogging can do!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_Charles-Andre-Etienne-Marie._
+
+
+Unpleased, but unprotesting, Vigo led me out into the anteroom. Those
+men who judged by the outside of things and, knowing Vigo's iron ways,
+said that he ruled Monsieur, were wrong.
+
+The big equery gave me over to the charge of Marcel and returned to the
+inner room. Hardly had the door closed behind him when the page burst
+out:
+
+"What is it? What is the coil? What have you done, Felix?"
+
+Now you can guess I was too sick-hearted for chatter. I had defied and
+disobeyed my liege lord; I could never hope for pardon or any man's
+respect. They threatened me with flogging; well, let them flog. They
+could not make my back any sorer than my conscience was. For I had not
+the satisfaction in my trouble of thinking that I had done right.
+Monsieur's danger should have been my first consideration. What was
+Yeux-gris, perjured scoundrel, in comparison with M. le Duc? And yet I
+knew that at the end of the half-hour I should not tell; at the end of
+the flogging I should not tell. I had warned Monsieur; that I would
+have done had it been the breaking of a thousand oaths. But give up
+Yeux-gris? Not if they tore me limb from limb!
+
+"What is it all about?" cried Marcel, again. "You look as glum as a
+Jesuit in Lent. What is the matter with you, Felix?"
+
+"I have cooked my goose," I said gloomily.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Nothing that I can speak about. But I am out of Monsieur's books."
+
+"What was old Vigo after when he took you in to Monsieur? I never saw
+anything so bold. When Monsieur says he is not to be disturbed he means
+it."
+
+I had nothing to tell him, and was silent.
+
+"What is it? Can't you tell an old chum?"
+
+"No; it is Monsieur's private business."
+
+"Well, you are grumpy!" he cried out pettishly. "You must be out of
+grace." He seemed to decide that nothing was to be made out of me just
+now on this tack, and with unabated persistence tried another.
+
+"Is it true, Felix, what one of the men said just now, that you tried to
+speak with Monsieur this morning when he drove out?"
+
+"Yes. But Monsieur did not recognize me."
+
+"Like enough," Marcel answered. "He has a way of late of falling into
+these absent fits. Monsieur is not the man he was."
+
+"He does look older," I said, "and worn. I trow the risk he is
+running--"
+
+"Pshaw!" cried Marcel, with scorn. "Is Monsieur a man to mind risks? No;
+it is M. le Comte."
+
+I started like a guilty thing, remembering what Yeux-gris had told me
+and I, wrapped in my petty troubles, had forgotten. Monsieur had lost
+his only son. And I had chosen this time to defy him!
+
+"How long ago was it?" I asked in a hushed voice.
+
+"Since M. le Comte left us? It will be three weeks next Friday."
+
+"How did he die?"
+
+"Die?" echoed Marcel. "You crazy fellow, he is not dead!"
+
+It was my turn to stare.
+
+"Then where is he?"
+
+"It would be money in my pouch if I knew. What made you think him dead,
+Felix?"
+
+"A man told me so."
+
+"Pardieu!" he cried in some excitement. "When? Who was it?"
+
+"To-day. I do not know the man's name."
+
+"It seems you know very little. Pardieu! I do not believe M. le Comte is
+dead. What else did your man say?"
+
+"Nothing. He only said the Comte de Mar was dead."
+
+"Pshaw! I don't believe it. You believe everything you hear because you
+are just from the country. No; if M. le Comte were dead we should hear
+of it. Oh, certainly, we should hear."
+
+"But where is he, then? You say he is lost."
+
+"Aye. He has not been seen or heard of since the day they had the
+quarrel."
+
+"Who quarrelled?"
+
+"Why, he and Monsieur," answered Marcel, in a lower voice, pointing to
+the door of the inner room. "M. le Comte has been his own master too
+long to take kindly to a hand over him; that is the whole of it. He has
+a quick temper. So has Monsieur."
+
+But I thought of Monsieur's wonderful patience, and I cried:
+
+"Shame!"
+
+"What now?"
+
+"To speak like that of Monsieur."
+
+"Enfin, it is true. He is none the worse for that. But I suppose if
+Monsieur had a cloven hoof one must not mention it."
+
+"One would get his head broken."
+
+"Oh, you Broux!" he cried out. "I have not seen you for half a year. I
+had forgotten that with you the St. Quentins rank with the saints."
+
+"You--you are a hired servant. You come to Monsieur as you might come to
+anybody. With the Broux it is different," I retorted angrily. Yet I
+could not but know in my heart that any hired servant might have served
+Monsieur better than I. My boasted loyalty--what was it but lip-service?
+I said more humbly: "Pshaw! it is no great matter. Tell me about the
+quarrel."
+
+"And so I will, if you're civil. In the first place, there was the
+question of M. le Comte's marriage."
+
+"What! is he married?"
+
+"Oh, by no means. Monsieur wouldn't have it. You see, Felix," Marcel
+said in a tone deep with importance, "we're Navarre's men now."
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"I suppose you would say 'of course' just like that to Mayenne himself.
+You greenhorn! It is as much as our lives are worth to side openly with
+Navarre. The League may attack us any day."
+
+"I know," I said uneasily. Every chance word Marcel spoke seemed to dye
+my guilt the deeper. "But what has this to do with M. le Comte's
+marriage?" I asked him.
+
+"Why, he was more than half a Leaguer. Perhaps he is one now. Some say
+he and Monsieur were at daggers drawn about politics; but I warrant it
+was about Mlle. de Montluc. They call her the Rose of Lorraine. She's
+the Duke of Mayenne's own cousin and housemate. And we're king's men, so
+of course it was no match for Monsieur's son. They say Mayenne himself
+favoured the marriage, but our duke wouldn't hear of it. However, the
+backbone of the trouble was M. de Grammont."
+
+"And who may he be?"
+
+"He's a cousin of the house. He and M. le Comte are as thick as thieves.
+Before we came to Paris they lodged together. So when M. le Comte came
+here he brought M. de Grammont. Dare I speak ill of Monsieur's cousin,
+Felix? For I would say, at the risk of a broken head, that he is a
+sour-faced churl. You cannot deny it. You never saw him."
+
+"No, nor M. le Comte, either."
+
+"Why, you have seen M. le Comte!"
+
+"Never. The only time he came to St. Quentin I was laid up in bed with a
+strained leg. I missed the chase. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Why, you are right; that was the time you fell out of the buttery
+window when you were stealing tarts, and Margot got after you with the
+broomstick. I remember very well."
+
+He was for calling up all our old pranks at the chateau, but it was
+little joy to me to think on those fortunate days when I was Monsieur's
+favourite. I said:
+
+"Nay, Marcel, you were telling me of M. le Comte and the quarrel."
+
+"Oh, as for that, it is easy told. You see M. le Comte and this Grammont
+took no interest in Monsieur's affairs, and they had very little to say
+to him, and he to them. They had plenty of friends in Paris, Leaguers or
+not, and they used to go about amusing themselves. But at last M. de
+Grammont had such a run of bad luck at the tables that he not only
+emptied his own pockets but M. le Comte's as well. I will say for M. le
+Comte that he would share his last sou with any one who asked."
+
+"And so would any St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, you are always piping up for the St. Quentins."
+
+"He should have no need in this house."
+
+We jumped up to find Vigo standing behind us.
+
+"What have you been saying of Monsieur?"
+
+"Nothing, M. Vigo," stammered the page. "I only said M. le Comte--"
+
+"You are not to discuss M. le Comte. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, M. Vigo."
+
+"Then obey. And you, Felix, I shall have a little interview with you
+shortly."
+
+"As you will, M. Vigo," I said hopelessly.
+
+He went off down the corridor, and Marcel turned angrily on me.
+
+"Mon dieu, Felix, you have got me into a nice scrape with your eternal
+chanting of the praises of Monsieur. Like as not I shall get a beating
+for it. Vigo never forgets."
+
+"I am sorry," I said. "We should not have been talking of it."
+
+"No, we should not. Come over here where we can watch both doors, and
+I'll tell you the rest before the old lynx gets back."
+
+We sat down close together, and he proceeded in a low tone to disobey
+Vigo.
+
+"Enfin, as I said, the two young gentlemen were quite sans le sou, for
+things had come to a point where M. le Duc looked pretty black at any
+application for funds--he has other uses for his gold, you see. One day
+Monsieur was expecting some one to whom he was to pay a thousand
+pistoles, and to have the money handy he put it in a secret drawer in
+his cabinet in the room yonder. The man arrives and is taken to
+Monsieur's private room. Monsieur gives him his orders and goes to the
+cabinet for his pistoles. No pistoles there!"
+
+Marcel paused dramatically. "And what then?" I asked.
+
+"Well, it appears he had once shown M. le Comte the trick of the drawer,
+so he sent for him--not to accuse him, mind you. For M. le Comte is wild
+enough, yet Monsieur did not think he would steal pistoles, nor would
+he, I will stake my oath. No, Monsieur merely asked him if he had ever
+shown any one the drawer, and M. le Comte answered, 'Only Grammont.'"
+
+And how have you learned all this?"
+
+"Oh, one hears."
+
+"One does, with one's ears to the keyhole."
+
+"It behooves you, Felix, to be civil to your better!"
+
+I made pretence of looking about me.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He sits here. I am page to the Duke of St. Quentin. And you?"
+
+"Touche!" I admitted bitterly enough. Little Marcel, my junior, my
+unquestioning follower in the old days, was now indeed my better, quite
+in a position to patronize.
+
+"Continue, if you please, Marcel. Yet, in passing, I should like to ask
+you how much you heard our talk in there just now."
+
+"Nothing," he answered candidly. "When they are so far down the room one
+cannot hear a word. In the affair of the pistoles they stood near the
+cabinet at this end. One could not help but hear. As for listening at
+keyholes, I scorn it."
+
+"Yes, it is well to scorn it. People have an unpleasant trick of opening
+doors so suddenly."
+
+He laughed cheerfully.
+
+"Old Vigo caught us, certes. Let's see, where was I? Oh, yes, then
+Monsieur put on his proud look and said, if it was a case of no one but
+his son and his cousin, he preferred to drop the matter. But M. le Comte
+got out of him what the trouble was and went off for Grammont, red as
+fire. The two together came back to Monsieur and denied up and down
+that either of them knew aught of his pistoles, or had told of the
+secret to any one. They say it was easy to see that Monsieur did not
+believe Grammont, but he did not give him the lie, and the matter came
+near dropping there, for M. le Duc would not accuse a kinsman. But then
+Lucas gave a new turn to the affair."
+
+"How long has Lucas been here, Marcel? Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, he's a rascal of a Huguenot. Monsieur picked him up at Mantes, just
+before we came to the city. And if he spies on Monsieur's enemies as
+well as he does on this household, he must be a useful man. He has that
+long nose of his in everything, let me tell you. Of course he was
+present when Monsieur missed the pistoles. So then, quite on his own
+account, without any orders, he took two of the men and searched M. de
+Grammont's room. And in a locked chest of his which they forced open
+they found five hundred of the pistoles in the very box Monsieur had
+kept them in."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Marcel made a fine gesture.
+
+"And then, pardieu! the storm broke. M. de Grammont raved like a madman.
+He said Lucas was the thief and had put half the sum in his chest to
+divert suspicion. He said it was a plot to ruin him contrived between
+Monsieur and his henchman, Lucas. It is true enough, certes, that
+Monsieur never liked him. He threatened Monsieur's life and Lucas's. He
+challenged Monsieur, and Monsieur declined to cross swords with a
+thief. He challenged Lucas, and Lucas took the cue from Monsieur. I was
+not there--on either side of the door. What I tell you has leaked out
+bit by bit from Lucas, for Monsieur keeps his mouth shut. The upshot of
+the matter was that Grammont goes at Lucas with a knife, and Monsieur
+has the guards pitch my gentleman into the street. Then M. le Comte
+swore a big oath that he would go with Grammont. Monsieur told him if he
+went in such company it would be forever. M. le Comte swore he would
+never come back under his father's roof if M. le Duc crawled to him on
+his knees to beg him."
+
+"Ah!" I cried; "and then?"
+
+"Marry, that's all. M. le Comte went straight out of this gate, without
+horse or squire. And we have not heard a word of either of them since."
+
+He paused, and when I made no comment, said, a trifle aggrieved:
+
+"Eh bien, you take it calmly, but you would not had you been here. It
+was an altogether lively affair. It wouldn't surprise me a whit if some
+day Monsieur should be attacked as he drives out. He's not one to forget
+an injury, this M. Gervais de Grammont."
+
+At the name, intelligence flashed over me, sudden and clear as last
+night's lightning-gleam. Yet this thing I seemed to see was so hideous,
+so horrible, that my mind recoiled from it.
+
+"Marcel," I stammered, shuddering, "Marcel--"
+
+"Mordieu! what ails you? Is some one walking on your grave?"
+
+"Marcel, how is M. le Comte named?"
+
+"The Comte de Mar? Oh, do you mean his names in baptism?
+Charles-Andre-Etienne-Marie. They call him Etienne. Why do you ask? What
+is it?"
+
+It was a certainty, then. Yet I could not bring myself to believe this
+horrible thing.
+
+"I have never seen him. How does he look?"
+
+"Oh, not at all like Monsieur. He has fair hair and gray eyes--que
+diable!"
+
+For I had flung open Monsieur's door and dashed in.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_The honour of St. Quentin._
+
+
+Monsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and hurriedly to
+Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon them, and then
+Monsieur cried out to me:
+
+"Ah, Felix! You have come to your senses."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."
+
+He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at Marcel,
+standing agape in the doorway.
+
+"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and shut the
+door into the corridor."
+
+Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.
+
+"Now, Felix."
+
+I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was disposed
+of.
+
+"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I have found
+out. They--"
+
+My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the words died
+on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know that this was no
+story to tell Monsieur before another.
+
+"I will tell Monsieur alone."
+
+"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.
+
+"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."
+
+He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and said to
+the secretary:
+
+"You may go, Lucas."
+
+Lucas protested.
+
+"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be trusted.
+Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your life."
+
+The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:
+
+"You may go."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Go!"
+
+Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that startled
+me. But I did not pay it much heed.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.
+
+But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I had to
+tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two words. I stood
+silent, not knowing how to start.
+
+"Felix! Beware how much longer you abuse my patience!"
+
+"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."
+
+"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he knew--But go on.
+The others--"
+
+"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St. Denis
+gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of the Amour
+de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron from garret
+to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is here that they
+plot."
+
+[Illustration: "WITH A CRY MONSIEUR SPRANG TOWARD ME."]
+
+Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall something
+half remembered, half forgotten.
+
+"But the men," he cried, "the men!"
+
+"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."
+
+"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning forward
+eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking--the quickest way to reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young men--noble."
+
+I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon him.
+
+"Their names, lad!"
+
+Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up and
+covered every other feeling. I burst out:
+
+"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."
+
+He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth.
+Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling the
+truth.
+
+I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave
+man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that gray-eyed
+cheat.
+
+With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.
+
+"You lie, you cur!"
+
+"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."
+
+He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog, who had
+sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which the dumb
+beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed head, a man
+stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was, the tears came to
+my eyes for Monsieur.
+
+He recovered himself.
+
+"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"
+
+My rage blazed up again.
+
+"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not who they
+were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things fitted."
+
+"Then it is your guess! You dare to say--"
+
+"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember respect.
+"Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen M. le Comte nor
+M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and heavy, with a black
+beard and a black scowl, whom the other called Gervais. The younger was
+called Etienne, tall and slender, with gray eyes and fair hair. And like
+Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like,
+though he is light! In face, in voice, in manner! He speaks like
+Monsieur. He has Monsieur's laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe
+that was why I loved him so much."
+
+"It was he whom you would not betray?"
+
+"Aye. That was before I knew."
+
+Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again.
+Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would look
+through me to the naked soul.
+
+"How do I know that you are not lying?"
+
+"Monsieur does know it."
+
+"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."
+
+He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever saw--the face of
+a man whose son has sought to murder him. Looking back on it now, I
+wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with that story. I wonder why I did
+not bury the shame and disgrace of it in my own heart, at whatever cost
+keep it from Monsieur. But the thought never entered my head then. I was
+so full of black rage against Yeux-gris--him most of all, because he had
+won me so--that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied
+Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.
+
+"Tell me everything--how you met them--all. Else I shall not believe a
+word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur cried out.
+
+I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning
+vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in
+hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had
+spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face
+drew the cry from me:
+
+"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"
+
+"Take care, Felix, he is my son!"
+
+I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.
+
+"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was not
+against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I swore, too,
+never to betray them! Two perjuries!"
+
+I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering it.
+
+"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.
+
+"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since he has
+touched it. He has made it vile--scoundrel, assassin, parricide!"
+
+Monsieur struck the words from my lips.
+
+"It is true," I muttered.
+
+"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."
+
+"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of a St.
+Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came uppermost
+again.
+
+"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a handful
+of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught amiss. They are
+only three--he and Grammont and the lackey."
+
+But Monsieur shook his head.
+
+"I cannot do that."
+
+"Why not, Monsieur?"
+
+"Can I take my own son prisoner?"
+
+"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would have
+gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and two more
+can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame him before the
+men." I guessed at what he was thinking.
+
+"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest my son
+like a common felon--shame him like that?"
+
+"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a right to
+say it. "He has forgotten his honour."
+
+"Aye. But I have remembered mine."
+
+"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"
+
+But his eyes told me that he did mean it.
+
+"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives him?"
+
+His face set sternly.
+
+"No," he answered. "No, Felix. He has placed himself beyond my
+forgiveness."
+
+"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the three!"
+
+He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.
+
+"You would have me kill my son?"
+
+"He would have killed you."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and
+catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud and
+honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry heart.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished for the
+sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back, but the case
+was changed now.
+
+"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."
+
+"Monsieur would spare him as well--him, the ringleader!"
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"He forgets it."
+
+"But I do not."
+
+"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"
+
+Monsieur looked at me.
+
+"When you are a man, Felix Broux, you will know that there are other
+things in this world besides vengeance. You will know that some injuries
+cannot be avenged. You will know that a gentleman cannot use the same
+weapons that blackguards use to him."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I was
+furious with him for it.
+
+He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had been
+standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me with puzzled,
+troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was wrong, and vented his
+feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur spoke to him; Roland bounded
+up to him and licked his hand. They walked up and down together,
+comforting each other.
+
+"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."
+
+He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then as he
+did.
+
+"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat, Felix? But
+does it seem to you fair that a tool should be punished when the leaders
+go free?"
+
+"No," said I; "but it is the common way."
+
+"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.
+
+I waited till he faced me once more.
+
+"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"
+
+"No, Felix. He shall be punished lest he betray again."
+
+He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by me, a
+broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take up his life
+once more. But I thought he would never get over the blow. A husband may
+forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will forgive her child's, but
+a father can neither forget nor forgive the crime of the son who bears
+his name.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the depths
+of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.
+
+Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.
+
+"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be looking to the
+country's business."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_Lucas and "Le Gaucher."_
+
+
+I cursed myself for a fool that I had carried the tale to Monsieur. It
+should have been my business to keep a still tongue and go kill
+Yeux-gris myself. For this last it was not yet too late.
+
+Marcel was hanging about in the corridor, and to him I gave the word for
+Vigo. I tore away from his eager questionings and hurried to the gate.
+
+In the morning I had not been able to get in, and now I could no more
+get out. By Vigo's orders, no man might leave the house.
+
+Vigo was after the spy, of course. Monsieur knew the traitor now; he
+would inform Vigo, and the gates would be open for honest men. But that
+might take time and I could not wait five minutes. I had the audacity to
+cry to the guards:
+
+"M. le Duc will let me pass out. I refer you to M. le Duc."
+
+The men were impressed. They had a respect for me, since I had been
+closeted with Monsieur. Yet they dared not disobey Vigo for their lives.
+In this dilemma the poor sentry, fearful of getting into trouble
+whatever he did, sent up an envoy to ask Monsieur. I was frightened
+then. I had uttered my speech in sheer bravado, and was very doubtful as
+to how he would answer my impudence. But he was utterly careless, I
+trow, what I did, for presently the word came down that I might pass
+out.
+
+The sun was setting as I hastened along the streets. I must reach the
+Rue Coupejarrets before dark, else there was no hope for me. A man in
+his senses would have known there was no hope anyway. Who but a madman
+would think of venturing back, forsworn, to those three villains, for
+the killing of one? It would be a miracle if aught resulted but failure
+and death. Yet I felt no jot of fear as I plunged into the mesh of
+crooked streets in the Coupejarrets quarter--only ardour to reach my
+goal. When, on turning a corner, I came upon a group of idlers choking
+the narrow ruelle, I said to myself that a dozen Parisians in the way
+could no more stop me than they could stop a charge of horse. All heels
+and elbows, I pushed into them. But, to my abasement, promptly was I
+seized upon by a burly porter and bidden, with a cuff, to mind my
+manners. Then I discovered the occasion of the crowd to be a little
+procession of choristers out of a neighbouring church--St. Jean of the
+Spire it was, though I knew then no name for it. The boys were singing,
+the watchers quiet, bareheaded. They sang as if there were nothing in
+the world but piety and love. The last level rays of the sun crowned
+them with radiant aureoles, painted their white robes with glory. I shut
+my eyes, dazzled; it was as if I beheld a heavenly host. When I opened
+them again the folk at my side were kneeling as the cross came by. I
+knelt, too, but the holy sign spoke to me only of the crucifix I had
+trampled on, of Yeux-gris and his lies. I prayed to the good God to let
+me kill Yeux-gris, prayed, kneeling there on the cobbles, with a fervour
+I had never reached before. When I rose I ran on at redoubled speed,
+never doubting that a just God would strengthen my hand, would make my
+cause his.
+
+I entered the little court. The shutter was fastened, as before, but I
+had my dagger, and could again free the bolt. I could creep up-stairs
+and mayhap stab Yeux-gris before they were aware of my coming. But that
+was not my purpose. I was no bravo to strike in the back, but the
+instrument of a righteous vengeance. He must know why he died.
+
+One to three, I had no chance. But if I knocked openly it was likely
+that Yeux-gris, being my patron, would be the one to come down to me.
+Then there was the opportunity, man to man. If it were Grammont or the
+lackey, I would boldly declare that I would give my news to none but
+Yeux-gris. In pursuance of this plan I was pounding vigorously on the
+door when a voice behind me cried out blithely:
+
+"So you are back at last, Felix Broux"
+
+At the first word I wheeled around. In the court entrance stood
+Yeux-gris, smiling and debonair. He had laid aside his sword, and held
+on his left arm a basket containing a loaf of bread, a roast capon, and
+some bottles, for all the world like an honest prentice doing his
+master's errand.
+
+"Yes, I am back!" I shouted. "Back to kill you, parricide!"
+
+He had a knife in his belt; the fight was even. I was upon him, my
+dagger raised to strike. He made no motion to draw, and I remembered in
+a flash he could not: his right arm was powerless. He sprang back,
+flinging up his burdened left as a shield, and my blade buried itself in
+the side of the basket.
+
+As I stabbed I heard feet thundering down the stairs within. I jerked my
+knife from the wicker and turned to face this new enemy. "Grammont," I
+thought, and that my end had come.
+
+The door flew open and, shoulder to shoulder like brothers, out rushed
+Grammont and--Lucas!
+
+My fear was drowned in amaze. I forgot to run and stood staring in
+sheer, blank bewilderment. Crying "Damned traitor!" Gervais, with drawn
+sword, charged at me.
+
+I had only the little dagger. I owe my life to Yeux-gris's quick wits
+and no less quick fingers. Dropping the basket, he snatched a bottle
+from it and hurled it at Gervais.
+
+"Ware, Grammont!" shouted Lucas, springing forward. But the missile flew
+too quickly. It struck Grammont square on the forehead, and he went down
+like a slaughtered ox.
+
+We looked, not at him, but at Lucas--Lucas, the duke's deferential
+servant, the coward and skulker, Grammont's hatred, standing here by
+Grammont's side, glaring at us over his naked sword.
+
+I saw in one glance that Yeux-gris was no less astounded than I, and
+from that instant, though the inwardness of the matter was still a
+riddle to me, my heart acquitted him of all dishonesty, of all
+complicity. His was not the face of a parricide.
+
+"Lucas!" he cried, in a dearth of words. "_Lucas!_"
+
+I was staring at Lucas in thick bewilderment. The man was transformed
+from the one I knew. At M. le Duc's he had been pale, nervous, and
+shaken--senselessly and contemptibly scared, as I thought, since he was
+warned of the danger and need not face it. But now he was another man. I
+can think only of those lanterns I have seen, set with coloured glass.
+They look dull enough all day, but when the taper within is lighted
+shine like jewels. So Lucas now. His face, so keen and handsome of
+feature, was brilliant, his eyes sparkling, his figure instinct with
+defiance. A smile crossed his face.
+
+"Aye," he answered evenly, "it is Lucas."
+
+M. le Comte appeared to be in a state of stupor. He could not for a
+space find his tongue to demand:
+
+"How, in the name of Heaven, come you here?"
+
+"To fight Grammont," Lucas answered at once.
+
+"A lie!" I shouted. "You're Grammont's friend. You came here to warn him
+off. It's your plot!"
+
+"Felix! The plot?" Yeux-gris cried.
+
+"The plot's to murder Monsieur. Martin let it out. I thought it was you
+and Grammont. But it's Lucas and Grammont!"
+
+Lucas hesitated. Even now he debated whether he could not lie out of it.
+Then he burst into laughter.
+
+"It seems the cat's out of the bag. Aye, M. le Comte de Mar, I came to
+warn Grammont off. The duke will be here straightway. How will you like
+to swing for parricide?"
+
+Yeux-gris stared at him, neither in fear nor in fury, but in utter
+stupefaction.
+
+"But Gervais? He plotted with you? But he hates you!"
+
+We gaped at Lucas like yokels at a conjurer. He made us no answer but
+looked from one to the other of us with the alertness of an angry viper.
+We were two, but without swords. I knew he was thinking how easiest to
+end us both.
+
+M. le Comte cried: "You! You come from Navarre's camp, from M. de
+Rosny!"
+
+"Aye. I have outwitted more than one man."
+
+"Mordieu! I was right to hate you!"
+
+Lucas laughed. Yeux-gris blazed out:
+
+"Traitor and thief! You stole the money. I said that from the first. You
+drove us from the house. How you and Grammont--"
+
+"Came together? Very simple," Lucas answered with easy insolence.
+"Grammont did not love Monsieur, your honoured father. It was child's
+play to make an assignation with him and to lament the part forced on me
+by Monsieur. Grammont was ready enough to scent a scheme of M. le Duc's
+to ruin him. He had said as much to Monsieur, as you may deign to
+remember."
+
+"Aye," said M. le Comte, still like a puzzled child, "he was angry with
+my father. But afterward he changed his mind. He knew it was you, and
+only you."
+
+Lucas broke again into derisive laughter.
+
+"M. de Grammont is as dull a dolt as ever I met, yet clever enough to
+gull you. He thought you must suspect. I dreaded it--needlessly. You
+wise St. Quentins! You cannot see what goes on under your very nose."
+
+M. le Comte sprang forward, scarlet. Lucas flourished the sword.
+
+"The boy there caught at a glance what you had not found out in a
+fortnight. He gets to the duke and blocks my game--for to-day. But if
+they sent him ahead to hold us till their men came up, they were fools,
+too. I'll have the duke yet, and I'll have you now."
+
+He rushed at the unarmed Yeux-gris. The latter darted at Grammont's
+fallen sword, seized it, was on guard, all in the second before Lucas
+reached him. He might have been in a fortnight's trance, but he was
+awake at last.
+
+I trembled for him, then took heart again, as he parried thrust after
+thrust and pressed Lucas hard. I had never seen a man fight with his
+left arm before; I had not realized it could be done, being myself
+helpless with that hand. But as I watched this combat I speedily
+perceived how dangerous is a left-handed adversary. In later years I was
+to understand better, when M. le Comte had become known the length of
+the land by the title "Le Gaucher." But at this time he was in the
+habit, like the rest of the world, of fencing with his right hand; his
+dexterity with the other he rated only as a pretty accomplishment to
+surprise the crowd. He used his left hand scarcely as well as Lucas the
+right; yet, the thrust sinister being in itself a strength, they were
+not badly matched. I stood watching with all my eyes, when of a sudden I
+felt a grasp on my ankle and the next instant was thrown heavily to the
+pavement.
+
+Grammont had come to life and taken prompt part in the fray.
+
+I fell close to him, and instantly he let go my leg and wound his arms
+around me. I tried to rise and could not, and we rolled about together
+in the wine and blood and broken glass. All the while I heard the
+sword-blades clashing. Yeux-gris, God be thanked! seemed to be holding
+his own.
+
+Fighting Gervais was like fighting two men. Slowly but steadily he
+pressed me down and held me. I struggled for dear life--and could not
+push him back an inch.
+
+I still held my knife but my arms were pinned down. Gervais raised
+himself a little to get a better clutch, and his fingers closed on my
+throat. One grip, and life seemed flowing from me. My arm was free now
+if I could but lift it. If I could not, nevermore should I lift it on
+this sunny earth. I did lift it, and drove the dagger deep into him.
+
+I could not take aim; I could not tell where the knife struck. A gasp
+showed he was hit; then he clinched my throat once more. Sight went from
+me, and hearing. "It is no use," I thought, and then thought went, too.
+
+But once again the saints were kind to me. The blackness passed, and I
+wondered what had happened that I was spared. Then I saw Grammont
+clutching with both hands at the dagger-hilt. After all, the blow had
+gone home. I had struck him in the left side under the arm. Three good
+inches of steel were in him.
+
+He had turned over on his side, half off me. I scrambled out from under
+him. To my surprise, Yeux-gris and Lucas were still engaged. I had
+thought it hours since Grammont pulled me down.
+
+As I rose, Yeux-gris turned his head toward me. Only for a second, but
+in that second Lucas pinked his shoulder. I dashed between them; they
+lowered their points.
+
+"First blood for me!" cried Lucas. "That serves for to-day, M. le Comte.
+I regret that I cannot wait to kill you, but that will come. It is
+necessary that I go before M. le Duc arrives. Clear the way."
+
+M. le Comte stood his ground, barring the alley. They glared at each
+other motionless.
+
+Grammont had raised himself to his knees and was trying painfully to get
+on his feet.
+
+"A hand, Lucas," he gasped.
+
+Lucas gave him a startled glance but neither went nor spoke to him.
+
+"I am not much hurt," said Grammont, huskily. Holding by the wall, he
+clambered up on his feet. He swayed, reeled forward, and clutched
+Lucas's arm.
+
+"Lucas, Lucas, help me! Draw out the knife. I cannot. I shall be myself
+when the knife is out. Lucas, for God's sake!"
+
+"You will die when the knife is out," said Lucas, wrenching himself
+free. He turned again to M. le Comte, and his eyes gleamed as he saw the
+blood trickling down his sleeve and the sword tremble in his hand.
+
+"Come on, then," he cried to Yeux-gris.
+
+But I sprang forward and seized the sword from M. le Comte's hand.
+
+"On guard!" I shouted, and we went to work.
+
+I could handle a sword as well as the next one. M. le Duc had taught me
+in his idle days at St. Quentin. It served me well now, and him, too.
+
+The light was fading in the narrow court. Our blades shone white in the
+twilight as the weapons clashed in and out. I saw, without looking,
+Grammont leaning against the wall, his gory face ashen, and Yeux-gris
+watching me with all his soul, now and then shouting a word of advice.
+
+I had had good training, and I fought for all there was in me. Yet I was
+a boy not come to my full strength, and Lucas was more than my match. He
+drove me back farther and farther toward the house-wall. Of a sudden I
+slipped in a smear of blood ('tis no lying excuse, I did slip) and lost
+my guard. He ran his blade into my shoulder, as he had done with
+Yeux-gris.
+
+He would likely have finished me had not a cry from Grammont shaken him.
+
+"The duke!"
+
+In truth, a deepening noise of hoofs and shouts came down the alley from
+the street.
+
+Lucas looked at me, who had regained my guard and stood, little hurt,
+between him and M. le Comte. He could not push past me into the house
+and so through to the other street. He made for the alley, crying out:
+
+"Au revoir, messieurs! We shall meet again."
+
+Grammont seized him.
+
+"Help me, Lucas, for the love of Christ! Don't leave me, Lucas!"
+
+Lucas beat him off with the sword.
+
+"Every man for himself!" he cried, and sprang down the alley.
+
+"It is not the duke," I said to Yeux-gris. "It is most likely the
+watch." I paled at the thought, for the watch was the League's, and
+Lucas by all signs the League's tool. It might go hard with us if
+captured. "Go through the house, M. le Comte," I cried. "Quick, if you
+love your life! I'll keep them at the alley's mouth as long as I can."
+
+Not waiting for his answer, I rushed down the passage. At the end of it
+I ran against Lucas, who, in his turn, had bowled into Vigo.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_Vigo._
+
+
+I knew of old that it was easier to catch a weasel asleep than Vigo
+absent where he was needed; yet I did not expect to meet him in the
+alley. Monsieur, then, had changed his mind.
+
+"Well caught!" cried Vigo, winding his arms round Lucas, who was
+struggling furiously for liberty. "Here, Maurice, Jules, I have number
+one. Ah, you young sinner! with your crew again? I thought as much. Tie
+the knots hard, boys. Better be quiet, you snake; you can't get away."
+
+Lucas seemed to make up his mind to this, for he quieted down directly.
+
+"So the game is up," he said pleasantly. "I had hoped to be gone before
+you arrived, dear Vigo."
+
+We had both been deprived promptly of our swords and Lucas's wrists were
+roped together, but my only bond was Vigo's hand on my arm.
+
+"Where are the others?" he demanded. "No tricks, now."
+
+"Here," I said, and led the way down the passage. Maurice and Jules,
+with their prisoner, pressed after us, and half a dozen of the duke's
+guard after them. The rest stayed without to mind the horses and keep
+off the gathering crowd.
+
+One of the men had a torch which lighted the red pavement. Vigo saw this
+first.
+
+"Morbleu! is it a shambles?"
+
+"That is wine," I said.
+
+"They spilled wine for effect, they spilled so little blood!" Thus
+Lucas, speaking with as cool devilry as if he still commanded the
+situation. Vigo could not know what he meant but he asked no questions;
+instead, bade Lucas hold his tongue.
+
+"I am dumb," Lucas rejoined, with a mock meekness more insolent than
+insolence. But we paid it no heed for M. le Comte came forward out of
+the shadows. He held his head well up but his face was white above his
+crimsoned doublet.
+
+"M. Etienne! Are you hurt?" shouted Vigo.
+
+"No, but he is." M. le Comte stepped aside to show us Grammont leaning
+against the wall.
+
+"Ah!" cried Vigo, triumphantly. He and two of the men rushed at Gervais.
+
+"You would not take me so easily but for a cursed knife in my back,"
+Grammont muttered thickly. "For the love of Heaven, Vigo, draw it out."
+
+With amazement Vigo perceived the knife.
+
+"Who did it?"
+
+"I."
+
+"You, Felix? In the back?" Vigo looked at me as if to demand again which
+side I was on.
+
+"He lay on me, throttling me," I explained. "I stabbed any way I
+could."
+
+"I trow you are a dead man," Vigo told Grammont. "Natheless, here comes
+the knife."
+
+It came, with a great cry from the victim. He fell back against Vigo's
+man, clapping his hand to his side.
+
+"I am done for," he gasped faintly.
+
+"That is well," said Vigo, carefully wiping off the knife.
+
+"Yon is the scoundrel," Grammont gasped, pointing to Lucas.
+
+"He will die a worse death than you," said Vigo.
+
+Grammont looked from the one to the other of us, the sullen rage in his
+face fading to a puzzled helplessness. He said fretfully:
+
+"Which--which is Etienne?"
+
+He could no longer see us plain. M. le Comte came forward silently.
+Grammont struggled for breath in a way pitiable to see. I put my arm
+about him and helped the guardsman to hold him straighter. He reached
+out his hand and caught at M. le Comte's sleeve.
+
+"Etienne--Etienne--pardon. It was wrong toward you--but I never had the
+pistoles. He called me thief--the duke. I beseech--your--pardon."
+
+M. le Comte was silent.
+
+"It was all Lucas--Lucas did it," Grammont muttered with stiffening
+lips. "I am sorry for--it. I am dying--I cannot die--without a chance.
+Say you--for--give--"
+
+Still M. le Comte held back, silent. Treachery was no less treachery
+though Grammont was dying. All the more that they were cousins,
+bedfellows, was the injury great to forgive. M. le Comte said nothing.
+
+How Grammont found the strength only God knows, who haply in his
+goodness gave him a last chance of mercy. Suddenly he straightened his
+sinking body, started from our hold, and tottered toward his cousin,
+both hands outstretched in appeal.
+
+M. le Comte's face was set like a flint. The dying man faltered forward.
+Then M. Etienne, never changing his countenance, slowly, half
+reluctantly, like a man in a dream, held out his hand.
+
+But the old comrades, estranged by traitory, were never to clasp again.
+As he reached M. le Comte, Grammont fell at his feet.
+
+"He was a strong man," said Vigo. He turned Grammont's face up and added
+the word, "Dead." Vigo adored the Duke of St. Quentin. Otherwise he had
+no emotions.
+
+But I was not case-hardened. And I--I myself--had slain this man, who
+had died slowly and in great pain. Vigo's voice sounded to me far off as
+he said bluntly:
+
+"M. le Comte, I make you my prisoner."
+
+"No, by Heaven!" cried M. Etienne, in a vibrating voice that brought me
+back to reality; "no, Vigo! I am no murderer. Things may look black
+against me but I am innocent. You have one villain at your feet and one
+a prisoner, but I am not a third! I am a St. Quentin; I do not plot
+against my father. I was to aid Grammont to set on Lucas, who would not
+answer a challenge. I have been tricked. Gervais asked my
+forgiveness--you heard him. Their dupe, yes--accomplice I was not.
+Never have I lifted my hand against my father, nor would I, whatever
+came. That I swear. Never have I laid eyes on Lucas since I left
+Monsieur's presence, till now when he came out of that door side by side
+with Grammont. Whatever the plot, I knew naught of it. I am a St.
+Quentin--no parricide!"
+
+The ringing voice ceased and M. le Comte stood silent, with haggard eyes
+on Vigo. Had he been prisoner at the bar of judgment he could not have
+waited in greater anxiety. For Vigo, the yeoman and servant, never
+minced words to any man nor swerved from the stark truth.
+
+I burned to seize Vigo's arm, to spur him on to speech. Of course he
+believed M. Etienne; how dared he make his master wait for the
+assurance? On his knees he should be, imploring M. le Comte's pardon.
+
+But no thought of humbling himself troubled Vigo. Nor did he pronounce
+judgment, but merely said:
+
+"M. le Comte will go home with me now. To-morrow he can tell his story
+to my master."
+
+"I will tell it before this hour is out!"
+
+"No. M. le Duc has left Paris. But it matters not, M. Etienne. Monsieur
+suspects nothing against you. Felix kept your name from him. And by the
+time I had screwed it out of Martin, Monsieur was gone."
+
+"Gone out of Paris?" M. Etienne echoed blankly. To his eagerness it was
+as if M. le Duc were out of France.
+
+"Aye. He meant to go to-night--Monsieur, Lucas, and I. But when Monsieur
+learned of this plot, he swore he'd go in open day. 'If the League must
+kill me,' says he, 'they can do it in daylight, with all Paris
+watching.' That's Monsieur!"
+
+At this I understood how Vigo came to be in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+Monsieur, in his distress and anxiety to be gone from that unhappy
+house, had forgotten the spy. Left to his own devices, the equery,
+struck with suspicion at Lucas's absence, laid instant hands on Martin
+the clerk, with whom Lucas, disliked in the household, had had some
+intimacy. It had not occurred to Vigo that M. le Comte, if guilty,
+should be spared. At once he had sounded boots and saddles.
+
+"I will return with you, Vigo," M. le Comte said. "Does the meanest
+lackey in my father's house call me parricide, I must meet the charge.
+My father and I have differed but if we are no longer friends we are
+still noblemen. I could never plot his murder, nor could he for one
+moment believe it of me."
+
+I, guilty wretch, quailed. To take a flogging were easier than to
+confess to him the truth. But I conceived I must.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I told M. le Duc you were guilty. I went back a
+second time and told him."
+
+"And he?" cried M. Etienne.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, he did believe it."
+
+"Morbleu! that cannot be true," Vigo cried, "for when I saw him he gave
+no sign."
+
+"It is true. But he would not have M. le Comte touched. He said he could
+not move in the matter; he could not punish his own kin."
+
+M. le Comte's face blazed as he cried out:
+
+"Vastly magnanimous! I thank him not. I'll none of his mercy. I expected
+his faith."
+
+"You had no claim to it, M. le Comte."
+
+"Vigo!" cried the young noble, "you are insolent, sirrah!"
+
+"I cry monsieur's pardon."
+
+He was quite respectful and quite unabashed. He had meant no insolence.
+But M. Etienne had dared criticise the duke and that Vigo did not allow.
+
+M. Etienne glared at him in speechless wrath. It would have liked him
+well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees. But how? It was a
+byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the duke's. The King of France
+could not dash him.
+
+Vigo went on:
+
+"It seems I have exceeded my duty, monsieur, in coming here. Yet it
+turns out for the best, since Lucas is caught and M. de Grammont dead
+and you cleared of suspicion."
+
+"What!" Yeux-gris cried. "What! you call me cleared!"
+
+Vigo looked at him in surprise.
+
+"You said you were innocent, M. le Comte."
+
+M. le Comte stared, without a word to answer. The equery, all unaware of
+having said anything unexpected, turned to the guardsman Maurice:
+
+"Well, is Lucas trussed? Have you searched him?"
+
+Maurice displayed a poniard and a handful of small coins for sole booty,
+but Jules made haste to announce: "He has something else, though--a
+paper sewed up in his doublet. Shall I rip it out, M. Vigo?"
+
+With Lucas's own knife the grinning Jules slashed his doublet from
+throat to thigh, to extract a folded paper the size of your palm. Vigo
+pondered the superscription slowly, not much at home with the work of a
+quill, save those that winged arrows. M. Etienne, coming forward, with a
+sharp exclamation snatched the packet.
+
+"How came you by my letter?" he demanded of Lucas.
+
+"M. le Comte was pleased to consign it for delivery to Martin."
+
+"What purpose had you with it?"
+
+"Rest assured, dear monsieur, I had a purpose."
+
+The questions were stormily vehement, the answers so gentle as to be
+fairly caressing. It was waste of time and dignity to parley with the
+scoundrel till one could back one's queries with the boot. But M.
+Etienne's passion knew no waiting. Thrusting the letter into his breast
+ere I, who had edged up to him, could catch a glimpse of its address, he
+cried upon Lucas:
+
+"Speak! You were ready enough to jeer at me for a dupe. Tell me what you
+would do with your dupe. You dared not open the plot to me--you did me
+the honour to know I would not kill my father. Then why use me
+blindfold? An awkward game, Lucas."
+
+Lucas disagreed as politely as if exchanging pleasantries in a salon.
+
+"A dexterous game, M. le Comte. Your best friends deemed you guilty.
+What would your enemies have said?"
+
+"Ah-h," breathed M. Etienne.
+
+"It dawns on you, monsieur? You are marvellous thick-witted, yet surely
+you must perceive. We had a dozen fellows ready to swear that your hand
+killed Monsieur."
+
+"You would kill me for my father's murder?"
+
+"Ma foi, no!" cried Lucas, airily. "Never in the world! We should have
+let you live, in the knowledge that whenever you displeased us we could
+send you to the gallows."
+
+M. le Comte, silent, stared at him with wild eyes, like one who looks
+into the open roof of hell. Lucas fell to laughing.
+
+"What! hang you and let our cousin Valere succeed? Mon dieu, no! M. de
+Valere is a man!"
+
+With a blow the guardsman struck the words and the laughter from his
+lips. But I, who no more than Lucas knew how to hold my tongue, thought
+I saw a better way to punish this brazen knave. I cried out:
+
+"You are the dupe, Lucas! Aye, and coward to boot, fleeing here
+from--nothing. I knew naught against you--you saw that. To slip out and
+warn Martin before Vigo got a chance at him--that was all you had to do.
+Yet you never thought of that but rushed away here, leaving Martin to
+betray you. Had you stuck to your post you had been now on the road to
+St. Denis, instead of the road to the Greve! Fool! fool! fool!"
+
+He winced. He had not been ashamed to betray his benefactor, to bite the
+hand that fed him, to desert a wounded comrade; but he was ashamed to
+confront his own blunder. I had the satisfaction of pricking, not his
+conscience, for he had none, but his pride.
+
+"I had to warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St. Quentin
+such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were his kin? You
+did better than you knew when you shut the door on me. You tracked me,
+you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the coil?"
+
+"By God's grace," M. le Comte answered. He laid a hand on my shoulder
+and leaned there heavily. Lucas grinned.
+
+"Ah, waxing pious, is he? The prodigal prepares to return."
+
+M. Etienne's hand clinched on my shoulder. Vigo commanded a gag for
+Lucas, saying, with the only touch of anger I ever knew him to show:
+
+"He shall hang when the king comes in. And now to horse, lads, and out
+of the quarter; we have wasted too much time palavering. King Henry is
+not in Paris yet. We shall do well not to rouse Belin, though we can
+make him trouble if he troubles us. Come, monsieur. Men, guard your
+prisoner. I misjudge if he is not cropful of the devil still."
+
+He did not look it. His figure was drooping; his face purple and
+contorted, for one of the troopers had crammed his scarf into the man's
+mouth, half strangling him. As he was led past us, with a sudden frantic
+effort, fit to dislocate his jaw, he disgorged the gag to cry out
+wildly:
+
+"Oh, M. l'Ecuyer, have mercy! Have pity upon me! For Christ's sake,
+pity!"
+
+[Illustration: "IN A FLASH HE WAS OUT OF THEIR GRASP, FLYING DOWN THE
+ALLEY."]
+
+His bravado had broken down at last. He tried to fling himself at Vigo's
+feet. The guards relaxed their hold to see him grovel.
+
+That was what he had hoped for. In a flash he was out of their grasp,
+flying down the alley.
+
+"To Vigo! Vigo is attacked," we heard him shout.
+
+It was so quick, we stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after,
+pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley we
+ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We lost
+precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it was a ruse
+and our prisoner escaped. When they comprehended, we all rushed together
+out of the passage, emerging among frightened horses and a great press
+of excited men.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_The Comte de Mar._
+
+
+"Which way went he?"
+
+"The man who just came out?"
+
+"This way!"
+
+"No, yonder!"
+
+"Nay, I saw him not."
+
+"A man with bound hands, you say?"
+
+"Here!"
+
+"Down that way!"
+
+"A man in black, was he? Here he is!"
+
+"Fool, no; he went that way!"
+
+M. Etienne, Vigo, I, and the guardsmen rushed hither and thither into
+the ever-thickening crowd, shouting after Lucas and exchanging rapid
+questions with every one we passed. But from the very first the search
+was hopeless. It was dark by this time and a mass of people blocked the
+street, surging this way and that, some eagerly joining in the chase,
+others, from ready sympathy with any rogue, doing their best to hinder
+and confuse us. There was no way to tell how he had gone. A needle in a
+haystack is easy found compared with him who loses himself in a Paris
+crowd by night.
+
+M. Etienne plunged into the first opening he saw, elbowing his way
+manfully. I followed in his wake, his tall bright head making as good an
+oriflamme as the king's plume at Ivry, but when at length we came out
+far down the street we had seen no trace of Lucas.
+
+"He is gone," said M. le Comte.
+
+"Yes, monsieur. If it were day they might find him, but not now."
+
+"No. Even Vigo will not find him. He is worsted for once. He has let
+slip the shrewdest knave in France. Well, he is gone," he repeated after
+a minute. "It cannot be mended by me. He is off, and so am I."
+
+"Whither, monsieur?"
+
+"That is my concern."
+
+"But monsieur will see M. le Duc?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+He broke in on me fiercely.
+
+"Think you that I--I, smirched and sullied, reeking with plots of
+murder--am likely to betake myself to the noblest gentleman in France?"
+
+"He will welcome M. le Comte."
+
+"Nay; he believed me guilty."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"You may not say 'but' to me."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur. Am I to tell Vigo monsieur is gone?"
+
+"Yes, tell him." His lip quivered; he struggled hard for steadiness.
+"You will go to M. le Duc, Felix, and rise in his favour, for it was you
+saved his life. Then tell him this from me--that some day, when I have
+made me worthy to enter his presence, then will I go to him and beg his
+forgiveness on my knees. And now farewell."
+
+He slipped away into the darkness.
+
+I stood hesitating for a moment. Then I followed my lord.
+
+He slackened his pace as he heard footsteps overtake him, and where a
+beam of light shone out from an open door he wheeled about, thinking me
+a footpad.
+
+"You, Felix?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur; I go with M. le Comte."
+
+"I have not permitted you."
+
+"Then must I go in despite. Monsieur is wounded; I cannot leave him to
+go unsquired."
+
+"There are lackeys to hire. I bade you seek M. le Duc."
+
+"Is not monsieur a thought unreasonable? I cannot be in two places at
+once. Monsieur can send a letter. The duke has Vigo and a household. I
+go with M. le Comte."
+
+"Oh," he cried, "you are a faithful servant! We are ridden to death by
+our faithful servants, we St. Quentins. Myself, I prefer fleas!" He
+added, growing angrier, "Will you leave me?"
+
+"No, monsieur," said I.
+
+He glowered at me and I think he had some notion of chasing me away with
+his sword. But since his dignity could not so stoop, he growled:
+
+"Come, then, if you choose to come unasked and most unwelcome!"
+
+With this he walked on a yard ahead of me, never turning his head nor
+saying a word, I following meekly, wondering whither, and devoutly
+hoping it might be to supper. Presently I observed that we were in a
+better quarter of the town, and before long we came to a broad,
+well-lighted inn, whence proceeded a merry chatter and rattle of dice.
+M. Etienne with accustomed feet turned into the court at the side, and
+seizing upon a drawer who was crossing from door to door despatched him
+for the landlord. Mine host came, fat and smiling, unworried by the hard
+times, greeted Yeux-gris with acclaim as "this dear M. le Comte,"
+wondered at his long absence and bloody shirt, and granted with all
+alacrity his three demands of a supper, a surgeon, and a bed. I stood
+back, ill at ease, aching at the mention of supper, and wondering
+whether I were to be driven off like an obtrusive puppy. But when M. le
+Comte, without glancing at me, said to the drawer, "Take care of my
+serving-man," I knew my stomach was safe.
+
+That was the most I thought of then, I do confess, for, except for my
+sausage, I had not tasted food since morning. The barber came and
+bandaged M. le Comte and put him straight to bed, and I was left free to
+fall on the ample victuals set before me, and was so comfortable and
+happy that the Rue Coupejarrets seemed like an evil dream. Since that
+day I have been an easy mark for beggars if they could but manage to
+look starved.
+
+Presently came a servant to say that my bed was spread in M. le Comte's
+room, and up-stairs ran I with an utterly happy heart, for I saw by this
+token that I was forgiven. Indeed, no sooner had I got fairly inside
+the door than my master raised himself on his sound elbow and called
+out:
+
+"Ah, Felix, do you bear me malice for an ungrateful churl?"
+
+"I bear malice?" I cried, flushing. "Monsieur is mocking me. I know
+monsieur cannot love me, since I attempted his life. Yet my wish is to
+be allowed to serve him so faithfully that he can forget it."
+
+"Nay," he said; "I have forgotten it. And it was freely forgiven from
+the moment I saw Lucas at my cousin's side."
+
+"For the second time," I said, "monsieur saved my life." And I dropped
+on my knees beside the bed to kiss his hand. But he snatched it away
+from me and flung his arm around my neck and kissed my cheek.
+
+"Felix," he cried, "but for you my hands would be red with my father's
+blood. You rescued him from death and me from worse. If I have any
+shreds of honour left 'tis you have saved them to me."
+
+"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I die."
+
+"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's fool!"
+
+"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what he
+said--"
+
+"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for some time
+what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin Valere duke! He
+was a man. But I--nom de dieu, I was not worth the killing."
+
+"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."
+
+"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot against
+dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind Lucas--I dare
+swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no secret now where Monsieur
+stands. Yet the king's party grows so strong and the mob so cheers
+Monsieur, the League dare not strike openly. So they put a spy in the
+house to choose time and way. And the spy would not stab, for he saw he
+could make me do his work for him. He saw I needed but a push to come to
+open breach with my father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull
+his chestnuts from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I
+could never strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their
+thrall forever!"
+
+"Never that, monsieur; never that!"
+
+"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of a stray
+boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose through. I
+was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais to be morose
+and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always stood his friend. I
+thought him shamefully used; I let myself be turned out of my father's
+house to champion him. I had no more notion he was plotting my ruin than
+a child playing with his dolls. I was their doll, mordieu! their toy,
+their crazy fool on a chain. But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to
+pledge my sword to Henry of Navarre."
+
+"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith--"
+
+"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he were
+better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and
+generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he will not
+starve us. He looks the other way, and the provision-trains come in. But
+the Leaguers, with all their regiments, dare not openly strike down one
+man,--one man who has come all alone into their country,--they put a spy
+into his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin
+to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they are
+most Catholic and noble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these pious
+plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and make me
+outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime with the
+League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"
+
+I caught his fire.
+
+"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers yet!"
+
+He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.
+
+"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, Felix, you and I alone will
+overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are made of. They
+think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with my father. I lazed
+about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my pleasure, too shallow a fop
+even to take sides in the fight for a kingdom. What should they see in
+me but an empty-headed roisterer, frittering away his life in follies?
+But they will find I am something more. Well, enter there!"
+
+He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as Maitre
+Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood shuffling on the
+threshold.
+
+"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I think he
+could not but have heard M. Etienne's tirading half-way down the
+passage.
+
+"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"
+
+"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it be sent
+in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had been wounded and
+was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him for a letter that
+would keep till morning. But he would have it 'twas of instant import,
+and so--"
+
+"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the maitre in, my
+mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason save my ardent wish, that
+Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.
+
+"I dared not deny him further," added Maitre Menard. "He wore the
+liveries of M. de Mayenne."
+
+"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. Etienne had said. "Pardieu,
+it may be Lucas himself!" And snatching up my master's sword I dashed
+out of the door and was in the cabaret in three steps.
+
+The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by the
+uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise resembled
+Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my sudden entrance
+had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his outraged dignity to
+cross swords with me. On any other day I had deemed it impossible to say
+him nay, but now with a real vengeance, a quarrel a outrance on my
+hands, he seemed of no consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I
+demanded M. de Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the
+dark court and the darker street.
+
+A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pass out, and he
+opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I ran a hundred
+yards up street and a hundred yards down street, shouting on the name of
+Lucas, calling him coward and skulker, bidding him come forth and fight
+me. The whole neighbourhood became aware than I wanted one Lucas to
+fight: lights twinkled in windows; men, women, and children poured out
+of doors. But Lucas, if it were he, had for the second time vanished
+soft-footed into the night.
+
+I returned with drooping tail to M. Etienne. He was alone, sitting up in
+bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes blazing.
+
+"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone. Oh, if I
+caught Lucas--"
+
+"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you waited
+long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This is no errand
+of Lucas but a very different matter."
+
+He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement in his
+eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and started to rise.
+
+"Get my clothes, Felix. I must go to the Hotel de Lorraine."
+
+But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and dragging the
+cover over him by main force.
+
+"You can go nowhere, M. Etienne; it is madness. The surgeon said you
+must lie here for three days. You will get a fever in your wounds; you
+shall not go."
+
+"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped. Cautiously I
+relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed: "Felix, I must go.
+So long as there is a spark of life left in me, I have no choice but to
+go."
+
+"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers--with M. de
+Mayenne."
+
+"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this--but this is Lorance."
+
+Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand and
+tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.
+
+I read:
+
+     _M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence,
+     or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hotel
+     de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed? Or is he so sure of
+     his standing that he fears no supplanting? In either case he is
+     wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed forever. He may, if
+     he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be forgotten. If he
+     would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at the eleventh hour,
+     to lay his apologies at the feet of_
+
+     LORANCE DE MONTLUC.
+
+"And she--"
+
+"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's desire."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see why I have
+stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow my father into
+exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused the breach with
+Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de Grammont. That was the
+spark kindled the powder, but the train was laid."
+
+"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"
+
+"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,--or my shame, as you
+choose,--I was not. I was neither one nor the other, neither fish nor
+flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was not. I was not
+disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore me. Monsieur reviled
+me for a skulker, a faineant; nom de diable, he might have remembered
+his own three years of idleness!"
+
+"Monsieur held out for his religion--"
+
+"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not merrily.
+
+"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked and evaded
+and temporized--for nothing. I would not join the League and break my
+father's heart; would not stand out against it and lose Lorance. I have
+been trying these three years to please both the goat and the
+cabbage--with the usual ending. I have pleased nobody. I am out of
+Mayenne's books: he made me overtures and I refused him. I am out of my
+father's books: he thinks me a traitor and parricide. And I am out of
+mademoiselle's: she despises me for a laggard. Had I gone in with
+Mayenne I had won her. Had I gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command
+in King Henry's army. But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two
+stools, I fall miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a
+do-nothing, the butt and laughing-stock of all brave men.
+
+"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his breath. "For
+once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given me a last chance.
+She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on her threshold, I at
+least die looking at her."
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die looking at
+her, for you will die out here in the street, and that will profit
+neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."
+
+"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I sent her
+a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She thinks me careless
+of her. I must go."
+
+"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself Mayenne is
+likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk into the enemies'
+very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."
+
+"Felix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with quick-blazing ire. "I
+do not permit such words to be spoken in connection with Mlle. de
+Montluc."
+
+"But, monsieur--"
+
+"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of pistolet. The
+St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in those they loved. I
+remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of resentment had forbidden
+me to speak ill of his son. And I remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith
+had been justified and that my accusations were lies. Natheless, I
+liked not the look of this affair, and I attempted further warnings.
+
+"Monsieur, in my opinion--"
+
+"You are not here to hold opinions, Felix, but your tongue."
+
+I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it liked
+him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes lay, only to
+drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and dashed half the water
+in it into his face.
+
+"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it was but
+a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was forced to seize
+my shoulder to keep from falling.
+
+"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I am all
+well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about like a ship at
+sea."
+
+I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue about
+it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the white bed-linen
+I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could drench him again he
+raised his lids.
+
+"Felix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that I shall reach
+Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you cannot walk
+across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M. Etienne."
+
+"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you say to
+her--pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her myself."
+
+"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt--how you would come, but
+cannot."
+
+"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her think it a
+flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you," he added, with
+half a laugh. "There is something very trust-compelling about you,
+Felix. And assure her of my lifelong, never-failing service."
+
+"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of
+Navarre."
+
+"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, Felix, was ever a poor wight so harried
+and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would destroy he first makes
+mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I have done with it."
+
+"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I go now,
+monsieur."
+
+"And good luck to you! Felix, I offer you no reward for this midnight
+journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense you will see her."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_Mademoiselle._
+
+
+I went to find Maitre Menard, to urge upon him that some one should stay
+with M. Etienne while I was gone, lest he swooned or became
+light-headed. But the surgeon himself was present, having returned from
+bandaging up some common skull to see how his noble patient rested. He
+promised that he would stay the night with M. le Comte; so, eased of
+that care, I set out for the Hotel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants
+with a flambeau coming along to guide and guard me. M. Etienne was a
+favourite in this inn of Maitre Menard's; they did not stop to ask
+whether he had money in his purse before falling over one another in
+their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one gets more out of
+the world by dint of fair words than by a long purse or a long sword.
+
+We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the right-about,
+to the impatience of my escort.
+
+"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a moment, but
+see Maitre Menard I must."
+
+He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.
+
+"Now what brings you back?"
+
+"This, maitre," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been
+in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy
+gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at
+large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him
+here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maitre, I beg you to admit no one
+to M. le Comte--no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from
+the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the maitre declared.
+
+"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St. Quentin's
+equery. You will know him for the biggest man in France."
+
+"Good. And this other; what is he like?"
+
+"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall and
+slim,--oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown hair and thin,
+aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."
+
+"His tongue shall not get around me," Maitre Menard promised. "The host
+of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you."
+
+With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition
+with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business. It was
+all very well for M. Etienne to declare grandly that as recompense for
+my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc. But I was not her lover and I
+thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her. I knew
+not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had
+dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had
+not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was
+scared.
+
+And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I
+was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's
+cousin. What mocking devil had driven Etienne de Mar, out of a whole
+France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this
+Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his father's friends no daughters,
+that he must seek a mistress from the black duke's household? Were there
+no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself
+with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?
+
+I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it not. If
+Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I marvelled that my
+master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his
+servant there. Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to
+do his bidding. Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought
+myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do
+confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house
+in Paris, the very core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not
+been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully
+enough.
+
+Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the streets,
+the clear summer night, and all of them were talking politics. As Jean
+and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the wine-shop lanterns, we
+caught always the names of Mayenne and Navarre. Everywhere they asked
+the same two questions: Was it true that Henry was coming into the
+Church? And if so, what would Mayenne do next? I perceived that old
+Maitre Jacques of the Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the
+people of Paris were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery,
+galled to desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.
+
+Mayenne's fine new hotel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a
+fete. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling
+dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a
+happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex
+him in the present situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.
+
+The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by men-at-arms;
+but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers lounged on the stone
+benches in the archway. Some of them were talking to a little knot of
+street idlers who had gathered about the entrance, while others, with
+the aid of a torch and a greasy pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.
+
+I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc, declaring
+that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.
+
+"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard replied at
+once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay, no need to ask,"
+he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would make."
+
+"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for
+mademoiselle."
+
+"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in.
+If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the
+consolation of a message."
+
+A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:
+
+"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the Comte
+de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and M. Paul
+for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the earth. It seemed
+as if she must take the little cheese or nothing. But now things are
+looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly in, and here is a
+messenger at least from the other."
+
+"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took up the
+tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's graces."
+
+"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in his
+ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le Balafre's
+own."
+
+"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came the
+retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him into the
+house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole history, false
+and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down before the lofty of
+the earth, we underlings, but behind their backs there is none with
+whose names we make so free. And there we have the advantage of our
+masters; for they know little of our private matters while we know
+everything of theirs.
+
+In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted me
+through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence issued a
+merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while I remained to
+undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose repose we had
+invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again, lifting the curtain
+for me to enter.
+
+The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces along the
+walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There was a crowd of
+people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my dazzled eyes; grouped,
+most of them, about the tables set up and down, either taking hands
+themselves at cards or dice or betting on those who did. Bluff soldiers
+in breastplate and jack-boots were not wanting in the throng, but the
+larger number of the gallants were brave in silken doublets and spotless
+ruffs, as became a noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what
+am I to say of them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun,
+agleam with jewels--eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had
+thought so fine, were but serving-maids to these.
+
+I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the chatter,
+unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the congregation
+of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me if I could, for
+here close about were a dozen fair women, any one of whom might be
+Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat. I knew not whom to
+address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in a suit of pink, took the
+burden on himself.
+
+"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."
+
+He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In truth, I
+must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned out of a bag in
+the midst of that gorgeous company.
+
+"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"I have wondered what has become of Etienne de Mar this last month,"
+spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his place behind a fair
+one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so fine as the other, but in
+his short, stocky figure and square face there was a force which his
+comrade lacked. He regarded me with a far keener glance as he asked:
+
+"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do for a
+lackey."
+
+"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de
+Montluc," suggested the pink youth.
+
+"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying down her
+hand at cards, rose and came toward me.
+
+She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried herself with
+stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as purely white and pink
+as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl, while her eyes, under their
+sooty lashes, shone blue as corn-flowers.
+
+I began to understand M. Etienne.
+
+"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood
+regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain
+myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her
+with his soft drawl:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy
+extraordinary--most extraordinary--from the court of his Highness the
+Comte de Mar."
+
+"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my
+uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.
+
+"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"
+
+"It appears not, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:
+
+"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his
+triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not
+produce M. de Mar."
+
+"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de
+Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not
+come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He
+tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."
+
+"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown,
+"methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better
+messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."
+
+"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc
+replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished
+for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant
+squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before
+her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled
+from between her fingers.
+
+By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general
+interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of
+authority demanded:
+
+"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"
+
+"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with
+instant gravity and respect.
+
+"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.
+
+"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out
+of the house again now."
+
+"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did
+not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the
+leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne
+herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.
+
+"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a
+stable-boy into my salon."
+
+"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she
+protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de
+Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they
+were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back
+if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my
+cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is
+the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But
+I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know
+not their duties, not me."
+
+"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I
+consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must
+hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs--to the
+stables."
+
+A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.
+
+"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who
+had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on
+Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed
+her, a curious circle still surrounded us.
+
+"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go,
+mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the
+vanished Mar."
+
+"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this
+messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured
+demoiselle.
+
+I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out
+in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the
+stables--anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such
+intent.
+
+"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not
+for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de
+Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."
+
+"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."
+
+"Whom was he fighting?"
+
+"And for what lady's favour?"
+
+"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"
+
+"Does she make him read his Bible?"
+
+"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"
+
+The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease
+mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:
+
+"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other
+matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that
+his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too
+weak and faint to walk across the floor."
+
+"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been
+about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."
+
+I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Etienne's chosen lady and
+therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could
+not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of
+rudeness that caused my short answer:
+
+"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."
+
+"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly
+fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my
+face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."
+
+"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:
+
+"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my
+haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself
+that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."
+
+Brie had me by the collar.
+
+"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought
+as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom
+de dieu, they are no secret."
+
+He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my
+teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried
+on, his voice rising with excitement:
+
+"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been
+about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
+forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast
+and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last
+month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better
+than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone,
+free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
+pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
+entered the room.
+
+M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I
+turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.
+
+He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His
+wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while
+his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his
+full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the
+Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was
+Mayenne himself.
+
+He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his
+glance travelling straight to me and my captor.
+
+"What have we here, Francois?"
+
+"This is a fellow of Etienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He
+came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him
+what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."
+
+"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear Francois; I already know Mar's
+whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."
+
+Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I
+perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but
+you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little;
+what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety.
+If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be
+thinking how well you would grace the gallows.
+
+M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:
+
+"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late,
+Francois. You little boys are fools; you think because you do not know a
+thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my information from you, ma
+belle Lorance?"
+
+The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe her.
+Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was neither
+loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.
+
+"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"
+
+She met his look unflinching.
+
+"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar, monsieur."
+
+"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"
+
+"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since
+May--until to-night."
+
+"And what has happened to-night?"
+
+"To-night--Paul appeared."
+
+"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his phlegm.
+"Paul here?"
+
+"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I know
+not whither or for what."
+
+Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.
+
+"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"
+
+She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure, but to go
+through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was moistening her
+dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide with apprehension.
+But he answered amiably, half absently, as if the whole affair were a
+triviality:
+
+"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."
+
+He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over our
+childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made him a
+curtsey, laughing lightly.
+
+"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is the
+best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I confess I
+am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might remember me still
+after a month of absence. I should have known it too much to ask of
+mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will you keep our memories
+green for more than a week, messieurs."
+
+"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue, Mlle.
+Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be awake the
+night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."
+
+"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a
+far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de
+Mar--behold him!"
+
+She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us
+all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face
+with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M.
+Etienne.
+
+"Behold M. de Mar--behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white
+fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent
+them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.
+
+[Illustration: "I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."]
+
+"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a
+laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the
+flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the
+Holy League?"
+
+But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.
+
+"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come
+himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"
+
+Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.
+
+"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive--and
+forget--his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his
+horse-boy."
+
+Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her faithlessness, her
+vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my master's plight. I knew it was
+sheer madness for me to attempt his defence before this hostile company;
+nay, there was no object in defending him; there was not one here who
+cared to hear good of him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled
+so hot that I lost all command of myself, and I burst out:
+
+"If I were a horse-boy,--which I am not,--I were twenty times too good
+to be carrying messages hither. You need not rail at his poverty,
+mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It was for you he was turned
+out of his father's house. But for you he would not now be lying in a
+garret, penniless and dishonoured. Whatever ills he suffers, it is you
+and your false house have brought them."
+
+Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without excitement.
+
+"Don't strangle him, Francois; I may need him later. Let him be flogged
+and locked in the oratory."
+
+He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the lackeys
+dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc saying:
+
+"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of
+diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_In the oratory._
+
+
+"Here, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a
+candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He reckoned
+wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay on well, boys;
+make him howl."
+
+Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and see the
+fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon. Pierre, the same
+who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led the way into a long
+oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was a huge chimney carved
+with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door led into a little oratory
+where tapers burned before the image of the Virgin; at the other, before
+the two narrow windows, stood a long table with writing-materials.
+Chests and cupboards nearly filled the walls. I took this to be a sort
+of council-room of my Lord Mayenne.
+
+Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested that he
+should quench the Virgin's candles.
+
+"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a light in
+there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind; she has a
+million others to see by."
+
+I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one good blow
+at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it. But as I gathered
+myself for the rush he spoke to me low and cautiously:
+
+"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."
+
+My clinched fist dropped to my side.
+
+"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think you half
+killed, and I'll manage."
+
+I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the way of
+the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much kindness, too.
+
+"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed boisterously. "Give
+it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left when I get through."
+
+"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the oratory.
+
+"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants him,"
+Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my wrists in front
+of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre laid on. And he, good
+fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull my loose jerkin away from
+my back, so that he dusted it down without greatly incommoding me. Some
+hard whacks I did get, but they were nothing to what a strong man could
+have given in grim earnest.
+
+I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as
+anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should have. I
+yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight of Jean and
+his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning varlets to the door
+before my performance was over. But at length, when I thought I had done
+enough for their pleasure and that of the nobles in the salon, I dropped
+down on the floor and lay quiet, with shut eyes.
+
+"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the master,"
+Pierre said.
+
+"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you have not
+even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back, whereat I
+groaned my hollowest.
+
+"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back touched,"
+laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I wonder what Our Lady
+thinks of some of the devotees we bring her."
+
+As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and I
+squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on the
+oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.
+
+I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my handcuff with
+my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in two. I was minded
+as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered whether he had managed
+to rid himself of their inconvenience. He went straightway, doubtless,
+to some confederate who cut them for him, and even now was planning
+fresh evil against the St. Quentins. I remembered his face as he cried
+to M. le Comte that they should meet again; and I thought that M.
+Etienne was likely to have his hands full with Lucas, without this
+unlucky tanglement with Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I
+called down a murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl
+alone? There were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on
+humanity if there were none kindlier.
+
+He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this girl's
+fair face had stood between him and his home, between him and action,
+between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly; yet, in my
+opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains. If she had
+loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl spurned and flouted
+him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not put the jade out of his
+mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the road to glory? When I got
+back to him and told him how she had mocked him, hang me but he should,
+though!
+
+Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me but with
+my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General, dark-minded Mayenne.
+What he wanted with me he had not revealed; nor was it a pleasant
+subject for speculation. He meant me, of course, to tell him all I knew
+of the St. Quentins; well, that was soon done; belike he understood more
+than I of the day's work. But after he had questioned me, what?
+
+Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never done him
+any harm? Or would he--I wondered, if they flung me out stark into some
+alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would search for me and claim my
+carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen by the blades of the League?
+
+I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not even this
+morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been in such mortal
+dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M. Etienne; but I was not
+likely to happen on succour here. Pierre, for all his kind heart, could
+not save me from the Duke of Mayenne.
+
+Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with me in the
+little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and prayed her to save
+me, and if she might not, then to stand by me during the hard moment of
+dying and receive my seeking soul. Comforted now and deeming I could
+pass, if it came to that, with a steady face, I laid me down, my head on
+the prie-dieu cushion, and presently went to sleep.
+
+I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet
+my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over
+me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not save you
+the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have availed you
+nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."
+
+With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her
+lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too confused
+for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the
+altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands,
+sobbing.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's tears! The
+man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half
+flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard. He did not hurt so
+much."
+
+She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and presently
+dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her shining wet
+eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make sure, she laid her
+hand delicately on my back.
+
+"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St. Genevieve, they
+have not brought the blood. I saw a man flogged once--" she shut her
+eyes, shuddering, and her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt,
+mademoiselle," I answered her.
+
+She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks, her hand
+still trembling. I could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your life!" she
+breathed.
+
+It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly I found
+myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this noblewoman for my
+death.
+
+"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can die
+happily."
+
+She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some
+menacing thrust.
+
+"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue fire. "They
+shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a thing that she
+cannot save a serving-boy?"
+
+She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to stifle
+their throbbing.
+
+"It was my fault," she cried--"it was all my fault. It was my vanity and
+silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that
+letter--a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen
+M. de Mar for five weeks--I did not know, what I readily guess now, that
+he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique."
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M. Etienne
+did not come himself."
+
+"You are glad for that?"
+
+"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"
+
+She caught her breath as if in pain.
+
+"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When
+I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my
+gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I
+had accomplished--mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"
+
+I had to tell her I had not thought it.
+
+"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must
+needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the
+throat--there has been bad blood between him and your lord this
+twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I
+interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would
+have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had
+seen to your beating himself."
+
+It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of
+guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display
+so much venom against M. Etienne unless he were a serious obstacle to
+his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a
+serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn
+her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show
+it to me.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Etienne
+rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and
+loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to
+make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her
+a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."
+
+"Is he hurt dangerously?"
+
+"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the
+right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."
+
+"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was
+penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."
+
+She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had taken
+from her bosom; but I retreated.
+
+"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we are not
+penniless--or if we are, we get on very well sans le sou. They do
+everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he has only to
+return to the Hotel St. Quentin to get all the gold pieces he can spend.
+Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle. I was angry when I said it; I
+did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's pardon."
+
+She looked at me a little hesitatingly.
+
+"You are telling me true?"
+
+"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed, indeed, I
+would not refuse it."
+
+"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for yourself. It
+will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find something you like as a
+token from me." With her own white fingers she slipped some tinkling
+coins into my pouch, and cut short my thanks with the little wailing
+cry:
+
+"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I could free
+them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with you they never
+will let you go."
+
+"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her to go
+back to bed. M. Etienne did not send me hither to bring her grief and
+trouble."
+
+"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here before
+on monsieur's errands?"
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I belong on
+the St. Quentin estate. My name is Felix Broux."
+
+"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"
+
+"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing it."
+
+"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered soberly.
+
+She stood looking at me helplessly.
+
+"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to herself; "but
+I might weep Francois de Brie's rough heart to softness. Then it is a
+question whether he could turn Mayenne. I wish I knew whether the duke
+himself or only Paul de Lorraine has planned this move to-night. That
+is," she added, blushing, but speaking out candidly, "whether they
+attack M. de Mar as the League's enemy or as my lover."
+
+"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as I knew
+how, but eager to find out all I could for M. Etienne--"this M. de
+Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover, too?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We are all
+pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses. For a
+time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my cousin Paul came back
+after a two years' disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de
+Mar was down. And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come,
+and it became the turn of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as
+suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky
+letter. And what it bodes for _him_ I know not."
+
+She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact
+of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as lonely in
+this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would have talked
+delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.
+
+"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has been
+happening to my M. Etienne this last month, if you are not afraid to
+stay long enough to hear it."
+
+"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes, you may
+tell me if you wish."
+
+She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I
+began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if
+the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all
+what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the
+affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned
+forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions.
+And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:
+
+"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas,
+without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself."
+
+I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked reluctantly:
+
+"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne's?"
+
+"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for
+their own pleasure."
+
+"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she said with
+an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin. I saw
+well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne's guilt. I
+thought I might tell her a little more.
+
+"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M. de
+Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them. So then
+M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin,
+invented this."
+
+"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave Paris. He
+will--he must!"
+
+"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered; "but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But then the letter came."
+
+"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time is over
+for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am a Ligueuse
+born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is his father's
+side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another day."
+
+"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."
+
+"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for him. If
+he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him a letter
+myself to tell him he must."
+
+"Then he will never go."
+
+"Felix!"
+
+"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted him; when
+he finds she does not--well, if he budges a step out of Paris, I do not
+know him. When he thought himself despised--"
+
+"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did not
+mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I made a mock
+of him, that he might hate me and keep away from me."
+
+"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with her."
+
+"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring out with
+impudent speech."
+
+"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played
+too well."
+
+"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do--well, I will not
+say despise him--but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis?
+Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my
+esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I
+would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore
+me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark.
+Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry
+for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
+mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry
+Brie and Lorraine?"
+
+"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden
+rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said
+woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."
+
+I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.
+
+"Ah, Felix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out
+of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.
+
+I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At
+length she sobbed out:
+
+"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar,
+when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all
+my fault."
+
+"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."
+
+But she shook her head.
+
+"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in
+his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap.
+But I will do my utmost, Felix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I
+will go to Francois de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."
+
+She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
+quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,--with my
+fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,--and on the threshold
+turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a
+gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door
+shut again.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_My Lord Mayenne._
+
+
+I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next
+second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.
+"What--" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line
+of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on
+account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and
+she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something
+else--a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the
+council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.
+
+Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.
+
+I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a
+sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.
+
+Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just
+roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the
+three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his
+back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared glance at him,
+for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our door seemed to call
+aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light scarcely pierced the
+shadows of the long room.
+
+More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair about,
+sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A tall man in
+black entered, saluting the general from the threshold.
+
+"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It was
+impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a sentence.
+
+"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as Mayenne's own.
+He shut the door after him and walked over to the table.
+
+"And how goes it?"
+
+"Badly."
+
+The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting for an
+invitation.
+
+"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to me with
+that report?"
+
+"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence, leaning back
+in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and proved to me what
+I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night visitor was Lucas.
+"Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone badly. In fact, your game
+is up."
+
+Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the table.
+
+"You tell me this?"
+
+Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.
+
+"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."
+
+[Illustration: MLLE. De MONTLUC AND FELIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY]
+
+Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a cat
+sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.
+
+"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.
+
+"When you put up yours, monsieur."
+
+"I have drawn none!"
+
+"In your sleeve, monsieur."
+
+"Liar!" cried Mayenne.
+
+I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade that
+flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from his belt.
+But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and rushed at Lucas. He
+dodged and they circled round each other, wary as two matched cocks.
+Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne, the less agile by reason
+of his weight, could make no chance to strike. He drew off presently.
+
+"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.
+
+"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending
+myself?"
+
+Mayenne let the charge go by default.
+
+"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu, do I
+employ you to fail?"
+
+"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."
+
+Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on
+the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good humour--no mean
+tribute to his power of self-control. For the written words can convey
+no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas's bearing--an insolence so
+studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh
+impossible to silence.
+
+"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."
+
+Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:
+
+"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was
+unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."
+
+"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you
+dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"
+
+He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into
+Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his
+guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas.
+He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the
+first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen role was the unmoved, the
+inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into
+the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man
+lived--unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.
+
+"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me
+that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."
+
+"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne
+went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was
+wrong--unless the thing were done."
+
+"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."
+
+"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling--"
+
+"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat
+he had shown. "It was fate--and that fool Grammont."
+
+"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."
+
+Lucas sat down, the table between them.
+
+"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you
+Mar's boy?"
+
+"What boy?"
+
+"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to
+come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message
+to Lorance."
+
+"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of mademoiselle's
+love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It is plain to the very
+lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at present we are discussing
+l'affaire St. Quentin."
+
+"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be the
+reward of my success."
+
+"I thought you told me you had failed."
+
+Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of
+it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.
+
+"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is
+immortal."
+
+"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I
+shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher."
+
+"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I have
+missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."
+
+"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne, reflectively.
+"Francois de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress. And he
+has not made any failures--as yet."
+
+Lucas sprang to his feet.
+
+"You swore to me I should have her."
+
+"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price."
+
+"I will bring you the price."
+
+"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the
+mouse--"e'en then I might change my mind."
+
+"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead duke in
+France."
+
+Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of
+mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to draw dagger,
+Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I somehow thought that
+the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there
+quiet was the party leader.
+
+He said now, evenly:
+
+"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."
+
+"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.
+
+So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of
+unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself
+began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it
+had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:
+
+"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love
+of my affectionate uncle?"
+
+"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you
+say."
+
+"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a
+Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast
+off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the
+Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at
+Ivry."
+
+"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You
+had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized
+you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you
+and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my
+army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."
+
+"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.
+
+"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the
+name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward,
+Lorance de Montluc."
+
+"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off
+with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering
+house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de
+Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the
+people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the
+scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you
+promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the
+royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's
+camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you
+listened to proposals from Mar again."
+
+"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your
+brother Charles, either."
+
+"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in
+your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you
+would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise
+you mean."
+
+"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.
+
+"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your
+brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the
+Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."
+
+"Nom de dieu, Paul--" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning
+forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on:
+
+"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am
+ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in
+your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk
+the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to
+tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's
+certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with
+mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to
+kill you St. Quentin."
+
+"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not
+killed him."
+
+Lucas reddened with ire.
+
+"I am no Jacques Clement to stab and be massacred. You cannot buy such a
+service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's work for you I choose my
+own time and way. I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you
+to deal with as it liked you. But you with your army at your back were
+afraid to kill him. You flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the
+onus of his death. Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to
+make his own son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke
+and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
+way--"
+
+"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my way; he was
+of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your way."
+
+"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he was a
+hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his ruin."
+
+"Something--not as much. I did not want him killed--I preferred him to
+Valere."
+
+"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."
+
+"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some other
+who might appear?"
+
+"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas answered.
+
+Mayenne broke into laughter.
+
+"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille? Lorance and
+no lovers! Ho, ho!"
+
+"I mean none whom she favours."
+
+"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow," Mayenne said.
+I had no idea whether he really thought it or only said it to annoy
+Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's brows were knotted; he
+spoke with an effort, like a man under stress of physical pain.
+
+"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she would
+not love him a parricide."
+
+"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker the
+villain the more they adore him."
+
+"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you have had
+successes."
+
+Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a laugh.
+
+"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of Lorance; you
+must also have her love?"
+
+"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."
+
+"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how long
+would it last? _Souvent femme varie_--that is the only fixed fact about
+her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will love some one else to-morrow,
+and some one else still the day after to-morrow. It is not worth while
+disturbing yourself about it."
+
+"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"You are very young, Paul."
+
+"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she shall
+not!"
+
+Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him out of
+his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a hundredfold. Lucas's
+face was seared with his passions as with the torture-iron; he clinched
+his hands together, breathing hard. On my side of the door I heard a
+sharp little sound in the darkness; mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.
+
+"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said, "since
+mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become so."
+
+"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would leap over
+the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the duke to take up
+his dagger.
+
+"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have not
+killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the scheme--my
+scheme--is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my scheme. I never advocated
+stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses and angered nephews and deceived
+sons and the rest of your cumbrous machinery. I would have had you stab
+him as he bent over his papers, and walk out of the house before they
+discovered him. But you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot
+and replot to make some one else do your work. Now, after months of
+intriguing and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed.
+Morbleu! is there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the
+gutter, as no true son of the valourous Le Balafre?"
+
+Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to come
+around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did not move;
+and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an effort, he
+said:
+
+"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured harder or
+planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been clever. I have
+made my worst enemy my willing tool--I have made Monsieur's own son my
+cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no contingency unprovided for--and
+I am ruined by a freak of fate."
+
+"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's," Mayenne
+returned.
+
+"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you like!"
+Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen, monsieur."
+
+He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to
+reconquer something of his old coolness.
+
+"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I spoke
+of. You said he had not been here?"
+
+"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I have
+something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's maids."
+
+"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to keep him.
+Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw him."
+
+He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought had
+travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of mademoiselle's
+affections.
+
+"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"
+
+It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low and
+hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it was no fear
+of listeners that kept his voice down--they had shouted at each other
+as if there was no one within a mile. I guessed that Lucas, for all his
+bravado, took little pride in his tale, nor felt happy about its
+reception. I could catch names now and then, Monsieur's, M. Etienne's,
+Grammont's, but the hero of the tale was myself.
+
+"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.
+
+At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old
+defiance:
+
+"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the
+acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your lansquenets
+couldn't keep him out."
+
+"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with shut
+fingers over the table and then opening them.
+
+"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own hotel stuffed
+with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to do, alone in my enemy's
+house, when at the least suspicion of me they had broken me on the
+wheel."
+
+"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble with
+all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins than of
+accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be to-day--where would
+the Cause be--if my first care was my own peril?"
+
+"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a cold sneer.
+"You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the Church and the
+King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare of Charles of
+Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine, your humble nephew,
+lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I am toiling for no one
+but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should find it most inconvenient
+to get on without a head on my shoulders, and I shall do my best to keep
+it there."
+
+"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne answered.
+"You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time, Paul, you will
+do well to remember that your interest is to forward my interest."
+
+"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet. You need
+not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than any man in your
+ranks."
+
+"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."
+
+Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word of blame.
+He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M. le Duc's
+departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with a sharp oath.
+
+"What! by daylight?"
+
+"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at night."
+
+"He went out in broad day?"
+
+"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of his old
+nonchalance.
+
+"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true, if he
+got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that let him.
+I'll nail it over his own gate."
+
+"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If you did,
+how long would it avail? _Souvent homme trahie_; that is the only fixed
+fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day, they will pass some one
+else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after."
+
+Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some deeper
+emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.
+
+     "Souvent homme trahie,
+     Mal habile qui s'y fie,"
+
+he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto of the
+house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good faith, as no
+man believed in theirs.
+
+"_Souvent homme trahie_," Mayenne said again, as if in the words he
+recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King Francis's
+version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."
+
+"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.
+
+I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne, because, for
+all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's and ability second
+to none, he dared trust no man--not the son of his body, not his
+brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in it, and there was no need
+to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured traitor, was farther from the
+goal of his desire than if we had slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne went on
+in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him once more as
+the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France, and feared and
+hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear lord Etienne.
+
+"Trust me for that."
+
+"Then came you here?"
+
+"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings at the
+Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came here and
+worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his presence. For I
+thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow he might be out of my
+reach. Well, it appears he had not the courage to come but he sent the
+boy. I was not sorry. I thought I could settle him more quietly at the
+inn. The boy went back once and almost ran into me in the court, but he
+did not see me. I entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool
+of a host put me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally
+declared the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no
+use. Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in
+front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But
+instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the cabaret."
+
+Mayenne burst out laughing.
+
+"It was not your night, Paul."
+
+"No," said Lucas, shortly.
+
+"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put out of
+the inn."
+
+"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with whom
+Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all went our ways,
+forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was afraid some one else
+might find him and he might tell tales."
+
+"And will he tell tales?"
+
+"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."
+
+"How about your spy in the Hotel St. Quentin?"
+
+"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas said
+easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And Grammont, you
+see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the thing but the boy
+Broux."
+
+"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for I have
+the boy."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_Mayenne's ward._
+
+
+Lucas sprang up.
+
+"You have him? Where?"
+
+"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing slowness.
+
+"Alive?"
+
+"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not done with
+him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the oratory there."
+
+"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of Mayenne's good
+faith to him struck his mind.
+
+"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might be in
+the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for that."
+
+"What will you do with him, monsieur?"
+
+"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second bidding,
+hastened down the room.
+
+All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had neither
+stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin herself. But now
+she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my shoulder with an
+encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide just as Lucas reached
+the threshold.
+
+He recoiled as from a ghost.
+
+"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"
+
+"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room. "What!
+Lorance!"
+
+He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.
+
+Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back on the
+other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she lifted her
+head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no fear, but she had
+the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on the oratory floor she
+had been in a panic lest they find her. But in the moment of discovery
+she faced them unflinching.
+
+"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.
+
+"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was here first,
+as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as mine by you."
+
+His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her pale
+cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her indignant eyes.
+
+"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.
+
+"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said. "You
+defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in
+your cowardly schemes."
+
+"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I shall kill
+M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would pleasure you to have
+a word with him first."
+
+I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret the
+speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness and
+recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and vinegar in a
+sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an end, with skill
+and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern his own gusty
+tempers.
+
+"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer tone.
+
+"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved most
+bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into danger. Since
+Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand, and since this is
+not the man you wanted but only his servant, will you not let him go
+free?"
+
+"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne protested,
+smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I thought you
+would thank me for it."
+
+"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."
+
+"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."
+
+She flushed red for very shame.
+
+"I was afraid--I knew you vexed with me," she faltered. "Oh, I have done
+ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring forgiveness. There was no
+need to ask.
+
+"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak before!
+Thank you, my cousin!"
+
+"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of
+impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."
+
+My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a craven that
+I had been overcome by groundless terror.
+
+"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle laughed
+out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall never meddle
+in your affairs again."
+
+"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to let the
+boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear what he
+should not, I have no choice but to silence him."
+
+"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.
+
+"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have made it
+impossible."
+
+Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had my hands
+been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in his heart.
+
+"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept over me,
+and that is worth dying for."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first instant of
+consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in the land! You,
+the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the League, the
+commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in stooping to take
+vengeance on a stable-boy."
+
+"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he
+answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all, since
+absolute power is not obliged to give an account of itself.
+
+"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn it? In
+that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while there is yet
+time."
+
+He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no justification. He
+advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the damsels of my
+household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room. Permit me then to
+conduct you to the staircase."
+
+She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering me as
+with a shield.
+
+"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."
+
+"Your hand, mademoiselle."
+
+She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in appeal.
+
+"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always tried
+to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy because he was
+a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St. Quentin, at least, had
+gone over to the other side. I did not know what you would do with him,
+and I could not rest in my bed because it was through me he came here.
+Monsieur, if I was foolish and frightened and indiscreet, do not punish
+the lad for my wrong-doing."
+
+Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.
+
+"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the
+door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"
+
+"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile, "if
+you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"
+
+"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my white
+cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my little
+cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have made her cry
+her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying, gave her to me to
+guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable. I am sorry. I wish I
+had not done it.'"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your bed?"
+
+She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went on as if
+thinking aloud.
+
+"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and your
+brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You would ask my
+father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I would run in to
+kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I thought you the
+handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as indeed you were."
+
+"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said
+abruptly.
+
+"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of you," she
+returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for my cousin
+Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them one night in
+all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of Henri de Guise; God
+guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you make it hard for me to
+ask it for my cousin Charles."
+
+"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said curtly.
+
+"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."
+
+"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With the
+door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and let him go.
+But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's business,
+mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him listen to my
+concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."
+
+"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble for the
+tales of boys--you, the lord of half France. But if you must needs fear
+his tongue, why, even then you should set him free. He is but a
+serving-boy sent here with a message. It is wanton murder to take his
+life; it is like killing a child."
+
+"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose, mademoiselle,"
+the duke retorted. "Since you have been eavesdropping, you have heard
+how he upset your cousin Paul's arrangements."
+
+"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved you the
+stain of a cowardly crime."
+
+"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my brother?"
+
+"The Valois."
+
+"And his henchman, St. Quentin."
+
+"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He was
+revolted at the deed."
+
+"Did they teach you that at the convent?"
+
+"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go
+to Blois."
+
+"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."
+
+"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin
+Charles."
+
+"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and
+murderer," Mayenne returned.
+
+"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from
+the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad."
+
+He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she went on:
+
+"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil
+that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you
+are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of
+Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field,
+and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of
+a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and
+loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against
+the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and
+their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray
+till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you
+head of the League."
+
+"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that
+is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to
+lead it to success."
+
+"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet
+lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with
+him!"
+
+He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her
+shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:
+
+"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"
+
+With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her
+knees before him, kissing his hand.
+
+Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood
+looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my
+heart to see.
+
+Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His
+mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St.
+Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of
+his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly
+murder. And in the Hotel de Lorraine, as in the Hotel de St. Quentin,
+his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both
+cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I
+had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but
+when she rose he said to her:
+
+"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I
+got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."
+
+She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an
+eager pace nearer her.
+
+"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your
+graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will not take
+me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that
+any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding
+here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day
+after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore
+to bring his proud head to the dust?"
+
+Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.
+
+"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not
+approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to
+defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your
+face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's
+housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in
+your veins and mine!"
+
+"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper
+with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and
+not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own
+revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our
+holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic
+kingdom of France."
+
+"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for
+nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever
+on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He
+hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best
+of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they
+fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them,
+they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple
+over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war
+is not a dancing-school."
+
+"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We
+have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen.
+And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in
+my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause
+with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it,
+as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did
+it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit
+for that."
+
+He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning
+her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last
+sentence I knew he spoke the truth.
+
+She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered pride in
+his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead, she eyed him
+with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape from his rampant
+desire.
+
+"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me," she said.
+
+"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I love you
+so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain you; there is
+no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame so bitter, no danger
+so awful, that I would not face it for you. Nor is there any sacrifice I
+will not make to gain your good will. I hate M. de Mar above any living
+man because you have smiled on him; but I will let him go for your sake.
+I swear to you before the figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will
+drop all enmity to Etienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither
+move against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or
+manner, so help me God!"
+
+He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She retreated from
+him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.
+
+"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the truth," she
+said.
+
+"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May my tongue
+rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"
+
+"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again curtsied
+to him.
+
+"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added. "I have
+no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more trouble for me
+than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to settle with St. Quentin.
+But I have no quarrel with the son. I will not molest him."
+
+"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her graceful
+obeisances.
+
+"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him, but not
+that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St. Quentins are
+Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I will let Mar alone;
+but if he come near you again, I will crush him as I would a buzzing
+fly."
+
+"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone. "While I live
+under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I am a Ligueuse and
+he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing between us. There shall be
+nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as Paul needs, because I have
+never lied to you."
+
+She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince under her
+stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de Montluc loved her
+enemies.
+
+"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.
+
+"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this for
+you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."
+
+"You have called me a good girl, cousin."
+
+"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so Friday-faced about
+it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give you another just as
+good."
+
+"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my looks
+belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to have
+ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."
+
+"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter whether your
+husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri was for getting
+himself into a monastery because he could not have his Margot. Yet in
+less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler with the Duchesse
+Katharine."
+
+"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she answered
+gently, if not merrily.
+
+"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But it is
+for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the credit."
+
+"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.
+
+"What use? He would not keep silence."
+
+"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of bright
+confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But Mayenne laughed.
+
+"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will not so
+flatter yourself, Lorance."
+
+Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what I had
+seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.
+
+Mayenne took out his dagger.
+
+"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you shall be."
+
+Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.
+
+"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."
+
+He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him against
+the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of the
+suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife and she cut
+my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a glance earnest,
+beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all she meant by it. The
+next moment she was making her deep curtsey before the duke.
+
+"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I thank you
+for your long patience, and bid you good night."
+
+With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go. But
+Mayenne bade her pause.
+
+"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks, Lorance?"
+
+He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her cheeks.
+
+"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said, and taking
+her hand with stately politeness led her from the room. The light seemed
+to go from it with the gleam of her yellow gown.
+
+"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He stood
+glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once
+no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery
+rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out
+at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed the
+door:
+
+"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh that
+wins; I shall have her yet."
+
+"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence I could
+muster.
+
+"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will never see
+daylight again."
+
+"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw dagger. I
+deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best of soldiers
+must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory, flinging the door
+to after me. He was upon it before I could get it shut, and the heavy
+oak was swung this way and that between us, till it seemed as if we must
+tear it off the hinges. I contrived not to let him push it open wide
+enough to enter; meantime, as I was unarmed, I thought it no shame to
+shriek for succour. I heard an answering cry and hurrying footsteps.
+Then Lucas took his weight from the door so suddenly that mine banged it
+shut. The next minute it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and
+panting, on the threshold.
+
+A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side Lucas
+lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light. His right
+hand he held behind his back, while with his left he poked his dagger
+into the candle-flame.
+
+Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.
+
+"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now, Paul?"
+
+"Mademoiselle's protege is nervous," Lucas answered with a fine sneer.
+"When I drew out my knife to get the thief from the candle he screamed
+to wake the dead and took sanctuary in the oratory."
+
+I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from the
+darkness Mayenne commanded:
+
+"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."
+
+The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a moment I
+hesitated, burning to defend my valour before mademoiselle. Then,
+reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had previously done me, and
+that the path to freedom was now open before me, I said nothing. Nor had
+I need. For as I turned she flashed over to Lucas and said straight in
+his face:
+
+"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead wife."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_"I'll win my lady!"_
+
+
+Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For
+when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw
+was the morning sun.
+
+My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter
+day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it
+was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy
+house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as
+joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten
+in some dark corner of the Hotel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts
+when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am
+afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man
+or any thing.
+
+Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have
+been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They
+liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning.
+Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk
+servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city,
+quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in
+the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my
+stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the
+courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut,
+but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and
+cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but,
+dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway
+into dreamless slumber.
+
+When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his
+zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for
+dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the
+pitchfork of a hostler.
+
+"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."
+
+"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M.
+le Comte."
+
+"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be
+disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."
+
+It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the
+trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting
+at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.
+
+"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was.
+Felix, what has happened to you?"
+
+[Illustration: "SORRY TO DISTURB MONSIEUR, BUT THE HORSES MUST BE
+FED."]
+
+I glanced at the serving-man; M. Etienne ordered him at once from the
+room.
+
+"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very
+richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is--" I paused in a
+dearth of words worthy of her.
+
+"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke!
+You saw her? And she said--"
+
+He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.
+
+"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him.
+"And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."
+
+"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Felix, does she? You cannot know."
+
+"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't
+have wept so much, just over me."
+
+"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.
+
+"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down
+in the night with a candle and cried over me."
+
+"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne?
+What said she, Felix?"
+
+"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance
+of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something
+you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's
+son."
+
+"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"
+
+"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafre. His mother was Rochelaise, I
+think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to
+hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since
+then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de
+Montluc in marriage."
+
+He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.
+
+"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her
+when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."
+
+"Great God!" said M. Etienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm
+of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry
+handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:
+
+"But she--mademoiselle?"
+
+"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle
+hates him."
+
+"Does she know--"
+
+"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer.
+"Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning,
+or I shall never make it clear to you."
+
+"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.
+
+He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I
+talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got
+deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life,
+me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to
+Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Etienne, to--well, you shall know.
+
+I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:
+
+"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well
+do they call you Felix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby,
+while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for
+all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And
+make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I'll stand
+it no longer. I'm done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun.
+No; to-day I shall take part myself."
+
+"But monsieur's arm--"
+
+"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch--it is nothing. Pardieu,
+it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning.
+To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."
+
+"Monsieur--" I began, but he broke in on me:
+
+"Nom de dieu, Felix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried
+off by that beast Lucas?"
+
+"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant
+to do."
+
+"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, but how?"
+
+"Ah, if I knew!"
+
+He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found
+it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room,
+and came back to seize me by the arm.
+
+"How are we to do it, Felix?" he demanded.
+
+But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:
+
+"Sais pas."
+
+He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the
+declaration:
+
+"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."
+
+"He will only have her own dead body," I said.
+
+He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with
+unseeing eyes. "Lorance--Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he
+did not know he spoke aloud.
+
+"If I could get word to her--" he went on presently. "But I can't send
+you again. Should I write a letter--But letters are mischievous. They
+fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?"
+
+"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands of
+Pierre, that lackey who befriended me--" But he shook his head.
+
+"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these
+inn-men--if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don't
+think I'll go myself!"
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would
+never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his
+way."
+
+"My faith, Felix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."
+
+"Not of mankind, M. Etienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or
+Vigo."
+
+"And of Mayenne?"
+
+"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the worst of
+the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did."
+
+"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"
+
+"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But
+Mayenne--sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and then again
+he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."
+
+"He does not mean you shall," M. Etienne returned. "Yet the key is not
+buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad."
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one,
+do not know it."
+
+"Ah, Felix," he cried, "you may believe that till doomsday--you will--of
+Monsieur."
+
+His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his
+thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely
+silent. But of last night's bitter distress he showed no trace. Last
+night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but
+to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but
+one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and
+shames.
+
+"Felix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to eat my pride."
+
+I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to;
+he went on:
+
+"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with
+anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."
+
+"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."
+
+"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were
+churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain
+them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur
+replies, I must go tell him I repent."
+
+I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.
+
+"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like
+sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"
+
+"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped hound."
+
+"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same
+thing."
+
+"I have heard M. l'Abbe read the story of the prodigal son," I said.
+"And he was a vaurien, if you like--no more monsieur's sort than Lucas
+himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off,
+he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck."
+
+M. Etienne looked not altogether convinced.
+
+"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is only
+decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should not go if
+it were not for mademoiselle."
+
+"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"
+
+"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry off
+mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand--well, I confess for the nonce that
+beats me."
+
+"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.
+
+"Aye, and we will! Come, Felix, you may put your knife in my dish. We
+must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the wine warm, but
+never mind."
+
+I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once
+resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long
+before we were in the streets, bound for the Hotel St. Quentin. He said
+no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about
+Mlle. de Montluc--not only as to every word she said, but as to every
+turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf
+when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell
+silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. He had his fair
+allowance of pride, this M. Etienne; he found his own words no palatable
+meal.
+
+However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he dropped, as
+one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure, and approached
+the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young gallant who had
+lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll he called to the
+sentry:
+
+"Hola, squinting Charlot! Open now!"
+
+"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw the bolts.
+"Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."
+
+M. Etienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into him, I could see,
+that his first greeting should be thus friendly.
+
+"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot
+volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night,
+after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us all
+blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time, nom d'un
+chien!"
+
+"Eh bien, I am found," M. Etienne returned. "In time we'll get Lucas,
+too. Is Monsieur back?"
+
+"No, M. Etienne, not yet."
+
+I think he was half sorry, half glad.
+
+"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.
+
+"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."
+
+"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."
+
+He went straight across the court and in at the door he had sworn never
+again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there,
+but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without
+a falter.
+
+Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice against
+himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of us, agleam with
+excitement.
+
+"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M. l'Ecuyer?"
+
+"I think in the stables, monsieur."
+
+"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."
+
+He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the hall
+where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my duty to
+keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel came flying
+back to say Vigo was on his way. M. Etienne thanked him, and he hung
+about, longing to pump me, and, in my lord's presence, not quite daring,
+till I took him by the shoulders and turned him out. I hate curiosity.
+
+M. Etienne stood behind the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure
+of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern
+determination to set this insolent servant in his place.
+
+The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young lord's
+side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there had never
+been a hard word between them:
+
+"M. Etienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the king himself."
+
+M. Etienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He had been
+prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de haut en bas,
+shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the wind out of his
+sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then laughed. And then he held
+out his hand, saying simply:
+
+"Thank you, Vigo."
+
+Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand had
+itched to box his ears.
+
+"What became of you last night, M. Etienne?" he inquired.
+
+"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"
+
+"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."
+
+"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.
+
+"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on the cards
+that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I want every man
+I have if they do."
+
+"I understand that," M. Etienne said, "but--"
+
+"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo
+pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he will
+not return till the king comes in. But since you are impatient, M. le
+Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If _he_ can get through the gates
+_you_ can."
+
+"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry, Vigo.
+There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would like me
+well to bear away my share. But--"
+
+He broke off, to begin again abruptly:
+
+"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that there was
+more cause of trouble between my father and me than the pistoles?"
+
+"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur. But you
+are cured of that."
+
+"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of it. If I
+hung around the Hotel de Lorraine, it was not for politics; it was for
+petticoats."
+
+Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth twitched.
+
+"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you may as
+well know more. Step up, Felix, and tell your tale."
+
+I did as I was bid, M. Etienne now and then taking the words out of my
+mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both with grave attention.
+I had for the second time in my career the pleasure of startling him out
+of his iron composure when I told him the true name and condition of
+Lucas. But at the end of the adventure all the comment he made was:
+
+"A fool for luck."
+
+"Well," said M. Etienne, impatiently, "is that all you have to say? What
+are we to do about it?"
+
+"Do? Why, nothing."
+
+"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And let that
+scoundrel have her?"
+
+"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help it."
+
+"I will help it!" M. Etienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to let that
+traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will surely
+get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."
+
+"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"
+
+"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we storm the
+Hotel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the sea."
+
+"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my lord
+declared.
+
+But Vigo shook his head.
+
+"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance. You
+have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a man ask
+in the world than that? Your father has been without it these three
+years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out. You have been
+without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts of mischief. But
+now all that is coming straight. King Henry is turning Catholic, so that
+a man may follow him without offence to God. He is a good fellow and a
+first-rate general. He's just out there, at St. Denis. There's your
+place, M. Etienne."
+
+"Not to-day, Vigo."
+
+"Yes, M. Etienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo said with his
+steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by staying here to drink
+up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your lady to you now than he would
+give her to Felix. And you can no more carry her off than could Felix.
+Mayenne will have you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat
+breakfast."
+
+"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you, Vigo."
+
+"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to die
+afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell fighting for
+Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve deep. But we should
+say it was well; we grudged not your life to the country and the king.
+While, if you fall in this fool affair--"
+
+"I fall for my lady," M. Etienne finished. "The bravest captain of them
+all does no better than that."
+
+"M. Etienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her. And if you
+could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now on are a staunch
+Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this maggot in your brain
+this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go to St. Denis; take your
+troop among Biron's horse. That is the place for you. You will marry a
+maid of honour and die a marshal of France."
+
+M. Etienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a smile.
+
+"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton waiting
+you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were alone and in
+peril, would you go off after glory?"
+
+"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would go."
+
+"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. Etienne cried. "You would do nothing of
+the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years in that hole, St.
+Quentin?"
+
+"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."
+
+"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I
+shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change me."
+
+"What is your purpose, M. Etienne?" Vigo asked.
+
+Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.
+
+"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can
+contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the
+Hotel de Lorraine--such feats have been accomplished before and may be
+again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers."
+
+"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."
+
+"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.
+
+"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army after her."
+
+"Coward!" shouted M. Etienne.
+
+I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw
+us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:
+
+"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to hold this
+house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it till the last
+man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hotel, his
+moneys, and his papers. I don't call it guarding to throw a firebrand
+among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece here would be worse than that."
+
+"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!" M.
+Etienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend the lady if
+every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!'"
+
+A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.
+
+"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage
+as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing
+the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."
+
+"Well, then," cried M. Etienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more
+do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on
+Mayenne's ruffians."
+
+"No, M. Etienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the
+command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with
+a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to
+succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before
+now."
+
+"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know,
+Monsieur would approve."
+
+"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot
+move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur
+returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no
+way with your liberty to proceed as you please."
+
+"I should think not, forsooth!" M. Etienne blazed out furiously.
+
+"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could
+order the guard--and they would obey--to lock you up in your chamber. I
+believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you
+free to act as it likes you."
+
+My lord was white with ire.
+
+"Who is master here, you or I?"
+
+"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my
+hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M.
+Etienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will
+get no countenance from me."
+
+"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. Etienne cried.
+
+Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add
+or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being
+angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.
+
+"Very well." M. Etienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I
+get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Felix
+here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_To the Bastille._
+
+
+But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no
+countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested
+M. Etienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarrassed or
+offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no
+feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in
+the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule,
+nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he
+was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would
+forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.
+
+On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M.
+Etienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would
+have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young
+lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside
+from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.
+
+M. Etienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's attitude,
+but he said little. He accepted the advance of money--"Of course
+Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained--and
+despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.
+
+I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished
+nothing by our return to the hotel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were
+both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our
+ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to
+Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very
+well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not
+his station, for Vigo never disobeyed _him_, but stood by him in all
+things. But I imagined that, were M. Etienne master, Vigo, for all his
+years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.
+
+I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Etienne did purpose to
+rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was
+somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he
+had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the
+matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hotel de Lorraine
+hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to
+try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.
+
+"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Felix."
+
+But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois
+Lanternes.
+
+The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared
+to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's
+throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at
+the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once,
+for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my
+master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I
+readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business
+indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.
+
+I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and
+clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth
+while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask
+the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to
+snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was
+so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it
+seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of
+the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good
+will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged
+with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys
+might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.
+
+The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and
+carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale.
+"This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the
+lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and
+shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where
+the staircase was.
+
+Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the
+serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men
+looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door
+of Maitre Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:
+
+"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know
+nothing of his whereabouts."
+
+As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look
+at me in fresh dread.
+
+"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a
+little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group
+and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a
+panther had got me.
+
+"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to
+bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour
+our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now,
+go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and
+see how you like it yourself!"
+
+She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door,
+shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.
+
+The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong
+box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.
+
+The bureau stood by the window, with Maitre Menard's account-books on
+it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two
+men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe
+of Maitre Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of
+Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.
+
+"I say I know not where he went," Maitre Menard was gasping, black in
+the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell--I have no
+notion. Ah--" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and
+bulging, rolled toward me.
+
+"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"
+
+He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city
+guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I
+entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance,
+as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.
+
+"My name is Felix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill--"
+
+"His servant," Maitre Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing
+him a breath.
+
+"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left
+your master?"
+
+"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.
+
+"Never you mind. I want him."
+
+"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of
+Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."
+
+"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he
+had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is
+friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long.
+But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."
+
+"On what charge?"
+
+"A trifle. Merely murder."
+
+"_Murder?_"
+
+"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."
+
+"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not--"
+
+I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas--Paul de Lorraine
+killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling
+wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I
+had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I
+should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte--" I began again,
+and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn
+last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me
+that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a
+very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.
+
+"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.
+
+At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness
+was the last thing I desired.
+
+"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very
+fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles. The Comte
+de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as
+lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not
+what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for
+him to the Hotel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last,
+and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he
+employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him.
+But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about
+him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."
+
+To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain
+only laughed at my patent fright.
+
+"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest.
+I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing
+about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."
+
+I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and
+merely answered:
+
+"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would
+have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were
+teaching me something.
+
+"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell
+me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it
+than this old mule."
+
+Maitre Menard, then, had told them nothing--staunch old loyalist. He
+knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled
+him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.
+
+"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where.
+But I know he will be back here to supper."
+
+"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your
+memory."
+
+At the word the soldier who had attended to Maitre Menard came over to
+me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I
+had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak
+I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared
+in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For
+had I said that my master was in the Hotel St Quentin, still those
+fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be
+ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to
+the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maitre Menard
+had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.
+
+Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed
+like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for
+M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of
+me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But
+Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could
+only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was
+flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung
+before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the
+threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of
+triumph.
+
+"Oh, M. Etienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing.
+Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my
+master, but--Lucas!
+
+"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For
+the second soldier had seized his other arm.
+
+"I regret to inconvenience monsieur," the captain answered, "but he is
+wanted at the Bastille."
+
+"Wanted? I?" Lucas cried, fear flashing into his eyes.
+
+He felt an instant's terror, I deem, lest Mayenne had betrayed him.
+Quick as he was, he did not see that he had been taken for another man.
+
+"You, monsieur. You are wanted for the murder of your man, Pontou."
+
+He grew white, looking instinctively at me, remembering where I had been
+at three o'clock this morning.
+
+"It is a lie! He left my service a month back and I have never seen him
+since."
+
+"Tell that to the judges," the captain said, as he had said to me. "I am
+not trying you. The handcuffs, men."
+
+One of them produced a pair. Lucas struggled frantically in his captors'
+grasp. He dragged them from one end of the room to the other, calling
+down all the curses of Heaven upon them; but they snapped the handcuffs
+on for all that.
+
+"If this is Mayenne's work--" he panted.
+
+The officer caught nothing but the name Mayenne.
+
+"The boy said you were a friend to his Grace, monsieur, but orders are
+orders. I have the warrant for your arrest from M. de Belin."
+
+"At whose instigation?"
+
+"How should I know'? I am a soldier of the guard. I have naught to do
+with it but to arrest you."
+
+"Let me see the warrant."
+
+"I am not obliged to. But I will, though. It may quiet your bluster."
+
+He took out the warrant and held it at a safe distance before Lucas's
+eyes. A great light broke in on that personage.
+
+"Mille tonnerres! I am not the Comte de Mar!"
+
+"Oh, you say that now, do you? Pity you had not thought of it sooner."
+
+"But I am not the Comte de Mar! I am Paul de Lorraine, nephew to my Lord
+Mayenne."
+
+"Why don't you say straight out that you're the Duc de Guise?"
+
+"I am not the Due de Guise," Lucas returned with dignity. He must have
+been cursing himself that he had not given his name sooner. "But I am
+his brother."
+
+"You take me for a fool."
+
+"Aye, who shall hang for his folly!"
+
+"You must think me a fool," the captain repeated. "The Duke of Guise's
+eldest brother is but seventeen--"
+
+"I did not say I was legitimate."
+
+"Oh, you did not say that? You did not know, then, that I could reel off
+the ages of every Lorraine of them all. No, M. de Mar, I am not so
+simple as you think. You will come along with me to the Bastille."
+
+"Blockhead! I'll have you broken on the wheel for this," Lucas stormed.
+"I am no more Count of Mar than I am King of Spain. Speak up, you old
+turnspit," he shouted to Maitre Menard. "Am I he?"
+
+Poor Maitre Menard had dropped down on his iron box, too limp and sick
+to know what was going on. He only stared helplessly.
+
+"Speak, rascal," Lucas cried. "Am I Comte de Mar?"
+
+"No," the maitre answered in low, faltering tones. He was at the last
+point of pain and fear. "No, monsieur officer, it is as he says. He is
+not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Who is he, then?"
+
+"I know not," the maitre stammered. "He came here last night. But it is
+as he says--he is not the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Take care, mine host," the officer returned; "you're lying."
+
+I could not wonder at him; if I had not been in a position to know
+otherwise, I had thought myself the maitre was lying.
+
+"If you had spoken at first I might have believed you," the captain
+said, bestowing a kick on him. "Get out of here, old ass, before I cram
+your lie down your throat. And clear your people away from this door.
+I'll not walk through a mob. Send every man Jack about his business, or
+it will be the worse for him. And every woman Jill, too."
+
+"M. le Capitaine," Maitre Menard quavered, rising unsteadily to his
+feet, "you make a mistake. On my sacred word, you mistake; this is
+not--"
+
+"Get out!" cried the captain, helping him along with his boot. Maitre
+Menard fell rather than walked out of the door.
+
+A gray hue came over Lucas's face. His first fright had given way to
+fury at perceiving himself the victim of a mistake, but now alarm was
+born in his eyes again. Was it, after all, a mistake? This obstinate
+disbelief in his assertion, this ordering away of all who could swear to
+his identity--was it not rather a plot for his ruin? He swallowed hard
+once or twice, fear gripping his throat harder than ever the dragoon's
+fingers had gripped mine. Certainly he was not the Comte de Mar; but
+then he was the man who had killed Pontou.
+
+"If this is a plot against me, say so!" he cried. "If you have orders to
+arrest me, do so. But arrest me by the name of Paul de Lorraine, not of
+Etienne de Mar."
+
+"The name of Etienne de Mar will do," the captain returned; "we have no
+fancy for aliases at the Bastille."
+
+"It is a plot!" Lucas cried.
+
+"It is a warrant; that is all I know about it"
+
+"But I am not Comte de Mar," Lucas repeated.
+
+His uneasy conscience had numbed his wits. In his dread of a plot he had
+done little to dissipate an error. But now he pulled himself together;
+error or intention, he would act as if he knew it must be error.
+
+"My captain, you have made a mistake likely to cost you your
+shoulder-straps. I tell you I am not Mar; the landlord, who knows him
+well, tells you I am not Mar. Ask those who know M. de Mar; ask these
+inn people. They will one and all tell you I am not he. Ask that boy
+there; even he dares not say to my face that I am."
+
+His eyes met mine, and I could see that, even in the moment of
+challenging me, he repented. He believed that I would give the lie. But
+the dragoon who was bending over him, relieving him of his sword-belt,
+spared me the necessity.
+
+"Captain, you need give yourself no uneasiness; this is the Comte right
+enough. I live in the Quartier Marais, and I have seen this gentleman a
+score of times riding with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+Lucas, at this unexpected testimony, looked so taken aback that the
+captain burst out laughing.
+
+"Yes, my dear monsieur, it is a little hard for M. de Mayenne's
+nephew--you are a nephew, are you not?--to explain how he comes to ride
+with the Duc de St. Quentin."
+
+It was awkward to explain. Lucas, knowing well that there was no future
+for him who betrayed the Generalissimo's secrets, cried out angrily:
+
+"He lies! I never rode out with M. de St. Quentin."
+
+"Oh, come now. Really you waste a great deal of breath," the captain
+said. "I regret the cruel necessity of arresting you, M. de Mar; but
+there is nothing gained by blustering about it. I usually know what I am
+about."
+
+"You do not know! Nom de dieu, you do not know. Felix Broux, speak up
+there. If you have told him behind my back that I am Etienne de Mar, I
+defy you to say it to my face."
+
+"I know nothing about it, messieurs." I repeated my little refrain.
+"Monsieur captain, remember, if you please, I never saw him till
+yesterday; he may be Paul de Lorraine for all I know. But he did not
+call himself that yesterday."
+
+"You hell-hound!" Lucas cried.
+
+"Go tell Louis to drive up to the cabaret door, Gaspard," bade the
+captain.
+
+Lucas gazed at him as if to tear out of him the truth of the matter. I
+think he was still a prey to suspicion of a plot in this, and it
+paralyzed his tongue. He so reeked with intrigue that he smelled one
+wherever he went. He was much too clever to believe that this arresting
+officer was simply thick-witted.
+
+"I say no more," he cried. "You may spare yourself your lies, the whole
+crew of you. I go as your prisoner, but I go as Paul of Lorraine, son of
+Henry, Duke of Guise."
+
+He said it with a certain superbness; but the young captain, bourgeois
+of the bourgeois, did not mean to let himself be put down by any sprig
+of the noblesse.
+
+"Certainly, if it is any comfort to you," he retorted. "But you are very
+dull, monsieur, not to be aware that your identity is known perfectly
+to others besides your lackey here and my man. I did not come to arrest
+you without a minute description of you from M. de Belin himself."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Lucas shouted. "I wrote the description. I myself lodged
+information against Mar. I came here to make sure you took him. Carry me
+before Belin; he will know me."
+
+I trembled lest the officer could not but see that the man spoke truth.
+But I had no need to fear; there is a combination of stupidity and
+vanity which nothing can move.
+
+"I have no orders to take you to M. de Belin," he returned calmly. "So
+you wrote the description, did you? Perhaps you will deny that it fits
+you?"
+
+He read from the paper:
+
+"'Charles-Andre-Etienne-Marie de St. Quentin, Comte de Mar. Age,
+three-and-twenty; figure, tall and slender; was dressed yesterday in
+black with a plain falling-band; carries his right arm in a sling--"
+
+"Is my arm in a sling?" Lucas demanded.
+
+"No, in a handcuff," the captain laughed, at the same moment that his
+dragoon exclaimed, "His right wrist is bandaged, though."
+
+"That is nothing! It is a mere scratch. I did it myself last night by
+accident," Lucas shouted, striving with his hampered left hand to pull
+the folds apart to show it. But he could not, and fell silent,
+wide-eyed, like one who sees the net of fate drawing in about him. The
+captain went on reading from his little paper:
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS DEPOSITED IN THE BIG BLACK COACH."]
+
+"'Fair hair, gray eyes, aquiline nose'--I suppose you will still tell
+us, monsieur, that you are not the man?"
+
+"I am not he. The Comte de Mar and I are nothing alike. We are both
+young, tall, yes; but that is all. He is slashed all up the forearm; my
+wrist is but scratched with a knife-edge. He has yellow hair; mine is
+brown. His eyes--"
+
+"It is plain to me, monsieur," the officer interrupted, "that the
+description fits you in every particular." And so it did.
+
+I, who had heard M. Etienne described twenty times, had yesterday
+mistaken Lucas for him; the same items served for both. It was the more
+remarkable because they actually looked no more alike than chalk and
+cheese. Lucas had set down his catalogue without a thought that he was
+drawing his own picture. If ever hunter was caught in his own gin, Lucas
+was!
+
+"You lie!" he cried furiously. "You know I am not Mar. You lie, the
+whole pack of you!"
+
+"Gag him, Ravelle," the captain commanded with an angry flush.
+
+"I demand to be taken before M. de Belin!" Lucas shouted.
+
+The next moment the soldier had twisted a handkerchief about his mouth.
+
+"Ready?" the captain asked of Gaspard, who had come back just in time to
+aid in the throttling. "Move on, then."
+
+He led the way out, the two dragoons following with their prisoner. And
+this time Lucas's fertile wits failed him. He did not slip from his
+captors' fingers between the room and the street. He was deposited in
+the big black coach that had aroused my wonder. Louis cracked his whip
+and off they rumbled.
+
+I laughed all the way back to the Hotel St. Quentin.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_To the Hotel de Lorraine._
+
+
+I found M. Etienne sitting on the steps before the house. He had doffed
+his rusty black for a suit of azure and silver; his sword and poniard
+were heavy with silver chasings. His blue hat, its white plume pinned in
+a silver buckle, lay on the stone beside him. He had discarded his sling
+and was engaged in tuning a lute.
+
+Evidently he was struck by some change in my appearance; for he asked at
+once:
+
+"What has happened, Felix?"
+
+"Such a lark!" I cried.
+
+"What! did old Menard share the crowns with you for your trouble?"
+
+"No; he pocketed them all. That was not it."
+
+I was so choked with laughter as to make it hard work to explain what
+was it, while his first bewilderment changed to an amazed interest,
+which in its turn gave way, not to delight, but to distress.
+
+"Mordieu!" he cried, starting up, his face ablaze, "if I resemble that
+dirt--"
+
+"As chalk and cheese," I said. "No one seeing you both could possibly
+mistake you for two of the same race. But there was nothing in his
+catalogue that did not fit him. It mentioned, to be sure, the right arm
+in a sling; his was not, but he had his wrist bandaged. I think he cut
+himself last night when he was after me and I flung the door in his
+face, for afterward he held his hand behind his back. At any rate, there
+was the bandage; that was enough to satisfy the captain."
+
+"And they took him off?"
+
+"Truly. They gagged him because he protested so much, and lugged him
+off."
+
+"To the Bastille?" he demanded, as if he could scarcely realize the
+event.
+
+"To the Bastille. In a big travelling-coach, between the officer and his
+men. He may be there by this time."
+
+He looked at me as if he were still not quite able to believe the thing.
+
+"It is true, monsieur. If I were inventing it I could not invent
+anything better; but it is true."
+
+"Certes, you could not invent anything better! Nor anything half so
+good. If ever there was a case of the biter bit--" he broke off,
+laughing.
+
+"Monsieur, you know not half how funny it was. Had you seen their
+faces--the more Lucas swore he was not Comte de Mar, the more the
+officer was sure he was."
+
+"Felix, you have all the luck. I said this morning you should go about
+no more without me. Then I send you off on a stupid errand, and see what
+you get into!"
+
+"Monsieur, I put it to you: Had you been there, how could Lucas have
+been arrested for Comte de Mar?"
+
+"He won't stay arrested long--more's the pity."
+
+"No," I said regretfully; "but they may keep him overnight."
+
+"Aye, he may be out of mischief overnight. I am happy to say that my
+face is not known at the Bastille."
+
+"Nor his, I take it. I thought from what I heard last night that he had
+never been in Paris save for a while in the spring, when he lay perdu.
+At the Bastille they may know nothing of the existence of a Paul de
+Lorraine. But, monsieur, if Mayenne has broken his word already, if they
+are arresting you on this trumped-up charge, you must get out of the
+gates to-night."
+
+"Impossible," he answered, smiling; "I have an engagement in Paris."
+
+"But monsieur may not keep it. He must go to St. Denis."
+
+"I must go nowhere but to the Hotel Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Felix; it is the safest spot for me in all Paris; it is
+the last place where they will look for me. Besides, now that they think
+me behind bars, they will not be looking for me at all. I shall be as
+safe as the hottest Leaguer in the camp."
+
+"But in the hotel-"
+
+"Be comforted; I shall not enter the hotel. There is a limit to my
+madness. No; I shall go softly around to a window in the side street
+under which I have often stood in the old days. She used to contrive to
+be in her chamber after supper."
+
+"But, monsieur, how long is it since you were there last?"
+
+"I think it must be two months. I had little heart for it after my
+father--So, you see, no one will be on the lookout for me to-night."
+
+"Neither will mademoiselle," I made my point.
+
+"I hope she may," he answered. "She will know I must see her to-night.
+And I think she will be at the window."
+
+The reasoning seemed satisfactory to him. And I thought one wet blanket
+in the house was enough.
+
+"Very well, monsieur. I am ready for anything you propose."
+
+"Then I propose supper."
+
+Afterward we played shovel-board, I risking the pistoles mademoiselle
+had given me. I won five more, for he paid little heed to what he was
+about, but was ever fidgeting over to the window to see if it was dark
+enough to start. At length, when it was still between dog and wolf, he
+announced that he would delay no longer.
+
+"Very well, monsieur," I said with all alacrity.
+
+"But you are not to come!"
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Certainly not. I must go alone to-night."
+
+"But, monsieur, you will need me. You will need some one to watch the
+street while you speak with mademoiselle."
+
+"I can have no listener to-night," he replied immovably.
+
+"But I will not listen, monsieur! I shall stand out of ear-shot. But you
+must have some one to give you warning should the guard set on you."
+
+"I can manage my own affairs," he retorted haughtily; "I desire neither
+your advice nor your company."
+
+"Monsieur!" I cried, almost in tears.
+
+"Enough!" he bade sharply. "Go send me Vigo."
+
+I went like one in whose face the doors of heaven had shut.
+
+Vigo came at once from the guard-room at my summons. It was on my tongue
+to tell him of M. le Comte's mad resolve to fare forth alone; to beg him
+to stop it. But I remembered how blameworthy I myself had held the
+equery for interfering with M. Etienne, and I made up my mind that no
+word of cavil at my lord should ever pass my lips. I lagged across the
+court at Vigo's heels, silent.
+
+M. Etienne was standing in the doorway.
+
+"Vigo," he said, without a change of countenance, "get Felix a rapier,
+which he can use prettily enough. I cannot take him out to-night
+unarmed."
+
+Vigo hesitated a moment, saluted, and went.
+
+"Monsieur," I cried out, "you meant all the time to take me!"
+
+He gazed down on my heated visage and laughed and laughed.
+
+"Felix," he gasped, "you had your sport over there at the inn. But I
+have seen nothing this summer as funny as _your_ face."
+
+Vigo came back with a sword and baldric for me, and a horse-pistol
+besides, but M. Etienne would not let me have it.
+
+"Circumstances are such, Vigo, that I want no noisy weapons."
+
+The equery regarded him with a troubled countenance.
+
+"I wish I knew, monsieur, whether I do right to let you go."
+
+"We will not discuss that, an it please you."
+
+"I do not, monsieur. I have no right to curtail M. le Comte's liberties.
+But I let you go with a heavy heart."
+
+He looked after us with foreboding eyes as we went out of the great
+gate, alone, with not so much as a linkboy. But if his heart was heavy,
+our hearts were light. We paced along as merrily as though to a feast.
+M. Etienne hung his lute over his neck and strummed it; and whenever we
+passed under a window whence leaned a pretty head, he sang snatches of
+love-songs. We were alone in the dark streets of a hostile city, bound
+for the house of a mighty foe; and one of us was wounded and one a tyro.
+Yet we laughed as we went; for there was Lucas languishing in prison,
+and here were we, free as air, steering our course for mademoiselle's
+window. One of us was in love, and the other wore a sword for the first
+time, and all the power of Mayenne daunted us not.
+
+We came at length within bow-shot of the Hotel de Lorraine, where M.
+Etienne was willing to abate somewhat his swagger. We left the Rue St.
+Antoine, creeping around behind the house through a narrow and twisting
+alley--it was pitch-black, but he knew the way well--into a little
+street dim-lighted from the windows of the houses upon it. It was only a
+few rods long, running from the open square in front of the hotel to the
+network of unpaved alleys behind. On the farther side stood a row of
+high-gabled houses, their doors opening directly on the pavement; on
+this side was but one big pile, the Hotel de Lorraine. The wall was
+broken by few windows, most of them dark; this was not the gay side of
+the house. The overhanging turret on the low second story, under which
+M. Etienne halted, was as dark as the rest, nor, though the casement was
+open wide, could we tell whether any one was in the room. We could hear
+nothing but the breeze crackling in the silken curtains.
+
+"Take your station at the corner there," he bade, "and shout if they
+seem to be coming for us. But I think we shall not be molested. My
+fingers are so stiff they will hardly recognize my hand on the strings."
+
+I went to my post, and he began singing, scarce loud enough for any but
+his lady above to mark him:
+
+     _Fairest blossom ever grew
+         Once she loosened from her breast.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     From her breast the rose she drew,
+         Dole for me, her servant blest,
+     Fairest blossom ever grew._
+
+The music paused, and I turned from my watch of the shadowy figures
+crossing the square, in instant alarm lest something was wrong. But
+whatever startled him ceased, for in a moment he went on again, and as
+he sang his voice rang fuller:
+
+     _Of my love the guerdon true,
+         'Tis my bosom's only guest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue.
+
+     Still to me 'tis bright of hue
+         As when first my kisses prest
+     Fairest blossom ever grew.
+
+     Sweeter than when gathered new
+         'Twas the sign her love confest.
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He stopped again and stood gazing up into the window, but whether he saw
+something or heard something I could not tell. Apparently he was not
+sure himself, for presently, a little tremulous, he added the four
+verses:
+
+     _Askest thou of me a clue
+         To that lady I love best?
+     Fairest blossom ever grew!
+     This I say, her eyes are blue._
+
+He doffed his hat, pushing back the hair from his brow, and waited,
+eager, hopeful. There was a little stir in the room that one thought was
+not the wind.
+
+I had come unconsciously half-way up the street to him in the ardour of
+my interest; but now I was startled back to my duty by the sound of men
+running round the corner behind me. One glance was enough; two abreast,
+swords in hand, they were charging us. I ran before them, drawing blade
+as I went and shouting to M. Etienne. But even as I called an answering
+shout came from the alley; two men of the Spanish guards shot out of the
+darkness and at us.
+
+M. Etienne, with his extraordinary quickness, had got the lute off his
+neck, and now, for want of a better use of it, flung it at the head of
+his nearest assailant, who received it full in the face, stopped,
+hesitated a moment, and ran back the way he had come. But three foes
+remained, with the whole Hotel de Lorraine behind them.
+
+We put our backs to the wall and set to. The remaining Spaniard engaged
+me; M. Etienne, protected somewhat in the embrasure of a doorway, held
+at bay with his good left arm a pair of attackers. These were in the
+dress of gentlemen, and wore masks as if their cheeks blushed (well they
+might) for the deeds of their hands.
+
+A broad window in the Hotel de Lorraine was flung open; a man leaned far
+out with a torch. The bright glare in our faces bewildered our
+gloom-accustomed eyes; I could not see what I was about, and rammed my
+point against my Spaniard's hilt, snapping my blade.
+
+The sudden impact sent him stumbling back a pace, and M. Etienne, who,
+with the quick eye of the born fencer, saw everything, cried to me,
+"Here!"
+
+I darted back into the doorway beside him. His two assailants finding
+that they gained nothing by their joint attack, but rather hampered each
+other, one dropped back to watch his comrade, the cleverer swordsman.
+This was decidedly a man of talent, but he was shorter in the arm than
+my master and had the disadvantage of standing on the ground, whereas M.
+Etienne was up one step. He could not force home any of his
+shrewd-planned thrusts; nor could he drive M. Etienne out of his coign
+to where in the open the two could make short work of him. The rapiers
+clashed and parted and twisted about each other and flew apart again;
+and then before I could see who was touched the attacker fell to his
+knees, with M. Etienne's sword in his breast.
+
+M. Etienne wrenched the blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his
+mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had thought him--Francois de
+Brie.
+
+M. Etienne was ready for the second gentleman, but neither he nor the
+soldier attacked. The torch-bearer in the window, with a shout, waved
+his arm toward the square. A mob of armed men hurled itself around the
+corner, a pikeman with lowered point in the van.
+
+This was not combat; it was butchery. M. Etienne, with a little moan,
+lifted his eyes for the first time from his assailant to the turret
+window. In the same instant I felt the door behind us give. Throwing my
+whole weight upon it, I seized M. Etienne and pulled him over the
+threshold. Some one inside slammed the door to, just as the Spaniard
+hurled himself against it.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_"On guard, monsieur."_
+
+
+We found ourselves in a narrow panelled passageway, lighted by a
+flickering oil-lamp pendent from a bracket. Confronting us was our
+preserver--a little old lady in black velvet, leaning back in chuckling
+triumph against the shot bolts.
+
+She was very small and very old. Her figure was bent and shrunken, a
+pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair was as white as
+her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment, furrowed with a
+thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes sparkled like a girl's.
+
+"I did not mean to let my nightingale's throat be slit," she cried in a
+shrill voice quavering like a young child's. "I have listened to your
+singing many a night, monsieur; I was glad to-night to find the
+nightingale back again. When I saw that crew rush at you, I said I would
+save you if only you would put your back to my door. Monsieur, you are a
+young man of intelligence."
+
+"I am a young man of amazing good fortune, madame," M. Etienne replied,
+with his handsomest bow, sheathing his wet blade. "I owe you a debt of
+gratitude which is ill repaid in the base coin of bringing trouble to
+this house."
+
+"Not at all--not at all!" she protested with animation. "No one is
+likely to molest this house. It is the dwelling of M. Ferou."
+
+"Of the Sixteen?"
+
+"Of the Sixteen," she nodded, her shrewd face agleam with mischief. "In
+truth, if my son were within, you were little likely to find harbourage
+here. But, as it is, he and his wife are supping with his Grace of
+Lyons. And the servants are one and all gone to mass, leaving madame
+grand'mere to shift for herself. No, no, my good friends; you may knock
+till you drop, but you won't get in."
+
+The attacking party was indeed hammering energetically on the door,
+shouting to us to open, to deny them at our peril. The eyes of the old
+lady glittered with new delight at every rap.
+
+"I fancy they will think twice before they batter down M. Ferou's door!
+Ma foi! I fancy they are a little mystified at finding you sanctuaried
+in this house. Was it not my Lord Mayenne's jackal, Francois de Brie?"
+
+"Yes; and Marc Latour."
+
+"I thought I knew them," she cried in evident pride at her sharpness.
+"It was dark, and they were masked, and my eyes are old, but I knew
+them! And which of the ladies is it?"
+
+He could do no less than answer his saviour.
+
+"Ah, well," she said, with a little sigh, "I too once--but that is a
+long time ago." Then her eyes twinkled again; I trow she was not much
+given to sighing. "That is a long time ago," she repeated briskly, "and
+now they think I am too old to do aught but tell my beads and wait for
+death. But I like to have a hand in the game."
+
+"I will come to take a hand with you any time, madame," M. Etienne
+assured her. "I like the way you play."
+
+She broke into shrill, delighted laughter.
+
+"I'll warrant you do! And I don't mean to do the thing by halves. No; I
+shall save you, hide and hair. Be so kind, my lad, as to lift the
+lantern from the hook."
+
+I did as she bade me, and we followed her down the passage like
+spaniels. She was so entirely equal to the situation that we made no
+protests and asked no questions. At the end of the hall she paused,
+opening neither the door on the right nor the door on the left, but,
+passing her hand up one of the panels of the wainscot, suddenly she
+flung it wide.
+
+"You are not so small as I," she chuckled, "yet I think you can make
+shift to get through. You, monsieur lantern-bearer, go first."
+
+I doubled myself up and scrambled through. The old lady, gathering her
+petticoats daintily, followed me without difficulty, but M. Etienne was
+put to some trouble to bow his tall head low enough. We stood at the top
+of a flight of stone steps descending into blackness. The old lady
+unhesitatingly tripped down before us.
+
+At the foot of the stairs was a vaulted stone passageway, slippery with
+lichen, the dampness hanging in beads on the wall. Turning two corners,
+we brought up at a narrow, nail-studded door.
+
+"Here I bid you farewell," quoth the little old lady. "You have only to
+walk on till you get to the end. At the steps, pull the rope once and
+wait. When he opens to you, say, 'For the Cause,' and draw a crown with
+your finger in the air."
+
+"Madame," M. Etienne cried, "I hope the day may come when I shall make
+you suitable acknowledgements. My name--"
+
+"I prefer not to know it," she interrupted, glancing up at him. "I will
+call you M. Yeux-gris; that is enough. As for acknowledgments--pooh! I
+am overpaid in the sport it has been."
+
+"But, madame, when monsieur your son discovers--"
+
+"Mon dieu! I am not afraid of my son or of any other woman's son!" she
+cried, with cackling laughter. And I warrant she was not.
+
+"Madame," M. Etienne said, "I trust we shall meet again when I shall
+have time to tell you what I think of you." He dropped on his knees
+before her, kissing both her hands.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course you are grateful," she said, somewhat bored
+apparently by his demonstration. "Naturally one does not like to die at
+your age. I wish you a pleasant journey, M. Yeux-gris, and you too, you
+fresh-faced boy. Give me back my lantern and fare you well."
+
+"You will let us see you safe back in your hall."
+
+"I will do nothing of the sort! I am not so decrepit, thank you, that I
+cannot get up my own stairs. No, no; no more gallantries, but get on
+your way! Begone with you! I must be back in my chamber working my
+altar-cloth when my daughter-in-law comes home."
+
+Crowing her elfin laugh, she pulled the door open and fairly hustled us
+through.
+
+"Good-by--you are fine boys"; and she slammed the door upon us. We were
+in absolute darkness. As we took our first breath of the dank, foul air,
+we heard bolts snap into place.
+
+"Well, since we cannot go back, let us go forward," said M. Etienne,
+cheerfully. "I am glad she has bolted the door; it is to throw them off
+the scent should they track us."
+
+I knew very well that he was not at all glad; that the same thought
+which chilled my blood had come to him. This little beldam, with her
+beady eyes and her laughter, was the wicked witch of our childhood days;
+she had shut us up in a charnel-house to die.
+
+I heard him tapping the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it
+as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the
+passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder.
+There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something
+swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and a
+laugh from him.
+
+"What was it? a bat? Cheer up, Felix; they don't bite." But I would not
+go on till I had made sure, as well as I could without seeing, that the
+cursed thing was not clinging on me somewhere.
+
+We walked on then in silence, the stone walls vibrant with our tread.
+We went on till it seemed we had traversed the width of Paris; and I
+wondered who were sleeping and feasting and scheming and loving over our
+heads. M. Etienne said at length:
+
+"Mordieu! I hope this snake-hole does not empty us out into the Seine."
+But I thought that as long as it emptied us out somewhere, I should not
+greatly mind the Seine.
+
+At this very moment M. Etienne clutched my arm, jerking me to a halt. I
+bounded backward, trying in the blackness to discern a precipice yawning
+at my feet. "Look!" he cried in a low, tense voice. I perceived, far
+before us in the gloom, a point of light, which, as we watched it, grew
+bigger and bigger, till it became an approaching lantern.
+
+"This is like to be awkward," murmured M. Etienne.
+
+The man carrying the light came on with firm, heavy tread; naturally he
+did not see us as soon as we saw him. I thought him alone, but it was
+hard to tell in this dark, echoy place.
+
+He might easily have approached within touch of my sad clothing without
+becoming aware of me, but M. Etienne's azure and white caught the
+lantern rays a rod away. The newcomer stopped short, holding up the
+light between us and his face. We could make nothing of him, save that
+he was a large man, soberly clad.
+
+"Who is it?" he demanded, his voice ringing out loud and steady. "Is it
+you, Ferou?"
+
+M. Etienne hooked his scabbard in place, and went forward into the clear
+circle of light.
+
+"No, M. de Mayenne; it is Etienne de Mar."
+
+"Ventre bleu!" Mayenne ejaculated, changing his lantern with comical
+alacrity to his left hand, and whipping out his sword. My master's came
+bare, too, at that. They confronted each other in silence, till
+Mayenne's ever-increasing astonishment forced the cry from him:
+
+"How the devil come you here?"
+
+"Evidently by way of M. Ferou's house," M. Etienne answered. Mayenne
+still stared in thick amazement; after a moment my master added: "I must
+in justice say that M. Ferou is not aware that I am using this passage;
+he is, with madame his wife, supping with the Archbishop of Lyons."
+
+M. Etienne leaned his shoulder against the wall, smiling pleasantly, and
+waiting for the duke to make the next move. Mayenne kept a nonplussed
+silence. The situation was indeed somewhat awkward. He could not come
+forward without encountering an agile opponent, whose exceeding skill
+with the sword was probably known to him. He could not turn tail, had
+his dignity allowed the course, without exposing himself to be spitted.
+He was in the predicament of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping
+at us less in fear, I think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I
+learned later, was one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter.
+Mayenne had as soon expected to meet a lion in the tunnel as to meet a
+foe. He cried out again upon us, with an instinctive certainty that a
+great prince's question must be answered:
+
+"How came you here?"
+
+"I don't ask," said M. Etienne, "how it happens that M. le Duc is
+walking through this rat-hole. Nor do I feel disposed to make any
+explanation to him."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mayenne; "our swords, if you are ready, will
+make adequate explanation."
+
+"Now, that is gallant of you," returned M. Etienne, "as it is evident
+that the closeness of these walls will inconvenience your Grace more
+than it will me."
+
+The walls of the passage were roughly laid. Mayenne perched his lantern
+on a projecting stone.
+
+"On guard, sir," he answered.
+
+The silence was profound. Mayenne had no companion following him. He was
+alone with his sword. He was not now head of the state, but only a man
+with a sword, standing opposite another man with a sword. Nor was he in
+the pink of form. Though he gave the effect, from his clear colour and
+proud bearing, perhaps also from his masterful energy, of tremendous
+force and strength, his body was in truth but a poor machine, his great
+corpulence making him clumsy and scant of breath. He must have known, as
+he eyed his supple antagonist, what the end would be. Yet he merely
+said:
+
+"On guard, monsieur."
+
+M. Etienne did not raise his weapon. I retreated a pace, that I might
+not be in the way of his jump, should Mayenne spring on him. M. Etienne
+said slowly:
+
+"M. de Mayenne, this encounter was none of my contriving. Nor have I any
+wish to cross swords with you. Family quarrels are to be deprecated.
+Since I still intend to become your cousin, I must respectfully beg to
+be released from the obligation of fighting you."
+
+A man knowing himself overmatched cannot refuse combat. He may, even as
+Mayenne had done, think himself compelled to offer it. But if he insists
+on forcing battle with a reluctant adversary, he must be a hothead
+indeed. And Mayenne was no hothead. He stood hesitant, feeling that he
+was made ridiculous in accepting the clemency and should be still more
+ridiculous to refuse it. He half lifted his sword, only to lower it
+again, till at last his good sense came to his relief in a laugh.
+
+"M. de Mar, it appears that, after all, some explanations are necessary.
+You think that in declining to fight you put me in your debt. Possibly
+you are right. But if you expect that in gratitude I shall hand over
+Lorance de Montluc, you were never more mistaken. Never, while I live,
+shall she marry into the king's camp. Now, monsieur, that we understand
+each other, I abide by your decision whether we fight or not."
+
+For answer, M. Etienne put up his blade. The Duke of Mayenne, saluting
+with his, did the like. "Mar," he said, "you stood off from us, like a
+coquetting girl, for three years. At length, last May, you refused
+point-blank to join us. I do not often ask a man twice, but I ask you.
+Will you join the League to-night, and marry Lorance to-morrow?"
+
+No man could have spoken with a franker grace. I believe then, I
+believe now, he meant it. M. Etienne believed he meant it.
+
+"Monsieur," he answered, "I have shilly-shallied long; but I am planted
+squarely at last with my father on the king's side. You put your
+interesting nephew into my father's house to kill him; I shall not sign
+myself with the League."
+
+"In that case," returned Mayenne, "perhaps we might each continue on his
+way."
+
+"With all my heart, monsieur."
+
+Each drew back against the wall to let the other pass, with a wary eye
+for daggers. Then M. Etienne, laughing a little, but watching Mayenne
+like a lynx, started to go by. The duke, seeing the look, suddenly
+raised his hands over his head, holding them there while both of us
+squeezed past him.
+
+"Cousin Charles," said M. Etienne, "I see that when I have married
+Lorance you and I shall get on capitally. Till then, God have you ever
+in guard."
+
+"I thank you, monsieur. You make me immortal."
+
+"I have no need to make you witty. M. de Mayenne, when you have
+submitted to the king, as you will one of these days, I shall have as
+delightful a kinsman as heart of man could wish. You and I will yet
+drink a loving-cup together. Till that happy hour, I am your good enemy.
+Fare you well, monsieur."
+
+He bowed; the duke, half laughing despite a considerable ire, returned
+the obeisance with all pomp. M. Etienne took me by the arm and departed.
+Mayenne stood still for a space; then we heard his retreating
+footsteps, and the glimmer of his light slowly faded away.
+
+[Illustration: "WE CLIMBED OUT INTO A SILK-MERCER'S SHOP."]
+
+"It wasn't necessary to tell him the door is bolted," M. Etienne
+muttered.
+
+We hurried along now without precaution, knowing that the floor which
+had supported Mayenne would support us. The consequence was that we
+stumbled abruptly against a step, and fell with a force like to break
+our kneecaps. I picked myself up at once, and ran headlong up the
+stairs, to hit my crown on the ceiling and reel back on M. Etienne,
+sweeping him off his feet, so that we rolled in a struggling heap on the
+stones of the passage. And for the minute the place was no longer dark;
+I saw more lightning than even flashed in the Rue Coupejarrets.
+
+"Are you hurt, Felix?" cried M. Etienne, the first to disentangle
+himself.
+
+"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say it was a
+trap-door."
+
+We ascended the stairs a second time--this time most cautiously on our
+hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of
+spirit, a wooden ceiling.
+
+"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.
+
+The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere
+above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we
+heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and
+then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a silk-mercer's shop.
+
+"Faith, my man," said M. Etienne to the little bourgeois who had opened
+to us, "I am glad to see you appear so promptly."
+
+He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.
+
+"You must have met--" he suggested with hesitancy.
+
+"Yes," said M. Etienne; "but he did not object. We are, of course, of
+the initiated."
+
+"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny
+assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret of the
+passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty few mercers
+have a duke in their shop as often as I."
+
+We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with piles of
+stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the
+counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them--gorgeous
+brocades and satins. Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.
+
+"Yes, that is the bell of the trap," the proprietor said, following our
+glance. "Customers do not know where it rings from. And if I am not at
+liberty to open, I drop my brass yardstick on the floor--But they told
+you that, doubtless, monsieur?" he added, regarding M. Etienne again a
+little uneasily.
+
+"They told me something else I had near forgotten," M. Etienne answered,
+and, drawing a crown in the air, gave the password, "For the Cause."
+
+"For the King," the shopkeeper made instant rejoinder, drawing in the
+air in his turn a letter C and the numeral X.
+
+M. Etienne laid a gold piece on the counter, and if the shopkeeper had
+felt any doubts of this well-dressed gallant who wore no hat, they
+vanished in its radiance.
+
+"And now, my friend, let us out into the street and forget our faces."
+
+The man took up his candle to light us to the door.
+
+"Perhaps it would not trouble monsieur to say a word for me over there?"
+he suggested, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. "M. le Duc has
+every confidence in me. Still, it would do no harm if monsieur should
+mention how quickly I let him out."
+
+"When I see him, I will surely mention it," M. Etienne promised him.
+"Continue to be vigilant to-night, my friend. There is another man to
+come."
+
+Followed by the little bourgeois's thanks and adieus, we walked out into
+the sweet open air. As soon as his door was shut again, we took to our
+heels, nor stopped running till we had put half a dozen streets between
+us and the mouth of the tunnel. Then we walked along in breathless
+silence.
+
+Presently M. Etienne cried out:
+
+"Death of my life! Had I fought there in the burrow, I should have
+changed the history of France!"
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_A chance encounter._
+
+
+The street before us was as orderly as the aisle of Notre Dame. Few
+way-farers passed us; those there were talked together as placidly as if
+love-trysts and melees existed not, and tunnels and countersigns were
+but the smoke of a dream. It was a street of shops, all shuttered,
+while, above, the burghers' families went respectably to bed.
+
+"This is the Rue de la Ferronnerie," my master said, pausing a moment to
+take his bearings. "See, under the lantern, the sign of the Pierced
+Heart. The little shop is in the Rue de la Soierie. We are close by the
+Halles--we must have come half a mile underground. Well, we'll swing
+about in a circle to get home. For this night I've had enough of the
+Hotel de Lorraine."
+
+And I. But I held my tongue about it, as became me.
+
+"They were wider awake than I thought--those Lorrainers. Pardieu! Feix,
+you and I came closer quarters with death than is entirely amusing."
+
+"If that door had not opened-" I shuddered.
+
+"A new saint in the calendar--la Sainte Ferou! But what a madcap of a
+saint, then! My faith, she must have led them a dance when Francis I was
+king!
+
+"Natheless it galls me," he went on, half to himself, "to know that I
+was lost by my own folly, saved by pure chance. I underrated the
+enemy--worst mistake in the book of strategy. I came near flinging away
+two lives and making a most unsightly mess under a lady's window."
+
+"Monsieur made somewhat of a mess as it was."
+
+"Aye. I would I knew whether I killed Brie. We'll go round in the
+morning and find out."
+
+"I am thankful that monsieur does not mean to go to-night."
+
+"Not to-night, Felix; I've had enough. No; we'll get home without
+passing near the Hotel de Lorraine, if we go outside the walls to do it.
+To-night I draw my sword no more."
+
+To this day I have no quite clear idea of how we went. A strange city at
+night--Paris of all cities--is a labyrinth. I know that after a time we
+came out in some meadows along the river-bank, traversed them, and
+plunged once more into narrow, high-walled streets. It was very late,
+and lights were few. We had started in clear starlight, but now a rack
+of clouds hid even their pale shine.
+
+"The snake-hole over again," said M. Etienne. "But we are almost at our
+own gates."
+
+But, as in the snake-hole, came light. Turning a sharp corner, we ran
+straight into a gentleman and his porte-flambeau, swinging along at as
+smart a pace as we.
+
+"A thousand pardons," M. Etienne cried to his encounterer, the possessor
+of years and gravity but of no great size, whom he had almost knocked
+down. "I heard you, but knew not you were so close. We were speeding to
+get home."
+
+The personage was also of a portliness, and the collision had knocked
+the wind out of him. He leaned panting against the wall. As he scanned
+M. Etienne's open countenance and princely dress his alarm vanished.
+
+"It is unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he
+said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall
+certainly bring the matter up at the next sitting."
+
+"Monsieur is a member of the Parliament?" M. Etienne asked with immense
+respect.
+
+"I have that honour, monsieur," the little man replied, delighted to
+impress us, as he himself was impressed, by the sense of his importance.
+
+"Oh," said M. Etienne, with increasing solemnity, "perhaps monsieur had
+a hand in a certain decree of the 28th June?"
+
+The little man began to look uneasy.
+
+"There was, as monsieur says, a measure passed that day," he stammered.
+
+"A rebellious and contumacious decree," M. Etienne rejoined, "most
+offensive to the general-duke." Whereupon he fingered his sword.
+
+"Monsieur," the little deputy cried, "we meant no offence to his Grace,
+or to any true Frenchman. We but desire peace after all these years of
+blood. We were informed that his Grace was angry; yet we believed that
+even he will come to see the matter in a different light--"
+
+"You have acted in a manner insulting to his Grace of Mayenne," M.
+Etienne repeated inexorably, and he glanced up the street and down the
+street to make sure the coast was clear. The wretched little deputy's
+teeth chattered.
+
+The linkman had retreated to the other side of the way, where he seemed
+on the point of fleeing, leaving his master to his fate. I thought it
+would be a shame if the badgered deputy had to stumble home in the dark,
+so I growled out to the fellow:
+
+"Stir one step at your peril!"
+
+I was afraid he would drop the flambeau and run, but he did not; he only
+sank back against the wall, eyeing my sword with exceeding deference. He
+knew not that there was but a foot of blade in the scabbard.
+
+The burgher looked up the street and down the street, after M. Etienne's
+example, but there was no help to be seen or heard. He turned to his
+tormentor with the valour of a mouse at bay.
+
+"Monsieur, beware what you do. I am Pierre Marceau!"
+
+"Oh, you are Pierre Marceau? And can M. Pierre Marceau explain how he
+happened to be faring forth from his dwelling at this unholy hour?"
+
+"I am not faring forth; I am faring home. I--we had a little con--that
+is, not to say a conference, but merely a little discussion on matters
+of no importance--"
+
+"I have the pleasure," interrupted M. Etienne, sternly, "of knowing
+where M. Marceau lives. M. Marceau's errand in this direction is not
+accounted for."
+
+"But I was going home--on my sacred honour I was! Ask Jacques, else. But
+as we went down the Rue de l'Eveque we saw two men in front of us. As
+they reached the wall by M. de Mirabeau's garden a gang of footpads fell
+on them. The two drew blades and defended themselves, but the ruffians
+were a dozen--a score. We ran for our lives."
+
+M. Etienne wheeled round to me.
+
+"Felix, here is work for us. As I was saying, M. Marceau, your decree is
+most offensive to the general-duke, and therefore, since he is my
+particular enemy, most pleasing to me. A beautiful night, is it not,
+sir? I wish you a delightful walk home."
+
+He seized me by the hand, and we dashed up the street.
+
+At the corner the noise of a fray came faintly but plainly to our ears.
+M. le Comte without hesitation plunged down a lane in the direction of
+the sound.
+
+"I said I wanted no more fighting to-night, but two against a mob! We
+know how it feels."
+
+The clash of steel on steel grew ever louder, and as we wheeled around a
+jutting garden wall we came full upon the combatants.
+
+"A rescue, a rescue!" cried M. Etienne. "Shout, Felix! Montjoie St.
+Denis! A rescue, a rescue!"
+
+We charged down the street, drawing our swords and shouting at the top
+of our lungs.
+
+It was too dark to see much save a mass of struggling figures, with
+every now and then, as the steel hit, a point of light flashing out, to
+fade and appear again like a brilliant glow-worm. We could scarce tell
+which were the attackers, which the two comrades we had come to save.
+
+But if we could not make them out, neither could they us. We shouted as
+boldly as if we had been a company, and in the clatter of their heels on
+the stones they could not count our feet. They knew not how many
+followers the darkness held. The group parted. Two men remained in hot
+combat close under the left wall. Across the way one sturdy fighter held
+off two, while a sixth man, crying on his mates to follow, fled down the
+lane.
+
+M. Etienne knew now what he was about, and at once took sides with the
+solitary fencer. The combat being made equal, I started in pursuit of
+the flying figure. I had run but a few yards, however, when I tripped
+and fell prostrate over the body of a man. I was up in a moment, feeling
+him to find out if he were dead; my hands over his heart dipped into a
+pool of something wet and warm like new milk. I wiped them on his sleeve
+as best I could, and hastily groped about for his sword. He did not need
+it now, and I did.
+
+When I rose with it my quarry was swallowed up in the shadows. M.
+Etienne, whose light clothing made a distinguishable spot in the gloom,
+had driven his opponent, or his opponent had driven him, some rods up
+the lane the way we had come. I stood perplexed, not knowing where to
+busy myself. M. Etienne's side I could not reach past the two duels; and
+of the four men near me, I could by no means tell, as they circled
+about and about, which were my chosen allies. They were all sombrely
+clad, their faces blurred in the darkness. When one made a clever pass,
+I knew not whether to rejoice or despair. But at length I picked out one
+who fenced, though valiantly enough, yet with greater effort than the
+rest; and I deemed that this had been the hardest pressed of all and
+must certainly be one of the attacked and the one most deserving of
+succour. He was plainly losing ground. I darted to his side just as his
+foe ran him through the arm.
+
+The assailant pulled his blade free and darted back against the wall to
+face the two of us. But the sword of the wounded man fell from his loose
+fingers.
+
+"I'm out of it," he cried to me; "I go for aid." And as his late
+combatant sprang forward to engage me, I heard him running off,
+stumbling where I had.
+
+There had been little light toward the last in the court of the house in
+the Rue Coupejarrets, and less under the windows of the Hotel de
+Lorraine; but here was none at all, I had to use my sword solely by the
+feel of his against it, and I underwent chilling qualms lest presently,
+without in the least knowing how it got there, I should find his point
+sticking out of my back. I could hardly believe he was not hitting me; I
+began to prickle in half a dozen places, and knew not whether the stings
+were real or imaginary. But one was not imaginary; my shoulder which
+Lucas had pinked and the doctor bandaged was throbbing painfully. I
+fancied that in my earlier combat the wound had opened again and that I
+was bleeding to death; and the fear shook me. I lunged wildly, and I
+had been sent to my account in short order had not at this moment one of
+the other pair near us, as it afterward appeared, driven his weapon
+square through his vis-a-vis's breast.
+
+"I am done for. Run who can!" he cried as he fell. The sword snapped in
+two against the paving-stones; he rolled over and lay still, his face in
+the dirt.
+
+My encounterer, with a shout to his single remaining comrade, made off
+down the lane. On my part, I was very willing to let him depart in
+peace.
+
+The clash of swords up the lane had ceased at the stricken man's cry,
+and out of the gloom came the sound of footfalls fainter and fainter. I
+deemed that the battle was over.
+
+The champion came toward me, three white patches visible for his face
+and hands; the rest of him but darkness moving in darkness. He held a
+sword rifled from the enemy, and advanced on me hesitatingly, not sure
+whether friend or foe remained to him. I felt that an explanation was
+due from me, but in my ignorance as to who he was and who his foes were,
+and why they had been fighting him and why we had been fighting them, I
+stood for a moment confused. It is hard to open conversation with a
+shadow.
+
+He spoke first, in a voice husky from his exertion:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"A friend," I said. "My master and I saw two men fighting four--we came
+to help the weaker side. Your friend was hurt, but he got away safe to
+fetch aid."
+
+The unknown made a rapid step toward me, crying, "What--"
+
+But at the word M. Etienne emerged from the shadows.
+
+"Who lives?" he called out. "You, Felix?"
+
+"Not hurt, monsieur. And you?"
+
+"Not a scratch. Nor did I scratch my man. Permit me to congratulate you,
+monsieur l'inconnu, on our coming up when we did."
+
+The unknown said one word:
+
+"Etienne!"
+
+I sprang forward with the impulse to throw my arms about him, in the
+pure rapture of recognizing his voice. This struggler, whom we had
+rushed in, blindfold, to save, was Monsieur! If we had been content to
+mind our own business, had sheered away like the deputy--it turned me
+faint to think how long we had delayed with old Marceau, we were so
+nearly too late. I wanted to seize Monsieur, to convince myself that he
+was all safe, to feel him quick and warm.
+
+I made one pace and stopped; for I remembered what ghastly shape stood
+between me and Monsieur--that horrible lying story.
+
+"Dieu!" gasped M. Etienne, "Monsieur!"
+
+For a moment we all kept silence, motionless; then Monsieur flung his
+sword over the wall.
+
+"Do your will, Etienne."
+
+His son darted forward with a cry.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur, I am not your assassin! I came to your aid not
+dreaming who you were; but, had I known, I would have fought a hundred
+times the harder. I never plotted against you. On the honour of a St.
+Quentin I swear it."
+
+Monsieur said naught, and we could not see his face; could not know
+whether he believed or rejected, softened or condemned.
+
+M. Etienne, catching at his breath, went on:
+
+"Monsieur, I know it is hard to credit. I have been a bad son to you,
+unloving, rebellious, insolent. We quarrelled; I spoke bitter words. But
+I am no ruffian. I am a St. Quentin. Had you had me whipped from the
+house, still would I never have raised hand against you. I knew nothing
+of the plot. Felix told you I was in it--small blame to him. But he was
+wrong. I knew naught of it."
+
+Had he been content to rest his case here, I think Monsieur could not
+but have believed his innocence on his bare word. The stones in the
+pavement must have known that he was uttering truth. But he in his
+eagerness paused for no answer, but went on to stun Monsieur with
+statements new and amazing to his ear.
+
+"My cousin Grammont--who is dead--was in the plot, and his lackey
+Pontou, and Martin the clerk; but the contriver was Lucas."
+
+"Lucas?"
+
+"Lucas," continued M. Etienne. "Or, to give him his true title, Paul de
+Lorraine, son of Henri de Guise."
+
+"But that is impossible" Monsieur cried, stupefied.
+
+"It is impossible, but it is true. He is a Lorraine--Mayenne's nephew,
+and for years Mayenne's spy. He came to you to kill you--for that
+object pure and simple. Last spring, before he came to you, he was here
+in Paris with Mayenne, making terms for your murder. He is no Huguenot,
+no Kingsman. He is Mayenne's henchman, son to Guise himself."
+
+"And how long have you known this?" asked Monsieur.
+
+"Since this morning." Then, as the import of the question struck him, he
+fell back with a groan. "Ah, Monsieur, if you can ask that, I have no
+more to say. It is useless." He turned away into the darkness.
+
+That they should part thus was too miserable to be endured. I was sure
+Monsieur's question was no accusation, but the groping of bewilderment.
+
+"M. Etienne, stop!" I commanded. "Monsieur, it is the truth. Indeed it
+is the truth. He is innocent, and Lucas _is_ a Guise. Monsieur, you must
+listen to me. M. Etienne, you must wait. I stirred up the whole trouble
+with my story to you, Monsieur, and I take it back. I believed I was
+telling the truth. I was wrong. When I left you, I went straight back to
+the Rue Coupejarrets to kill your son--your murderer, I thought. And
+there I found Grammont and Lucas side by side. We thought them sworn
+foes: they were hand in glove. They came at me to end me because I had
+told, and M. Etienne saved me. Lucas mocked him to his face because he
+had been tricked; Lucas bragged that it was his own scheme--that M.
+Etienne was his dupe. Vigo will tell you. Vigo heard him. His scheme
+was to saddle M. Etienne with your murder. He was tricked. He believed
+what he told me--that the thing was a duel between Lucas and Grammont.
+You must believe it, Monsieur!"
+
+M. Etienne, who had actually obeyed me,--me, his lackey,--turned to his
+father once again.
+
+"Monsieur, if you cannot believe me, believe Felix. You believed him
+when he took away my good name. Believe him now when he restores it."
+
+"Nay," Monsieur cried; "I believe thee, Etienne."
+
+And he took his son in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_The signet of the king._
+
+
+Already a wan light was revealing the round tops of the plum-trees in M.
+de Mirabeau's garden, the high gray wall, and the narrow alleyway
+beneath it. And the two vague shapes by me were no longer vague shapes,
+but were turning moment by moment, as if coming out of an enchantment,
+into their true forms. It really was Monsieur in the flesh, with a wet
+glint in his eyes as he kissed his boy.
+
+Neither thought of me, and it was none of my concern what they said to
+each other. I went a rod or two down the lane, round a curve in the
+wall, and watched the bands of light streaking the eastern sky, in utter
+content. Never before had the world seemed to me so good a place. Since
+this misery had come right, I knew all the rest would; I should yet
+dance at M. Etienne's wedding.
+
+I leaned my head back against the wall, and had shut my eyes to consider
+the matter more quietly, when I heard my name.
+
+"Felix! Felix! Where is the boy got to?"
+
+The sun was clean up over the horizon, and as I blinked and wondered
+how he had contrived the feat so quickly, my two messieurs came hand in
+hand round the corner to me, the level rays glittering on Monsieur's
+burnished breastplate, on M. Etienne's bright head, and on both their
+shining faces. Now that for the first time I saw them together, I found
+them, despite the dark hair and the yellow, the brown eyes and the gray,
+wonderfully alike. There was the same carriage, the same cock of the
+head, the same smile. If I had not known before, I knew now, the instant
+I looked at them, that the quarrel was over. Save as it gave them a
+deeper love of each other, it might never have been.
+
+I sprang up, and Monsieur, my duke, embraced me.
+
+"Lucky we came up the lane when we did, eh, Felix?" M. Etienne said.
+"But, Monsieur, I have not asked you yet what madness sent you
+traversing this back passage at two in the morning."
+
+"I might ask you that, Etienne."
+
+The young man hesitated a bare moment before he answered:
+
+"I am just come from serenading Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+A shade fell over Monsieur's radiance. At his look, M. Etienne cried
+out:
+
+"I've told you I'm no Leaguer! Mayenne offered me mademoiselle if I
+would come over. I refused. Last night he sent me word that he would
+kill me as a common nuisance if I sought to see her. That was why I
+tried."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, curiosity mastering me, "was she in the window?"
+
+He shook his head, his eyes on his father' face.
+
+"Etienne," Monsieur said slowly, "can't you see that Mlle. de Montluc is
+not for you?"
+
+"I shall never see it, Monsieur. The first article in my creed says she
+is for me. And I'll have her yet, for all Mayenne."
+
+"Then, mordieu, we'll steal her together!"
+
+"You! You'll help me?"
+
+"Why, dear son," Monsieur explained, "it broke my heart to think of you
+in the League. I could not bear that my son should help a Spaniard to
+the throne of France, or a Lorrainer either. But if it is a question of
+stealing the lady--well, I never prosed about prudence yet, thank God!"
+
+M. Etienne, wet-eyed, laughing, hugged Monsieur.
+
+"By St. Quentin, we'll get you your lady! I hated the marriage while I
+thought it would make you a Leaguer. I could not see you sacrifice your
+honour to a girl's bright eyes. But your life--that is different."
+
+"My life is a little thing."
+
+"No," Monsieur said; "it is a good deal--one's life. But one is not to
+guard one's life at the cost of all that makes life sweet."
+
+"Ah, you know how I love her!"
+
+"They call me a fool," Monsieur went on musingly, "because I risk my
+life in wild errands. But, mordieu! I am the wise man. For they who
+think ever of safety, and crouch and scheme and shuffle to procure it,
+why, look you, they destroy their own ends. For, when all is done, they
+have never really lived. And that is why they hate death so, these
+worthies. While I, who have never cringed to fear, I live like a king.
+I go my ways without any man's leave; and if death comes to me a little
+sooner for that, I am a poor creature if I do not meet him smiling. If I
+may live as I please, I am content to die when I must."
+
+"Aye," said M. Etienne, "and if we live as we do not please, still we
+must die presently. Therefore do I purpose never to give over striving
+after my lady."
+
+"Oh, we'll win her by noon. But first we'll sleep. There's Felix yawning
+his head off. Come, come."
+
+We set off along the alley, the St. Quentins arm in arm, I at their
+heels. Monsieur looked over his shoulder with a sudden anxiety.
+
+"Felix, you said Huguet had run for aid?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur; Vigo should have been here before now," I answered,
+remembering Vigo's promptitude yesterday.
+
+"Every one was asleep; he has been hammering this half-hour to get in,"
+M. Etienne said easily.
+
+But Monsieur asked of me:
+
+"Was he much hurt, Felix?"
+
+"No; I am sure not, Monsieur. He was run through the arm; I am sure he
+was not hurt otherwise."
+
+We came to where the two slain men lay across the way. M. Etienne
+exclaimed:
+
+"If you do not hold your life dear, you sell it dear, Monsieur! How many
+of the rascals were there?"
+
+"It was hard to tell in the dark. Five, I think."
+
+"Now, Monsieur, how came you to be in this place in the dark?"
+
+"Why, what to do, Etienne? I came in at the gate just after midnight. I
+could not leave St. Denis earlier, and night is my time to enter Paris.
+The inns were shut--"
+
+"But some friend near the gate? Tarigny would have sheltered you."
+
+"Aye, and got into trouble for it, had it leaked out to the Sixteen."
+
+"Tarigny is no craven."
+
+"But neither am I," said Monsieur, smiling.
+
+"Oh, I give you up! Go your ways. But I will not come to save you next
+time."
+
+"No, lad; you will be at my side hereafter."
+
+M. Etienne laughed and said no more.
+
+"But in truth," Monsieur added, "I did not expect waylaying. If these
+fellows watched by the gate, they hid cleverly. I never saw a finger-tip
+of them till they sprang upon us by the corner here, when we were almost
+home."
+
+M. Etienne bent over and turned face up the man whom Monsieur had run
+through the heart. He was an ugly enough fellow, one eye entirely closed
+by a great scar that ran from his forehead nearly to his grizzled
+mustache.
+
+"This is Bernet le Borgne," he said. "Have you encountered him before,
+Monsieur? He was a soldier under Guise once, they say, but he has done
+naught but hang about Paris taverns this many a year. We used to wonder
+how he lived; we knew he did somebody's dirty work. Clisson employed
+him once, so I know something of him. With his one eye he could fence
+better than most folks with two. My congratulations to you, Monsieur."
+
+But Monsieur, not heeding, was bending over the other man.
+
+"Your acquaintance is wider than mine. Do you know this one?"
+
+M. Etienne shook his head over this other man, who lay face up, staring
+with wide dark eyes into the sky. His hair curled in little rings about
+his forehead, and his cheeks were smooth; he looked no older than I.
+
+"He dashed at me the first of all," Monsieur said in a low voice. "I ran
+him through before the others came up. Mordieu! I am glad it was dark. A
+boy like that!"
+
+"He had good mettle to run up first," M. Etienne said. "And it is no
+disgrace to fall to your sword, Monsieur. Come, let us go."
+
+But Monsieur looked back again at the dead lad, and then at his son and
+at me, and came with us heavy of countenance.
+
+On the stones before us lay a trail of blood-drops.
+
+"Now, that is where Huguet ran with his wounded arm," I said to M.
+Etienne.
+
+"Aye, and if we did not know the way home we could find it by this red
+track."
+
+But the trail did not reach the door; for when we turned into the little
+street where the arch is, where I had waited for Martin, as we turned
+the familiar corner under the walls of the house itself, we came
+suddenly on the body of a man. Monsieur ran forward with a cry, for it
+was the squire Huguet.
+
+He wore a leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any
+forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail,
+and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we
+had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of
+ours to kill twenty.
+
+Monsieur knelt on the ground beside him, but he was quite cold.
+
+"The man who fled when we charged them must have lurked about," I said.
+"Huguet's sword-arm was useless; he could not defend himself."
+
+"Or else he fainted from his wound, he bled so," M. Etienne answered.
+"And one of those who fled last came upon him helpless and did this."
+
+"Why didn't I follow him instead of sitting down, a John o'dreams?" I
+cried. "But I was thinking of you and Monsieur; I forgot Huguet."
+
+"I forgot him, too," Monsieur sorrowed. "Shame to me; he would not have
+forgotten me."
+
+"Monsieur," his son said, "it was no negligence of yours. You could have
+saved him only by following when he ran. And that was impossible."
+
+"In sight of the door," Monsieur said sadly. "In sight of his own door."
+
+We held silent. Monsieur got soberly to his feet.
+
+"I never lost a better man."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "he asks no better epitaph. If you will say that
+of me when I die, I shall not have lived in vain."
+
+He smiled at the outburst, but I did not care; if he would only smile, I
+was content it should be at me.
+
+"Nay, Felix," he said. "I hope it will not be I who compose your
+epitaph. Come, we must get to the house and send after poor Huguet."
+
+"Felix and I will carry him," M. Etienne said, and we lifted him between
+us--no easy task, for he was a heavy fellow. But it was little enough to
+do for him.
+
+We bore him along slowly, Monsieur striding ahead. But of a sudden he
+turned back to us, laying quick fingers on the poor torn breast.
+
+"What is it, Monsieur?" cried his son.
+
+"My papers."
+
+We set him down, and the three of us examined him from top to toe,
+stripping off his steel coat, pulling apart his blood-clotted linen,
+prying into his very boots. But no papers revealed themselves.
+
+"What were they, Monsieur?"
+
+A drawn look had come over Monsieur's face.
+
+"Papers which the king gave me, and which I, fool and traitor, have
+lost."
+
+I ran back to the spot where we had found Huguet; there was his hat on
+the ground, but no papers. I followed up the red trail to its beginning,
+looking behind every stone, every bunch of grass; but no papers. In my
+desperation I even pulled about the dead man, lest the packet had been
+covered, falling from Huguet in the fray. The two gentlemen joined me
+in the search, and we went over every inch of the ground, but to no
+purpose.
+
+"I thought them safer with Huguet than with me," Monsieur groaned. "I
+knew we ran the risk of ambush. Myself would be the object of attack; I
+bade Huguet, were we waylaid, to run with the papers."
+
+"And of course he would not."
+
+"He should; it was my command. He stayed and saved my life perhaps, and
+lost me what is dearer than life--my honour."
+
+"He could not leave you to be killed, Monsieur; that were asking the
+impossible."
+
+"Aye, but I am saved at the ruin of a hundred others!" Monsieur cried.
+"The papers contained certain lists of names of Mayenne's officers
+pledged to support the king if he turn Catholic. I had them for
+Lemaitre. But at this date, in Mayenne's hands, they spell the men's
+destruction. Huguet should have known that if I told him to desert me, I
+meant it."
+
+M. Etienne ventured no word, understanding well enough that in such
+bitter moments no consolation consoles. M. le Duc added after a moment:
+
+"Mordieu! I am ashamed of myself. I might be better occupied than in
+blaming the dead--the brave and faithful dead. Belike he could not run,
+they set on us so suddenly. When he could, he did go, and he went to his
+death. They were my charge, the papers. I had no right to put the
+responsibility on any other. I should have kept them myself. I should
+have gone to Tarigny. I should never have ventured myself through these
+black lanes. Fool! traitorous fool!"
+
+"Nay, Monsieur, the mischance might have befallen any one."
+
+"It would not have befallen Villeroi! It would not have befallen Rosny!"
+Monsieur exclaimed bitterly. "It befalls me because I am a lack-wit who
+rushes into affairs for which he is not fit. I can handle a sword, but I
+have no business to meddle in statecraft."
+
+"Then have those wiseheads out at St. Denis no business to employ you,"
+M. Etienne said. "He is not unknown to fame, this Duke of St. Quentin;
+everybody knows how he goes about things. Monsieur, they gave you the
+papers because no one else would carry them into Paris. They knew you
+had no fear in you; and it is because of that that the papers are
+lacking. But take heart, Monsieur. We'll get them back."
+
+"When? How?"
+
+"Soon," M. Etienne answered, "and easily, if you will tell me what they
+are like. Are they open?"
+
+"I fear by now they may be. There are three sheets of names, and a
+fourth sheet, a letter--all in cipher."
+
+"Ah, but in that case--"
+
+Monsieur cut short his son's jubilation.
+
+"But--Lucas."
+
+"Of course--I forgot him. He knows your ciphers, then?"
+
+"Dolt that I was, he knows everything."
+
+"Then must we lay hands on the papers before they reach Mayenne, and
+all is saved," M. Etienne declared cheerfully. "These fellows can't read
+a cipher. If the packet be not open, Monsieur?"
+
+"It was a span long, and half as wide; for all address, the letters _St.
+Q._ in the corner. It was tied with red cord and bore the seal of a
+flying falcon, and the motto, _Je reviendrai_."
+
+"What! the king's seal? That's serious. Expect, then, Monsieur, to see
+the papers in an hour's time."
+
+"Etienne, Etienne," Monsieur cried, "are you mad?"
+
+"No madder than is proper for a St. Quentin. It's simple enough. I told
+you I recognized that worthy back there for one Bernet, who lodged at an
+inn I wot of over beyond the markets. Do we betake ourselves thither, we
+may easily fall in with some comrades of his bosom who have not the
+misfortune to be lying dead in a back lane, who will know something of
+your loss. Bernet's sort are no bigots; while they work for the League,
+they will lend a kindly ear to the chink of Kingsmen's florins."
+
+"Ah," cried Monsieur, "then let us go." But M. Etienne laid a
+restraining hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Not you. I. They will kill you in the Halles just as cheerfully as in
+the Quartier Marais. This is my affair."
+
+He looked at Monsieur with kindling eyes, seeing his chance to prove his
+devotion. The duke yielded to his eagerness.
+
+"But," M. Etienne added generously, "you may have the honour of paying
+the piper."
+
+"I give you carte blanche, my son. Etienne, if you put that packet into
+my hand, it is more than if you brought the sceptre of France."
+
+"Then go practise, Monsieur, at feeling more than king."
+
+He embraced his father, and we turned off down the street.
+
+The sun was well up by this time, and the city rousing to the labours of
+the day. Half was I glad of the lateness of the hour, for we ran no risk
+now of cutthroats; and half was I sorry, for it behooves not a man
+supposed to be in the Bastille to show himself too liberally to the
+broad eye of the streets. Every time--and it was often--that we
+approached a person who to my nervous imagination looked official, I
+shook in my shoes. The way seemed fairly to bristle with soldiers,
+officers, judges; for aught I knew, members of the Sixteen, Governor
+Belin himself. It was a great surprise to me when at length we arrived
+without let or hindrance before the door of a mean little
+drinking-place, our goal.
+
+We went in, and M. Etienne ordered wine, much to my satisfaction. My
+stomach was beginning to remind me that I had given it nothing for
+twelve hours or so, while I had worked my legs hard.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge with you?" my master asked of the landlord. We
+were his only patrons at the moment.
+
+"M. Bernet? Him with the eye out?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Why, no, monsieur. I don't let lodgings. The building is not mine. I
+but rent the ground floor for my purposes."
+
+"But M. Bernet lodges in the house, then?"
+
+"No, he doesn't. He lodges round the corner, in the court off the Rue
+Clichet."
+
+"But he comes here often?"
+
+"Oh, aye. Every morning for his glass. And most evenings, too."
+
+M. Etienne laid down the drink-money, and something more.
+
+"Sometimes he has a friend with him, eh?"
+
+The man laughed.
+
+"No, monsieur; he comes in here alone. Many's the time I'll standing in
+my door when he'll go by with some gallant, and he never chances to see
+me or my shop. While if he's alone it's 'Good morning, Jean. Anything in
+the casks to-day?' He can no more get by my door than he'll get by
+Death's when the time comes."
+
+"No," agreed M. Etienne; "we all stop there, soon or late. Those friends
+of M. Bernet, then--there is none you could put a name to?"
+
+"Why, no, monsieur, more's the pity. He has none lives in this quarter.
+M. Bernet's in low water, you understand, monsieur. If he lives here, it
+is because he can't help it. But he goes elsewhere for his friends."
+
+"Then you can tell us, my man, where he lodges?"
+
+"Aye, that can I," mine host answered, bustling out from behind the bar,
+eager in the interest of the pleasant-spoken, open-handed gallant. "Just
+round the corner of the Rue Clichet, in the court. The first house on
+the left, that is his. I would go with monsieur, only I cannot leave the
+shop alone, and the wife not back from market. But monsieur cannot miss
+it. The first house in the court. Thank you, monsieur. Au revoir,
+monsieur."
+
+In the doorway of the first house on the left in the little court stood
+an old man with a wooden leg, sweeping heaps of refuse out of the
+passage.
+
+"It appears that every one on this stair lacks something," M. Etienne
+murmured to me. "It is the livery of the house. Can you tell me, friend,
+where I may find M. Bernet?"
+
+The concierge regarded us without cordiality, while by no means ceasing
+his endeavours to cover our shoes with his sweepings.
+
+"Third story back," he said.
+
+"Does M. Bernet lodge alone?"
+
+"One of him's enough," the old fellow growled, whacking out his dirty
+broom on the door-post, powdering us with dust. M. Etienne, coughing,
+pursued his inquiries:
+
+"Ah, I understood he shared his lodgings with a comrade. He has a
+friend, then, in the building?"
+
+"Aye, I suppose so," the old chap grinned, "when monsieur walks in."
+
+"But he has another friend besides me, has he not?" M. Etienne
+persisted. "One who, if he does not live here, comes often to see M.
+Bernet?"
+
+"You seem to know all about it. Better see Bernet himself, instead of
+chattering here all day."
+
+"Good advice, and I'll take it," said M. Etienne, lightly setting foot
+on the stair, muttering to himself as he mounted, "and come back to
+break your head, mon vieillard."
+
+We went up the three flights and along the passage to the door at the
+back, whereon M. Etienne pounded loudly. I could not see his reason, and
+heartily I wished he would not. It seemed to me a creepy thing to be
+knocking on a man's door when we knew very well he would never open it
+again. We knocked as if we fully thought him within, when all the while
+we knew he was lying a stone on the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden
+wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the
+marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a
+market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne
+away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking,
+as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that
+suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him
+pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At the real
+creaking of a hinge I could scarce swallow a cry.
+
+It was not Bernet's door, but the door at the front which opened,
+letting a stream of sunlight into the dark passage. In the doorway stood
+a woman, with two bare-legged babies clinging to her skirts.
+
+"Madame," M. Etienne addressed her, with the courtesy due to a duchess,
+"I have been knocking at M. Bernet's door without result. Perhaps you
+could give me some hint as to his whereabouts?"
+
+"Ah, I am sorry. I know nothing to tell monsieur," she cried
+regretfully, impressed, as the concierge had not been, by his look and
+manner. "But this I can say: he went out last night, and I do not
+believe he has been in since. He went out about nine--or it may have
+been later than that. Because I did not put the children to bed till
+after dark; they enjoy running about in the cool of the evening as much
+as anybody else, the little dears. And they were cross last night, the
+day was so hot, and I was a long time hushing them to sleep. Yes, it
+must have been after ten, because they were asleep, and the man
+stumbling on the stairs woke Pierre. And he cried for an hour. Didn't
+you, my angel?"
+
+She picked one of the brats up in her arms to display him to us. M.
+Etienne asked:
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Why, the one that came for him. The one he went out with."
+
+"And what sort of person was this?"
+
+"Nay, how was I to see? Would I be out walking the common passage with a
+child to hush? I was rocking the cradle."
+
+"But who does come here to visit M. Bernet?"
+
+"I've never seen any one, monsieur. I've never laid eyes on M. Bernet
+but twice. I keep in my apartment. And besides, we have only been here a
+week."
+
+"I thank you, madame," M. Etienne said, turning to the stairs.
+
+She ran out to the rail, babies and all.
+
+"But I could take a message for him, monsieur. I will make a point of
+seeing him when he comes in."
+
+"I will not burden you, madame," M. Etienne answered from the story
+below. But she was loath to stop talking, and hung over the railing to
+call:
+
+"Beware of your footing, monsieur. Those second-floor people are not so
+tidy as they might be; one stumbles over all sorts of their rubbish out
+in the public way."
+
+The door in front of us opened with a startling suddenness, and a big,
+brawny wench bounced out to demand of us:
+
+"What is that she says? What are you saying of us, you slut?"
+
+We had no mind to be mixed in the quarrel. We fled for our lives down
+the stair.
+
+The old carl, though his sweeping was done, leaned on his broom on the
+outer step.
+
+"So you didn't find M. Bernet at home? I could have told you as much had
+you been civil enough to ask."
+
+I would have kicked the old curmudgeon, but M. Etienne drew two gold
+pieces from his pouch.
+
+"Perchance if I ask you civilly, you will tell me with whom M. Bernet
+went out last night?"
+
+"Who says he went out with anybody?"
+
+"I do," and M. Etienne made a motion to return the coins to their place.
+
+"Since you know so much, it's strange you don't know a little more," the
+old chap growled. "Well, Lord knows if it is really his, but he goes by
+the name of Peyrot."
+
+"And where does he lodge?"
+
+"How should I know? I have trouble enough keeping track of my own
+lodgers, without bothering my head about other people's."
+
+"Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M. Etienne said
+patiently, with a persuasive chink of his pouch. "Recollect now; you
+have been sent to this monsieur with a message."
+
+"Well, Rue des Tournelles, sign of the Gilded Shears," the old carl spat
+out at last.
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Hang me else."
+
+"If you are lying to me, I will come back and beat you to a jelly with
+your own broom."
+
+"It's the truth, monsieur," he said, with some proper show of respect at
+last. "Peyrot, at the Gilded Shears, Rue des Tournelles. You may beat me
+to a jelly if I lie."
+
+"It would do you good in any event," M. Etienne told him, but flinging
+him his pistoles, nevertheless. The old fellow swooped upon them,
+gathered them up, and was behind the closed door all in one movement.
+But as we walked away, he opened a little wicket in the upper panel, and
+stuck out his ugly head to yell after us:
+
+"If M. Bernet's not at home yet, neither will his friend be. I've told
+you what will profit you none."
+
+"You mistake, Sir Gargoyle," M. Etienne called over his shoulder. "Your
+information is entirely to my needs."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_The Chevalier of the Tournelles._
+
+
+It was a long walk to the Rue des Tournelles, which lay in our own
+quarter, not a dozen streets from the Hotel St. Quentin itself. We found
+the Gilded Shears hung before a tailor's shop in the cellar of a tall,
+cramped structure, only one window wide. Its narrow door was
+inhospitably shut, but at our summons the concierge appeared to inform
+us that M. Peyrot did truly live here and, moreover, was at home, having
+arrived but half an hour earlier than we. He would go up and find out
+whether monsieur could see us.
+
+But M. Etienne thought that formality unnecessary, and was able, at
+small expense, to convince the concierge of it. We went alone up the
+stairs and crept very quietly along the passage toward the door of M.
+Peyrot. But our shoes made some noise on the flags; had he been
+listening, he might have heard us as easily as we heard him. Peyrot had
+not yet gone to bed after the night's exertion; a certain clatter and
+gurgle convinced us that he was refreshing himself with supper, or
+breakfast, before reposing.
+
+M. Etienne stood still, his hand on the door-knob, eager, hesitating.
+Here was the man; were the papers here? If they were, should we secure
+them? A single false step, a single wrong word, might foil us.
+
+The sound of a chair pushed back came from within, and a young man's
+quick, firm step passed across to the far side of the room. We heard a
+box shut and locked. M. Etienne nipped my arm; we thought we knew what
+went in. Then came steps again and a loud yawn, and presently two whacks
+on the floor. We knew as well as if we could see that Peyrot had thrown
+his boots across the room. Next a clash and jangle of metal, that meant
+his sword-belt with its accoutrements flung on the table. M. Etienne,
+with the rapid murmur, "If I look at you, nab him," turned the
+door-handle.
+
+But M. Peyrot had prepared against surprise by the simple expedient of
+locking his door. He heard us, too, for he stopped in the very middle of
+a prolonged yawn and held himself absolutely still. M. Etienne called
+out softly:
+
+"Peyrot!"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I want to speak with you about something important."
+
+"Who are you, then?"
+
+"I'll tell you when you let me in."
+
+"I'll let you in when you tell me."
+
+"My name's Martin. I'm a friend of Bernet. I want to speak to you
+quietly about a matter of importance."
+
+"A friend of Bernet. Hmm! Well, friend of Bernet, it appears to me you
+speak very well through the door."
+
+"I want to speak with you about the affair of to-night."
+
+"What affair?"
+
+"To-night's affair."
+
+"To-night? I go to a supper-party at St. Germain. What have you to say
+about that?"
+
+"Last night, then," M. Etienne amended, with rising temper. "If you want
+me to shout it out on your stairs, the St. Quentin affair."
+
+"Now, what may you mean by that?" called the voice from within. If
+Peyrot was startled by the name, he carried it off well.
+
+"You know what I mean. Shall I take the house into our confidence?"
+
+"The house knows as much of your meaning as I. See here, friend of
+Bernet, if you are that gentleman's mate, perhaps you have a password
+about you."
+
+"Aye," said M. Etienne, readily. "This is it: twenty pistoles."
+
+No answer came immediately; I could guess Peyrot puzzled. Presently he
+called to us:
+
+"By the bones of St. Anne, I don't believe a word you've been saying.
+But I'll have you in and see what you look like."
+
+We heard him getting into his boots again and buckling on his baldric.
+Then we listened to the turning of a key; a lid was raised and banged
+down again, and the lock refastened. It was the box once more. M.
+Etienne and I looked at each other.
+
+At length Peyrot opened the door and surveyed us.
+
+"What, two friends of Bernet, ventre bleu!" But he allowed us to enter.
+
+He drew back before us with a flourishing bow, his hand resting lightly
+on his belt, in which was stuck a brace of pistols. Any idea of doing
+violence on the person of M. Peyrot we dismissed for the present.
+
+Our eyes travelled from his pistols over the rest of him. He was small,
+lean, and wiry, with dark, sharp face and deep-set twinkling eyes. One
+moment's glance gave us to know that Peyrot was no fool.
+
+My lord closed the door after him and went straight to the point.
+
+"M. Peyrot, you were engaged last night in an attack on the Duke of St.
+Quentin. You did not succeed in slaying him, but you did kill his man,
+and you took from him a packet. I come to buy it."
+
+He looked at us a little dazed, not understanding, I deem, how we knew
+this. Certes, it had been too dark in the lane for his face to be seen,
+and he had doubtless made sure that he was not followed home. He said
+directly:
+
+"You are the Comte de Mar."
+
+"Even so, M. Peyrot. I did not care to have the whole stair know it, but
+to you I have no hesitation in confiding that I am M. de Mar."
+
+M. Peyrot swept a bow till his head almost touched the floor.
+
+"My poor apartment is honoured."
+
+As he louted low, I made a spring forward; I thought to pin him before
+he could rise. But he was up with the lightness of a bird from the bough
+and standing three yards away from me, where I crouched on the spring
+like a foiled cat. He grinned at me in open enjoyment.
+
+"Monsieur desired?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+"No, it is I who desire," said M. Etienne, clearing himself a place to
+sit on the corner of the table. "I desire that packet, monsieur. You
+know this little expedition of yours to-night was something of a
+failure. When you report to the general-duke, he will not be in the best
+of humours. He does not like failures, the general; he will not incline
+to reward you dear. While I am in the very best humour in the world."
+
+He smiled to prove it. Nor do I think his complaisance altogether
+feigned. The temper of our host amused him.
+
+As for friend Peyrot, he still looked dazed. I thought it was because he
+had not yet made up his mind what line to take; but had I viewed him
+with neutral eyes I might easily have deemed his bewilderment genuine.
+
+"Perhaps we should get on better if I could understand what monsieur is
+driving at?" he suggested. "Monsieur's remarks about his noble father
+and the general-duke are interesting, but humble Jean Peyrot, who does
+not move in court circles, is at a loss to translate them. In other
+words, I have no notion what you are talking about."
+
+"Oh, come," M. Etienne cried, "no shuffling, Peyrot. We know as well as
+you where you were before dawn."
+
+"Before dawn? Marry, I was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous."
+
+M. Etienne slipped across the room as quickly as Peyrot's self might
+have done, lifted up a heavy curtain hanging before an alcove, and
+disclosed the bed folded smooth, the pillow undisturbed. He turned with
+a triumphant grin on the owner, who showed all his teeth pleasantly in
+answer, no whit abashed.
+
+"For all you are a count, monsieur, you have the worst manners ever came
+inside these walls."
+
+M. le Comte, with no attempt at mending them, went on a tour about the
+room, examining with sniffing interest all its furniture, even to the
+dishes and tankards on the table. Peyrot, leaning against the wall by
+the window, regarded him steadily, with impassive face. At length M.
+Etienne walked over to the chest by the chimneypiece and deliberately
+put his hand on the key.
+
+Instantly Peyrot's voice rang out, "Stop!" M. Etienne, turning, looked
+into his pistol-barrel.
+
+My lord stood exactly as he was, bent over the chest, his fingers on the
+key, looking over his shoulder at the bravo with raised, protesting
+eyebrows and laughing mouth. But though he laughed, he stood still.
+
+"If you make a movement I do not like, M. de Mar, I will shoot you as I
+would a rat. Your side is down and mine is up; I have no fear to kill
+you. It will be painful to me, but if necessary I shall do it."
+
+M. Etienne sat down on the chest and smiled more amiably than ever.
+
+"Why--have I never known you before, Peyrot?"
+
+"One moment, monsieur." The nose of the pistol pointed around to me. "Go
+over there to the door, you."
+
+I retreated, covered by the shining muzzle, to a spot that pleased him.
+
+"Now are we more comfortable," Peyrot observed, pulling a chair over
+against the wall and seating him, the pistol on his knee. "Monsieur was
+saying?"
+
+Monsieur crossed his legs, as if of all seats in the world he liked his
+present one the best. He had brought none of the airs of the noble into
+this business, realizing shrewdly that they would but hamper him, as
+lace ruffles hamper a duellist. Peyrot, treeless adventurer, living by
+his sharp sword and sharp wits, reverenced a count no more than a
+hod-carrier. His occasional mocking deference was more insulting than
+outright rudeness; but M. Etienne bore it unruffled. Possibly he
+schooled himself so to bear it, but I think rather that he felt so
+easily secure on the height of his gentlehood that Peyrot's impudence
+merely tickled him.
+
+"I was wondering," he answered pleasantly, "how long you have dwelt in
+this town and I not known it. You are from Guienne, methinks."
+
+"Carcassonne way," the other said indifferently. Then memory bringing a
+deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left
+a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within
+its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged
+friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints
+and living sinners, at twenty."
+
+"A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."
+
+"Nay, I am none. Else I might have stayed. But one night I took
+leg-bail, lived in the woods till my hair grew, and struck out for
+Paris. And never regretted it, neither."
+
+He leaned his head back, his eyes fixed contemplatively on the ceiling,
+and burst into song, in voice as melodious as a lark's:
+
+     _Piety and Grace and Gloom,
+     For such like guests I have no room!
+     Piety and Gloom and Grace,
+     I bang my door shut in your face!
+     Gloom and Grace and Piety,
+     I set my dog on such as ye!_
+
+Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the
+floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have
+twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Etienne rose and leaned
+across the table toward him.
+
+"M. Peyrot has made his fortune in Paris? Monsieur rolls in wealth, of
+course?"
+
+Peyrot shrugged his shoulders, his eyes leaving the ceiling and making a
+mocking pilgrimage of the room, resting finally on his own rusty
+clothing.
+
+"Do I look it?" he answered.
+
+"Oh," said M. Etienne, slowly, as one who digests an entirely new idea,
+"I supposed monsieur must be as rich as a Lombard, he is so cold on the
+subject of turning an honest penny."
+
+Peyrot's roving eye condescended to meet his visitor's.
+
+"Say on," he permitted lazily.
+
+"I offer twenty pistoles for a packet, seal unbroken, taken at dawn from
+the person of M. de St. Quentin's squire."
+
+"Now you are talking sensibly," the scamp said, as if M. Etienne had
+been the shuffler. "That is a fair offer and demands a fair answer.
+Moreover, such zeal as you display deserves success. I will look about a
+bit this morning among my friends and see if I can get wind of your
+packet. I will meet you at dinner-time at the inn of the Bonne Femme."
+
+"Dinner-time is far hence. You forget, M. Peyrot, that you are risen
+earlier than usual. I will go out and sit on the stair for five minutes
+while you consult your friends."
+
+Peyrot grinned cheerfully.
+
+"M. de Mar doesn't seem able to get it through his head that I know
+nothing whatever of this affair."
+
+"No, I certainly don't get that through my head."
+
+Peyrot regarded him with an air ill-used yet compassionate, such as he
+might in his monkish days have employed toward one who could not be
+convinced, for instance, of the efficacy of prayer.
+
+"M. de Mar," quoth he, plaintively, in pity half for himself so
+misunderstood, half for his interlocutor so wilfully blind, "I do
+solemnly assure you, once and for all, that I know nothing of this
+affair of yours. Till you so asserted, I had no knowledge that Monsieur,
+your honoured father, had been set on, and deeply am I pained to hear
+it. These be evil days when such things can happen. As for your packet,
+I learn of it only through your word, having no more to do with this
+deplorable business than a babe unborn."
+
+I declare I was almost shaken, almost thought we had wronged him. But M.
+Etienne gauged him otherwise.
+
+"Your words please me," he began.
+
+"The contemplation of virtue," the rascal droned with down-drawn lips,
+in pulpit tone, "is always uplifting to the spirit."
+
+"You have boasted," M. Etienne went on, "that your side was up and mine
+down. Did you not reflect that soon my side may be up and yours down,
+you would hardly be at such pains to deny that you ever bared blade
+against the Duke of St. Quentin."
+
+"I have made my declaration in the presence of two witnesses, far too
+honourable to falsify, that I know nothing of the attack on the duke,"
+Peyrot repeated with apparent satisfaction. "But of course it is
+possible that by scouring Paris I might get on the scent of your packet.
+Twenty pistoles, though. That is not much."
+
+M. Etienne stood silent, drumming tattoos on the table, not pleased with
+the turn of the matter, not seeing how to better it. Had we been sure of
+our suspicions, we would have charged him, pistol or no pistol,
+trusting that our quickness would prevent his shooting, or that the
+powder would miss fire, or that the ball would fly wide, or that we
+should be hit in no vital part; trusting, in short, that God was with us
+and would in some fashion save us. But we could not be sure that the
+packet was with Peyrot. What we had heard him lock in the chest might
+have been these very pistols that he had afterward taken out again.
+Three men had fled from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of
+knowing whether this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had
+encountered, or he who had engaged M. Etienne. And did we know, that
+would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and plundered Huguet.
+Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know who had it, or he might
+be in honest ignorance of its existence. If he had it, it were a crying
+shame to pay out honest money for what we might take by force; to buy
+your own goods from a thief were a sin. But supposing he had it not? If
+we could seize upon him, disarm him, bind him, threaten him, beat him,
+rack him, would he--granted he knew--reveal its whereabouts? Writ large
+in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice.
+He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went
+to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from
+the very beginning, with some other knave mayhap worse than this.
+
+Plainly the game was in Peyrot's hands; we could play only to his lead.
+
+"If you will put the packet into my hands, seal unbroken, this day at
+eleven, I engage to meet you with twenty pistoles," M. Etienne said.
+
+"Twenty pistoles were a fair price for the packet. But monsieur forgets
+the wear and tear on my conscience incurred for him. I must be
+reimbursed for that."
+
+"Conscience, quotha!"
+
+"Certainly, monsieur. I am in my way as honest a man as you in yours. I
+have never been false to the hand that fed me. If, therefore, I divert
+to you a certain packet which of rights goes elsewhere, my sin must be
+made worth my while. My conscience will sting me sorely, but with the
+aid of a glass and a lass I may contrive to forget the pain.
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear,
+     Baggages, you're welcome here!_
+
+I fix the injury to my conscience at thirty pistoles, M. le Comte. Fifty
+in all will bring the packet to your hand."
+
+It had been a pleasure to M. le Comte to fling a tankard in the fellow's
+face. But the steadfast determination to win the papers for Monsieur,
+and, possibly, respect for Peyrot's weapon, withheld him.
+
+"Very well, then. In the cabaret of the Bonne Femme, at eleven. You may
+do as you like about appearing; I shall be there with my fifty
+pistoles."
+
+"What guaranty have I that you will deal fairly with me?"
+
+"The word of a St. Quentin."
+
+"Sufficient, of course."
+
+The scamp rose with a bow.
+
+"Well, I have not the word of a gentleman to offer you, but I give you
+the opinion of Jean Peyrot, sometime Father Ambrosius, that he and the
+packet will be there. This has been a delightful call, monsieur, and I
+am loath to let you go. But it is time I was free to look for that
+packet."
+
+M. Etienne's eyes went over to the chest.
+
+"I wish you all success in your arduous search."
+
+"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot sighed.
+"My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my task difficult
+indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall question every man in
+Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone unturned."
+
+M. Etienne still pensively regarded the chest.
+
+"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the purpose."
+
+"You appear yet to nurse the belief that I have the packet. But as a
+matter of fact, monsieur, I have not."
+
+I studied his grave face, and could not for the life of me make out
+whether he were lying. M. Etienne said merely:
+
+"Come, Felix."
+
+"You'll drink a glass before you go?" Peyrot cried hospitably, running
+to fill a goblet muddy with his last pouring. But M. Etienne drew back.
+
+"Well, I don't blame you. I wouldn't drink it myself if I were a count,"
+Peyrot said, setting the draught to his own lips. "After this noon I
+shall drink it no more all summer. I shall live like a king.
+
+     _Kiss me, Folly; hug me, Mirth:
+     Life without you's nothing worth!_
+
+Monsieur, can I lend you a hat?"
+
+I had already opened the door and was holding it for my master to pass,
+when Peyrot picked up from the floor and held out to him a battered and
+dirty toque, with its draggled feather hanging forlornly over the side.
+Chafed as he was, M. Etienne could not deny a laugh to the rascal's
+impudence.
+
+"I cannot rob monsieur," he said.
+
+"M. le Comte need have no scruple. I shall buy me better out of his
+fifty pistoles."
+
+But M. Etienne was out in the passage, I following, banging the door
+after me. We went down the stair in time to Peyrot's lusty carolling:
+
+     _Mirth I'll keep, though riches fly,
+     While Folly's sure to linger by!_
+
+"Think you we'll get the packet?" I asked.
+
+"Aye. I think he wants his fifty pistoles. Mordieu! it's galling to let
+this dog set the terms."
+
+"Monsieur," I cried, "perhaps he'll not stir out at once. I'll run home
+for Vigo and his men, and we'll make the rascal disgorge."
+
+"Now are you more zealous than honest, boy."
+
+I was silent, abashed, and he added:
+
+"I had not been afraid to try conclusions with him, pistols or not, were
+I sure that he had the packet. I believe he has, yet there is the
+chance that, after all, in this one particular he speaks truth. I cannot
+take any chances; I must get those papers for Monsieur."
+
+"Yes, we could not have done otherwise, M. Etienne. But, monsieur, will
+you dare go to this inn? M. le Comte is a man in jeopardy; he may not
+keep rendezvous of the enemy's choosing."
+
+"I might not keep one of Lucas's choosing. Though," he added, with a
+smile, "natheless, I think I should. But it is not likely this fellow
+knows of the warrant against me. Paris is a big place; news does not
+travel all over town as quickly as at St. Quentin. I think friend Peyrot
+has more to gain by playing fair than playing false, and appointing the
+cabaret of the Bonne Femme has a very open, pleasing sound. Did he mean
+to brain me he would scarce have set that place."
+
+"It was not Peyrot alone I meant. But monsieur is so well known. In the
+streets, or at the dinner-hour, some one may see you who knows Mayenne
+is after you."
+
+"Oh, of that I must take my chance," he made answer, no whit troubled by
+the warning. "I go home now for the ransom, and I will e'en be at the
+pains to doff this gear for something darker."
+
+"Monsieur," I pleaded, "why not stay at home to get your dues of sleep?
+Vigo will bring the gold; he and I will put the matter through."
+
+"I ask not your advice," he cried haughtily; then with instant
+softening: "Nay, this is my affair, Felix. I have taken it upon myself
+to recover Monsieur his papers. I must carry it through myself to the
+very omega."
+
+I said no more, partly because it would have done no good, partly
+because, in spite of the strange word, I understood how he felt.
+
+"Perhaps you should go home and sleep," he suggested tenderly.
+
+"Nay," cried I. "I had a cat-nap in the lane; I'm game to see it
+through."
+
+"Then," he commanded, "you may stay here-abouts and watch that door. For
+I have some curiosity to know whether he will need to fare forth after
+the treasure. If he do as I guess, he will spend the next hours as you
+counsel me, making up arrears of sleep, and you'll not see him till a
+quarter or so before eleven. But whenever he comes out, follow him. Keep
+your safe distance and dog him if you can."
+
+"And if I lose him?"
+
+"Come back home. Station yourself now where he won't notice you. That
+arch there should serve."
+
+We had been standing at the street corner, sheltered by a balcony over
+our heads from the view of Peyrot's window.
+
+"Monsieur," I said, "I do wish you would bring Vigo back with you."
+
+"Felix," he laughed, "you are the worst courtier I ever saw."
+
+I crossed the street as he told me, glancing up at the third story of
+the house of the Gilded Shears. No watcher was visible. From the
+archway, which was entrance to a court of tall houses, I could well
+command Peyrot's door, myself in deep shadow M. Etienne nodded to me and
+walked off whistling, staring full in the face every one he met.
+
+I would fain have occupied myself as we guessed the knave Peyrot to be
+doing, and shut mine aching eyes in sleep. But I was sternly determined
+to be faithful to my trust, and though for my greater comfort--cold
+enough comfort it was--I sat me down on the paving-stones, yet I kept my
+eyelids propped open, my eyes on Peyrot's door. I was helped in carrying
+out my virtuous resolve by the fact that the court was populous and my
+carcass in the entrance much in the way of the busy passers-by, so that
+full half of them swore at me, and the half of that half kicked me. The
+hard part was that I could not fight them because of keeping my eyes on
+Peyrot's door.
+
+He delayed so long and so long that I feared with shamed misgiving I
+must have let him slip, when at length, on the very stroke of eleven, he
+sauntered forth. He was yawning prodigiously, but set off past my lair
+at a smart pace. I followed at goodly distance, but never once did he
+glance around. He led the way straight to the sign of the Bonne Femme.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE "BONNE FEMME."]
+
+I entered two minutes after him, passing from the cabaret, where my men
+were not, to the dining-hall, where, to my relief, they were. At two
+huge fireplaces savoury soups bubbled, juicy rabbits simmered, fat
+capons roasted; the smell brought the tears to my eyes. A concourse of
+people was about: gentles and burghers seated at table, or passing in
+and out; waiters running back and forth from the fires, drawers from
+the cabaret. I paused to scan the throng, jostled by one and another,
+before I descried my master and my knave. M. Etienne, the prompter at
+the rendezvous, had, like a philosopher, ordered dinner, but he had
+deserted it now and stood with Peyrot, their backs to the company, their
+elbows on the deep window-ledge, their heads close together. I came up
+suddenly to Peyrot's side, making him jump.
+
+"Oh, it's you, my little gentleman!" he exclaimed, smiling to show all
+his firm teeth, as white and even as a court beauty's. He looked in the
+best of humours, as was not wonderful, considering that he was engaged
+in fastening up in the breast of his doublet something hard and lumpy.
+M. Etienne held up a packet for me to see, before Peyrot's shielding
+body; it was tied with red cord and sealed with a spread falcon over the
+tiny letters, _Je reviendrai_. In the corner was written very small,
+_St. Q._ Smiling, he put it into the breast of his doublet.
+
+"Monsieur," my scamp said to him with close lips that the room might not
+hear, "you are a gentleman. If there ever comes a day when You-know-who
+is down and you are up, I shall be pleased to serve you as well as I
+have served him."
+
+"I hanker not for such service as you have given him," M. Etienne
+answered. Peyrot's eyes twinkled brighter than ever.
+
+"I have said it. I will serve you as vigourously as I have served him.
+Bear me in mind, monsieur."
+
+"Come, Felix," was all my lord's answer.
+
+Peyrot sprang forward to detain us.
+
+"Monsieur, will you not dine with me? Both of you, I beg. I will have
+every wine the cellar affords."
+
+"No," said M. Etienne, carelessly, not deigning to anger; "but there is
+my dinner for you, an you like. I have paid for it, but I have other
+business than to eat it."
+
+Bidding a waiter serve M. Peyrot, he walked from the room without other
+glance at him. A slight shade fell over the reckless, scampish face; he
+was a moment vexed that we scorned him. Merely vexed, I think; shamed
+not at all; he knew not the feel of it. Even in the brief space I
+watched him, as I passed to the door, his visage cleared, and he sat him
+down contentedly to finish M. Etienne's veal broth.
+
+My lord paced along rapidly and gladly, on fire to be before Monsieur
+with the packet. But one little cloud, transient as Peyrot's, passed
+across his lightsome countenance.
+
+"I would that knave were of my rank," he said. "I had not left him
+without slapping a glove in his face."
+
+That Peyrot had come off scot-free put me out of patience, too, but I
+regretted the gold we had given him more than the wounds we had not. The
+money, on the contrary, troubled M. Etienne no whit; what he had never
+toiled for he parted with lightly.
+
+We came to our gates and went straightway up the stairs to Monsieur's
+cabinet. He sprang to meet us at the door, snatching the packet from
+his son's eager hand.
+
+"Well done, Etienne, my champion! An you brought me the crown of France
+I were not so pleased!"
+
+The flush of joy at generous praise of good work kindled on M. Etienne's
+cheek; it were hard to say which of the two messieurs beamed the more
+delightedly on the other.
+
+"My son, you have brought me back my honour," spoke Monsieur, more
+quietly, the exuberance of his delight abating, but leaving him none the
+less happy. "If you had sinned against me--which I do not admit, dear
+lad--it were more than made up for now."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I have often asked myself of late what I was born for.
+Now I know it was for this morning."
+
+"For this and many more mornings, Etienne," Monsieur made gay answer,
+laying a hand on his son's shoulder. "Courage, comrade. We'll have our
+lady yet."
+
+He smiled at him hearteningly and turned away to his writing-table. For
+all his sympathy, he was, as was natural, more interested in his papers
+than in Mlle. de Montluc.
+
+"I'll get this off my hands at once," he went on, with the effect of
+talking to himself rather than to us. "It shall go straight off to
+Lemaitre. You'd better go to bed, both of you. My faith, you've made a
+night of it!"
+
+"Won't you take me for your messenger, Monsieur? You need a trusty
+one."
+
+"A kindly offer, Etienne. But you have earned your rest. And you, true
+as you are, are yet not the only staunch servant I have, God be thanked.
+Gilles will take this straight from my hand to Lemaitre's."
+
+He had inclosed the packet in a clean wrapper, but now, a thought
+striking him, he took it out again.
+
+"I'd best break off the royal seal, lest it be spied among the
+president's papers. I'll scratch out my initial, too. The cipher tells
+nothing."
+
+"He is not likely to leave it about, Monsieur."
+
+"No, but this time we'll provide for every chance. We'll take all the
+precautions ingenuity can devise or patience execute."
+
+He crushed the seal in his fingers, and took the knife-point to scrape
+the wax away. It slipped and severed the cords. Of its own accord the
+stiff paper of the flap unfolded.
+
+"The cipher seems as determined to show itself to me again as if I were
+in danger of forgetting it," Monsieur said idly. "The truth is--"
+
+He stopped in the middle of a word, snatching up the packet, slapping it
+wide open, tearing it sheet from sheet. Each was absolutely blank!
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_The Florentines._
+
+
+M. Etienne, forgetting his manners, snatched the papers from his
+father's hand, turning them about and about, not able to believe his
+senses. A man hurled over a cliff, plunging in one moment from flowery
+lawns into a turbulent sea, might feel as he did.
+
+"But the seal!" he stammered.
+
+"The seal was genuine," Monsieur answered, startled as he. "How your
+fellow could have the king's signet--"
+
+"See," M. Etienne cried, scratching at the fragments. "This is it. Dunce
+that I am not to have guessed it! Look, there is a layer of paper
+embedded in the wax. Look, he cut the seal out, smeared hot wax on the
+false packet, pressed in the seal, and curled the new wax over the edge.
+It was cleverly done; the seal is but little thicker, little larger than
+before. It did not look tampered with. Would you have suspected it,
+Monsieur?" he demanded piteously.
+
+"I had no thought of it. But this Peyrot--it may not yet be too late--"
+
+"I will go back," M. Etienne cried, darting to the door. But Monsieur
+laid forcible hands on him.
+
+"Not you, Etienne. You were hurt yesterday; you have not closed your
+eyes for twenty-four hours. I don't want a dead son. I blame you not for
+the failure; not another man of us all would have come so near success."
+
+"Dolt! I should have known he could not deal honestly," M. Etienne
+cried. "I should have known he would trick me. But I did not think to
+doubt the crest. I should have opened it there in the inn, but it was
+Lemaitre's sealed packet. However, Peyrot sat down to my dinner: I can
+be back before he has finished his three kinds of wine."
+
+"Stop, Etienne," Monsieur commanded. "I forbid you. You are gray with
+fatigue. Vigo shall go."
+
+M. Etienne turned on him in fiery protest; then the blaze in his eyes
+flickered out, and he made obedient salute.
+
+"So be it. Let him go. I am no use; I bungle everything I touch. But he
+may accomplish something."
+
+He flung himself down on the bench in the corner, burying his face in
+his hands, weary, chagrined, disheartened. A statue-maker might have
+copied him for a figure of Defeat.
+
+"Go find Vigo," Monsieur bade me, "and then get you to bed."
+
+I obeyed both orders with all alacrity.
+
+I too smarted, but mine was the private's disappointment, not the
+general's who had planned the campaign. The credit of the rescue was
+none of mine; no more was the blame of failure. I need not rack myself
+with questioning, Had I in this or that done differently, should I not
+have triumphed? I had done only what I was told. Yet I was part of the
+expedition; I could not but share the grief. If I did not wet my pillow
+with my tears, it was because I could not keep awake long enough.
+Whatever my sorrows, speedily they slipped from me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I roused with a start from deep, dreamless sleep, and then wondered
+whether, after all, I had waked. Here, to be sure, was Marcel's bed, on
+which I had lain down; there was the high gable-window, through which
+the westering sun now poured. There was the wardrobe open, with Marcel's
+Sunday suit hanging on the peg; here were the two stools, the little
+image of the Virgin on the wall. But here was also something else, so
+out of place in the chamber of a page that I pinched myself to make sure
+it was real. At my elbow on the pallet lay a box of some fine foreign
+wood, beautifully grained by God and polished by grateful man. It was
+about as large as my lord's despatch-box, bound at the edges with
+shining brass and having long brass hinges wrought in a design of leaves
+and flowers. Beside the box were set three shallow trays, lined with
+blue velvet, and filled full of goldsmith's work-glittering chains,
+linked or twisted, bracelets in the form of yellow snakes with green
+eyes, buckles with ivory teeth, glove-clasps thick with pearls,
+ear-rings and finger-rings with precious stones.
+
+I stared bedazzled from the display to him who stood as showman. This
+was a handsome lad, seemingly no older than I, though taller, with a
+shock of black hair, rough and curly, and dark, smooth face, very boyish
+and pleasant. He was dressed well, in bourgeois fashion; yet there was
+about him and his apparel something, I could not tell what, unfamiliar,
+different from us others.
+
+He, meeting my eye, smiled in the friendliest way, like a child, and
+said, in Italian:
+
+"Good day to you, my little gentleman."
+
+I had still the uncertain feeling that I must be in a dream, for why
+should an Italian jeweller be displaying his treasures to me, a
+penniless page? But the dream was amusing; I was in no haste to wake.
+
+I knew my Italian well enough, for Monsieur's confessor, the Father
+Francesco, who had followed him into exile, was Florentine; and as he
+always spoke his own tongue to Monsieur, and I was always at the duke's
+heels, I picked up a deal of it. After Monsieur's going, the father,
+already a victim, poor man, to the falling-sickness, of which he died,
+stayed behind with us, and I found a pricking pleasure in talking with
+him in the speech he loved, of Monsieur's Roman journey, of his exploits
+in the war of the Three Henrys. Therefore the words came easily to my
+lips to answer this lad from over the Alps:
+
+"I give you good day, friend."
+
+He looked somewhat surprised and more than pleased, breaking at once
+into voluble speech:
+
+"The best of greetings to you, young sir. Now, what can I sell you this
+fine day? I have not been half a week in this big city of yours, yet
+already I have but one boxful of trinkets left. They are noble,
+open-handed customers, these gallants of Paris. I have not to show them
+my wares twice, I can tell you. They know what key will unlock their
+fair mistresses' hearts. And now, what can I sell you, my little
+gentleman, to buy your sweetheart's kisses?"
+
+"Nay, I have no sweetheart," I said, "and if I had, she would not wear
+these gauds."
+
+"She would if she could get them, then," he retorted. "Now, let me give
+you a bit of advice, my friend, for I see you are but young: buy this
+gold chain of me, or this ring with this little dove on it,--see, how
+cunningly wrought,--and you'll not lack long for a sweetheart."
+
+His words huffed me a bit, for he spoke as if he were vastly my senior.
+
+"I want no sweetheart," I returned with dignity, "to be bought with
+gold."
+
+"Nay," he cried quickly, "but when your own valour and prowess have
+inflamed her with passion, you should be willing to reward her devotion
+and set at rest her suspense by a suitable gift."
+
+I looked at him uneasily, for I had a suspicion that he might be making
+fun of me. But his countenance was as guileless as a kitten's.
+
+"Well, I tell you again I have no sweetheart and I want no sweetheart,"
+I said; "I have no time to bother with girls."
+
+At once he abandoned the subject, seeing that he was making naught by
+it.
+
+"The messer is very much occupied?" he asked with exceeding deference.
+"The messer has no leisure for trifling in boudoirs; he is occupied with
+great matters? Oh, that can I well believe, and I cry the messer's
+pardon. For when the mind is taken up with affairs of state, it is
+distasteful to listen even for a moment to light talk of maids and
+jewels."
+
+Again I eyed him challengingly; but he, with face utterly unconscious,
+was sorting over his treasures. I made up my mind his queer talk was but
+the outlandish way of a foreigner. He looked at me again, serious and
+respectful.
+
+"The messer must often be engaged in great risks, in perilous
+encounters. Is it not so? Then he will do well to carry ever over his
+heart the sacred image of our Lord."
+
+He held up to my inspection a silver rosary from which depended a
+crucifix of ivory, the sad image of the dying Christ carved upon it.
+Even in Monsieur's chapel, even in the church at St. Quentin, was
+nothing so masterfully wrought as this figurine to be held in the palm
+of the hand. The tears started in my eyes to look at it, and I crossed
+myself in reverence. I bethought me how I had trampled on my crucifix;
+the stranger all unwittingly had struck a bull's-eye. I had committed
+grave offence against God, but perhaps if, putting gewgaws aside, I
+should give my all for this cross, he would call the account even. I
+knew nothing of the value of a carving such as this, but I remembered I
+was not moneyless, and I said, albeit somewhat shyly:
+
+"I cannot take the rosary. But I should like well the crucifix. But
+then, I have only ten pistoles."
+
+"Ten pistoles!" he repeated contemptuously. "Corpo di Bacco! The
+workmanship alone is worth twenty." Then, viewing my fallen visage, he
+added: "However, I have received fair treatment in this house, beshrew
+me but I have! I have made good sales to your young count. What sort of
+master is he, this M. le Comte de Mar?"
+
+"Oh, there's nobody like him," I answered, "except, of course, M. le
+Duc."
+
+"Ah, then you have two masters?" he inquired curiously, yet with a
+certain careless air. It struck me suddenly, overwhelmingly, that he was
+a spy, come here under the guise of an honest tradesman. But he should
+gain nothing from me.
+
+"This is the house of the Duke of St. Quentin," I said. "Surely you
+could not come in at the gate without discovering that?"
+
+"He is a very grand seigneur, then, this duke?"
+
+"Assuredly," I replied cautiously.
+
+"More of a man than the Comte de Mar?"
+
+I would have told him to mind his own business, had it not been for my
+hopes of the crucifix. If he planned to sell it to me cheap, thereby
+hoping to gain information, marry, I saw no reason why I should not buy
+it at his price--and withhold the information. So I made civil answer:
+
+"They are both as gallant gentlemen as any living. About this cross,
+now--"
+
+"Oh, yes," he answered at once, accepting with willingness--well
+feigned, I thought--the change of topic. "You can give me ten pistoles,
+say you? 'Tis making you a present of the treasure. Yet, since I have
+received good treatment at the hands of your master, I will e'en give it
+to you. You shall have your cross."
+
+With suspicions now at point of certainty, I drew out my pouch from
+under my pillow, and counted into his hand the ten pieces which were my
+store. My rosary I drew out likewise; I had broken it when I shattered
+the cross, but one of the inn-maids had tied it together for me with a
+thread, and it served very well. The Italian unhooked the delicate
+carving from the silver chain and hung it on my wooden one, which I
+threw over my neck, vastly pleased with my new possession. Marcel's
+Virgin was a botch compared with it. I remembered that mademoiselle, who
+had given me half my wealth, the half that won me the rest, had bidden
+me buy something in the marts of Paris; and I told myself with pride
+that she could not fail to hold me high did she know how, passing by all
+vanities, I had spent my whole store for a holy image. Few boys of my
+age would be capable of the like. Certes, I had done piously, and should
+now take a further pious joy, my purchase safe on my neck, in thwarting
+the wiles of this serpent. I would play with him awhile, tease and
+baffle him, before handing him over in triumph to Vigo.
+
+Sure enough, he began as I had expected:
+
+"This M. de Mar down-stairs, he is a very good master, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," I said, without enthusiasm.
+
+"He has always treated you well?"
+
+I bethought myself of the trick I had played successfully with the
+officer of the burgess guard.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so. I have only known him two days."
+
+"But you have known him well? You have seen much of him?" he demanded
+with ill-concealed eagerness.
+
+"But not so very much," I made tepid answer. "I have not been with him
+all the time of these two days. I have seen really very little of him."
+
+"And you know not whether or no he be a good master?"
+
+"Oh, pretty good. So-so."
+
+He sprang forward to deal me a stinging box on the ear.
+
+I was out of bed at one bound, scattering the trinkets in a golden rain
+and rushing for him. He retreated before me. It was to save his jewels,
+but I, fool that I was, thought it pure fear of me. I dashed at him, all
+headlong confidence; the next I knew he had somehow twisted his foot
+between mine, and tripped me before I could grapple. Never was wight
+more confounded to find himself on the floor.
+
+I was starting up again unhurt when I saw something that made me to
+forget my purpose. I sat still where I was, with dropped jaw and bulging
+eyes. For his hair, that had been black, was golden.
+
+"Ventre bleu!" I said.
+
+"And so you know not you little villain, whether you have a good master
+or not?"
+
+"But how was I to dream it was monsieur?" I cried, confounded. "I knew
+there was something queer about him--about you, I mean--about the person
+I took you for, that is. I knew there was something wrong about
+you--that is to say, I mean, I thought there was; I mean I knew he
+wasn't what he seemed--you were not. And Peyrot fooled us, and I didn't
+want to be fooled again."
+
+"Then I am a good master?" he demanded truculently, advancing upon me.
+
+I put up my hands to my ears.
+
+"The best, monsieur. And monsieur wrestled well, too."
+
+"I can't prove that by you, Felix," he retorted, and laughed in my
+nettled face. "Well, if you've not trampled on my jewels, I forgive your
+contumacy."
+
+If I had, my bare toes had done them no harm. I crawled about the floor,
+gathering them all up and putting them on the bed, where I presently sat
+down myself to stare at him, trying to realize him for M. le Comte. He
+had seated himself, too, and was dusting his trampled wig and clapping
+it on again.
+
+He had shaved off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and the whole
+look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke of the razor;
+he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He had stained his face
+so well that it looked for all the world as though the Southern sun had
+done it for him; his eyebrows and, lashes were dark by nature. His wig
+came much lower over his forehead than did his own hair, and altered the
+upper part of his face as much as the shaving of the lower. Only his
+eyes were the same. He had had his back to the window at first, and I
+had not noted them; but now that he had turned, his eyes gleamed so
+light as to be fairly startling in his dark face--like stars in a stormy
+sky.
+
+"Well, then, how do you like me?"
+
+"Monsieur confounds me. It's witchery. I cannot get used to him."
+
+"That's as I would have it," he returned, coming over to the bedside to
+arrange his treasures. "For if I look new to you, I think I may look so
+to the Hotel de Lorraine."
+
+"Monsieur goes to the Hotel de Lorraine as a jeweller?" I cried,
+enlightened.
+
+"Aye. And if the ladies do not crowd about me--" he broke off with a
+gesture, and put his trays back in his box.
+
+"Well, I wondered, monsieur. I wondered if we were going to sell
+ornaments to Peyrot."
+
+He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn Peyrot.
+He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him eating, cursed him
+drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting; cursed him summer, cursed
+him winter; cursed him young, cursed him old; living, dying, and dead. I
+inferred that the packet had not been recovered.
+
+"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne Femme, but
+Peyrot had vanished. So he galloped round to the Rue Tournelles, whither
+he had sent two of our men before him, but the bird was flown. He had
+been home half an hour before,--he left the inn just after us,--had
+paid his arrears of rent, surrendered his key, and taken away his chest,
+with all his worldly goods in it, on the shoulders of two porters, bound
+for parts unknown. Gilles is scouring Paris for him. Mordieu, I wish him
+luck!"
+
+His face betokened little hope of Gilles. We both kept chagrined
+silence.
+
+"And we thought him sleeping!" presently cried he.
+
+"Well," he added, rising, "that milk's spilt; no use crying over it.
+Plan a better venture; that's the only course. Monsieur is gone back to
+St. Denis to report to the king. Marry, he makes as little of these
+gates as if he were a tennis-ball and they the net. Time was when he
+thought he must plan and prepare, and know the captain of the watch, and
+go masked at midnight. He has got bravely over that now; he bounces in
+and out as easily as kiss my hand. I pray he may not try it once too
+often."
+
+"Mayenne dare not touch him."
+
+"What Mayenne may dare is not good betting. Monsieur thinks he dares
+not. Monsieur has come through so many perils of late, he is happily
+convinced he bears a charmed life. Felix, do you come with me to the
+Hotel de Lorraine?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" I cried, bethinking myself that I had forgotten to
+dress.
+
+"Nay, you need not don these clothes," he interposed, with a look of
+wickedness which I could not interpret. "Wait; I'm back anon."
+
+He darted out of the room, to return speedily with an armful of apparel,
+which he threw on the bed.
+
+"Monsieur," I gasped in horror, "it's woman's gear!"
+
+"Verily."
+
+"Monsieur! you cannot mean me to wear this!"
+
+"I mean it precisely."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"Why, look you, Felix," he laughed, "how else am I to take you? You were
+at pains to make yourself conspicuous in M. de Mayenne's salon; they
+will recognize you as quickly as me."
+
+"Oh, monsieur, put me in a wig, in cap and bells, an you like! I will be
+monsieur's clown, anything, only not this!"
+
+"I never heard of a jeweller accompanied by his clown. Nor have I any
+party-colour in my armoires. But since I have exerted myself to borrow
+this toggery,--and a fine, big lass is the owner, so I think it will
+fit,--you must wear it."
+
+I was like to burst with mortification; I stood there in dumb, agonized
+appeal.
+
+"Oh, well, then you need not go at all. If you go, you go as Felicie.
+But you may stay at home, if it likes you better."
+
+That settled me. I would have gone in my grave-clothes sooner than not
+go at all, and belike he knew it. I began arraying myself sullenly and
+clumsily in the murrain petticoats.
+
+There was a full kirtle of gray wool, falling to my ankles, and a white
+apron. There was a white blouse with a wide, turned-back collar, and a
+scarlet bodice, laced with black cords over a green tongue. I was soon
+in such a desperate tangle over these divers garments, so utterly
+muddled as to which to put on first, and which side forward, and which
+end up, and where and how by the grace of God to fasten them, that M.
+Etienne, with roars of laughter, came unsteadily to my aid. He insisted
+on stuffing the whole of my jerkin under my blouse to give my figure the
+proper curves, and to make me a waist he drew the lacing-cords till I
+was like to suffocate. His mirth had by this time got me to laughing so
+that every time he pulled me in, a fit of merriment would jerk the laces
+from his fingers before he could tie them. This happened once and again,
+and the more it happened the more we laughed and the less he could dress
+me. I ached in every rib, and the tears were running down his cheeks,
+washing little clean channels in the stain.
+
+"Felix, this will never do," he gasped when at length he could speak.
+"Never after a carouse have I been so maudlin. Compose yourself, for the
+love of Heaven. Think of something serious; think of me! Think of
+Peyrot, think of Mayenne, think of Lucas. Think of what will happen to
+us now if Mayenne know us for ourselves."
+
+"Enough, monsieur," I said. "I am sobered."
+
+But even now that I held still we could not draw the last holes in the
+bodice-point nearly together.
+
+"Nay, monsieur, I can never wear it like this," I panted, when he had
+tied it as tight as he could. "I shall die, or I shall burst the seams."
+He had perforce to give me more room; he pulled the apron higher to
+cover gaps, and fastened a bunch of keys and a pocket at my waist. He
+set a brown wig on my head, nearly covered by a black mortier, with its
+wide scarf hanging down my back.
+
+"Hang me, but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried, proud of
+me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "Felix, you've no notion how
+handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the world when you contrived to
+be born a boy."
+
+"I thank my stars I was born a boy," I declared. "I wouldn't get into
+this toggery for any one else on earth. I tell monsieur that, flat."
+
+"You must change your shoes," he cried eagerly. "Your hobnails spoil
+all."
+
+I put one of his gossip's shoes on the floor beside my foot.
+
+"Now, monsieur, I ask you, how am I to get into that?"
+
+"Shall I fetch you Vigo's?" he grinned.
+
+"No, Constant's," I said instantly, thinking how it would make him
+writhe to lend them.
+
+"Constant's best," he promised, disappearing. It was as good as a play
+to see my lord running errands for me. Perhaps he forgot, after a month
+in the Rue Coupejarrets, that such things as pages existed; or, more
+likely, he did not care to take the household into his confidence. He
+was back soon, with a pair of scarlet hose, and shoes of red morocco,
+the gayest affairs you ever saw. Also he brought a hand-mirror, for me
+to look on my beauty.
+
+"Nay, monsieur," I said with a sulk that started anew his laughter.
+"I'll not take it; I want not to see myself. But monsieur will do well
+to examine his own countenance."
+
+"Pardieu! I should say so," he cried. "I must e'en go repair myself; and
+you, Felix,--Felicie,--must be fed."
+
+I was in truth as hollow as a drum, yet I cried out that I had rather
+starve than venture into the kitchen.
+
+"You flatter yourself," he retorted. "You'd not be known. Old Jumel will
+give you the pick of the larder for a kiss," he roared in my sullen
+face, and added, relenting: "Well, then, I will send one of the lackeys
+up with a salver. The lazy beggars have naught else to do."
+
+I bolted the door after him, and when the man brought my tray, bade him
+set it down outside. He informed me through the panels that he would go
+drown himself before he would be content to lie slugabed the livelong
+day while his betters waited on him. I trembled for fear in his virtuous
+scorn he should take his fardel away again. But he had had his orders.
+When, after listening to his footsteps descending the stairs, I reached
+out a cautious arm, the tray was on the floor. The generous meat and
+wine put new heart into me; by the time my lord returned I was eager for
+the enterprise.
+
+"Have you finished?" he demanded. "Faith, I see you have. Then let us
+start; it grows late. The shadows, like good Mussulmans, are stretching
+to the east. I must catch the ladies in their chambers before supper.
+Come, we'll take the box between us."
+
+"Why, monsieur, I carry that on my shoulders."
+
+"What, my lass, on your dainty shoulders? Nay, 'twould make the
+townsfolk stare."
+
+I gnawed my lip in silence; he exclaimed:
+
+"Now, never have I seen a maid fresh from the convent blush so prettily.
+I'd give my right hand to walk you out past the guard-room."
+
+I shrank as a snail when you touch its horns. He cried:
+
+"Marry, but I will, though!"
+
+Now I, unlike Sir Snail, had no snug little fortress to take refuge in;
+I might writhe, but I could not defend myself.
+
+"As you will, monsieur," I said, setting my teeth hard.
+
+"Nay, I dare not. Those fellows would follow us laughing to the doors of
+Lorraine House itself. I've told none of this prank; I have even
+contrived to send all the lackeys out of doors on fools' errands. We'll
+sneak out like thieves by the postern. Come, tread your wariest."
+
+On tiptoe, with the caution of malefactors, we crept from stair to
+stair, giggling under our breath like the callow lad and saucy lass we
+looked to be. We won in safety to the postern, and came out to face the
+terrible eye of the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_A double masquerade._
+
+
+"Felix, we are speaking in our own tongue. It is such lapses as these
+bring men to the gallows. Italian from this word, my girl."
+
+"Monsieur, I have no notion how to bear myself, what to say," I answered
+uneasily.
+
+"Say as little as you can. For, I confess, your voice and your hands
+give me pause; otherwise I would take you anywhere for a lass. Your part
+must be the shy maiden. My faith, you look the role; your cheeks are
+poppies! You will follow docile at my heels while I tell lies for two. I
+have the hope that the ladies will heed me and my jewels more than you."
+
+"Monsieur, could we not go safelier at night?"
+
+"I have thought of that. But at night the household gathers in the
+salon; we should run the gantlet of a hundred looks and tongues. While
+now, if we have luck, we may win to mademoiselle's own chamber--" He
+broke off abruptly, and walked along in a day-dream.
+
+"Well," he resumed presently, coming back to the needs of the moment,
+"let us know our names and station. I am Giovanni Rossini, son of the
+famous goldsmith of Florence; you, Giulietta, my sister. We came to
+Paris in the legate's train, trade being dull at home, the gentry having
+fled to the hills for the hot month. Of course you've never set foot out
+of France, Fe--Giulietta?"
+
+"Never out of St. Quentin till I came hither. But Father Francesco has
+talked to me much of his city of Florence."
+
+"Good; you can then make shift to answer a question or two if put to it.
+Your Italian, I swear, is of excellent quality. You speak French like
+the Picard you are, but Italian like a gentleman--that is to say, like a
+lady."
+
+"Monsieur," I bemoaned miserably, "I shall never come through it alive,
+never in the world. They will know me in the flick of an eye for a boy;
+I know they will. Why, the folk we are passing can see something wrong;
+they all are staring at me."
+
+"Of course they stare," he answered tranquilly. "I should think some
+wrong if they did not. Can your modesty never understand, my Giulietta,
+what a pretty lass you are?"
+
+He fell to laughing at my discomfort, and thus, he full of gay
+confidence, I full of misgiving, we came before the doors of the Hotel
+de Lorraine.
+
+"Courage," he whispered to me. "Courage will conquer the devil himself.
+Put a good face on it and take the plunge." The next moment he was in
+the archway, deluging the sentry with his rapid Italian.
+
+"Nom d'un chien! What's all this? What are you after?" the man shouted
+at us, to make us understand the better. "Haven't you a word of honest
+French in your head?"
+
+M. Etienne, tapping his box, very brokenly, very laboriously stammered
+forth something about jewels for the ladies.
+
+"Get in with you, then."
+
+We were not slow to obey.
+
+The courtyard was deserted, nor did we see any one in the windows of the
+house, against which the afternoon sun struck hotly. To keep out his
+unwelcome rays, the house door was pushed almost shut. We paused a
+moment on the step, to listen to the voices of gossiping lackeys within,
+and then M. Etienne boldly knocked.
+
+There was a scurrying in the hall, as if half a dozen idlers were
+plunging into their doublets and running to their places. Then my good
+friend Pierre opened the door. In the row of underlings at his back I
+recognized the two who had taken part in my flogging. The cold sweat
+broke out upon me lest they in their turn should know me.
+
+M. Etienne looked from one to another with the childlike smile of his
+bare lips, demanding if any here spoke Italian.
+
+"I," answered Pierre himself. "Now, what may your errand be?"
+
+"Oh, it's soon told," M. Etienne cried volubly, as one delighted to find
+himself understood. "I am a jeweller from Florence; I am selling my
+wares in your great houses. I have but just sold a necklace to the
+Duchesse de Joyeuse; I crave permission to show my trinkets to the fair
+ladies here. But take me up to them, and they'll not make you repent
+it."
+
+"Go tell madame," Pierre bade one of his men, and turning again to us
+gave us kindly permission to set down our burden and wait.
+
+For incredible good luck, the heavy hangings were drawn over the sunny
+windows, making a soft twilight in the room. I sidled over to a bench in
+the far corner and was feeling almost safe, when Pierre--beshrew
+him!--called attention to me.
+
+"Now, that is a heavy box for a maid to help lug. Do you make the lasses
+do porters' work, you Florentines?"
+
+"But I am a stranger here," M. Etienne explained. "Did I hire a porter,
+how am I to tell an honest one? Belike he might run off with all my
+treasures, and where is poor Giovanni then? Besides, it were cruel to
+leave my little sister in our lodging, not a soul to speak to, the long
+day through. There is none where we lodge knows Italian, as you do so
+like an angel, Sir Master of the Household."
+
+Now, Pierre was no more maitre d'hotel than I was, but that did not
+dampen his pleasure to be called so. He sat down on the bench by M.
+Etienne.
+
+"How came you two to be in Paris?" he asked.
+
+My lord proceeded to tell him I know not what glib and convincing
+farrago, with every excellence, I made no doubt, of accent and gesture.
+But I could not listen; I had affairs of my own by this time. The
+lackeys had come up close round me, more interested in me than in my
+brother, and the same Jean who had held me for my beating, who had
+wanted my coat stripped off me that I might be whacked to bleed, now
+said:
+
+"I'll warrant you're hot and tired and thirsty, mademoiselle, for all
+you look as fresh as cress. Will you drink a cup of wine if I fetch it?"
+
+I had kept my eyes on the ground from the first moment of encounter, in
+mortal dread to look these men in the face; but now, gaining courage, I
+raised my glance and smiled at him bashfully, and faltered that I did
+not understand.
+
+He understood the sense, if not the words, of my answer, and repeated
+his offer, slowly, loudly. I strove to look as blank as the wall, and
+shook my head gently and helplessly, and turned an inquiring gaze to the
+others, as if beseeching them to interpret. One of the fellows clapped
+Jean on the shoulder with a roar of laughter.
+
+"A fall, a fall!" he shouted. "Here's the all-conquering Jean Marchand
+tripped up for once. He thinks nothing that wears petticoats can
+withstand him, but here's a maid that hasn't a word to throw at him."
+
+"Pshaw! she doesn't understand me," Jean returned, undaunted, and
+promptly pointed a finger at my mouth and then raised his fist to his
+own, with sucks and gulps. I allowed myself to comprehend then. I smiled
+in as coquettish a fashion as I could contrive, and glanced on the
+ground, and slowly looked up again and nodded.
+
+The men burst into loud applause.
+
+"Good old Jean! Jean wins. Well played, Jean! Vive Jean!"
+
+Jean, flushed with triumph, ran off on his errand, while I thought of
+Margot, the steward's daughter, at home, and tried to recollect every
+air and grace I had ever seen her flaunt before us lads. It was not bad
+fun, this. I hid my hands under my apron and spoke not at all, but
+sighed and smiled and blushed under their stares like any fine lady.
+Once in one's life, for one hour, it is rather amusing to be a girl. But
+that is quite long enough, say I.
+
+Jean came again directly with a great silver tankard.
+
+"Burgundy, pardieu!" cried one of his mates, sticking his nose into the
+pot as it passed him, "and full! Ciel, you must think your lass has a
+head."
+
+"Oh, I shall drink with her," Jean answered.
+
+I put out my hand for the tankard, running the risk of my big paw's
+betraying me, resolved that he should not drink with me of that draught,
+when of a sudden he leaned over to snatch a kiss. I dodged him, more
+frightened than the shyest maid. Though in this half-light I might
+perfectly look a girl, I could not believe I should kiss like one. In a
+panic, I fled from Jean to my master's side.
+
+M. Etienne, wheeling about, came near to laughing out in my face, when
+he remembered his part and played it with a zeal that was like to undo
+us. He sprang to his feet, drawing his dagger.
+
+"Who insults my sister?" he shouted. "Who is the dog does this!"
+
+They were on him, wrenching the knife from his hand, wrenching his lame
+arm at the same time so painfully that he gasped. I was scared chill; I
+knew if they mishandled him they would brush the wig off.
+
+"Mind your manners, sirrah!" Jean cried.
+
+Monsieur's ardour vanished; a gentle, appealing smile spread over his
+face.
+
+"I cry your pardon, sir," he said to Jean; then turning to Pierre, "This
+messer does not understand me. But tell him, I beg you, I crave his good
+pardon. I was but angered for a moment that any should think to touch my
+little sister. I meant no harm."
+
+"Nor he," Pierre retorted. "A kiss, forsooth! What do you expect with a
+handsome lass like that? If you will take her about--"
+
+"Madame says the jeweller fellow is to come up," our messenger
+announced, returning.
+
+My lord besought Pierre:
+
+"My knife? I may have my knife? By the beard of St. Peter, I swear to
+you, I meant no harm with it. I drew it in jest."
+
+Now, this, which was the sole true statement he had made since our
+arrival, was the only one Pierre did not quite believe. He took the
+knife from Jean, but he hesitated to hand it over to its owner.
+
+"No," he said; "you were angry enough. I know your Italian temper. I'm
+thinking I'll keep this little toy of yours till you come down."
+
+"Very well, Sir Majordomo," M. Etienne rejoined indifferently, "so be it
+you give it to me when I go." He grasped the handle of the box, and we
+followed our guide up the stair, my master offering me the comforting
+assurance:
+
+"It really matters not in the least, for if we be caught the dagger's
+not yet forged can save us."
+
+We were ushered into a large, fair chamber hung with arras, the carpet
+under our feet deep and soft as moss. At one side stood the bed, raised
+on its dais; opposite were the windows, the dressing-table between them,
+covered with scent-bottles and boxes, brushes and combs, very glittering
+and grand. Fluttering about the room were some half-dozen fine dames and
+demoiselles, brave in silks and jewels. Among them I was quick to
+recognize Mme. de Mayenne, and I thought I knew vaguely one or two other
+faces as those I had seen before about her. I started presently to
+discover the little Mlle. de Tavanne: that night she had worn sky-colour
+and now she wore rose, but there was no mistaking her saucy face.
+
+We set our box on a table, as the duchess bade us, and I helped M.
+Etienne to lay out its contents, which done, I retired to the
+background, well content to leave the brunt of the business to him. It
+was as he prophesied: they paid me no heed whatever. He was smoothly
+launched on the third relating of his tale; I trow by this time he
+almost believed it himself. Certes, he never faltered, but rattled on as
+if he had two tongues, telling in confidential tone of our father and
+mother, our little brothers and sisters at home in Florence; our journey
+with the legate, his kindness and care of us (I hoped that dignitary
+would not walk in just now to pay his respects to madame la generale);
+of our arrival in Paris, and our wonder and delight at the city's
+grandeur, the like of which was not to be found in Italy; and, last, but
+not least, he had much to say, with an innocent, wide-eyed gravity, in
+praise of the ladies of Paris, so beautiful, so witty, so generous! They
+were all crowding around him, calling him pretty boy, laughing at his
+compliments, handling and exclaiming over his trinkets, trying the
+effect of a buckle or a bracelet, preening and cooing like
+bright-breasted pigeons about the corn-thrower. It was as pretty a sight
+as ever I beheld, but it was not to smile at such that we had risked our
+heads. Of Mlle. de Montluc there was no sign.
+
+No one was marking me, and I wondered if I might not slip out unseen and
+make my way to mademoiselle's chamber. I knew she lodged on this story,
+near the back of the house, in a room overlooking the little street and
+having a turret-window. But I was somewhat doubtful of my skill to find
+it through the winding corridors of a great palace. I was more than
+likely to meet some one who would question my purpose, and what answer
+could I make? I scarce dared say I was seeking mademoiselle. I am not
+ready at explanations, like M. le Comte.
+
+Yet here were the golden moments flying and our cause no further
+advanced. Should I leave it all to M. Etienne, trusting that when he had
+made his sales here he would be permitted to seek out the other ladies
+of the house? Or should I strive to aid him? Could I win in safety to
+mademoiselle's chamber, what a feat!
+
+It so irked me to be doing nothing that I was on the very point of
+gingerly disappearing when one of the ladies, she with the yellow curls,
+the prettiest of them all, turned suddenly from the group, calling
+clearly:
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+Our hearts stood still--mine did, and I can vouch for his--as the heavy
+window-curtain swayed aside and she came forth.
+
+She came listlessly. Her hair sweeping against her cheek was ebony on
+snow, so white she was; while under her blue eyes were dark rings, like
+the smears of an inky finger. M. Etienne let fall the bracelet he was
+holding, staring at her oblivious of aught else, his brows knotted in
+distress, his face afire with love and sympathy. He made a step forward;
+I thought him about to catch her in his arms, when he recollected
+himself and dropped on his knees to grope for the fallen trinket.
+
+"You wanted me, madame?" she asked Mme. de Mayenne.
+
+"No," said the duchess, with a tartness of voice she seemed to reserve
+for Mlle. de Montluc; "'twas Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"It was I," the fair-haired beauty answered in the same breath. "I want
+you to stop moping over there in the corner. Come look at these baubles
+and see if they cannot bring a sparkle to your eye. Fie, Lorance! The
+having too many lovers is nothing to cry about. It is an affliction many
+and many a lady would give her ears to undergo."
+
+"Take heart o' grace, Lorance!" cried Mlle. de Tavanne. "If you go on
+looking as you look to-day, you'll not long be troubled by lovers."
+
+She made no answer to either, but stood there passively till it might be
+their pleasure to have done with her, with a patient weariness that it
+wrung the heart to see.
+
+"Here's a chain would become you vastly, Lorance," Mme. de Montpensier
+went on, friendlily enough, in her brisk and careless voice. "Let me try
+it on your neck. You can easily coax Paul or some one to buy it for
+you."
+
+She fumbled over the clasp. M. Etienne, with a "Permit me, madame," took
+it boldly from her hand and hooked it himself about mademoiselle's neck.
+He delayed longer than he need over the fastening of it, looking with
+burning intentness straight into her face. She lifted her eyes to his
+with a quick frown of displeasure, drawing herself back; then all at
+once the colour waved across her face like the dawn flush over a gray
+sky. She blushed to her very hair, to her very ruff. Then the red
+vanished as quickly as it had come; she clutched at her bosom, on the
+verge of a swoon.
+
+He threw out his arms to catch her. Instantly she stepped aside, and,
+turning with a little unsteady laugh to the lady at whose elbow she
+found herself, asked:
+
+"Does it become me, madame?"
+
+The little scene had passed so quickly that it seemed none had marked
+it. Mademoiselle had stood a little out of the group, monsieur with his
+back to it, and the ladies were busy over the jewels. She whom
+mademoiselle had addressed, a big-nosed, loud-voiced lady, older than
+any of the others, answered her bluntly:
+
+"You look a shade too green-faced to-day, mademoiselle, for anything to
+become you."
+
+"What can you expect, Mme. de Brie?" Mlle. Blanche promptly demanded.
+"Mlle. de Montluc is weary and worn from her vigils at your son's
+bedside."
+
+Mme. de Montpensier had the temerity to laugh; but for the rest, a sort
+of little groan ran through the company. Mme. de Mayenne bade sharply,
+"Peace, Blanche!" Mme. de Brie, red with anger, flamed out on her and
+Mlle. de Montluc equally:
+
+"You impudent minxes! 'Tis enough that one of you should bring my son
+to his death, without the other making a mock of it."
+
+"He's not dying," began the irrepressible Blanche de Tavanne, her eyes
+twinkling with mischief; but whatever naughty answer was on her tongue,
+our mademoiselle's deeper voice overbore her:
+
+"I am guiltless of the charge, madame. It was through no wish of mine
+that your son, with half the guard at his back, set on one wounded man."
+
+"I'll warrant it was not," muttered Mlle. Blanche.
+
+"Mar has turned traitor, and deserves nothing so well as to be spitted
+in the dark," Mme. de Brie cried out.
+
+Mademoiselle waited an instant, with flashing eyes meeting madame's. She
+had spoken hotly before, but now, in the face of the other's passion,
+she held herself steady.
+
+"Your charge is as false, madame, as your wish is cruel. Do you go to
+vespers and come home to say such things? M. de Mar is no traitor; he
+was never pledged to us, and may go over to Navarre when he will."
+
+It was quietly spoken, but the blue lightning of her eyes was too much
+for Mme. de Brie. She opened her mouth to retort, faltered, dropped her
+eyes, and finally turned away, yet seething, to feign interest in the
+trinkets. It was a rout.
+
+"Then you are the traitor, Lorance," chimed the silvery tones of Mme. de
+Montpensier. "It is not denied that M. de Mar has gone over to the
+enemy; therefore are you the traitor to have intercourse with him."
+
+She spoke without heat, without any appearance of ill feeling. Hers was
+merely the desire, for the fun of it, to keep the flurry going. But
+mademoiselle answered seriously, with the fleetingest glance at M. le
+Comte, where he, forgetting he knew no French, feasted his eyes
+recklessly on her, pitying, applauding, adoring her. I went softly
+around the group to pull his sleeve; we were lost if any turned to see
+him.
+
+"Madame," mademoiselle addressed her cousin of Montpensier, speaking
+particularly clearly and distinctly, "I mean ever to be loyal to my
+house. I came here a penniless orphan to the care of my kinsman Mayenne;
+and he has always been to me generous and loving--"
+
+"If not madame," murmured Mile. Blanche to herself.
+
+"--as I in my turn have been loving and obedient. It was only two nights
+ago he told me M. de Mar must be as dead to me. Since then I have held
+no intercourse with him. Last night he came under my window; I was not
+in my chamber, as you know. I knew naught of the affair till M. de Brie
+was brought in bleeding. It was not by my will M. de Mar came here--it
+was a misery to me. I sent him word by his boy that other night to leave
+Paris; I implored him to leave Paris. If, instead, he comes here, he
+racks my heart. It is no joy to me, no triumph to me, but a bitter
+distress, that any honest gentleman should risk his life in a vain and
+empty quest. M. de Mar must go his ways, as I must go mine. Should he
+ever make attempt to reach me again, and could I speak to him, I should
+tell him just what I have said now to you."
+
+I pressed monsieur's hand in the endeavour to bring him back to sense;
+he seemed about to cry out on her. But mademoiselle's earnestness had
+drawn all eyes.
+
+"Pshaw, Lorance! banish these tragedy airs!" Mme. de Montpensier
+rejoined, her lightness little touched. A wounded bird falls by the
+rippling water, but the ripples tinkle on. "M. de Mar is not likely ever
+to venture here again; he had too warm a welcome last night. My faith,
+he may be dead by this time--dead to all as well as to you. After he
+vanished into Ferou's house, no one seems to know what happened. Has
+Charles told you, my sister?"
+
+"Ferou gave him up, of course," Mme. de Mayenne answered. "Monsieur has
+done what seemed to him proper."
+
+"You are darkly mysterious, sister."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne raised her eyebrows and smiled, as one solemnly pledged
+to say no more. She could not, indeed, say more, knowing nothing
+whatever about it. Our mademoiselle spoke in a low voice, looking
+straight before her:
+
+"If Heaven willed that he escaped last night, I pray he may leave the
+city. I pray he may never try to see me more. I pray he may depart
+instantly--at once."
+
+"I pray your prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more of him,"
+Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she herself had
+started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but all this solemn
+prating about him is duller than a sermon." She raised a dainty hand
+behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames, let us get back to our
+purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these jeweller folk know no French."
+
+M. Etienne was himself again, all smiles and quick pleasantries. I
+slipped off to my post in the background, trying to get out of the eye
+of Mlle. de Tavanne, who had been staring at me the last five minutes in
+a way that made my goose-flesh rise, so suspicious, so probing, was it.
+On my retreat she did indeed move her gaze from me, but only to watch M.
+le Comte as a hound watches a thicket. It was a miracle that none had
+pounced on him before, so reckless had he been. I perceived with
+sickening certainty that Mlle. de Tavanne had guessed something amiss.
+She fairly bristled with suspicion, with knowledge. I waited from
+breathless moment to moment for announcement. There was nothing to be
+done; she held us in the hollow of her hand. We could not flee, we could
+not fight. We could do nothing but wait quietly till she spoke, and then
+submit quietly to arrest; later, most like, to death.
+
+Minute followed minute, and still she did not speak. Hope flowed back to
+me again; perhaps, after all, we might escape. I wondered how high were
+the windows from the ground.
+
+As I stole across the room to see, Mlle. de Tavanne detached herself
+from the group and glided unnoticed out of the door.
+
+It was thirty feet to the stones below--sure death that way. But she had
+given us a respite; something might yet be done. I seized M. Etienne's
+arm in a grip that should tell him how serious was our pass.
+Remembering, for a marvel, my foreign tongue, I bespoke him:
+
+"Brother, it grows late. We must go. It will soon be dark. We must go
+now--now!"
+
+He turned on me with an impatient frown, but before he could answer,
+Mme. de Montpensier cried, with a laugh:
+
+"And do you fear the dark, wench? Marry, you look as if you could take
+care of yourself."
+
+"Nay, madame," I protested, "but the box. Come, Giovanni. If we linger,
+we may be robbed in the dark streets."
+
+"Why, my sister, where are your manners?" he retorted, striving to shake
+me off. "The ladies have not yet dismissed me."
+
+"We shall be robbed of the box," I persisted; "and the night air is bad
+for your health, my Nino. If you stay longer you will have trouble in
+the throat."
+
+He looked at me hard. I tried to make my eyes tell him that my fear was
+no vague one of the streets, that his throat was in peril here and now.
+He understood; he cried with merry laughter to Mme. de Montpensier:
+
+"Pray excuse her lack of manners, duchessa. I know what moves the maid.
+I must tell you that in the house where we lodge dwells also a beautiful
+young captain--beautiful as the day. It's little of his time he spends
+at home, but we have observed that he comes every evening to array
+himself grandly for supper at some one's palace. We count our day lost
+an we cannot meet him, by accident, on the stairs."
+
+They all laughed. I, with my cheeks burning like any silly maid's, set
+to work to put up our scattered wares. But despair weighed me down; if
+we had to remember ceremony we were lost. The ladies were protesting,
+declaring they had not made their bargains, and monsieur was smirking
+and bowing, as if he had the whole night before him. Our one chance was
+to bolt; to charge past the sentry and flee as from the devil. I pulled
+monsieur's arm again, and muttered in his ear:
+
+"She knows us; she's gone to tell. We must run for it."
+
+At this moment there arose from down the corridor piercing shriek on
+shriek, the howls of a young child frantic with rage and terror. At the
+same time sounded other different cries, wild, outlandish chattering.
+
+"The baby! It's Toto! Oh, ciel!" Mme. de Mayenne gasped. "Help,
+mesdames!" She rushed from the room, Mme. de Montpensier at her heels,
+all the rest following after.
+
+All, that is, but one. Mlle. de Montluc started as the rest, but at the
+threshold paused to let them pass. She flung the door to behind them,
+and ran back to monsieur, her face drawn with terror, her hand
+outstretched.
+
+"Monsieur, monsieur!" she panted. "Go! you must go!"
+
+He seized her hand in both of his.
+
+"O Lorance! Lorance!"
+
+She laid her left hand on his for emphasis.
+
+"Go! go! An you love me, go!"
+
+For answer he fell on his knees before her, covering those sweet hands
+with kisses.
+
+The door was flung open; Mlle. de Tavanne stood on the threshold. They
+started apart, monsieur leaping to his feet, mademoiselle springing back
+with choking cry. But it was too late; she had seen us.
+
+She was rosy with running, her little face brimming over with mischief.
+She flitted into the room, crying:
+
+"I knew it! I knew it was M. de Mar! The gray eyes! M. le Duc has done
+with him as he thought proper, forsooth! Well, I have done as I thought
+proper. I unchained Mme. de Montpensier's monkey and threw him into the
+nursery, where he's scared the baby nearly into spasms. Toto carried the
+cloth-of-gold coverlet up on top of the tester, where he's picking it to
+pieces, the darling! They won't be back--you're safe for a while, my
+children. I'll keep watch for you. Make good use of your time. Kiss her
+well, monsieur."
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are an angel."
+
+"No, she is the angel," Mlle. Blanche laughed back at him. "I'm but your
+warder. Have no fear; I'll keep good watch. Here, you in the petticoats,
+that were a boy the other night, go to the farther door. Mme. de Nemours
+takes her nap in the second room beyond. You watch that door; I'll watch
+the corridor. Farewell, my children! Peste! think you Blanche de Tavanne
+is so badly off for lovers that she need grudge you yours, Lorance?"
+
+She danced out of the door, while I ran across to my station, Mlle. de
+Montluc standing bewildered, ardent, grateful, half laughing, half in
+tears.
+
+"Lorance, Lorance!" M. Etienne murmured tremulously. "She said I should
+kiss you--"
+
+I put my fingers in my ears and then took them out again, for if my ears
+were sealed, how was I to hear Mme. de Nemours approaching? But I admit
+I should have kept my eyes glued to the crack of the door; that I ever
+turned them is my shame. I have no business to know that mademoiselle
+bowed her face upon her lover's shoulder, her hand clasping his neck,
+silent, motionless. He pressed his cheek against her hair, holding her
+close; neither had any will to move or speak. It seemed they were well
+content to stand so the rest of their lives.
+
+Mademoiselle was the first to stir; she raised her head and strove to
+break away from his locked arms.
+
+"Monsieur! monsieur! This is madness! You must go!"
+
+"Are you sorry I came?" he demanded vibrantly. "Are you sorry, Lorance?"
+
+His eyes held hers; she threw pretence to the winds.
+
+"No, monsieur; I am glad. For if we never meet again, we have had this."
+
+"Aye. If I die to-night, I have had to-day."
+
+Their voices were like the rune of the heart of the forest, like the
+music of deep streams. I turned away my head ashamed, and strove to
+think of nothing but the waking of Mme. de Nemours.
+
+"I thought you dead," she moaned, her voice muffled against his cheek.
+"No one would tell me what happened last night. I could not devise any
+way of escape for you--"
+
+"There is a tunnel from Ferou's house to the Rue de la Soierie. His
+mother--merciful angel--let me through."
+
+"And you were not hurt?"
+
+"Not a scratch, ma mie."
+
+"But the wound before? Felix said--"
+
+"I was put out of combat the night I got it," he explained earnestly,
+troubled even now because he had not obeyed her summons. "I was dizzy; I
+could not walk."
+
+"But now, monsieur? Does it heal?"
+
+"It is well--almost. 'Twas but a slash on the arm."
+
+"Oh, then have I no anxiety," she murmured, with a smile that twinkled
+across her lips and was gone. "I cannot perceive you to be disabled,
+monsieur."
+
+"My sweeting!" he laughed out. "If I cannot hold a sword yet, I can hold
+my love."
+
+"But you must not, monsieur," she cried, fear, that had slept a moment,
+springing on her again. "You must go, and this instant, while the others
+are yet away. I knew you, Blanche knew you; some other will. Oh, go, go,
+I implore you!"
+
+"If you will come with me."
+
+She made no answer, save to look at him as at a madman.
+
+"Nay, I mean not now, past the sentry. I am not so crazy as that. But
+you will slip out, you will find a way, and come to me."
+
+Silently, sadly, she shook her head. His arms loosened, and she freed
+herself from him. But instantly he was close on her again.
+
+"But you must! you will, you must! Ah, Lorance, my father is won over.
+He bids me win you. He has sworn to welcome you; when he sees you he
+will be your slave."
+
+"But my cousin Mayenne is not won over."
+
+"Devil fly away with your cousin Mayenne!" M. Etienne retorted with a
+vehemence that made me shudder, lest the walls have ears.
+
+"Ah, you are free to say that, monsieur, but I am not. I am of his
+blood, and dwell in his house, and eat at his board."
+
+He was looking at her with a passionate ardour, grasping her actual
+words less than their import of refusal.
+
+"Are you afraid?" he cried. "Are you frightened, heart-root of mine? You
+need not be, mignonne. You can contrive to slip from the house--Mlle. de
+Tavanne will help you. Once in the street, I will meet you; I will carry
+you home to hold you against all the world."
+
+"It is not that," she answered.
+
+"Am I your fear?" he cried quickly. "Ah, Lorance, my Lorance, you need
+not. I love you as I love the Queen of Heaven."
+
+"Ah, hush!"
+
+"As I love the Queen of Heaven. I will as soon do sacrilege toward her
+as ill to you."
+
+He dropped on his knees before her, kissing the hem of her gown. She
+stood looking down on his bowed head with a tenderness that seemed to
+infold him as with a mantle.
+
+He raised his eyes to hers, still kneeling at her feet.
+
+"Lorance, will you come with me?"
+
+She was silent a moment, with heaving breast and face a-quiver.
+
+"Monsieur, I am sworn. That night when Felix came, when I was in deadly
+terror for him and for you, Etienne, I promised my lord, an he would
+lift his hand from you, to obey him in all things. He bade me never
+again to hold intercourse with you--alack, I am already forsworn! But I
+cannot--"
+
+He leaped to his feet, crying out:
+
+"Lorance, he was the first forsworn! For he did move against me--"
+
+"He told you--the warning went through Felix--that if you tried to reach
+me he would crush you as a buzzing fly. Oh, monsieur, I implored you to
+leave Paris! You are not kind to me, you are cruel, when you venture
+here."
+
+"You are cruel to me, Lorance."
+
+Sighing, she turned from him, hiding her face in her hands.
+
+"Mayenne has not kept faith with you!" monsieur went on vehemently. "He
+has broken his oath. I mean not last night. I had my warning; the attack
+was provoked. But yesterday in the afternoon, before I made the attempt
+to see you, he sent to arrest me for the murder of the lackey Pontou."
+
+"Paul's deed!" she cried in white surprise. "He spoke of it--we heard,
+Felix and I. What, monsieur! sent to arrest you? But you are here."
+
+"They missed me. They took by mistake Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"He was not here last night!" she cried. "Mayenne was demanding him of
+me."
+
+"Then he slept pleasantly in the Bastille. May he never look on the
+outside of its walls again!"
+
+"But he will, he does. He must be free by this time; they cannot keep
+Mayenne's nephew in the Bastille. And oh, if he hated you before, how he
+will hate you now! Oh, Etienne, if you love me, go! Go to your own camp,
+your own side, at St. Denis. There are you safe. Here in Paris you may
+not draw a tranquil breath."
+
+"And shall I flee my dangers? Shall I run, in the face of my peril?"
+
+"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is more to me
+than tongue can tell."
+
+"My love, my love!" He snatched her into his arms; she held away from
+him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching hands on
+his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, you will go! you will go!"
+
+"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way! Only to
+meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates
+together--leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis
+keep our honeymoon."
+
+"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a
+month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League.
+Is that true?"
+
+"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love
+for you. I swear to you--"
+
+"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."
+
+"Lorance!"
+
+"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me. Your
+house stands against us; you would not desert your house. Am I then to
+be false to mine?"
+
+"A woman belongs to her husband's house."
+
+"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you are full
+of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father before me, in the
+shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our
+masters, our friends. When I was orphaned young, and penniless because
+King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my
+cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the
+house. Am I to turn traitor now?"
+
+"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.
+
+"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"
+
+She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her lips to
+monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his arms. I was
+at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets, he with shaking
+fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.
+
+The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de Montpensier alone
+conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's face was hot and angry,
+and bore marks of tears. Not in this room only had a combat raged.
+
+"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying
+vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she had
+not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither again."
+
+"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the ladies. "You
+have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too forbearing, too
+patient under many presumptions. One would suppose the mistress here to
+be Mme. de Montpensier."
+
+"I will show who is mistress here," the Duchesse de Mayenne retorted.
+Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way softly to the
+door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon her:
+
+"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to the rescue
+of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be eaten by the
+beasts for aught you care, while you prink over trinkets."
+
+Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the whirl of
+her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little Tavanne came
+gallantly to the rescue:
+
+"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely safe;
+Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."
+
+Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's rich
+accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her
+belongings.
+
+"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said with
+relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite right,
+Lorance."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_Within the spider's web._
+
+
+Mademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts with her.
+Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier wished than
+accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of bargaining. Mme.
+de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet, Mme. de Brie wanted a
+vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of shoe-buckles. M. Etienne developed a
+recklessness about prices that would have whitened the hair of a
+goldsmith father; I thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious
+of such prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the
+quick settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with
+longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme. de
+Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that no one
+was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine enough for a
+coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking madame for her
+reminder, with the gratitude of victims snatched from an awful fate. We
+were commanded to bundle out, which with all alacrity we did.
+
+Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I had been
+coming in. As we passed, lackey-led, through the long corridors, I had
+ease enough of mind to enable me to take my bearings, and to whisper to
+my master, "That door yonder is the door of the council-room, where I
+was." Even as I spoke the door opened, two gentlemen appearing at the
+threshold. One was a stranger; the other was Mayenne.
+
+Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood a moment
+or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his farewells, and
+went off down the staircase.
+
+Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up the
+passage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of merchandise:
+
+"What have you there, Louis?"
+
+"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just dismissed
+him."
+
+He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at length said
+to M. le Comte:
+
+"I will look at your wares."
+
+M. Etienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing his Highness
+that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.
+
+"How came you in Paris, then?"
+
+M. Etienne for the fourth time went through with his tale. I think this
+time he must have trembled over it. My Lord Mayenne had not the
+reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we knew, he might be
+informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris
+this year. He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to
+himself the number of monsieur's lies. But if M. Etienne trembled in his
+soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At
+its finish Mayenne said:
+
+"Come in here."
+
+The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his Grace of
+Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the window where he had
+sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my teeth to keep them from
+chattering together. Not Grammont's brutality, not Lucas's venom, not
+Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly
+as did Mayenne's amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I
+entered the tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I
+could not see. Mayenne was a well, the light shining down its sides a
+way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over the
+edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look through
+iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see clearly that
+Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as placid as a summer day,
+turning over the contents of the box, showing little interest in us,
+much in our wares, every now and then speaking a generous word of praise
+or asking a friendly question. He was the very model of the gracious
+prince; the humble tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have
+worshipfully loved him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew
+us; that he was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he
+would walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab
+us.
+
+Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I should have
+braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would have been
+bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the uncertainty that was so
+heart-shaking--like crossing a morass in the dark. We might be on the
+safe path; we might with every step be wandering away farther and
+farther into the treacherous bog; there was no way to tell. Mayenne was
+quite the man to be kindly patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich
+present for a friend. He was also the man to sit in the presence of his
+enemy, unbetraying, tranquil, assured, waiting. It seemed to me that in
+a few minutes more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I
+am Felix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"
+
+But before I had verily come to this, something happened to change the
+situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the door after him,
+Lucas.
+
+M. Etienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into the embrasure of
+the window, where we stood in plain sight but with our faces blotted out
+against the light. Mayenne looked up from two rings he was comparing,
+one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came rapidly across the room.
+
+"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost believe
+myself back in night before last."
+
+"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting half from
+hurry, half from wrath.
+
+"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on indifferently,
+his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you have used your time
+profitably."
+
+"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly, arming
+himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a moment he
+had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily into the room.
+He was once more the Lucas who had entered that other night, nonchalant,
+mocking.
+
+"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a bracelet from
+the tray.
+
+The close kinship of these men betrayed itself in nothing so sharply as
+in their unerring instinct for annoying each other. Had Lucas
+volunteered explanation for his absence, Mayenne would not have listened
+to it; but as he withheld it, the duke demanded brusquely:
+
+"Well, do you give an account of yourself? You had better."
+
+Lucas repeated the tactics which he had found such good entertainment
+before. He looked with raised eyebrows toward us.
+
+"You would not have me speak before these vermin, uncle?"
+
+"These vermin understand no French," Mayenne made answer. "But do as it
+likes you. It is nothing to me."
+
+My master pinched my hand. Mayenne did not know us! After all, he was
+what M. Etienne had called him--a man, neither god nor devil. He could
+make mistakes like the rest of us. For once he had been caught napping.
+
+Lucas leaned back in his chair with a meditative air, as if idly
+wondering whether to speak or not. In his place I should not have
+wondered one moment. Had Mayenne assured me in that quiet tone that he
+cared nothing whether I spoke, I should scarce have been able to utter
+my words fast enough. But there was so strange a twist in Lucas's nature
+that he must sometimes thwart his own interests, value his caprice above
+his prosperity. Also, in this case his story was no triumphant one. But
+at length he did begin it:
+
+"I went to Belin to inform him that day before yesterday Etienne de Mar
+murdered his lackey, Pontou, in Mar's house in the Rue Coupejarrets."
+
+"Was that your errand?" Mayenne said, looking up in slow surprise. "My
+faith! your oaths to Lorance trouble you little."
+
+Lucas started forward sharply. "Do you tell me you did not know my
+purpose?"
+
+"I knew, of course, that you were up to some warlockry," Mayenne
+answered; "I did not concern myself to discover what."
+
+"There speaks the general! There speaks the gentleman!" Lucas cried out.
+"A general hangs a spy, yet he profits by spying. The spy runs the
+risks, incurs the shames; the general sits in his tent, his honour
+untarnished, pocketing all the glory. Faugh, you gentlemen! You will not
+do dirty work, but you will have it done for you. You sit at home with
+clean hands and eyes that see not, while we go forth to serve you. You
+are the Duke of Mayenne. I am your bastard nephew, living on your
+favour. But you go too far when you sneer at my smirches."
+
+He was on his feet, standing over Mayenne, his face blazing. M. Etienne
+made an instinctive step forward, thinking him about to knife the duke.
+But Mayenne, as we well knew, was no craven.
+
+"Be a little quieter, Paul," he said, unmoved. "You will have the guard
+in, in a moment."
+
+Lucas held absolutely still for a second. So did Mayenne. He knew that
+Lucas, standing, could stab quicker than he defend. He sat there with
+both hands on the table, looking composedly up at his nephew. Lucas
+flung away across the room.
+
+"I shall have dismissed these people directly," Mayenne continued. "Then
+you can tell me your tale."
+
+"I can tell it now in two words," Lucas answered, coming abruptly back.
+"Belin signed the warrant, and sent a young ass of the burgher guard
+after Mar. I attended to some affairs of my own. Then after a time I
+went round to the Trois Lanternes to see if they had got him. He was not
+there--only that cub of a boy of his. When I came in, he swore, the
+innkeeper swore, the whole crew swore, I was Mar. The fool of an officer
+arrested me."
+
+I expected Mayenne to burst out laughing in Lucas's chagrined face. But
+instead he seemed less struck with his nephew's misfortunes than with
+some other aspect of the affair. He said slowly:
+
+"You told Belin this arrest was my desire?"
+
+"I may have implied something of the sort."
+
+"You repeated it to the arresting officer before Mar's boy!"
+
+"I had no time to say anything before they hustled me off," Lucas
+exclaimed. "Mille tonnerres! Never had any man such luck as I. It's
+enough to make me sign papers with the devil."
+
+"Mar would believe I had broken faith with him?"
+
+"I dare say. One isn't responsible for what Mar believes," Lucas
+answered carelessly.
+
+Mayenne was silent, with knit brows, drumming his hand on the table.
+Lucas went on with the tale of his woes:
+
+"At the Bastille, I ordered the commissary to send to you. He did not;
+he sent to Belin. Belin was busy, didn't understand the message,
+wouldn't be bothered. I lay in my cell like a mouse in a trap till an
+hour agone, when at last he saw fit to appear--damn him!"
+
+Mayenne fell to laughing. Lucas cried out:
+
+"When they arrested me my first thought was that this was your work."
+
+"In that case, how should you be free now?"
+
+"You found you needed me."
+
+"You are twice wrong, Paul. For I knew nothing of your arrest. Nor do I
+think I need you. Pardieu! you succeed too badly to give me confidence."
+
+Lucas stood glowering, gnawing his lip, picturing the chagrin, the angry
+reproaches, the justifications he did not utter. I am certain he pitied
+himself as the sport of fate and of tyrants, the most shamefully used
+of mortal men. And so long as he aspired to the hand of Mayenne's ward,
+so long was he helpless under Mayenne's will.
+
+"'Twas pity," Mayenne said reflectively, "that you thought best to be
+absent last night. Had you been here, you had had sport. Your young
+friend Mar came to sing under his lady's window."
+
+"Saw she him?" Lucas cried sharply.
+
+"How should I know? She does not confide in me."
+
+"You took care to find out!" Lucas cried, knowing he was being badgered,
+yet powerless to keep himself from writhing.
+
+"I may have."
+
+"Did she see him?" Lucas demanded again, the heavy lines of hatred and
+jealousy searing his face.
+
+"No credit to you if she did not. You accomplish singularly little to
+harass M. de Mar in his love-making. You deserve that she should have
+seen him. But, as a matter of fact, she did not. She was in the chapel
+with madame."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Francois de Brie--now there is a youngster, Paul," Mayenne interrupted
+himself to point out, "who has not a tithe of your cleverness; but he
+has the advantage of being on the spot when needed. Desiring a word with
+mademoiselle, he betook himself to her chamber. She was not there, but
+Mar was warbling under the window."
+
+"Brie?"
+
+"Brie bestirred himself. He sent two of the guard round behind the
+house to cut off the retreat, while he and Latour attacked from the
+front."
+
+"Mar's killed?" Lucas cried. "He's killed!"
+
+"By no means," answered Mayenne. "He got away."
+
+Before he could explain further,--if he meant to,--the door opened, and
+Mlle. de Montluc came in.
+
+Her eyes travelled first to us, in anxiety; then with relief to Mayenne,
+sitting over the jewels; last, to Lucas, with startlement. She advanced
+without hesitation to the duke.
+
+"I am come, monsieur, to fetch you to supper."
+
+"Pardieu, Lorance!" Mayenne exclaimed, "you show me a different face
+from that of dinner-time." Indeed, so she did, for her eyes were shining
+with excitement, while the colour that M. Etienne had kissed into them
+still flushed her cheeks.
+
+"If I do," she made quick answer, "it is because, the more I think on
+it, the surer I grow that my loving cousin will not break my heart."
+
+"I want a word with you, Lorance," Mayenne said quietly.
+
+"As many as you like, monsieur," she replied promptly. "But will you not
+send these creatures from the room first?"
+
+"Do you include your cousin Paul in that term?"
+
+"I meant these jewellers. But since you suggest it, perhaps it would be
+as well for Paul to go."
+
+"You hear your orders, Paul."
+
+"Aye, I hear and I disobey," Lucas retorted. "Mademoiselle, I take too
+much joy in your presence to be willing to leave it."
+
+"Monsieur," she said to the duke, ignoring her cousin Paul with a
+coolness that must have maddened him, "will you not dismiss your
+tradespeople? Then can we talk comfortably."
+
+"Aye," answered Mayenne, "I will. I am more gallant than Paul. If you
+command it, out they go, though I have not half had time to look their
+wares over. Here, master jeweller," he addressed M. Etienne, slipping
+easily into Italian, "pack up your wares and depart."
+
+M. Etienne, bursting into rapid thanks to his Highness for his
+condescension in noticing the dirt of the way, set about his packing.
+Mayenne turned to his lovely cousin.
+
+"Now for my word to you, mademoiselle. You wept so last night, it was
+impossible to discuss the subject properly. But now I rejoice to see you
+more tranquil. Here is the beginning and the middle and the end of the
+matter: your marriage is my affair, and I shall do as I like about it."
+
+She searched his face; before his steady look her colour slowly died. M.
+Etienne, whether by accident or design, knocked his tray of jewels off
+the table. Murmuring profuse apologies, he dropped on his knees to grope
+for them. Neither of the men heeded him, but kept their eyes steadily on
+the lady.
+
+"Mademoiselle," Mayenne deliberately went on, "I have been over-fond
+with you. Had I followed my own interests instead of bowing to your
+whims, you had been a wife these two years. I have indulged you,
+mademoiselle, because you were my ally Montluc's daughter, because you
+came to me a lonely orphan, because you were my little cousin whose
+baby mouth I kissed. I have let you cavil at this suitor and that, pout
+that one was too tall and one too short, and a third too bold and a
+fourth not bold enough. I have been pleased to let you cajole me. But
+now, mademoiselle, I am at the end of my patience."
+
+"Monsieur," she cried, "I never meant to abuse your kindness. You let me
+cajole you, as you say, else I could not have done it. You treated my
+whims as a jest. You let me air them. But when you frowned, I have put
+them by. I have always done your will."
+
+"Then do it now, mademoiselle. Be faithful to me and to your birth.
+Cease sighing for the enemy of our house."
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "when you first brought him to me, he was not the
+enemy of our house. When he came here, day after day, season after
+season, he was not our enemy. When I wrote that letter, at Paul's
+dictation, I did not know he was our enemy. You told me that night that
+I was not for him. I promised you obedience. Did he come here to me and
+implore me to wed with him, I would send him away."
+
+Mayenne little imagined how truly she spoke; but he could not look in
+her eyes and doubt her honesty.
+
+"You are a good child, Lorance," he said. "I could wish your lover as
+docile."
+
+"He will not come here again," she cried. "He knows I am not for him. He
+gives it up, monsieur--he takes himself out of Paris. I promise you it
+is over. He gives me up."
+
+"I have not his promise for that," Mayenne said dryly; "but the next
+time he comes after you, he may settle with your husband."
+
+She uttered a little gasp, but scarce of surprise--almost of relief that
+the blow, so long expected, had at last been dealt.
+
+"You will marry me, monsieur?" she murmured. "To M. de Brie?"
+
+"You are shrewd, mademoiselle. You know that it will be a good three
+months before Francois de Brie can stand up to be wed. You say to
+yourself that much may happen in three months. So it may. Therefore will
+your bridegroom be at hand to-morrow morning."
+
+She made no rejoinder, but her eyes, wide like a hunted animal's, moved
+fearsomely, loathingly, to Lucas. Mayenne uttered an abrupt laugh.
+
+"No; Paul is not the happy man. Besides bungling the St. Quentin affair,
+he has seen fit to make free with my name in an enterprise of his own.
+Therefore, Paul, you will dance at Lorance's wedding a bachelor.
+Mademoiselle, you marry in the morning Senor el Conde del Rondelar y
+Saragossa of his Majesty King Philip's court. After dinner you will
+depart with your husband for Spain."
+
+Lucas sprang forward, hand on sword, face ablaze with furious protest.
+Mayenne, heeding him no more than if he had not been there, rose and
+went to Mlle de Montluc.
+
+"Have I your obedience, cousin?"
+
+"You know it, monsieur."
+
+She was curtseying to him when he folded her in his arms, kissing both
+her cheeks.
+
+"You are as good as you are lovely, and that says much, ma mie. We will
+talk a little more about this after supper. Permit me, mademoiselle."
+
+He took her hand and led her in leisurely fashion out of the room.
+
+It wondered me that Lucas had not killed him. He looked murder. Haply
+had the duke disclosed by so much as a quivering eyelid a consciousness
+of Lucas's rage, of danger to himself, Lucas had struck him down. But he
+walked straight past, clad in his composure as in armour, and Lucas made
+no move. I think to stab was the impulse of a moment, gone in a moment.
+Instantly he was glad he had not killed the Duke of Mayenne, to be cut
+himself into dice by the guard. After the duke was gone, Lucas stood
+still a long time, no less furious, but cogitating deeply.
+
+We had gathered up our jewels and locked our box, and stood holding it
+between us, waiting our chance to depart. We might have gone a dozen
+times during the talking, for none marked us; but M. Etienne, despite my
+tuggings, refused to budge so long as mademoiselle was in the room. Now
+was he ready enough to go, but hesitated to see if Lucas would not leave
+first. That worthy, however, showed no intention of stirring, but
+remained in his pose, buried in thought, unaware of our presence. To get
+out, we had to walk round one end or the other of the table, passing
+either before or behind him. M. le Comte was for marching carelessly
+before his face, but I pulled so violently in the other direction that
+he gave way to me. I think now that had we passed in front of him, Lucas
+would have let us go by without a look. As it was, hearing steps at his
+back, he wheeled about to confront us. If the eye of love is quick, so
+is the eye of hate. He cried out instantly:
+
+"Mar!"
+
+We dropped the box, and sprang at him. But he was too quick for us. He
+leaped back, whipping out his sword.
+
+"I have you now, Mar!" he cried.
+
+M. Etienne grabbed up the heavy box in both hands to brain him. Lucas
+retreated. He might run through M. Etienne, but only at the risk of
+having his head split. After all, it suited his book as well to take us
+alive. Shouting for the guards, he retreated toward the door.
+
+But I was there before him. As he ran at M. Etienne, I had dashed by,
+slammed the door shut, and bolted it. If we were caught, we would make a
+fight for it. I snatched up a stool for weapon.
+
+He halted. Then he darted over to the chimney, and pulled violently the
+bell-rope hanging near. We heard through the closed door two loud peals
+somewhere in the corridor.
+
+We both ran for him. Even as he pulled the rope, M. Etienne struck the
+box over his sword, snapping it. I dropped my stool, as he his box, and
+we pinned Lucas in our arms.
+
+"The oratory!" I gasped. With a strength born of our desperation, we
+dragged him kicking and cursing across the room, heaved him with all our
+force into the oratory, and bolted the door on him.
+
+"Your wig!" cried M. Etienne, running to recover his box. While I picked
+it up and endeavoured with clumsy fingers to put it on properly, he set
+on its legs the stool I had flung down, threw the pieces of Lucas's
+sword into the fireplace, seized his box, dashed to me and set my wig
+straight, dashed to the outer door, and opened it just as Pierre came up
+the corridor.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" the lackey demanded. "You ring as if it was a
+question of life and death."
+
+"I want to be shown out, if the messer will be so kind. His Highness the
+duke, when he went to supper, left me here to put up my wares, but I
+know not my way to the door."
+
+It was after sunset, and the room, back from the windows, was dusky. The
+lackey seemed not to mark our flushed and rumpled looks, and to be quite
+satisfied with M. Etienne's explanation, when of a sudden Lucas, who had
+been stunned for the moment by the violent meeting of his head and the
+tiles, began to pound and kick on the oratory door.
+
+He was shouting as well. But the door closed with absolute tightness; it
+had not even a keyhole. His cries came to us muffled and inarticulate.
+
+"Corpo di Bacco!" M. Etienne exclaimed, with a face of childlike
+surprise. "Some one is in a fine hurry to enter! Do you not let him in,
+Sir Master of the Household?"
+
+"I wonder who he's got there now," Pierre muttered to himself in
+French, staring in puzzled wise at the door. Then he answered M. Etienne
+with a laugh:
+
+"No, my innocent; I do not let him in. It might cost me my neck to open
+that door. Come along now. I must see you out and get back to my
+trenchers."
+
+We met not a soul on the stairs, every one, served or servants, being in
+the supper-room. We passed the sentry without question, and round the
+corner without hindrance. M. Etienne stopped to heave a sigh of
+thanksgiving.
+
+"I thought we were done for that time!" he panted. "Mordieu! another
+scored off Lucas! Come, let us make good time home! 'Twere wise to be
+inside our gates when he gets out of that closet."
+
+We made good time, ever listening for the haro after us. But we heard it
+not. We came unmolested up the street at the back, of the Hotel St.
+Quentin, on our way to the postern. Monsieur took the key out of his
+doublet, saying as we walked around the corner tower:
+
+"Well, it appears we are safe at home."
+
+"Yes, M. Etienne."
+
+Even as I uttered the words, three men from the shadow of the wall
+sprang out and seized us.
+
+"This is he!" one cried. "M. le Comte de Mar, I have the pleasure of
+taking you to the Bastille."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_The countersign._
+
+
+Instantly two more men came running from the postern arch. The five were
+upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while another gagged me.
+Two held M. Etienne, a third stopping his mouth.
+
+"Prettily done," quoth the leader. "Not a squeal! Morbleu! I wasn't
+anxious to have old Vigo out disputing my rights."
+
+M. Etienne's wrists were neatly trussed by this time. At a word from the
+leader, our captors turned us about and marched us up the lane by
+Mirabeau's garden, where Bernet's blood lay rusty on the stones. We
+offered no resistance whatever; we should only have been prodded with a
+sword-point for our pains. I made out, despite the thickening twilight,
+the familiar uniform of the burgher guard; M. de Belin, having bagged
+the wrong bird once, had now caught the right one.
+
+The captain bade one of the fellows go call the others off; I could
+guess that the job had been done thoroughly, every approach to the house
+guarded. I gnashed my teeth over the gag, that I had not suspected the
+danger. The truth was, both of us had our heads so full of mademoiselle,
+of Mayenne, and of Lucas, that we had forgotten the governor and his
+preposterous warrant.
+
+They led us into the Rue de l'Eveque, where was waiting the same black
+coach that had stood before the Oie d'Or, the same Louis on the box. Its
+lamps were lighted; by their glimmer our captors for the first time saw
+us fairly.
+
+"Why, captain," cried the man at M. Etienne's elbow, "this is no Comte
+de Mar! The Comte de Mar is fair-haired; I've seen him scores of times."
+
+"The Comte de Mar answers to the name of Etienne, and so does this
+fellow," the captain answered. He took the candle from one of the lamps
+and held it in M. Etienne's face. Then he put out a sudden hand, and
+pulled the wig off.
+
+"Good for you, captain!" cried the men. We were indeed unfortunate to
+encounter an officer with brains.
+
+"We'll take your gag off too, M. le Comte, in the coach," the captain
+told him.
+
+"Will you bring the lass along, captain?"
+
+"Not exactly," the leader laughed. "A fine prison it would be, could a
+felon have his bonnibel at his side. No, I'll leave the maid; but she
+needn't give the alarm yet. Do you stay awhile with her, L'Estrange;
+you'll not mind the job. Keep her a quarter of an hour, and then let her
+go her ways."
+
+They bundled my lord into the coach, box and all, the captain and two
+men with him. The fourth clambered up beside Louis as he cracked his
+whip and rattled smartly down the street.
+
+My guardian stole a loving arm around my waist and marched me down the
+quiet lane between the garden walls. He was clutching my right wrist,
+but my left hand was free, and I fumbled at my gag. In the middle of the
+deserted lane he halted.
+
+"Now, my beauty, if you'll be good I'll take that stopper off. But if
+you make a scream, by Heaven, it'll be your last!"
+
+I shook my head and squeezed his hand imploringly, while he, holding me
+tight in one sinewy arm, plucked left-handedly at the knot. I waited,
+meek as Griselda, till the gag was off, and then I let him have it.
+Volleying curses, I hammered him square in the eye.
+
+It was a mad course, for he was armed, I not. But instead of stabbing,
+he dropped me like a hot coal, gasping in the blankest consternation:
+
+"Thousand devils! It's a boy!"
+
+A second later, when he recollected himself, I was tearing down the
+lane.
+
+I am a good runner, and then, any one can run well when he runs for his
+life. Despite the wretched kirtle tying up my legs, I gained on him, and
+when I had reached the corner of our house, he dropped the pursuit and
+made off in the darkness. I ran full tilt round to the great gate,
+bellowing for the sentry to open. He came at once, with a dripping
+torch, to burst into roars of laughter at the sight of me. My wig was
+somewhere in the lane behind me; he knew me perfectly in my silly
+toggery. He leaned against the wall, helpless with laughing, shouting
+feebly to his comrades to come share the jest. I, you may well imagine,
+saw nothing funny about it, but kicked and shook the grilles in my rage
+and impatience. He did open to me at length, and in I dashed, clamouring
+for Vigo. He had appeared in the court by this, as also half a dozen of
+the guard, who surrounded me with shouts of astonished mockery; but I,
+little heeding, cried to the equery:
+
+"Vigo, M. le Comte is arrested! He's in the Bastille!"
+
+Vigo grasped my arm, and lifted rather than led me in at the guard-room
+door, slamming it in the soldiers' faces.
+
+"Now, Felix."
+
+"M. Etienne!" I gasped--"M. Etienne is arrested! They were lying in wait
+for him at the back of the house, by the tower. They've taken him off in
+a coach to the Bastille."
+
+"Who have?"
+
+"The governor's guard. You'll saddle and pursue? You'll rescue him?"
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+"About ten minutes. The coach was standing in the Rue de l'Eveque. They
+left a man guarding me, but I broke away."
+
+"It can't be done," Vigo said. "They'll be out of the quarter by now. If
+I could catch them at all, it would be close by the Bastille. No good in
+that; no use fighting four regiments. What the devil are they arresting
+him for, Felix? I understand Mayenne wants his blood, but what has the
+city guard to do with it?"
+
+"It's Lucas's game," I said. Then I remembered that we had not confided
+to him the tale of the first arrest. I went on to tell of the adventure
+of the Trois Lanternes, and, reflecting that he might better know just
+how the land lay with us, I made a clean breast of everything--the fight
+before Ferou's house, the rescue, the rencounter in the tunnel, to-day's
+excursion, and all that befell in the council-room. I wound up with a
+second full account of our capture under the very walls of the house,
+our garroting before we could cry on the guards to save us. Vigo said
+nothing for some time; at length he delivered himself:
+
+"Monsieur wouldn't have a patrol about the house. He wouldn't publish to
+the mob that he feared any danger whatever. Of course no one foresaw
+this. However, the arrest is the best thing could have happened."
+
+"Vigo!" I gasped in horror. Was Vigo turned traitor? The solid earth
+reeled beneath my feet.
+
+"He'd never rest till he got himself killed," Vigo went on. "Monsieur's
+hot enough, but M. Etienne's mad to bind. If they hadn't caught him
+to-night he'd have been in some worse pickle to-morrow; while, as it is,
+he's safe from swords at least."
+
+"But they can murder as well in the Bastille as elsewhere!" I cried.
+
+Vigo shook his head.
+
+"No; had they meant murder, they'd have settled him here in the alley.
+Since they lugged him off unhurt, they don't mean it. I know not what
+the devil they are up to, but it isn't that."
+
+"It was Lucas's game in the first place," I repeated. "He's too prudent
+to come out in the open and fight M. Etienne. He never strikes with his
+own hand; his way is to make some one else strike for him. So he gets M.
+Etienne into the Bastille. That's the first step. I suppose he thinks
+Mayenne will attend to the second."
+
+"Mayenne dares not take the boy's life," Vigo answered. "He could have
+killed him, an he chose, in the streets, and nobody the wiser. But now
+that monsieur's taken publicly to the Bastille, Mayenne dares not kill
+him there, by foul play or by law--the Duke of St. Quentin's son. No;
+all Mayenne can do is to confine him at his good pleasure. Whence
+presently we will pluck him out at King Henry's good pleasure."
+
+"And meantime is he to rot behind bars?"
+
+"Unless Monsieur can get him out. But then," Vigo went on, "a month or
+two in a cell won't be a bad thing for him, neither. His head will have
+a chance to cool. After a dose of Mayenne's purge he may recover of his
+fever for Mayenne's ward."
+
+"Monsieur! You will send to Monsieur?"
+
+"Of course. You will go. And Gilles with you to keep you out of
+mischief."
+
+"When? Now?"
+
+"No," said Vigo. "You will go clothe yourself in breeches first, else
+are you not likely to arrive anywhere but at the mad-house. And then eat
+your supper. It's a long road to St. Denis."
+
+I ran at once, through a fusillade of jeers from soldiers, grooms, and
+house-men, across the court, through the hall, and up the stairs to
+Marcel's chamber. Never was I gladder of anything in my life than to
+doff those swaddling petticoats. Two minutes, and I was a man again. I
+found it in my heart to pity the poor things who must wear the trappings
+their lives long.
+
+But for all my joy in my freedom, I choked over my supper and pushed it
+away half tasted, in misery over M. Etienne. Vigo might say comfortably
+that Mayenne dared not kill him, but I thought there were few things
+that gentleman dared not do. Then there was Lucas to be reckoned with.
+He had caught his fly in the web; he was not likely to let him go long
+undevoured. At best, if M. Etienne's life were safe, yet was he
+helpless, while to-morrow our mademoiselle was to marry. Vigo seemed to
+think that a blessing, but I was nigh to weeping into my soup. The one
+ray of light was that she was not to marry Lucas. That was something.
+Still, when M. Etienne came out of prison, if ever he did,--I could
+scarce bring myself to believe it,--he would find his dear vanished over
+the rocky Pyrenees.
+
+Vigo would not even let me start when I was ready. Since we were too
+late to find the gates open, we must wait till ten of the clock, at
+which hour the St. Denis gate would be in the hands of a certain
+Brissac, who would pass us with a wink at the word St. Quentin.
+
+I was so wroth with Vigo that I would not stay with him, but went
+up-stairs into M. Etienne's silent chamber, and flung myself down on the
+window-bench his head might never touch again, and wondered how he was
+faring in prison. I wished I were there with him. I cared not much what
+the place was, so long as we were together. I had gone down the mouth of
+hell smiling, so be it I went at his heels. Mayhap if I had struggled
+harder with my captors, shown my sex earlier, they had taken me too.
+Heartily I wished they had; I trow I am the only wight ever did wish
+himself behind bars. And promptly I repented me, for if Vigo had proved
+but a broken reed, there was Monsieur. Monsieur was not likely to sit
+smug and declare prison the best place for his son.
+
+The slow twilight faded altogether, and the dark came. The city was very
+still. Once in a while a shout or a sound of bell was borne over the
+roofs, or infrequent voices and footsteps sounded in the street beyond
+our gate. The men in the court under my window were quiet too, talking
+among themselves without much raillery or laughter; I knew they
+discussed the unhappy plight of the heir of St. Quentin. The chimes had
+rung some time ago the half-hour after nine, and I was fidgeting to be
+off, but huffed as I was with him, I could not lower myself to go ask
+Vigo's leave to start. He might come after me when he wanted me.
+
+"Felix! Felix!" Marcel shouted down the corridor. I sprang up; then,
+remembering my dignity, moved no further, but bade him come in to me.
+
+"Where are you mooning in the dark?" he demanded, stumbling over the
+threshold. "Oh, there you are. Dame! you'd come down-stairs mighty quick
+if you knew what was there for you?"
+
+"What?" I cried, divided between the wild hope that it was Monsieur and
+the wilder one that it was M. Etienne.
+
+"Don't you wish I'd tell you? Well, you're a good boy, and I will. It's
+the prettiest lass I've seen in a month of Sundays--you in your
+petticoats don't come near her."
+
+"For me?" I stuttered.
+
+"Aye; she asked for M. le Duc, and when he wasn't here, for you. I
+suppose it's some friend of M. Etienne's."
+
+I supposed so, indeed; I supposed it was the owner of my borrowed
+plumage come to claim her own, angry perhaps because I had not returned
+it to her. I wondered whether she would scratch my eyes out because I
+had lost the cap--whether I could find it if I went to look with a
+light. None too eagerly I descended to her.
+
+She was standing against the wall in the archway. Two or three of the
+guardsmen were about her, one with a flambeau, by which they were all
+surveying her. She wore the coif and blouse, the black bodice and short
+striped skirt, of the country peasant girl, and, like a country girl,
+she showed a face flushed and downcast under the soldiers' bold
+scrutiny. She looked up at me as at a rescuing angel. It was Mlle. de
+Montluc!
+
+I dashed past the torch-bearer, nearly upsetting him in my haste, and
+snatched her hand.
+
+"Mademoiselle! Come into the house!"
+
+She clutched me with fingers as cold as marble, which trembled on mine.
+
+"Where is M. de St. Quentin?"
+
+"At St. Denis."
+
+"You must take me there to-night."
+
+"I was going," I stammered, bewildered; "but you, mademoiselle--"
+
+"You knew of M. de Mar's arrest?"
+
+"Aye."
+
+"What coil is this, Felix?" demanded Vigo, coming up. He took the torch
+from his man, and held it in mademoiselle's face, whereupon an amazing
+change came over his own. He lowered the light, shielding it with his
+hand, as if it were an impertinent eye.
+
+"You are Vigo," she said at once.
+
+"Yes; and I know not what noble lady mademoiselle can be, save--will it
+please her to come into the house?"
+
+He led the way with his torch, not suffering himself to look at her
+again. He had his foot on the staircase, when she called to him, as if
+she had been accustomed to addressing him all her life:
+
+"Vigo, this will do. I will speak to you here."
+
+"As mademoiselle wishes. I thought the salon fitter. My cabinet here
+will be quieter than the hall, mademoiselle."
+
+He opened the door, and she entered. He pushed me in next, giving me the
+torch and saying:
+
+"Ask mademoiselle, Felix, whether she wants me." He amazed me--he who
+always ordered.
+
+"I want you, Vigo," mademoiselle answered him herself. "I want you to
+send two men with me to St. Denis."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"No; to-night."
+
+"But mademoiselle cannot go to St. Denis."
+
+"I can, and I must."
+
+"They will not let a horse-party through the gate at night," Vigo began.
+
+"We will go on foot."
+
+"Mademoiselle," Vigo answered, as if she had proposed flying to the
+moon, "you cannot walk to St. Denis."
+
+"I must!" she cried.
+
+I had put the flambeau in a socket on the wall. Now that the light shone
+on her steadily, I saw for the first time, though I might have known it
+from her presence here, how rent with emotion she was, white to the
+lips, with gleaming eyes and stormy breast. She had spoken low and
+quietly, but it was a main-force composure, liable to snap like glass. I
+thought her on the very verge of passionate tears. Vigo looked at her,
+puzzled, troubled, pitying, as on some beautiful, mad creature. She
+cried out on him suddenly, her rich voice going up a key:
+
+"You need not say 'cannot' to me, Vigo! You know not how I came here. I
+was locked in my chamber. I changed clothes with my Norman maid. There
+was a sentry at each end of the street. I slid down a rope of my
+bedclothes; it was dark--they did not see me. I knocked at Ferou's
+door--thank the saints, it opened to me quickly! I told M. Ferou--God
+forgive me!--I had business for the duke at the other end of the tunnel.
+He took me through, and I came here."
+
+"But, mademoiselle, the bats!" I cried.
+
+"Yes, the bats," she returned, with a little smile. "And my hands on the
+ropes!" She turned them over; the skin was torn cruelly from her
+delicate palms and the inside of her fingers. Little threads of blood
+marked the scores. "Then I came here," she repeated. "In all my life I
+have never been in the streets alone--not even for one step at noonday.
+Now will you tell me, M. Vigo, that I cannot go to St. Denis?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, it is yours to say what you can do."
+
+As for me, I dropped on my knees and laid my lips to her fingers,
+softly, for fear even their pressure might hurt her tenderness.
+
+"Mademoiselle!" I cried in pure delight. "Mademoiselle, that you are
+here!"
+
+She flushed under my words.
+
+"Ah, it is no little thing brought me. You knew M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+We assented; she went on, more to me than to Vigo, as if in telling me
+she was telling M. Etienne. She spoke low, as if in pain.
+
+"After supper M. de Mayenne went back to his cabinet and let out Paul de
+Lorraine."
+
+"I wish we had killed him," I muttered. "We had no time or weapons."
+
+"M. de Mayenne sent for me then," she went on, wetting her lips. "I have
+never seen him so angry. He was furious because M. de Mar had been
+before his face and he had not known it. He felt he had been made a mock
+of. He raged against me--I never knew he could be so angry. He said the
+Spanish envoy was too good for me; I should marry Paul de Lorraine
+to-morrow."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle!"
+
+"That was not it. I had borne that!" she cried. "Mayhap I deserved it.
+But while my lord thundered at me, word came that M. de Mar was taken.
+My lord swore he should die. He swore no man ever set him at naught and
+lived to boast of it."
+
+"Will--"
+
+She swept on unheeding:
+
+"He said he should be tried for the murder of Pontou--he should be
+tortured to make him confess it."
+
+She dropped down on her knees, hiding her face in her arms on the table,
+shaking from head to foot as in an ague. Vigo swore to himself, loudly,
+violently: "If Mayenne do that, by the throne of Heaven, I'll kill him!"
+
+She sprang to her feet, dry-eyed, fierce as a young lioness.
+
+"Is that all you can say? Mayenne may torture him and be killed for it?"
+
+"I shall send to the duke--" Vigo began.
+
+"Aye! I shall go to the duke! I can say who killed Pontou. I know much
+besides to tell the king. I was Mayenne's cousin, but if he would save
+his secrets he must give up M. de Mar. Mother of God! I have been his
+obedient child; I have let him do so with me as he would. I sent my
+lover away. I consented to the Spanish marriage. But to this I will not
+submit. He shall not torture and kill Etienne de Mar!"
+
+Vigo took her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Shall we start, Vigo? Once at St. Denis, I am hostage for his safety.
+The king can tell Mayenne that if Mar is tortured he will torture me!
+Mayenne may not tender me greatly, but he will not relish his cousin's
+breaking on the wheel."
+
+"Mayenne won't torture M. Etienne," Vigo said, patting her hand in both
+of his, forgetting she was a great lady, he an equery. "Fear not! you
+will save him, mademoiselle."
+
+"Let us go!" she cried feverishly. "Let us go!"
+
+Gilles was in the court waiting, stripped of his livery, dressed
+peaceably as a porter, but with a mallet in his hand that I should not
+like to receive on my crown. I thought we were ready, but Vigo bade us
+wait. I stood on the house-steps with mademoiselle, while he took aside
+Squinting Charlot for a low-voiced, emphatic interview.
+
+"Must we wait?" mademoiselle urged me, quivering like the arrow on the
+bow-string. "They may discover I am gone. Need we wait?"
+
+"Aye," I answered; "if Vigo bids us. He knows."
+
+We waited then. Vigo disappeared presently. Mademoiselle and I stood
+patient, with, oh! what impatience in our hearts, wondering how he could
+so hinder us. Not till he came back did it dawn on me for what we had
+stayed. He was dressed as an under-groom, not a tag of St. Quentin
+colours on him.
+
+"I beg a thousand pardons, mademoiselle. I had to give my lieutenant his
+orders. Now, if you will give the word, we go."
+
+"Do you go, M. Vigo?" She breathed deep. It was easy to see she looked
+upon him as a regiment.
+
+"Of course," Vigo answered, as if there could be no other way.
+
+I said in pure devilry, to try to ruffle him:
+
+"Vigo, you said you were here to guard Monsieur's interests-his house,
+his goods, his moneys. Do you desert your trust?"
+
+Mademoiselle turned quickly to him:
+
+"Vigo, you must not let me take you from your rightful post. Felix and
+your man here will care for me--"
+
+"The boy talks silliness, mademoiselle," Vigo returned tranquilly.
+"Mademoiselle is worth a dozen hotels. I go with her."
+
+He walked beside her across the court, I following with Gilles, laughing
+to myself. Only yesterday had Vigo declared that never would he give aid
+and comfort to Mlle. de Montluc. It was no marvel she had conquered M.
+Etienne, for he must needs have been in love with some one, but in
+bringing Vigo to her feet she had won a triumph indeed.
+
+We had to go out by the great gate, because the key of the postern was
+in the Bastille. But as if by magic every guardsman and hanger-about had
+disappeared--there was not one to stare at the lady; though when we had
+passed some one locked the gates behind us. Vigo called me up to
+mademoiselle's left. Gilles was to loiter behind, far enough to seem
+not to belong to us, near enough to come up at need. Thus, at a good
+pace, mademoiselle stepping out as brave as any of us, we set out across
+the city for the Porte St. Denis.
+
+Our quarter was very quiet; we scarce met a soul. But afterward, as we
+reached the neighbourhood of the markets, the streets grew livelier. Now
+were we gladder than ever of Vigo's escort; for whenever we approached a
+band of roisterers or of gentlemen with lights, mademoiselle sheltered
+herself behind the equery's broad back, hidden as behind a tower. Once
+the gallant M. de Champfleury, he who in pink silk had adorned Mme. de
+Mayenne's salon, passed close enough to touch her. She heaved a sigh of
+relief when he was by. For her own sake she had no fear; the midnight
+streets, the open road to St. Denis, had no power to daunt her: but the
+dread of being recognized and turned back rode her like a nightmare.
+
+Close by the gate, Vigo bade us pause in the door of a shop while he
+went forward to reconnoiter. Before long he returned.
+
+"Bad luck, mademoiselle. Brissac's not on. I don't know the officer, but
+he knows me, that's the worst of it. He told me this was not St. Quentin
+night. Well, we must try the Porte Neuve."
+
+But mademoiselle demurred:
+
+"That will be out of our way, will it not, Vigo? It is a longer road
+from the Porte Neuve to St. Denis?"
+
+"Yes; but what to do? We must get through the walls."
+
+"Suppose we fare no better at the Porte Neuve? If your Brissac is
+suspected, he'll not be on at night. Vigo, I propose that we part
+company here. They will not know Gilles and Felix at the gate, will
+they?"
+
+"No," Vigo said doubtfully; "but--"
+
+"Then can we get through!" she cried. "They will not stop us, such
+humble folk! We are going to the bedside of our dying mother at St.
+Denis. Your name, Gilles?"
+
+"Forestier, mademoiselle," he stammered, startled.
+
+"Then are we all Forestiers--Gilles, Felix, and Jeanne. We can pass out,
+Vigo; I am sure we can pass out. I am loath to part with you, but I fear
+to go through the city to the Porte Neuve. My absence may be
+discovered--I must place myself without the walls speedily.
+
+"Well, mademoiselle may try it," Vigo gave reluctant consent. "If you
+are refused, we can fall back on the Porte Neuve. If you succeed--Listen
+to me, you fellows. You will deliver mademoiselle into Monsieur's hands,
+or answer to me for it. If any one touches her little finger--well,
+trust me!"
+
+"That's understood," we answered, saluting together.
+
+"Mademoiselle need have no doubts of them," Vigo said. "Felix is M. le
+Comte's own henchman. And Gilles is the best man in the household, next
+to me. God speed you, my lady. I am here, if they turn you back."
+
+We went boldly round the corner and up the street to the gate. The
+sentry walking his beat ordered us away without so much as looking at
+us. Then Gilles, appointed our spokesman, demanded to see the captain of
+the watch. His errand was urgent.
+
+But the sentry showed no disposition to budge. Had we a passport? No, we
+had no passport. Then we could go about our business. There was no
+leaving Paris to-night for us. Call the captain? No; he would do nothing
+of the kind. Be off, then!
+
+But at this moment, hearing the altercation, the officer himself came
+out of the guard-room in the tower, and to him Gilles at once began his
+story. Our mother at St. Denis had sent for us to come to her dying bed.
+He was a street-porter; the messenger had had trouble to find him. His
+young brother and sister were in service, kept to their duties till
+late. Our mother might even now be yielding up the ghost! It was a
+pitiful case, M. le Capitaine; might we not be permitted to pass?
+
+The young officer appeared less interested in this moving tale than in
+the face of mademoiselle, lighted up by the flambeau on the tower wall.
+
+"I should be glad to oblige your charming sister," he returned, smiling,
+"but none goes out of the city without a passport. Perhaps you have one,
+though, from my Lord Mayenne?"
+
+"Would our kind be carrying a passport from the Duke of Mayenne?" quoth
+Gilles.
+
+"It seems improbable," the officer smiled, pleased with his wit. "Sorry
+to discommode you, my dear. But perhaps, lacking a passport, you can yet
+oblige me with the countersign, which does as well. Just one little
+word, now, and I'll let you through."
+
+[Illustration: "IT DESOLATES ME TO HEAR OF HER EXTREMITY."]
+
+"If monsieur will tell me the little word?" she asked innocently.
+
+He burst into laughter.
+
+"No, no; I am not to be caught so easy as that, my girl."
+
+"Oh, come, monsieur captain," Gilles urged, "many and many a fellow goes
+in and out of Paris without a passport. The rules are a net to stop big
+fish and let the small fry go. What harm will it do to my Lord Mayenne,
+or you, or anybody, if you have the gentleness to let three poor
+servants through to their dying mother?"
+
+"It desolates me to hear of her extremity," the captain answered, with a
+fine irony, "but I am here to do my duty. I am thinking, my dear, that
+you are some great lady's maid?"
+
+He was eying her sharply, suspiciously; she made haste to protest:
+
+"Oh, no, monsieur; I am servant to Mme. Mesnier, the grocer's wife."
+
+"And perhaps you serve in the shop?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she said, not seeing his drift, but on guard against a
+trap. "No, monsieur; I am never in the shop. I am far too busy with my
+work. Monsieur does not seem to understand what a servant-lass has to
+do."
+
+For answer, he took her hand and lifted it to the light, revealing all
+its smooth whiteness, its dainty, polished nails.
+
+"I think mademoiselle does not understand it, either."
+
+With a little cry, she snatched her hand from him, hiding it in the
+folds of her kirtle, regarding him with open terror. He softened
+somewhat at sight of her distress.
+
+"Well, it's none of my business if a lady chooses to be masquerading
+round the streets at night with a porter and a lackey. I don't know what
+your purpose is--I don't ask to know. But I'm here to keep my gate, and
+I'll keep it. Go try to wheedle the officer at the Porte Neuve."
+
+In helpless obedience, glad of even so much leniency, we turned away--to
+face a tall, grizzled veteran in a colonel's shoulder-straps. With a
+dragoon at his back, he had come so softly out of a side alley that not
+even the captain had marked him.
+
+"What's this, Guilbert?" he demanded.
+
+"Some folks seeking to get through the gates, sir. I've just turned them
+away."
+
+"What were you saying about the Porte Neuve?"
+
+"I said they could go see how that gate is kept. I showed them how this
+is."
+
+"Why must you pass through at this time of night?" said the commanding
+officer, civilly. Gilles once again bemoaned the dying mother. The young
+captain, eager to prove his fidelity, interrupted him:
+
+"I believe that's a fairy-tale, sir. There's something queer about these
+people. The girl says she is a grocer's servant, and has hands like a
+duchess's."
+
+The colonel looked at us sharply, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He
+said in a perfectly neutral manner:
+
+"It is of no consequence whether she be a servant or a duchess--has a
+mother or not. The point is whether these people have the countersign.
+If they have it, they can pass, whoever they are."
+
+"They have not," the captain answered at once. "I think you would do
+well, sir, to demand the lady's name."
+
+Mademoiselle started forward for a bold stroke just as the superior
+officer demanded of her, "The countersign?" As he said the word, she
+pronounced distinctly her name:
+
+"Lorance--"
+
+"Enough!" the colonel said instantly. "Pass them through, Guilbert."
+
+The young captain stood in a mull, but no more bewildered than we.
+
+"Mighty queer!" he muttered. "Why didn't she give it to me?"
+
+"Stir yourself, sir!" his superior gave sharp command. "They have the
+countersign; pass them through."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_St. Denis--and Navarre!_
+
+
+As the gates clanged into place behind us, Gilles stopped short in his
+tracks to say, as if addressing the darkness before him:
+
+"Am I, Gilles, awake or asleep? Are we in Paris, or are we on the St.
+Denis road?"
+
+"Oh, come, come!" Mademoiselle hastened us on, murmuring half to herself
+as we went: "O you kind saints! I saw he could not make us out for
+friends or foes; I thought my name might turn the scale. Mayenne always
+gives a name for a countersign; to-night, by a marvel, it was mine!"
+
+I like not to think often of that five-mile tramp to St. Denis. The road
+was dark, rutty, and in places still miry from Monday night's rain.
+Strange shadows dogged us all the way. Sometimes they were only bushes
+or wayside shrines, but sometimes they moved. This was not now a wolf
+country, but two-footed wolves were plenty, and as dangerous. The
+hangers-on of the army--beggars, feagues, and footpads--hovered, like
+the cowardly beasts of prey they were, about the outskirts of the city.
+Did a leaf rustle, we started; did a shambling shape in the gloom whine
+for alms, we made ready for onset. Gilles produced from some place of
+concealment--his jerkin, or his leggings, or somewhere--a brace of
+pistols, and we walked with finger on trigger, taking care, whenever a
+rustle in the grass, a shadow in the bushes, seemed to follow us, to
+talk loud and cheerfully of common things, the little interests of a
+humble station. Thanks to this diplomacy, or the pistol-barrels shining
+in the faint starlight, none molested us, though we encountered more
+than one mysterious company. We never passed into the gloom under an
+arch of trees without the resolution to fight for our lives. We never
+came out again into the faint light of the open road without wondering
+thanks to the saints--silent thanks, for we never spoke a word of any
+fear, Gilles and I. I trow mademoiselle knew well enough, but she spoke
+no word either. She never faltered, never showed by so much as the turn
+of her head that she suspected any danger, but, eyes on the distant
+lights of St. Denis, walked straight along, half a step ahead of us all
+the way. Stride as we might, we two strong fellows could never quite
+keep up with her.
+
+The journey could not at such pace stretch out forever. Presently the
+distant lights were no longer distant, but near, nearer, close at
+hand--the lights of the outposts of the camp. A sentinel started out
+from the quoin of a wall to stop us, but when we had told our errand he
+became as friendly as a brother. He went across the road into a
+neighbouring tournebride to report to the officer of the guard, and
+came back presently with a torch and the order to take us to the Duke of
+St. Quentin's lodging.
+
+It was near an hour after midnight, and St. Denis was in bed. Save for a
+drowsy patrol here and there, we met no one. Fewer than the patrols were
+the lanterns hung on ropes across the streets; these were the only
+lights, for the houses were one and all as dark as tombs. Not till we
+had reached the middle of the town did we see, in the second story of a
+house in the square, a beam of light shining through the shutter-chink.
+
+"Some one in mischief." Gilles pointed.
+
+"Aye," laughed the sentry, "your duke. This is where he lodges, over the
+saddler's."
+
+He knocked with the butt of his musket on the door. The shutter above
+creaked open, and a voice--Monsieur's voice--asked, "Who's there?"
+
+Mademoiselle was concealed in the embrasure of the doorway; Gilles and I
+stepped back into the street where Monsieur could see us.
+
+"Gilles Forestier and Felix Broux, Monsieur, just from Paris, with
+news."
+
+"Wait."
+
+"Is it all right, M. le Duc?" the sentry asked, saluting.
+
+"Yes," Monsieur answered, closing the shutter.
+
+The soldier, with another salute to the blank window, and a nod of
+"Good-by, then," to us, went back to his post. Left in darkness, we
+presently heard Monsieur's quick step on the flags of the hall, and the
+clatter of the bolts. He opened to us, standing there fully dressed,
+with a guttering candle.
+
+"My son?" he said instantly.
+
+Mademoiselle, crouching in the shadow of the door-post, pushed me
+forward. I saw I was to tell him.
+
+"Monsieur, he was arrested and driven to the Bastille to-night between
+seven and eight. Lucas--Paul de Lorraine--went to the governor and swore
+that M. Etienne killed the lackey Pontou in the house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. It was Lucas killed him--Lucas told Mayenne so. Mlle. de
+Montluc heard him, too. And here is mademoiselle."
+
+At the word she came out of the shadow and slowly over the threshold.
+
+Her alarm and passion had swept her to the door of the Hotel St. Quentin
+as a whirlwind sweeps a leaf. She had come without thought of herself,
+without pause, without fear. But now the first heat of her impulse was
+gone. Her long tramp had left her faint and weary, and here she had to
+face not an equery and a page, hers to command, but a great duke, the
+enemy of her house. She came blushfully in her peasant dress, shoes
+dirty from the common road, hair ruffled by the night winds, to show
+herself for the first time to her lover's father, opposer of her hopes,
+thwarter of her marriage. Proud and shy, she drifted over the door-sill
+and stood a moment, neither lifting her eyes nor speaking, like a bird
+whom the least movement would startle into flight.
+
+But Monsieur made none. He kept as still, as tongue-tied, as she,
+looking at her as if he could hardly believe her presence real. Then as
+the silence prolonged itself, it seemed to frighten her more than the
+harsh speech she may have feared; with a desperate courage she raised
+her eyes to his face.
+
+The spell was broken. Monsieur stepped forward at once to her.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you have come a journey. You are tired. Let me give you
+some refreshment; then will you tell me the story."
+
+It was an unlucky speech, for she had been on the very point of
+unburdening herself; but now, without a word, she accepted his escort
+down the passage. But as she went, she flung me an imploring glance; I
+was to come too. Gilles bolted the door again, and sat down to wait on
+the staircase; but I, though my lord had not bidden me, followed him and
+mademoiselle. It troubled me that she should so dread him--him, the
+warmest-hearted of all men. But if she needed me to give her confidence,
+here I was.
+
+Monsieur led her into a little square parlour at the end of the passage.
+It was just behind the shop, I knew, it smelt so of leather. It was
+doubtless the sitting-and eating-room of the saddler's family. Monsieur
+set his candle down on the big table in the middle; then, on second
+thought, took it up again and lighted two iron sconces on the wall.
+
+"Pray sit, mademoiselle, and rest," he bade, for she was starting up in
+nervousness from the chair where he had put her. "I will return in a
+moment."
+
+When he had gone from the room, I said to her, half hesitating, yet
+eagerly:
+
+"Mademoiselle, you were never afraid on the way, where there was good
+cause for fear. But now there is nothing to dread."
+
+She rose and fluttered round the walls of the room, looking for
+something. I thought it was for a way of escape, but it was not, for she
+passed the three doors and came back to her place with an air of
+disappointment, smoothing the loose strands of her hair.
+
+"I never before went anywhere unmasked," she murmured.
+
+Monsieur entered with a salver containing a silver cup of wine and some
+Rheims biscuit. He offered it to her formally; she accepted with
+scarcely audible thanks, and sat, barely touching the wine to her lips,
+crumbling the biscuit into bits with restless fingers, making the
+pretence of a meal serve as excuse for her silence. Monsieur glanced at
+her, puzzled-wise, waiting for her to speak. Had the Infanta Isabella
+come to visit him, he could not have been more surprised. It seemed to
+him discourteous to press her; he waited for her to explain her
+presence.
+
+I wanted to shake mademoiselle. With a dozen swift words, with a glance
+of her blue eyes, she could sweep Monsieur off his feet as she had swept
+Vigo. And instead, she sat there, not daring to look at him, like a
+child caught stealing sweets. She had found words to defend herself from
+the teasing tongues at the Hotel de Lorraine, to plead for me, to lash
+Lucas, to move Mayenne himself; but she could not find one syllable for
+the Duke of St. Quentin. She had been to admiration the laughing
+coquette, the stout champion, the haughty great lady, the frank lover;
+but now she was the shy child, blushing, stammering, constrained.
+
+Had Monsieur attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded of her
+up and down what had brought her this strange road at such amazing hour
+and in such unfitting company, she must needs have answered, and, once
+started, she would quickly have kindled her fire again. Had he, on other
+part, with a smile, an encouraging word, given her ever so little a
+push, she had gone on easily enough. But he did neither. He was
+courteous and cold. Partly was his coldness real; he could not look on
+her as other than the daughter of his enemy's house, ward of the man who
+had schemed to kill him, will-o'-the-wisp who had lured his son to
+disaster. Partly was it mere absence; M. Etienne's plight was more to
+him than mademoiselle's. When she spoke not, he turned impatiently to
+me.
+
+"Tell me, Felix, all about it."
+
+Before I could answer him the door behind us opened to admit two
+gentlemen, shoulder to shoulder. They were dressed much alike, plainly,
+in black. One was about thirty years of age, tall, thin-faced, and dark,
+and of a gravity and dignity beyond his years. Living was serious
+business to him; his eyes were thoughtful, steady, and a little cold.
+His companion was some ten years older; his beard and curling hair, worn
+away from his forehead by the helmet's chafing, were already sprinkled
+with gray. He had a great beak of a nose and dark-gray eyes, as keen as
+a hawk's, and a look of amazing life and vim. The air about him seemed
+to tingle with it. We had all done something, we others; we were no
+shirks or sluggards: but the force in him put us out, penny candles
+before the sun. I deem not Jeanne the Maid did any marvel when she
+recognized King Charles at Chinon. Here was I, a common lout, never
+heard a heavenly voice in all my days, yet I knew in the flick of an eye
+that this was Henri Quatre.
+
+I was hot and cold and trembling, my heart pounding till it was like to
+choke me. I had never dreamed of finding myself in the presence. I had
+never thought to face any man greater than my duke. For the moment I was
+utterly discomfited. Then I bethought me that not for God alone were
+knees given to man, and I slid down quietly to the floor, hoping I did
+right, but reflecting for my comfort that in any case I was too small to
+give great offence.
+
+Mademoiselle started out of her chair and swept a curtsey almost to the
+ground, holding the lowly pose like a lady of marble. Only Monsieur
+remained standing as he was, as if a king was an every-day affair with
+him. I always thought Monsieur a great man, but now I knew it.
+
+The king, leaving his companion to close the door, was across the room
+in three strides.
+
+"I am come to look after you, St. Quentin," he cried, laughing. "I
+cannot have my council broken up by pretty grisettes. The precedent is
+dangerous."
+
+With the liveliest curiosity and amusement he surveyed the top of
+mademoiselle's bent head, and Monsieur's puzzled, troubled countenance.
+
+"This is no grisette, Sire," Monsieur answered, "but a very high-born
+demoiselle indeed--cousin to my Lord Mayenne."
+
+Astonishment flashed over the king's mobile face; his manner changed in
+an instant to one of utmost deference.
+
+"Rise, mademoiselle," he begged, as if her appearance were the most
+natural and desirable thing in the world. "I could wish it were my good
+adversary Mayenne himself who was come to treat with us; but be assured
+his cousin shall lack no courtesy."
+
+She swayed lightly to her feet, raising her face to the king's. Into his
+countenance, which mirrored his emotions like a glass, came a quick
+delight at the sight of her. The colour waxed and waned in her cheeks;
+her breath fluttered uncertainly; her eyes, anxious, eager, searched his
+face.
+
+"I cry your Majesty's good pardon," she faltered. "I had urgent business
+with M. de St. Quentin--I did not guess he was with your Majesty--"
+
+"The king's business is glad to step aside for yours, mademoiselle."
+
+She curtseyed, blushing, hiding her eyes under their sooty lashes;
+thinking as I did, I made no doubt, here was a king indeed. His Majesty
+went on:
+
+"I can well believe, mademoiselle, 'tis no trifling matter brings you at
+midnight to our rough camp. We will not delay you further, but be at
+pains to remember that if in anything Henry of France can aid you he
+stands at your command."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO ST. DENIS.]
+
+He made her a noble bow and took her hand to kiss, when she, like a
+child that sees itself losing a protector, clutched his hand in her
+little trembling fingers, her wet eyes fixed imploringly on his face. He
+beamed upon her; he felt no desire whatever to be gone.
+
+"Am I to stay?" he asked radiantly; then with grave gentleness he added:
+"Mademoiselle is in trouble. Will she bring her trouble to the king?
+That is what a king is for--to ease his subjects' burdens."
+
+She could not speak; she made him her obeisance with a look out of the
+depths of her soul.
+
+"Then are you my subject, mademoiselle?" he demanded slyly.
+
+She shook the tears from her lashes, and found her voice and her smile
+to answer his:
+
+"Sire, I was a true Ligueuse this morning. But I came here half
+Navarraise, and now I swear I am wholly one."
+
+"Now, that is good hearing!" the king cried. "Such a recruit from
+Mayenne! Also is it heartening to discover that my conversion is not the
+only sudden one in the world. It has taken me five months to turn my
+coat, but here is mademoiselle turns hers in a day."
+
+He had glanced over his shoulder to point this out to his gentleman, but
+now he faced about in time to catch his recruit looking triste again.
+
+"Mademoiselle," he said, "you are beautiful, grave; but, as you had the
+graciousness to show me just now, still more beautiful, smiling. Now we
+are going to arrange matters so that you will smile always. Will you
+tell me what is the trouble, my child?"
+
+"Gladly, Sire," she answered, and dropped down a moment on her knees
+before him, to kiss his hand.
+
+I marvelled that Mayenne and all his armies had been able to keep this
+man off his throne and in his saddle four long years. It was plain why
+his power grew stronger every day, why every hour brought him new allies
+from the ranks of the League. You had only to see him to adore him. Once
+get him into Paris, the struggle would be over. They would put up with
+no other for king.
+
+"Sire," mademoiselle said with hesitancy, "I shall tire you with my
+story."
+
+"I am greatly in dread of it," the king answered, ceremoniously placing
+her in a chair before seating himself to listen. Then, to give her a
+moment, I think, to collect herself, he turned to his companion:
+
+"Here, Rosny, if you ache to be grubbing over your papers, do not let us
+delay you."
+
+"I am in no haste, Sire," his gentleman answered, unmoving.
+
+"Which is to say, you dare not leave me alone," the king laughed out. "I
+tell you, St. Quentin, if I am not dragooned into a staid, discreet,
+steady-paced monarch, 'twill be no lapse of Whip-King Rosny's. I am
+listening, mademoiselle."
+
+She began at once, eager and unfaltering. All her confusion was gone.
+It had been well-nigh impossible to tell the story to M. de St. Quentin,
+impossible to tell it to this impassive M. de Rosny. But to the King of
+France and Navarre it was as easy to talk as to one's playfellow.
+
+"Sire, I am Lorance de Montluc. My grandfather was the Marshal Montluc."
+
+"Were to-day next Monday, I could pray, 'God rest his soul,'" the king
+rejoined. "But even a heretic may say that he was a gallant general, an
+honour to France. He married a sister of Francois le Balafre? And
+mademoiselle is orphaned now, and my friend Mayenne's ward?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. I came here, Sire, to tell M. de St. Quentin concerning his
+son. And though I am talking of myself, it is all the same story. Three
+years ago, after the king died, M. de Mayenne was endeavouring with all
+his might to bring the Duke of St. Quentin into the League. He offered
+me to him for his son, M. de Mar."
+
+"And you are still Mlle. de Montluc?"
+
+She turned to Monsieur with the prettiest smile in the world.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin, though he has not fought for you, Sire, has ever
+been whole-heartedly loyal."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" the king exclaimed. "He is either an incredible
+loyalist or an incredible ass!"
+
+Even the grave Rosny smiled, and the victim laughed as he defended
+himself.
+
+"That my loyalty may be credible, Sire, I make haste to say that I had
+never seen mademoiselle till this hour."
+
+"I know not whether to think better of you for that, or worse," the king
+retorted. "Had I been in your place, beshrew me but I should have seen
+her."
+
+Monsieur smiled and was silent, with anxious eyes on mademoiselle.
+
+"M. de St. Quentin withdrew to Picardie, Sire, but M. de Mar stayed in
+Paris. And my cousin Mayenne never gave up entirely the notion of the
+marriage. He is very tenacious of his plans."
+
+"Aye," said the king, with a grimace. "Well I know."
+
+"He blew hot and cold with M. de Mar. He favoured the marriage on Sunday
+and scouted it on Wednesday and discussed it again on Friday."
+
+"And what were M. de Mar's opinions?"
+
+She met his probing gaze blushing but candid.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, favoured it every day in the week."
+
+"I'll swear he did!" the king cried.
+
+"When M. le Duc came back to Paris," mademoiselle went on, "and it was
+known he had espoused your cause, Sire, Mayenne was so loath to lose the
+whole house of St. Quentin to you that he offered to marry me out of
+hand to M. de Mar. And he refused."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris!" Henry cried. "We will marry you to a king's son. On
+my honour, mademoiselle--"
+
+"Sire," she pleaded, "you promised to hear me."
+
+"That I will, then. But I warn you I am out of patience with these St.
+Quentins."
+
+"Then you are out of patience with devotion to your cause, Sire."
+
+"What! you speak for the recreants?"
+
+"I assure you, Sire, you have no more loyal servant than M. de Mar."
+
+"Strange I cannot recollect the face of my so loyal servant," the king
+said dryly.
+
+But she, with a fine scorn of argument, made the audacious answer:
+
+"When you see it, you will like it, Sire."
+
+"Not half so well as I like yours, mademoiselle, I promise you! But he
+comes to me well commended, since you vouch for him. Or rather, he does
+not come. What is this ardent follower doing so long away from me? Where
+the devil does this eager partizan keep himself? St. Quentin, where is
+your son?"
+
+"He had been with you long ago, Sire, but for the bright eyes of a lady
+of the League. And now she comes to tell me--my page tells me--he is in
+the Bastille."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! And how has that calamity befallen?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, embarrassed by her very wealth of matter,
+confused between her longing to set the whole case before the king, and
+her fear of wearying his patience. But his glance told her she need have
+no misgiving. Had she come to present him Paris, he could not have been
+more interested.
+
+In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his words.
+
+"Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle? Last night, for the first time in
+a month, I saw my son. He was just returned from an adventure under her
+window. Mayenne's guard had set on him, and he was escaped by the skin
+of his teeth. He declared to me that never till he was slain should he
+cease endeavour to win Mlle. de Montluc. And I? Marry, I ate my words in
+humblest fashion. After three years I made my surrender. Since you are
+his one desire, mademoiselle, then are you my one desire. I bade him
+God-speed."
+
+She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her lashes.
+
+"Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends. And I have so many!"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried in the same breath, "fear not. I will get
+you your lover if I sell France for him."
+
+She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.
+
+"I have no fear, Sire. With you and M. de St. Quentin to save him, I can
+have no fear. But he is in desperate case. Has M. de St. Quentin told
+you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de Lorraine?"
+
+"Aye," said the king, "it is a dolourous topic--very painful! Eh,
+Rosny?"
+
+"I do not shrink from my pains, Sire," M. de Rosny answered quietly. "I
+hold myself much to blame in this matter. I thought I knew the Lucases
+root and branch--I did not discover that a daughter of the house had
+ever been a friend to Henri de Guise."
+
+"And how should you discover it?" the king demanded. He had made the
+attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself to the
+defence. "How were you to dream it? Henri de Guise's side was the last
+place to look for a girl of the Religion. But I forgive him. If he stole
+a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep: we have stolen the flower of
+Lorraine."
+
+"Paul Lucas--Paul de Lorraine," she went on eagerly, "was put into M. le
+Duc's house to kill him. He went all the more willingly that he believed
+M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor. He tried to draw M. de Mar into the
+scheme, to ruin him. He failed. And the whole plot came to naught."
+
+"I have learned that," the king said. "I have been told how a country
+boy stripped his mask off."
+
+He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed. He was
+so quick that he grasped everything at half a word. Instantly he had
+turned to the lady again. "Pray continue, dear mademoiselle."
+
+"Afterward--that is, yesterday--Paul went to M. de Belin and swore
+against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in his house in the Rue
+Coupejarrets. The lackey was murdered there, but Paul de Lorraine did
+it. The man knew the plot; Paul killed him to stop his tongue. I heard
+him confess it to M. de Mayenne. I and this Felix Broux were in the
+oratory and heard it."
+
+"Then M. de Mar was arrested?"
+
+"Not then. The officers missed him. To-day he came to our house, dressed
+as an Italian jeweller, with a case of trinkets to sell. Madame
+admitted him; no one knew him but me and my chamber-*mate. On the way
+out, Mayenne met him and kept him while he chose a jewel. Paul de
+Lorraine was there too. I was like to die of fear. I went in to M. de
+Mayenne; I begged him to come out with me to supper, to dismiss the
+tradespeople that I might talk with him there--anything. But it availed
+not. M. de Mayenne spoke freely before them, as one does before common
+folk. Presently he led me to supper. Paul was left alone with M. de Mar
+and the boy. He recognized them. He was armed, and they were not, but
+they overbore him and locked him up in the closet."
+
+"Mordieu, mademoiselle! I was to rescue M. de Mar for your sake, but now
+I will do it for his own. I find him much to my liking. He came away
+clear, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Aye, to be seized in the street by the governor's men. When M. de
+Mayenne found how he had been tricked, Sire, he blazed with rage."
+
+"I'll warrant he did!" the king answered, suppressing, however, in
+deference to her distress, his desire to laugh. "Ventre-saint-gris,
+mademoiselle! forgive me if this amuses me here at St. Denis. I trow it
+was not amusing in the Hotel de Lorraine."
+
+"He sent for me, Sire," she went on, blanching at the memory; "he
+accused me of shielding M. de Mar. It was true. He called me liar,
+traitor, wanton. He said I was false to my house, to my bread, to my
+honour. He said I had smiling lips and a Judas-heart--that I had kissed
+him and betrayed him. I had given him my promise never to hold
+intercourse with M. de Mar again, I had given my word to be true to my
+house. M. de Mar came by no will of mine. I had no inkling of such
+purpose till I beheld him before madame and her ladies. He came to
+entreat me to fly--to wed him. I denied him, Sire. I sent him away. But
+was I to say to the guard, 'This way, gentlemen. This is my lover'?"
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king exclaimed, "good hap that you have turned your
+back on the house of Lorraine. Here, if we are but rough soldiers, we
+know how to tender you."
+
+"It was not for myself I came," she said more quietly. "My lord had the
+right to chasten me. I am his ward, and I did deceive him. But while he
+foamed at me came word of M. de Mar's capture. Then Mayenne swore he
+should pay for this dear. He said he should be found guilty of the
+murder. He said plenty of witnesses would swear to it. He said M. de Mar
+should be tortured to make him confess."
+
+With an oath Monsieur sprang forward.
+
+"Aye," she cried, starting up, "he swore M. de Mar should suffer the
+preparatory and the previous, the estrapade and the brodekins!"
+
+"He dare not," the king shouted. "Mordieu, he dare not!"
+
+"Sire," she cried, "you can promise him that for every blow he strikes
+Etienne de Mar you will strike me two. Mar is in his hands, but I am in
+yours. For M. de Mar, unhurt, you will deliver him me, unhurt. If he
+torture Mar, you will torture me."
+
+"Mademoiselle," the king cried, "rather shall he torture every chevalier
+in France than I touch a hair of your head!"
+
+"Sire--" the word died away in a sigh; like a snapt rose she fell at his
+feet.
+
+The king was quick, but Monsieur quicker. On his knees beside her,
+raising her head on his arm, he commanded me:
+
+"Up-stairs, Felix! The door at the back--bid Dame Verney come
+instantly."
+
+I flew, and was back to find him risen, holding mademoiselle in his
+arms. Her hair lay loose over his shoulder like a rippling flag; her
+lashes clung to her cheeks as they would never lift more.
+
+"St. Quentin," his Majesty was saying, "I would have married her to a
+prince. But since she wants your son she shall have him,
+ventre-saint-gris, if I storm Paris to-morrow!" And as Monsieur was
+carrying her from the room, the king bent over and kissed her.
+
+"Mademoiselle has dropped a packet from her dress," M. de Rosny said.
+"Will you take it, St. Quentin?"
+
+The king, who was nearest, turned to pass it to him; at the sight of it
+he uttered his dear "ventre-saint-gris!" It was a flat, oblong packet,
+tied about with common twine, the seal cut out. The king twitched the
+string off, and with one rapid glance at the papers put them into
+Monsieur's hand.
+
+"Take them, St. Quentin; they are yours."
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_The two dukes._
+
+
+Mademoiselle being given into Dame Verney's motherly hands, Gilles and I
+were ordered to repose ourselves on the skins in the saddler's shop.
+Lying there in the malodourous gloom, I could see the crack of light
+under the door at the back and hear, between Gilles's snores, the murmur
+of voices. The king and his gentlemen were planning to save my master; I
+went to sleep in perfect peace.
+
+At daybreak, even before the saddler opened the shop, Monsieur routed us
+out.
+
+"I'm off for Paris, lads. Felix comes with me. Gilles stays to guard
+mademoiselle."
+
+I felt not a little injured, deeming that I, whom mademoiselle knew
+best, should not be the one chosen to stay by her. But the sting passed
+quickly. After all, Paris was likely to be more exciting than St. Denis.
+
+The day being Friday, we delayed not to eat, but straightway mounted the
+two nags that a sunburnt Bearn pikeman had brought to the door. As we
+walked them gently across the square, which at this rath hour we alone
+shared with the twittering birds, we saw coming down one of the empty
+streets the hurrying figure of M. de Rosny. My lord drew rein at once.
+
+"You are no slugabed, St. Quentin," the young councillor called. "I
+deserved to miss you. Fear not! I come not to hinder you, but to wish
+you God-speed."
+
+"Now, this is kind, Rosny," Monsieur answered, grasping his hand. "The
+more that you don't approve me."
+
+Rosny smiled, like a sudden burst of sunshine in a December day. Another
+man's embrace would have meant less.
+
+"I approve you so much, St. Quentin, that I cannot composedly see you
+putting your head into the lion's jaws."
+
+"My head is used to the pillow. Do the teeth close, I am no worse off
+than my son."
+
+"Your death makes your son's no easier."
+
+"Why, what else to do, Rosny?" Monsieur exclaimed. "Mishandle the lady?
+Storm Paris? Sell the Cause?"
+
+"I would we could storm Paris," Rosny sighed. "It would suit me better
+to seize the prisoner than to sue for him. But Paris is not ripe for us
+yet. You know my plan--to send to Villeroi. I believe he could manage
+this thing."
+
+"I am second to none," Monsieur said politely, "in my admiration of M.
+de Villeroi's abilities. But to reach him is uncertain; what he can or
+will do, uncertain. Etienne de Mar is not Villeroi's son; he is mine."
+
+"Aye, it is your business," Rosny assented. "It is yours to take your
+way."
+
+"A mad way, but mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that once or
+twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness has served."
+
+Rosny took Monsieur's hand in a silent grip.
+
+"Maximilien," the duke said, smiling down on him, "what a pity you are a
+scamp of a heretic!"
+
+"Henri," Rosny returned gravely, "I would you had had the good fortune
+to be born in the Religion."
+
+Again he wished us God-speed, and we gathered up our reins. As we turned
+the corner I glanced back to find him still standing as we had left him,
+gazing soberly after us.
+
+The man who was going into the lion's den was far less solemn over it.
+By fits and starts, as he thought on his son's great danger, he
+contrived a gloomy countenance: but Monsieur had ridden all his life
+with Hope on the pillion; she did not desert him now. As we cantered
+steadily along in the fresh, cool morning, he already pictured M.
+Etienne released. However mad he acknowledged his errand to be, I think
+he was scarce visited by a doubt of its success. It was impossible to
+him that his son should not be saved.
+
+We entered with perfect ease the gate of Paris, and took our way without
+hesitancy through the busiest streets. Nowhere did the guard spring on
+us, but, instead, more than once, the passers-by gathered in knots, the
+tradesmen and artisans ran out of their shops to cheer St. Quentin, to
+cheer France, to cheer peace, to cheer to the echo the Catholic king.
+
+"I hope Mayenne hears them," Monsieur said to me, doffing his hat to a
+big farrier who had come out of his smithy waving impudently in the eye
+of all the world the white flag of the king.
+
+We kept a brisk pace alike where they cheered us and where, in other
+streets, they scowled and hooted at us, so that I looked out for men
+with pistols in second-story windows. But, friend or foe, none stopped
+us till at length we drew rein before the grilles of the Hotel de
+Lorraine.
+
+They made no demur at admitting us. Monsieur went into the house, while
+I led the horses to the stables, where three or four grooms at once
+volunteered to rub them down, in eagerness to pump their guardian. But
+before the fellows had had time to get much out of me came Jean
+Marchand, all unrecognizing, to summon me indoors. I followed him in
+delight, partly for curiosity, partly because it had seemed to me when
+the doorway swallowed Monsieur that I might never see him more. Jean
+ushered me into the well-remembered council-room, where Monsieur stood
+alone, surprised at the sight of me.
+
+"A lackey came for me," I said. "Look, Monsieur, that's where we shut up
+Lucas."
+
+I ceased hastily, for I knew the step in the corridor.
+
+It was difficult to credit mademoiselle's tale, to believe that Mayenne
+could ever be in a rage. In he came, big and calm and smiling, whatever
+emotion he may have felt at Monsieur's arrival not only buried, but with
+a flower-bed blooming over it. He greeted his guest with all the
+courteous ease of an unruffled conscience and a kindly heart. Not till
+his glance fell on me did he show any sign of discomposure.
+
+"What, you!" he exclaimed brusquely.
+
+"Your servant brought him hither," Monsieur said for me.
+
+"I understood that one of your gentlemen had come with you. I sent for
+him, deeming his presence might conduce to your ease, M. de St.
+Quentin."
+
+"I am at my ease, M. de Mayenne," my lord answered, with every
+appearance of truth. "You may go, Felix."
+
+"No," said Mayenne. "Since he is here, he may stay. He serves the
+purpose as well as another."
+
+He did not say what the purpose was, nor could I see for what he had
+kept me, unless as a sign to Monsieur that he meant to play fair. I
+began to feel somewhat heartened.
+
+"You have guessed, M. de Mayenne, my errand?"
+
+"Certainly. You have come to join the League."
+
+Monsieur laughed out.
+
+"On the contrary, M. de Mayenne, I have come to persuade you to join the
+King."
+
+"That was a waste of horse-flesh."
+
+"My friend, you know as well as we do that before long you will come
+over."
+
+"I am not there yet, nor are my enemies scattered, nor is the League
+dead."
+
+"Dying, my lord. It will get its coup de grace o' Sunday, when the king
+goes to mass."
+
+"St. Quentin," Mayenne made quiet answer, "when I am in such case that
+nothing remains to me but to fall on my sword or to kneel to Henry, be
+assured I shall kneel to Henry. Till then I play my game."
+
+"Play it, then. We have the patience to wait for you, monsieur. Be
+assured, in your turn, that when you do come on your knees to his
+Majesty you will do well to have a friend or two at court."
+
+"Morbleu," Mayenne cried, suddenly showing his teeth, "you will never go
+back to him if I choose to stop you!"
+
+Monsieur raised his eyebrows at him, pained by the unsuavity.
+
+"Of course not, monsieur. I quite understood that when I entered the
+gate. I shall never leave this house if you will otherwise."
+
+"You will leave the house unharmed," Mayenne said curtly. "I shall not
+treat you as your late master treated my brother."
+
+"I thank your generosity, monsieur, and commend your good sense."
+
+Mayenne looked for a moment as if he repented of both. Then he broke
+into a laugh.
+
+"One permits the insolences of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur sprang up, his hand on his sword. But at once the quick flush
+passed from his face, and he, too, laughed.
+
+Mayenne sat as he was, in somewhat lowering silence. My duke made a
+step nearer him, and spoke for the first time with perfect seriousness.
+
+"My Lord Mayenne, it was no outrecuidance brought me here this morning.
+There is the Bastille. There is the axe. I know that my course has been
+offensive to you--your nephew proved me that. I know also that you do
+not care to meddle with me openly. At least, you have not meddled.
+Whether you will change your method--but I venture to believe not. I am
+popular just now in Paris. I had more cheers as I came in this morning
+than have met your ears for many a month. You have a great name for
+prudence, M. de Mayenne; I believe you will not molest me."
+
+I hardly thought my duke was making a great name for prudence. But then,
+as he said, he had to work in his own way. Mayenne returned, with
+chilling calm:
+
+"You may find me, St. Quentin, less timid than you suppose."
+
+"Impossible. Mayenne's courage is unquestioned. I rely not on his
+timidity, but on his judgment."
+
+"You take a great deal upon yourself in supposing that I wanted your
+death on Tuesday and do not want it on Friday."
+
+"The king is three days nearer the true faith than on Tuesday. His party
+is three days stronger. On Tuesday it would have been a blunder to kill
+me; on Friday it is three days worse a blunder."
+
+"But not less a pleasure. I have had something of the kind in mind ever
+since your master killed my brother."
+
+"You should profit by that murderer's experience before you take a leaf
+from his book, M. de Mayenne. Henry of Valois gained singularly little
+when he slew Guise to make you head of the League."
+
+Mayenne started, and then laughed to show his scorn of the flattery. But
+I think he was, all the same, half pleased, none the less because he
+knew it to be flattery. He said unexpectedly:
+
+"Your son comes honestly by his unbound tongue."
+
+"Ah, my son! Now that you mention him, we shall discuss him a little.
+You have put my son, monsieur, in the Bastille."
+
+"No; Belin and my nephew Paul, whom you know, have put him there."
+
+"But M. de Mayenne can get him out if he choose."
+
+"If he choose."
+
+Monsieur sat down again, with the air of one preparing for an amiable
+discussion.
+
+"He is charged with the murder of one Pontou, a lackey. Of course he did
+not commit it, nor would you care if he had. His real offence is making
+love to your ward."
+
+"Well, do you deny it?"
+
+"Not the love, but the offence of it. Palpably you might do much worse
+than dispose of the lady to my heir."
+
+"I might do much better than bestow my time on you if that is all you
+have to say."
+
+"We have hardly opened the subject, M. de Mayenne--"
+
+"I have no wish to carry it further."
+
+"Monsieur, the king's ranks afford no better match than my heir."
+
+"No maid of mine shall ever marry a Royalist."
+
+"I swore no son of mine should ever marry a Leaguer, but I have come to
+see the error of my ways, as you will see yours, Mayenne. It is for you
+to choose where among the king's forces you will marry mademoiselle."
+
+A vague uneasiness, a fear which he would not own a fear, crept into
+Mayenne's eyes. He studied the face before him, a face of gay challenge,
+and said, at length, not quite confidently himself:
+
+"You speak with a confidence, St. Quentin."
+
+"Why, to be sure."
+
+Mayenne jumped heavily to his feet.
+
+"What mean you?"
+
+"I mean that mademoiselle's marrying is in my hands. Where is your ward,
+M. de Mayenne?"
+
+"Mordieu! Have you found her?"
+
+"You speak sooth."
+
+"In your hotel--"
+
+"No, eager kinsman. In a place whither you cannot follow her."
+
+Mayenne looked about, as if with some instinctive idea of seeking a
+weapon, of summoning his soldiers.
+
+"By God's throne, you shall tell me where!"
+
+"With pleasure. She is at St. Denis."
+
+Mayenne cried helplessly, as numbed under a blow:
+
+"St. Denis! But how--"
+
+"How came she there? On foot, every step. I suppose she never walked
+two streets in her life before, has she, M. de Mayenne? But she tramped
+to St. Denis through the dark, to knock at my door at one in the
+morning."
+
+Mayenne seized Monsieur's wrist.
+
+"She is safe, St. Quentin? She is safe?"
+
+"As safe, monsieur, as the king's protection can make her."
+
+"Pardieu! Is she with the king?"
+
+"She is at my lodgings, in the care of the saddler's wife who lets them.
+I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."
+
+"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming
+short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.
+
+"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
+Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
+heart."
+
+"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for
+her safe return."
+
+"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his
+best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager
+for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my
+venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me
+in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he
+would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."
+
+"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"
+
+"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the
+way, there is Valere, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses
+little."
+
+"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"
+
+"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."
+
+I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.
+But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his
+arm-chair.
+
+"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"
+
+"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without
+a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army
+cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly,
+for that?"
+
+Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether
+the shot hit. Monsieur went on:
+
+"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must
+answer for it to the people of Paris."
+
+Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he
+said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:
+
+"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was
+not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him
+awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in
+heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."
+
+"Monsieur--"
+
+"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked
+to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not
+see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."
+
+"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is
+to that generosity I appeal."
+
+"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."
+
+"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the
+same path!"
+
+It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's.
+Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to
+warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had
+greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:
+
+"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries.
+They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet
+cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."
+
+Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.
+
+"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she
+had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the
+streets myself till dawn."
+
+"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our
+torture did you torture Mar."
+
+"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.
+
+"God's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to
+what the maid was strung."
+
+"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said
+slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as
+befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was
+good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I
+drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your
+daughter, St. Quentin."
+
+Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added,
+with his cool smile:
+
+"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh
+at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to
+your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"
+
+"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."
+
+He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief
+delayed taking it.
+
+"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the
+Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little
+concessions for myself."
+
+"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."
+
+My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived
+with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask
+of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still,
+that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one
+side, I have thought of something for you to grant."
+
+"Name it, monsieur."
+
+"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his
+usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread
+them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I
+was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had
+vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle.
+de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."
+
+"Your shrewdness does you credit."
+
+"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of
+your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."
+
+"Even to half my fortune--"
+
+"No, not your gear. Save that for your Bearnais's itching palm."
+
+"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the
+League."
+
+"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on
+at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had
+certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I
+have changed my mind about beginning with yours."
+
+"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."
+
+Mayenne laughed.
+
+"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I
+let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy
+me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."
+
+"Oh, I don't like that!"
+
+The naivete amazed while it amused Mayenne.
+
+"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my
+court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight
+to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no
+attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."
+
+Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the
+condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers,
+his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be
+killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to
+inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually
+hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.
+
+"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den
+and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne,
+especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."
+
+"You mistake, St. Quentin. You are welcome to spend the rest of your
+days with me."
+
+"In the Bastille?"
+
+"Or in the League."
+
+"The former is preferable."
+
+"You may count yourself thrice fortunate, then, that a third alternative
+is given you."
+
+"It needs not the reminder. You have treated me as a prince indeed. Be
+assured the St. Quentins will not forget."
+
+"Every one forgets."
+
+"Perhaps. But when you need our good offices we shall not have had time
+to forget."
+
+"Pardieu, St. Quentin, you have good courage to tell me to my head my
+course is run!"
+
+"My dear Mayenne, none punishes the maunderings of the court jester."
+
+Monsieur laughed out with a gay gusto; after a moment Mayenne laughed
+too. My duke cried quickly, rising and walking the length of the table
+to his host:
+
+"You have dealt with me munificently, Mayenne. You have kept back but
+one thing I want. That is yourself. You know you must come over to us
+sooner or later. Come now!"
+
+The other did not flame out at Monsieur, but answered coldly:
+
+"I have no taste to be Navarre's vassal."
+
+"Better his than Spain's."
+
+Mayenne shrugged his shoulders, his face at its stolidest.
+
+"Well, I am no astrologer to read the future."
+
+Monsieur laid an emphatic hand on his host's shoulder.
+
+"But I read it, my friend. I see a French land under a French king, a
+Catholic and a gallant fellow, faithful to old friends, friendly to old
+foes. I see the dear land at peace at last, the looms humming, the mills
+clacking, wheat growing thick on the battle-fields."
+
+Mayenne looked up with a grim smile.
+
+"I have still a field or two to water for that wheat. My compliments to
+your new master, St. Quentin; you may tell him from me that when I
+submit, I submit. When I have made my surrender, from that hour forth am
+I his hound to lick his hand, to guard and obey him. Till then, let him
+beware of my teeth! While I have one pikeman to my back, one sou in my
+pouch, I fight my cause."
+
+"And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry's
+court to pull you up out of the mire."
+
+"I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices,"
+Mayenne said grandly. He stood there stately and proud and confident,
+the picture of princeliness and strength. Last night at St. Denis it had
+seemed to me that no power could defy my king. Now it seemed to me that
+no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne. When suddenly,
+precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you
+know it is make-believe, the general-duke's dignity melted into a smile.
+
+"After all," he said, "it's as well to lay an anchor to windward."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_My young lord settles scores with two foes at once._
+
+
+Occupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our several
+stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I awaited in a
+shady corner of the court the conclusion of formalities. I had just
+declared that King Henry would be in Paris within a week, and was on the
+point of getting my crown cracked for it, when, as if for the very
+purpose--save the mark!--of rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas.
+He approached rapidly, eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no
+whit; but all the loungers turned to stare at him. Even then he paid no
+heed, passing us without a glance. But the tall d'Auvray bespoke him.
+
+"M. de Lorraine! Any news?"
+
+He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he had not
+known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now. He was both
+pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye all night.
+
+"Any news here?" he made Norman answer.
+
+"No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information. We have heard nothing."
+
+"And the woman?"
+
+"Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word."
+
+Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of us, as if
+he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he was not in the
+least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a full minute before
+he awoke to my identity.
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yes, M. de Lorraine," I said, with all the respectfulness I could
+muster, which may not have been much. Considering our parting, I was
+ready for any violence. But after the first moment of startlement he
+regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way, while he inquired without
+apparent resentment how I came there.
+
+"With M. le Duc de St. Quentin," I grinned at him. "We and M. de Mayenne
+are friends now."
+
+I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed. But he turned
+abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet shown.
+
+"You've not told this fellow?"
+
+"We understand our orders, monsieur," d'Auvray answered, a bit huffed.
+
+Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but of course
+I could not.
+
+"They had no need to tell me, M. de Lorraine. I know quite well what the
+trouble is. I know rather more about it than you do yourself."
+
+He confronted me now with all the fire I could ask.
+
+"What mean you, whelp?"
+
+"I mean mademoiselle. What else should I mean?"
+
+"What do you know?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"Her whereabouts?"
+
+"Her whereabouts."
+
+He had his hand to his knife by this. I abated somewhat of my drawl to
+say, still airily:
+
+"Go ask M. de St. Quentin. He's here. He'll be so glad to see you."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Certes. He's closeted now with M. de Mayenne. They're thicker than
+brothers. Go see for yourself, M.--Lucas."
+
+"Where is mademoiselle?"
+
+"Safe. She's to marry the Comte de Mar to-morrow."
+
+He stared at me for one moment, weighing whether this could be true;
+then without further parley he shot into the house.
+
+"Is that true?" d'Auvray demanded.
+
+Their tongues loosened now, they flooded me with questions concerning
+mademoiselle, which I answered warily as I could, heartily repenting me
+by this of baiting Lucas. No good could come of it. He might even turn
+Mayenne from his bargain, upset all our triumph. I hardly heard what the
+soldiers said to me; I was almost nervous enough, wild enough, to dash
+up-stairs after him. But that was no help. I stayed where I was, fevered
+with anxiety.
+
+At the end of five minutes he came out of the house again, and, without
+a glance at us, went straight through the gate with the step and air of
+a man who knows what he is about. I was no easier in my mind though I
+saw him gone.
+
+Soon on his steps came a lackey to order M. de St. Quentin's horses and
+two musketeers to mount and ride with him. On reaching the door with the
+nags, I discovered I was not to be of the party; our second steed must
+carry gear of mademoiselle's and her handwoman, a hard-faced peasant,
+silent as a stone. Though the men quizzed her, asking if she were glad
+to get to her mistress again, whether she had known all this time the
+lady's whereabouts, she answered no single word, but busied herself
+seeing the horse loaded to her notion. Presently, in the guidance of
+Pierre, Monsieur appeared.
+
+"You stay, Felix, and go to the Bastille for your master. Then you will
+wait at the St. Denis gate for Vigo, with horses."
+
+"Is all right, Monsieur?" I had to ask, as I held his stirrup. "Is all
+right? Lucas--"
+
+His face had been a little clouded as he came down the stairs, and now
+it darkened more, but he answered:
+
+"Quite right, Achates. M. de Mayenne stands to his word. Lucas availed
+nothing."
+
+He stood a moment frowning, then his countenance cleared up.
+
+"My faith! I have enough to gladden me without fretting that Lucas is
+alive. Fare you well, Felix. You are like to reach St. Denis as soon as
+I. My son's horse will not lag."
+
+He sprang to the saddle with a smiling salute to his guardians, and the
+little train clattered off.
+
+Pierre came to my elbow with an open paper--the order signed and sealed
+for M. de Mar's release.
+
+"Here, my young cockerel, you and d'Auvray are to take this to the
+Bastille, and it will be strange if your master does not walk free
+again. His Grace bids you tell M. de Mar he remembers Wednesday night,
+underground."
+
+"And I remember Tuesday night in the council-room, Pierre," I was
+beginning, but he cut me short. Even now that I was in favour, he risked
+no mention of his disobedience. He packed me off with d'Auvray on the
+instant; I had no chance to ask him whether he suspected us yesterday.
+Sometimes I have thought he did, but I am bound to say he gave us no
+look to show it.
+
+D'Auvray and I walked straight across Paris to the many-towered
+Bastille. It seemed a little way. Before the potent name of Mayenne bars
+flew open; a sentry on guard in the court led us into a small room all
+stone, floor, walls, ceiling, where sat at the table some high official,
+perhaps the governor of the prison himself. He was an old campaigner,
+grizzled and weather-beaten, his right sleeve hanging empty. An
+interesting figure, no doubt, but I paid him scant attention, for at his
+side stood Lucas.
+
+"I come on M. de Mayenne's business," he was expostulating, vehement,
+yet civil. "I suppose he did not think it necessary to write the order,
+since you know me."
+
+"The regulations, M. de Lorraine--" The officer broke off to demand of
+our escort, "Well, what now?"
+
+I went straight up to him, not waiting permission, and held out my
+paper.
+
+"An order, if it please you, monsieur, for the Comte de Mar's release."
+
+Lucas's hand went out to snatch and crumple it; then his clenched fist
+dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would blacken the paper
+with their fire.
+
+"Just that--the requisition for M. de Mar's release," the officer told
+him, looking up from it. "All perfectly regular and in order. In five
+minutes, M. de Lorraine, the Comte de Mar shall be before you. You may
+have all the conversation you wish."
+
+Lucas's face was as blank as the wall.
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," the officer
+went on to explain, evidently not caring to offend the general's nephew.
+"Without the written order I could not admit your brother of Guise. But
+now you can have all the conversation you desire with M. de Mar."
+
+Lucas's face did not change, save to scowl at the very name of his
+brother Guise. He said curtly, "No, I must get back to his Grace," and,
+barely bowing, went from the room.
+
+"Now, I don't make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That
+Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the
+Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had
+come to stab M. Etienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had
+missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My
+master once released, Lucas could not hurt him.
+
+What was as much to the point, the officer had no doubt of Mayenne's
+good faith. He went with his paper into an inner room, where we caught
+sight, through the door, of big books with a clerk or two behind them,
+and in a moment appeared again with a key.
+
+"Since the young gentleman's a count, I'll do turnkey's office myself,"
+he said, his grim old battlement of a face smiling.
+
+This was our day; from Mayenne down, everybody went out of his way to
+pleasure us. I was suddenly emboldened by his manner.
+
+"Monsieur, perhaps it is preposterous to ask, but might I go with you?"
+
+He looked at me a moment, surprised.
+
+"Well, after all, why not? You too, Sir Musketeer, an you like."
+
+So the three of us, he and d'Auvray and I, went to rescue the Comte de
+Mar.
+
+We passed through corridor after corridor, row after row of heavy-barred
+doors. The deeper we penetrated the mighty pile, the fonder I grew of my
+friend Mayenne, by whose complaisance none of these doors would shut on
+me. We climbed at last a steep turret stair winding about a huge fir
+trunk, lighted by slits of windows in the four-foot wall, and at the
+top turned down a dark passage to a door at the end, the bolts of which,
+invisible to me in the gloom, the veteran drew back with familiar hand.
+
+The cell was small, with one high window through which I could see
+naught but the sky. For all furniture it contained a pallet, a stool, a
+bench that might serve as table. M. Etienne stood at the window, his arm
+crooked around the iron bars, gazing out over the roofs of Paris.
+
+He wheeled about at the door's creaking.
+
+"I go to trial, monsieur?" he asked quickly, not seeing me behind the
+keeper.
+
+"No, M. le Comte. The charge is cancelled. I come to set you free."
+
+I dashed in past the officer, snatching my lord's hand to kiss.
+
+"It's true, monsieur! You're free! It's all settled with Mayenne.
+Monsieur's seen him; he sets you free. He said, 'In recognizance of
+Wednesday night.'"
+
+Incredulous joy flashed over his face, to give way to belief without
+joy.
+
+"Now I know she's married."
+
+"Nothing of the sort!" I fairly shouted at him, dancing up and down in
+my eagerness. "She's to marry M. le Comte. She's at St. Denis with
+Monsieur. She's to marry you. It's all arranged. Mayenne consents--the
+king--everybody. It's all settled. She marries you."
+
+Preposterous as it seemed, he could not discredit my fervour. He
+followed us out of the cell and through the fortress in a radiant daze.
+He half believed himself dreaming, I think, and feared to speak lest his
+happiness should melt. I fancied even that he walked lightly and
+gingerly, as if the slightest unwary movement might break the spell. Not
+till we were actually in the open door of the court, face to face with
+freedom, did he rouse himself to acknowledge the thing real. With a
+joyous laugh, he turned to the keeper:
+
+"M. de La Motte, you should employ your leisure in writing down your
+reflections, like the Chevalier de Montaigne. You could give us a
+trenchant essay on the Ingratitude of Man. Here are you host of the
+biggest inn in Paris--a pile more imposing than the Louvre itself. Your
+hospitality is so eager that you insist on entertaining me, so lavish
+that you lodge me for nothing, would keep me without a murmur till the
+end of my life. Yet I, ingrate that I am, depart without a thank you!"
+
+"They don't leave in such case that they can very well thank me, most of
+my guests," La Motte answered, with a dry smile. "You are a fortunate
+man, M. de Mar."
+
+"M. le Comte, will you come quietly with me to the St. Denis gate?"
+d'Auvray asked him. "Or must I borrow a guard from M. de La Motte?"
+
+M. Etienne's whole face was smiling; not his lips alone, but his eyes.
+Even his skin and hair seemed to have taken on a brighter look. He
+glanced at d'Auvray in surprise at the absurd question.
+
+"I will come like a lamb, M. le Mousquetaire."
+
+We saluted La Motte and walked merrily out into the Place Bastille. I
+think I never felt so grand as when I passed through the noble
+sally-port, the soldiers making no motion to hinder us, but all saluting
+as if we owned the place. It had its advantage, this making friends with
+Mayenne.
+
+The first thing my lord did, still in the shadow of the prison, was to
+come to terms with d'Auvray.
+
+"See here, my friend, why must you put yourself to the fatigue of
+escorting me to the gate?"
+
+"Orders, monsieur. The general-duke wants to know that you get into no
+mischief between here and the gate. You are banished, you understand,
+from Paris."
+
+"I pledge you my word I shall make no attempt to elude my fate. I go
+straight to the gate. But, with all politeness to you, Sir Musketeer, I
+could dispense with your company."
+
+"I am a soldier, and a soldier's orders must be obeyed," d'Auvray quoted
+the keeper's words, which seemed to have impressed him. "However, M. le
+Comte, if I had something to look at, I could walk ten paces behind you
+and look at it."
+
+"Oh, if it is a question of something to play with!" M. Etienne laughed.
+
+D'Auvray was provided with toys, and M. Etienne linked arms with me, the
+soldier out of ear-shot behind us. He followed till we were in the Rue
+St. Denis, when, waving his hand in farewell, he turned his steps with
+the pious consciousness of duty done. Only I looked back to see it;
+monsieur had forgotten his existence.
+
+"I am not proud; I don't mind being marched through the streets by a
+musketeer," M. Etienne explained as we started; "but I can't talk before
+him. Tell me, Felix, the story, if you would have me live."
+
+And I told him, till we almost ran blindly into the tower of the St.
+Denis gate.
+
+We learned of the warder that M. de St. Quentin had recently passed out,
+but that nothing had been seen of his equery. No steeds were here for
+us.
+
+"Well, then, we'll go have a glass. But if Vigo doesn't come soon, by my
+faith, I'll walk to St. Denis!"
+
+But that promised glass was never drunk, nor were we to set out at once
+for St. Denis; for in the door of the wine-shop we met Lucas.
+
+I had dismissed him from thought, as something out of the reckoning,
+dead and done with, powerless as yesterday's broken sword. I thought him
+gone out of our lives when he went out of prison--gone forever, like
+last year's snow. And here within the hour we encountered him, a naked
+sword in his hand, a smile on his lips. He said, in the flower of his
+easy insolence:
+
+"Tuesday I told you our hour would come. It is here."
+
+"At your service," quoth my lord.
+
+"Then it needs not to slap your face?"
+
+"You insult me safely, Lucas. You have but one life. That is forfeit, be
+you courteous."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+Lucas held out the bare sword, hilt toward us.
+
+"Monsieur had a box for weapon yesterday, but as I prefer to fight in
+the established way, I ventured to provide him with a sword."
+
+"Thoughtful of you, Lucas. Is this the make of sword you elect to be
+killed with?"
+
+He was bending the blade to try its temper. Lucas unsheathed his own.
+
+"M. de Mar may have his choice."
+
+M. de Mar professed himself satisfied with the blade given him.
+
+"Have you summoned your seconds, Lucas?"
+
+Lucas raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Is that necessary? I thought we might settle our affairs without delay.
+I confess myself impatient."
+
+"Your sentiments for once are mine."
+
+"It is understood you bring your spaniel with you. He will watch that I
+do not spring on you before you are ready," Lucas said, with a fine
+sneer.
+
+"And who is to watch me?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur's chivalry is notorious. Precautions are unnecessary. It
+is your privilege, monsieur, to appoint the happy spot."
+
+"The spot is near at hand. Where you slew Pontou is the fitting place
+for you to die."
+
+"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas amended.
+
+Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on our way
+to that of the Coupejarrets.
+
+Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul play. I had
+suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord, who knew, had
+accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I had felt sure of a
+trap. But his inviting my presence at the place of our choice smelt like
+honesty.
+
+M. Etienne remarked casually to me:
+
+"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you thought you
+saw there--Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What ails you, lad?
+Footsteps on your grave?"
+
+But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of his. For
+of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not Lucas, but M.
+Etienne. What if the vision were, after all, the thing I had at first
+believed it--a portent? An appearance not of those who had died by
+steel, but of those who must. One, two, and now the third.
+
+Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I had
+seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no omen, but a
+mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?
+
+And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress as a
+Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this house lay
+under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save to our tombs.
+
+We entered the well-remembered little passage, the well-remembered
+court, where shards of glass still strewed the pavement. Some one--the
+gendarmes, I fancy, when they took away Pontou--had put a heavy padlock
+on the door Lucas and Grammont left swinging.
+
+"We go in by your postern, Felix," my master said. "M. Lucas, I confess
+I prefer that you go first."
+
+Lucas put his back to the wall.
+
+"Why go farther, M. le Comte?"
+
+"Do you long for interruption'?"
+
+"We were not noticed coming in. The street was quiet."
+
+He crossed the court abruptly and went down the alley to look into the
+street.
+
+"Not a soul in sight," he said, coming back. "I think we shall not be
+interrupted. Still, it is wise to use every care. We will fight, if you
+like, in the house."
+
+He opened with his knife the fastened shutter, and leaped lightly in.
+Monsieur followed. I, the last, was for closing the shutter, but he
+stopped me.
+
+"No; leave it wide. I have no fancy for a walk in pitch-darkness with M.
+Lucas."
+
+"Do we fight here?" Lucas asked, facing us in the wide, square hall. "We
+can let in more light."
+
+"You seem anxious, my friend, to call attention to your whereabouts. As
+I am host, I designate the fighting-ground. Up-stairs, if you please."
+
+"I suppose you insist on my walking first," Lucas sneered.
+
+"I request it, monsieur."
+
+"With all the willingness in the world," his rogue-ship answered,
+setting foot straightway on the stair and mounting steadily, never
+turning to see how near we followed, or what we did with our hands. His
+trust made me ashamed of our lack of it. I almost believed we did him
+injustice. Yet at heart I could not bring myself to credit him with any
+fair dealing.
+
+We went up one flight, up two. We had left behind us the twilight of the
+lower story, had not reached dawn again at the top. We walked in
+blackness. Suddenly I halted.
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I heard a noise."
+
+"Of course you did. The place is full of rats."
+
+"It was no rat. It was footsteps."
+
+We all three held still.
+
+"There, monsieur. Don't you hear?"
+
+"Nothing, Felix; your teeth are chattering. Cross yourself and come on."
+
+But I could not stand it.
+
+"I'll go back and see, monsieur."
+
+"No," Lucas said, striding back from the foot of the next flight. "I
+will go."
+
+We saw a glint in the gloom, monsieur's bared sword.
+
+"You will go neither one of you. Hush! If we show ourselves, there'll be
+no duel to-day."
+
+We kept still, all three leaning over the banister, peering down to
+where the white tiles picked themselves out of the floor of the hall far
+beneath. We could see them better than we could see one another. All was
+silent. Not so much as a rustle came up from below. Suddenly Lucas made
+a step or two, as if to pass us. M. Etienne wheeled about, raising his
+sword toward the spot where from his footfalls we supposed Lucas to be.
+
+"You show an eagerness to get away from me, M. de Lorraine."
+
+"Not in the least, M. de Mar. This alarm is but Felix's poltroonery, yet
+it prompts me to go down and close the shutter."
+
+"On the contrary, you will go up with me. Felix will close the shutter."
+
+They confronted each other, vague shapes in the darkness, each with
+drawn sword. Then Lucas raised his in salute.
+
+"As you will; so be some one sees to it."
+
+"Go, Felix."
+
+Lucas first, they mounted the last flight of stairs, and their footsteps
+passed along the corridor to the room at the back. I, as I was ordered,
+set my face down the stairs.
+
+They might mock me as they liked, but I could not get it out of my head
+that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping heart, I stole
+from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the flight. I heard
+plainly the sound of moving above me, and of voices; but below not a
+whisper, not a creak. It must have been my silly fears. Resolved to
+choke them, I planted my feet boldly on the next flight, and descended
+humming, to prove my ease, the rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch.
+Suddenly, from not three feet off, came the soft singing:
+
+     _Mirth, my love, and Folly dear_--
+
+My knees knocked together, and the breath fluttered in my throat. It
+seemed the darkness itself had given tongue. Then came a low laugh and
+the muttered words:
+
+"Here we are, M. de Lorraine. Are you ready?"
+
+There was a stir of feet on the landing before me, behind the voice. The
+house, then, was full of Lucas's cutthroats, the first of them Peyrot.
+In the height of my terror, I remembered that M. Etienne's life, too,
+depended on my wits, and I kept them. I whispered, for whispering voices
+are hard to tell apart:
+
+"Not yet. The two of them are up there. Keep quiet, and I'll send the
+boy down. When you've finished him, come up."
+
+"As you say, monsieur. It is your job."
+
+I turned, scarce able to believe my luck, and, not daring to run, walked
+up-stairs again. Prick my ears as I might, I heard no movement after me.
+Actually, I had fooled Peyrot. I had gone down to meet my death, and a
+tune had saved me.
+
+When I reached the uppermost landing, I rushed along the passage and
+into the room, flinging the door shut, locking and bolting it.
+
+They had not begun to fight, but had busied themselves clearing the
+space of all obstacles. The table was pushed against the wall in the
+corner by the door; the chairs were heaped one on another at the end of
+the room. Both shutters were wide open. M. Etienne, bareheaded, in his
+shirt, stood at guard. Lucas was kneeling on the floor, picking up with
+scrupulous care some bits of a broken plate. He sprang to his feet at
+sight of me.
+
+"What is it?" cried M. Etienne.
+
+"Cutthroats. They'll be here in a minute."
+
+Even as I spoke, I heard tramping on the stairs below. My slam of the
+door had warned them that something was wrong.
+
+"Was that your delay?" M. Etienne shouted, springing at his foe.
+
+"I play to win!" Lucas answered, smiling.
+
+The blades met; the men circled about and about. Lucas, though he
+preferred to murder, knew how to duel.
+
+We were doomed. With monsieur's sword for only weapon, we could never
+hope to pass the gang. In another minute they would be here to batter
+the door down and end us. Our consolation lay in killing Lucas first.
+Yet as I watched, I feared that M. Etienne, in the brief moments that
+remained to him, could not conquer him, so shrewd and strong was Lucas's
+fence. Must the scoundrel win? I started forward to play Pontou's trick.
+Lucas sought to murder us. Why not we him?
+
+One flash from my lord's eyes, and I retreated in despair. For I knew
+that did I touch Lucas, M. Etienne would let fall his sword, let Lucas
+kill him. And the bravos were on the last flight.
+
+Was there no escape? There were three doors in the room. One led to the
+passage, one to the closet, the third--I dashed through to find myself
+in a large empty chamber, a door wide open giving on the passage.
+Through it I could see the dusky figures of four men running up the
+stairs.
+
+I was across the room like an arrow, and got the door shut and bolted
+before they could reach the landing. The next moment some one flung
+against it. It stood firm. Delaying only a moment to shake it, three of
+the four I could hear run to the farther door, whence issued the noise
+of the swords.
+
+I, inside the wall, ran back too. The combat still raged. Neither, that
+I could see, had gained the least advantage. Outside, the murderers
+dashed themselves upon the door.
+
+I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed myself,
+pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the panels a little
+firmer.
+
+Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second chamber. Its
+shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no other door to the
+room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but spanned a foot above the
+fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest sweep that ever wielded broom
+could not have squeezed between them.
+
+In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it was, I
+thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I stuck my head
+out. It was the same window where I had stood when Grammont seized me.
+There, not ten feet away, eight at the most, but a little above me, was
+the casement of my garret in the Amour de Dieu. Would it be possible to
+jump and catch the sill? If I did, I could scarce pull myself in.
+
+I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu. And there
+beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me. There was no
+mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my lungs:
+
+"Maitre Jacques!"
+
+He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his
+amazement, I saw that he knew me.
+
+"Maitre Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out! Help us for the
+love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!"
+
+For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the inn.
+
+I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel.
+White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging,
+ungaining.
+
+Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending,
+blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were fighting out there,
+that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I learned better.
+Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of
+stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not long stand against that.
+
+I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost, lost!
+
+Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's victory,
+he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the back room. But it
+was Lucas who lay prone.
+
+"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would not till
+with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de grace.
+
+Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great splinter six
+inches wide, hanging from the top, blocked the opening. A hand came
+through to wrench it away.
+
+M. Etienne, across the room at a leap, drove his knife through the hand,
+nailing it to the wood. On the instant he recognized its owner.
+
+"Good morning, Peyrot. We've recovered the packet."
+
+Not waiting for further amenities, I seized my lord and dashed him into
+the front room, only a faint hope to lead me, but the oaths of the
+bravos a good spur. And, St. Quentin be thanked, there in the garret
+window were Jacques and his tapsters, pushing a ladder to us.
+
+"Go, monsieur! There are four behind us. Go!"
+
+"You first!"
+
+But I, who had snatched up his sword as he stabbed Lucas, ran back to
+guard the door. He had the sense to see there was no good arguing.
+Crying, "Quick after me, Felix!" he crawled out on the ladder.
+
+Peyrot was released. Another blow from the ram, and the door fell to
+finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam. I
+darted to the window. M. Etienne was in the garret, helping hold the
+ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too eagerly. Like a lath it
+snapped.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+_"The very pattern of a king."_
+
+
+The next world appeared to be strangely like this. I found myself lying
+on a straw bed in a little low attic, my head resting comfortably on
+some one's shoulder, while some one else poured wine down my gullet.
+Presently I discovered that Maitre Jacques's was the ministering hand,
+M. Etienne's the shoulder. After all, this was not heaven, but still
+Paris.
+
+I had no desire to speak so long as the flow of old Jacques's best
+Burgundy continued; but when he saw my eyes wide open, he stopped, and I
+said, my voice, to my surprise, very faint and quavery:
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Dear, brave lad! You fainted!"
+
+My lord's voice was as unsteady as mine.
+
+"But the ladder?" I murmured.
+
+"The ladder broke. But you had hold beyond the break. You hung on till
+we seized you. And then you swooned."
+
+"What a baby!" I said, getting to my feet. "But the men, monsieur?
+Peyrot?"
+
+"I think we've seen the last of those worthies. They took to their heels
+when you escaped them."
+
+"But, monsieur, they've gone to inform! You'll be taken for killing
+Lucas."
+
+"I doubt it. Themselves smell too strong of blood to dare bruit the
+matter. Natheless, if you can walk now, we'll make good time to the
+gate."
+
+But for all his haste, he would not start till I had had some bread and
+soup down in the kitchen.
+
+"We must take good care of you, boy Felix," he said. "For where the St.
+Quentins would be without you, I tremble to think."
+
+I set out a new man. In three steps, it seemed to me, we had reached the
+city gate, to find the way blocked by a company of twenty or thirty
+horse, the St. Quentin uniform flaunting gay in the sun. The nearest
+trooper set up a shout at sight of us, when Vigo, coming out suddenly
+from behind a nag, took M. le Comte in his big embrace. He released him
+immediately, looking immensely startled at his own demonstration.
+
+M. Etienne laughed out at him.
+
+"Be more careful, I beg you, Vigo! You will make me imagine myself of
+some importance."
+
+"I thought you swallowed up," Vigo growled. "You had been here--I
+couldn't get a trace of you."
+
+"I was killing Lucas."
+
+"Sacre! He's dead?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"That's the best morning's work ever you did, M. Etienne."
+
+"Have you horse for us, Vigo?"
+
+"Of course. Some of the men will walk. I suppose we're leaving Paris to
+buy you out of the Bastille?"
+
+"Not worth it, eh, Vigo?"
+
+"Yes," said Vigo, gravely--"yes, M. Etienne. You are worth it."
+
+Vigo's troop was but slow-moving, as some of the horses carried double,
+some were loaded with chattels. M. Etienne and I, on the duke's
+blood-chargers, soon left the cavalcade behind us. Before I knew it, we
+were halted at the outpost of the camp. My lord gave his name.
+
+"To be sure!" cried the sentry. "We've orders about you. You dine with
+the king, M. de Mar."
+
+"Mordieu! I do?"
+
+"You do. Orders are to take you to him out of hand. Captain!"
+
+The officer lounged out of the tavern door.
+
+"Captain, M. de Mar."
+
+"Oh, aye!" cried the captain, coming forward with brisk interest. "M. de
+Mar, you're the child of luck. You dine with the king."
+
+"I am the child of bewilderment, captain."
+
+"And you've not too much time to recover from it, M. le Comte. You are
+to go straight to the king."
+
+"I may go to M. de St. Quentin's lodgings first?"
+
+"No, monsieur; straight to the king."
+
+"What! in my shirt?"
+
+"I can't help it, monsieur," the captain laughed. "I suppose the king
+did not guess you were coming in your shirt. Anyway, his order was to
+fetch you direct. And direct you go. But never care. Our king's no
+stickler for toggery. He's known what it is himself to lack for a coat."
+
+"I might wash my face, then."
+
+"Certainly. No harm in that."
+
+So M. Etienne went into the tournebride and washed his face. And that
+was all the toilet he made for audience with the greatest king in the
+world.
+
+"You'll ride to Monsieur's," he commanded me, when the captain answered:
+
+"No; he goes with you, monsieur, if he's the boy Choux, Troux, whatever
+it is."
+
+"Broux--Felix Broux!" I cried, a-quiver.
+
+"That's it. You go to the king, too. Another luck-child."
+
+I thought so indeed. We followed the sentry through the town in a waking
+dream, content to let him do with us as he would. He did the talking,
+explained to the grandees in the king's hall our names and errand. One
+of them led us up the stairs and knocked at a closed door.
+
+"Enter!"
+
+It was Henry's own voice. I pinched monsieur's hand to tell him. Our
+guide opened the door a crack.
+
+"M. de Mar, Sire, and his servant."
+
+"Good, La Force. Let them enter."
+
+M. La Force fairly pushed us over the sill, so abashed were we, and shut
+the door upon us.
+
+The king was alone. But before this simple gentleman in the rusty black,
+M. Etienne caught his breath as he had not done before a court in full
+pomp. He had seen courts, but he had never seen the first soldier of
+Europe. He advanced three steps into the room, and forgot to kneel,
+forgot to lower his gaze in the presence, but merely stared wide-eyed at
+majesty, as majesty stared at him. Thus they stood surveying each other
+from top to toe in the frankest curiosity, till at length the king
+spoke:
+
+"M. de Mar, you look less like a carpet-knight than I expected."
+
+M. Etienne came to himself, to kneel at once.
+
+"Sire, I blush for my looks. But your zealous soldiers would not let me
+from their clutches. I am just come from killing Paul de Lorraine."
+
+"What! the spy Lucas?"
+
+"Himself. And when I left the spot by way of the window in some haste, I
+was not expecting this honour, Sire."
+
+"Nor do I think you deserve it, ventre-saint-gris!" the king cried.
+"Though you come hatless and coat-less to-day, you have been a long time
+on the road, M. de Mar."
+
+"Aye, Sire."
+
+"You might as well have stayed away as come at this hour. Marry, all's
+over! Go hang yourself, my breathless follower! We have fought all our
+great battles, and you were not there!"
+
+Scarlet under the lash, M. Etienne, kneeling, bent his eyes on the
+ground. He was silent, but as the king spoke not, he felt it incumbent
+to stammer something:
+
+"That is my life's misfortune, Sire."
+
+"Misfortune, sirrah? Misfortune you call it? Let me hear you say fault."
+
+"I dare not, Sire," M. Etienne murmured. "It was of course your
+Majesty's fault. We cannot serve heretics, we St. Quentins."
+
+"Ventre-saint-gris! You think well of yourself, young Mar."
+
+"I must, Sire, when your Majesty invites me to dinner."
+
+The king burst into laughter, and his temper, which I believe was all a
+play, vanished to the winds.
+
+"Pardieu! you're a glib fellow, Mar. But I didn't invite you to dinner
+for your own sake, little as you can imagine it. So you would have
+joined my flag four years ago, had I not been a stinking heretic?"
+
+"Aye, Sire, I needs must have. Therefore am I everlastingly beholden to
+your Majesty for remaining so long a Huguenot."
+
+"How now, cockerel?"
+
+M. Etienne faltered a moment. He was not burdened by shyness, but before
+the king's sharp glance he underwent a cold terror lest he had been too
+free with his tongue. However, there was naught to do but go on.
+
+"Sire, had I fought under your banner like a man, at Dieppe and Arques
+and Ivry, M. de Mayenne had never dreamed of marrying his ward to me. I
+had never known her."
+
+"The loveliest demoiselle I ever saw!" the king cried. "I shall marry
+her to one of my staunchest supporters."
+
+[Illustration: THE MEETING.]
+
+The smile was washed from M. Etienne's lips. He turned as white as
+linen. In one moment his youth seemed to go from him. The king,
+unnoting, picked a parchment off the table.
+
+"To one of my bravest captains. Here's his commission, my lad."
+
+M. Etienne stared up from the writing into the king's laughing face.
+
+"I, Sire? I?"
+
+"You, Mar, you. You are my staunch supporter, perhaps?"
+
+"Your horse-boy, an you ask it, Sire!"
+
+He pressed his lips to the king's hand, great, helpless tears dripping
+down upon it.
+
+"If I ever desert you, I am a dog, Sire! But the fighting is not all
+done. I will capture you a flag yet."
+
+"Perhaps. I much fear me there's life in Mayenne still."
+
+M. Etienne, not venturing to rise, yet lifted beseeching eyes to the
+king's.
+
+"What! you want to get away from me, ventre-saint-gris!"
+
+My lord, who wanted precisely that, had no choice but to protest that
+nothing was farther from his thoughts.
+
+"Stuff!" the king exclaimed. "You're in a sweat to be gone, you
+unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with the
+king, and your one itch is to escape the tedium!"
+
+"Sire--"
+
+"Peace! You are guilty, sirrah. Take your punishment!"
+
+He darted across the room, and throwing open an inner door, called
+gently, "Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Yes, Sire," she answered, coming to the threshold.
+
+The peasant lass was gone forever. The great lady, regal in satins,
+stood before us. She bent on the king a little, eager, questioning
+glance; then she caught sight of her lover. Faith, had the sun gone out,
+the room would have been brilliant with the light of her face.
+
+M. Etienne sprang up and toward her. And she, pushing by the king as if
+he had been the door-post, went to him. They stood before each other,
+neither touching nor speaking, but only looking one at the other like
+two blind folk by a heavenly miracle restored to sight.
+
+"How now, children? Am I not a model monarch? Do you swear by me
+forever? Do you vouch me the very pattern of a king?"
+
+Answer he got none. They heard nothing, knew nothing, but each other.
+The slighted king chuckled and, beckoning me, withdrew to his cabinet.
+
+So here an end. For if Henry of France leave them, you and I may not
+stay.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helmet of Navarre, by Bertha Runkle
+
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