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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The House of the Wolf, by Stanley Weyman
+
+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: The House of the Wolf
+       A Romance
+
+Author: Stanley Weyman
+
+Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2041]
+Release Date: January, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF ***
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+Note:
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+In this Etext, text in italics has been written in capital letters.
+
+Many French words in the text have accents, etc. which have been
+omitted.
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+
+THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
+
+A Romance
+
+
+by
+
+STANLEY WEYMAN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAP.
+
+    I.--WARE WOLF!
+   II.--THE VIDAME'S THREAT.
+  III.--THE ROAD TO PARIS.
+   IV.--ENTRAPPED!
+    V.--A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.
+   VI.--MADAME'S FRIGHT.
+  VII.--A YOUNG KNIGHT ERRANT.
+ VIII.--THE PARISIAN MATINS.
+   IX.--THE HEAD OF ERASMUS.
+    X.--HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
+   XI.--A NIGHT OF SORROW.
+  XII.--JOY IN THE MORNING.
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+The following is a modern English version of a curious French memoir,
+or fragment of autobiography, apparently written about the year 1620 by
+Anne, Vicomte de Caylus, and brought to this country--if, in fact, the
+original ever existed in England--by one of his descendants after the
+Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  This Anne, we learn from other
+sources, was a principal figure at the Court of Henry IV., and,
+therefore, in August, 1572, when the adventures here related took
+place, he and his two younger brothers, Marie and Croisette, who shared
+with him the honour and the danger, must have been little more than
+boys. From the tone of his narrative, it appears that, in reviving old
+recollections, the veteran renewed his youth also, and though his story
+throws no fresh light upon the history of the time, it seems to possess
+some human interest.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WARE WOLF!
+
+I had afterwards such good reason to look back upon and remember the
+events of that afternoon, that Catherine's voice seems to ring in my
+brain even now.  I can shut my eyes and see again, after all these
+years, what I saw then--just the blue summer sky, and one grey angle of
+the keep, from which a fleecy cloud was trailing like the smoke from a
+chimney.  I could see no more because I was lying on my back, my head
+resting on my hands. Marie and Croisette, my brothers, were lying by me
+in exactly the same posture, and a few yards away on the terrace,
+Catherine was sitting on a stool Gil had brought out for her.  It was
+the second Thursday in August, and hot.  Even the jackdaws were silent.
+I had almost fallen asleep, watching my cloud grow longer and longer,
+and thinner and thinner, when Croisette, who cared for heat no more
+than a lizard, spoke up sharply, "Mademoiselle," he said, "why are you
+watching the Cahors road?"
+
+I had not noticed that she was doing so.  But something in the keenness
+of Croisette's tone, taken perhaps with the fact that Catherine did not
+at once answer him, aroused me; and I turned to her.  And lo!  she was
+blushing in the most heavenly way, and her eyes were full of tears, and
+she looked at us adorably.  And we all three sat up on our elbows, like
+three puppy dogs, and looked at her.  And there was a long silence.
+And then she said quite simply to us, "Boys, I am going to be married
+to M. de Pavannes."
+
+I fell flat on my back and spread out my arms.  "Oh, Mademoiselle!" I
+cried reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, Mademoiselle!" cried Marie.  And he fell flat on his back, and
+spread out his arms and moaned.  He was a good brother, was Marie, and
+obedient.
+
+And Croisette cried, "Oh, mademoiselle!"  too.  But he was always
+ridiculous in his ways.  He fell flat on his back, and flopped his arms
+and squealed like a pig.
+
+Yet he was sharp.  It was he who first remembered our duty, and went to
+Catherine, cap in hand, where she sat half angry and half confused, and
+said with a fine redness in his cheeks, "Mademoiselle de Caylus, our
+cousin, we give you joy, and wish you long life; and are your servants,
+and the good friends and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as--"
+
+But I could not stand that.  "Not so fast, St. Croix de Caylus" I said,
+pushing him aside--he was ever getting before me in those days--and
+taking his place.  Then with my best bow I began, "Mademoiselle, we
+give you joy and long life, and are your servants and the good friends
+and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as--as--"
+
+"As becomes the cadets of your house," suggested Croisette, softly.
+
+"As becomes the cadets of your house," I repeated.  And then Catherine
+stood up and made me a low bow and we all kissed her hand in turn,
+beginning with me and ending with Croisette, as was becoming.
+Afterwards Catherine threw her handkerchief over her face--she was
+crying--and we three sat down, Turkish fashion, just where we were, and
+said "Oh, Kit!"  very softly.
+
+But presently Croisette had something to add.  "What will the Wolf
+say?"  he whispered to me.
+
+"Ah!  To be sure!"  I exclaimed aloud.  I had been thinking of myself
+before; but this opened quite another window.  "What will the Vidame
+say, Kit?"
+
+She dropped her kerchief from her face, and turned so pale that I was
+sorry I had spoken--apart from the kick Croisette gave me. "Is M. de
+Bezers at his house?"  she asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes," Croisette answered.  "He came in last night from St. Antonin,
+with very small attendance."
+
+The news seemed to set her fears at rest instead of augmenting them as
+I should have expected.  I suppose they were rather for Louis de
+Pavannes, than for herself.  Not unnaturally, too, for even the Wolf
+could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt our cousin.  Her
+slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and gentle brown eyes, her
+pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us boys and in those days, to
+sum up all that was womanly.  We could not remember, not even Croisette
+the youngest of us--who was seventeen, a year junior to Marie and
+myself--we were twins--the time when we had not been in love with her.
+
+But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded
+seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday
+stillness of that afternoon.  It was the summer of 1572.  The great
+peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the Huguenots
+had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or two was to be
+solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be cemented by the
+marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois, the King's
+sister.  The Vicomte de Caylus, Catherine's father and our guardian,
+was one of the governors appointed to see the peace enforced; the
+respect in which he was held by both parties--he was a Catholic, but no
+bigot, God rest his soul!--recommending him for this employment.  He
+had therefore gone a week or two before to Bayonne, his province.  Most
+of our neighbours in Quercy were likewise from home, having gone to
+Paris to be witnesses on one side or the other of the royal wedding.
+And consequently we young people, not greatly checked by the presence
+of good-natured, sleepy Madame Claude, Catherine's duenna, were
+disposed to make the most of our liberty; and to celebrate the peace in
+our own fashion.
+
+We were country-folk.  Not one of us had been to Pau, much less to
+Paris.  The Vicomte held stricter views than were common then, upon
+young people's education; and though we had learned to ride and shoot,
+to use our swords and toss a hawk, and to read and write, we knew
+little more than Catherine herself of the world; little more of the
+pleasures and sins of court life, and not one-tenth as much as she did
+of its graces.  Still she had taught us to dance and make a bow.  Her
+presence had softened our manners; and of late we had gained something
+from the frank companionship of Louis de Pavannes, a Huguenot whom the
+Vicomte had taken prisoner at Moncontour and held to ransom.  We were
+not, I think, mere clownish yokels.
+
+But we were shy.  We disliked and shunned strangers.  And when old Gil
+appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the melancholy cud of
+Kit's announcement, and cried sepulchrally, "M. le Vidame de Bezers to
+pay his respects to Mademoiselle!"--Well, there was something like a
+panic, I confess!
+
+We scrambled to our feet, muttering, "The Wolf!"  The entrance at
+Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the
+terrace.  This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may
+not--when walking on the terrace--fall into it.  Gil had spoken before
+his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a moment, just a
+moment.  Croisette made a rush for the doorway into the house; but
+failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind a buttress of the tower,
+his finger on his lip.  I am slow sometimes, and Marie waited for me,
+so that we had barely got to our legs--looking, I dare say, awkward and
+ungainly enough--before the Vidame's shadow fell darkly on the ground
+at Catherine's feet.
+
+"Mademoiselle!"  he said, advancing to her through the sunshine, and
+bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that was born of
+his size and manner combined, "I rode in late last night from Toulouse;
+and I go to-morrow to Paris.  I have but rested and washed off the
+stains of travel that I may lay my--ah!"
+
+He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off in his
+compliment; raising himself and saluting us.  "Ah," he continued
+indolently, "two of the maidens of Caylus, I see.  With an odd pair of
+hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not set them spinning,
+Mademoiselle?"  and he regarded us with that smile which--with other
+things as evil--had made him famous.
+
+Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back.  We looked hotly at
+him; but could find nothing to say.
+
+"You grow red!"  he went on, pleasantly--the wretch!--playing with us
+as a cat does with mice.  "It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid
+Mademoiselle set you spinning?  I now would spin at Mademoiselle's
+bidding, and think it happiness!"
+
+"We are not girls!"  I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a
+boy's passion.  "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a
+girl, M. le Vidame!"  For though we counted it a joke among ourselves
+that we all bore girls' names, we were young enough to be sensitive
+about it.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  And how he dwarfed us all as he stood there
+dominating our terrace!  "M. de Montmorenci was a man," he said
+scornfully.  "M. Anne de Caylus is--"
+
+And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us, taking his
+seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair.  It was clear even to our
+vanity that he did not think us worth another word--that we had passed
+absolutely from his mind.  Madame Claude came waddling out at the same
+moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her.  And we--well we slunk away
+and sat on the other side of the terrace, whence we could still glower
+at the offender.
+
+Yet who were we to glower at him?  To this day I shake at the thought
+of him.  It was not so much his height and bulk, though he was so big
+that the clipped pointed fashion of his beard a fashion then new at
+court--seemed on him incongruous and effeminate; nor so much the
+sinister glance of his grey eyes--he had a slight cast in them; nor the
+grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that
+permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great
+brutal presence of the man--that was overpowering--that made the great
+falter and the poor crouch.  And then his reputation!  Though we knew
+little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked
+with his name.  We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an
+employer of bravos.  At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the
+shambles.  Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days--gone
+by now, thank God!--and whispered his name when they spoke of
+assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before
+a Guise, nor blush before the Virgin.
+
+Such was our visitor and neighbour, Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers.  As
+he sat on the terrace, now eyeing us askance, and now paying Catherine
+a compliment, I likened him to a great cat before which a butterfly has
+all unwittingly flirted her prettiness.  Poor Catherine!  No doubt she
+had her own reasons for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then
+guessed.  For she seemed to have lost her voice.  She stammered and
+made but poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we
+boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the gap, the
+conversation languished.  The Vidame was not for his part the man to
+put himself out on a hot day.
+
+It was after one of these pauses--not the first but the longest--that I
+started on finding his eyes fixed on mine.  More, I shivered.  It is
+hard to describe, but there was a look in the Vidame's eyes at that
+moment which I had never seen before.  A look of pain almost:  of dumb
+savage alarm at any rate.  From me they passed slowly to Marie and
+mutely interrogated him.  Then the Vidame's glance travelled back to
+Catherine, and settled on her.
+
+Only a moment before she had been but too conscious of his presence.
+Now, as it chanced by bad luck, or in the course of Providence,
+something had drawn her attention elsewhere.  She was unconscious of
+his regard.  Her own eyes were fixed in a far-away gaze.  Her colour
+was high, her lips were parted, her bosom heaved gently.
+
+The shadow deepened on the Vidame's face.  Slowly he took his eyes from
+hers, and looked northwards also.
+
+Caylus Castle stands on a rock in the middle of the narrow valley of
+that name.  The town clusters about the ledges of the rock so closely
+that when I was a boy I could fling a stone clear of the houses.  The
+hills are scarcely five hundred yards distant on either side, rising in
+tamer colours from the green fields about the brook.  It is possible
+from the terrace to see the whole valley, and the road which passes
+through it lengthwise. Catherine's eyes were on the northern extremity
+of the defile, where the highway from Cahors descends from the uplands.
+She had been sitting with her face turned that way all the afternoon.
+
+I looked that way too.  A solitary horseman was descending the steep
+track from the hills.
+
+"Mademoiselle!"  cried the Vidame suddenly.  We all looked up. His tone
+was such that the colour fled from Kit's face.  There was something in
+his voice she had never heard in any voice before--something that to a
+woman was like a blow. "Mademoiselle," he snarled, "is expecting news
+from Cahors, from her lover.  I have the honour to congratulate M. de
+Pavannes on his conquest."
+
+Ah!  he had guessed it!  As the words fell on the sleepy silence, an
+insult in themselves, I sprang to my feet, amazed and angry, yet
+astounded by his quickness of sight and wit.  He must have recognized
+the Pavannes badge at that distance.  "M. le Vidame," I said
+indignantly--Catherine was white and voiceless--"M. le Vidame--" but
+there I stopped and faltered stammering.  For behind him I could see
+Croisette; and Croisette gave me no sign of encouragement or support.
+
+So we stood face to face for a moment; the boy and the man of the
+world, the stripling and the ROUE.  Then the Vidame bowed to me in
+quite a new fashion.  "M. Anne de Caylus desires to answer for M. de
+Pavannes?"  he asked smoothly; with a mocking smoothness.
+
+I understood what he meant.  But something prompted me--Croisette said
+afterwards that it was a happy thought, though now I know the crisis to
+have been less serious than he fancied to answer, "Nay, not for M. de
+Pavannes.  Rather for my cousin."  And I bowed.  "I have the honour on
+her behalf to acknowledge your congratulations, M. le Vidame.  It
+pleases her that our nearest neighbour should also be the first outside
+the family to wish her well.  You have divined truly in supposing that
+she will shortly be united to M. de Pavannes."
+
+I suppose--for I saw the giant's colour change and his lip quiver as I
+spoke--that his previous words had been only a guess.  For a moment the
+devil seemed to be glaring through his eyes; and he looked at Marie and
+me as a wild animal at its keepers.  Yet he maintained his cynical
+politeness in part.  "Mademoiselle desires my congratulations?"  he
+said, slowly, labouring with each word it seemed.  "She shall have them
+on the happy day.  She shall certainly have them then.  But these are
+troublous times.  And Mademoiselle's betrothed is I think a Huguenot,
+and has gone to Paris.  Paris--well, the air of Paris is not good for
+Huguenots, I am told."
+
+I saw Catherine shiver; indeed she was on the point of fainting, I
+broke in rudely, my passion getting the better of my fears. "M. de
+Pavannes can take care of himself, believe me," I said brusquely.
+
+"Perhaps so," Bezers answered, his voice like the grating of steel on
+steel.  "But at any rate this will be a memorable day for Mademoiselle.
+The day on which she receives her first congratulations--she will
+remember it as long as she lives!  Oh, yes, I will answer for that, M.
+Anne," he said looking brightly at one and another of us, his eyes more
+oblique than ever, "Mademoiselle will remember it, I am sure!"
+
+It would be impossible to describe the devilish glance he flung at the
+poor sinking girl as he withdrew, the horrid emphasis he threw into
+those last words, the covert deadly threat they conveyed to the dullest
+ears.  That he went then, was small mercy.  He had done all the evil he
+could do at present.  If his desire had been to leave fear behind him,
+he had certainly succeeded.
+
+Kit crying softly went into the house; her innocent coquetry more than
+sufficiently punished already.  And we three looked at one another with
+blank faces, It was clear that we had made a dangerous enemy, and an
+enemy at our own gates.  As the Vidame had said, these were troublous
+times when things were done to men--ay, and to women and
+children--which we scarce dare to speak of now.  "I wish the Vicomte
+were here," Croisette said uneasily after we had discussed several
+unpleasant contingencies.
+
+"Or even Malines the steward," I suggested.
+
+"He would not be much good," replied Croisette.
+
+"And he is at St. Antonin, and will not be back this week. Father
+Pierre too is at Albi."
+
+"You do not think," said Marie, "that he will attack us?"
+
+"Certainly not!" Croisette retorted with contempt.  "Even the Vidame
+would not dare to do that in time of peace.  Besides, he has not half a
+score of men here," continued the lad, shrewdly, "and counting old Gil
+and ourselves we have as many.  And Pavannes always said that three men
+could hold the gate at the bottom of the ramp against a score.  Oh, he
+will not try that!"
+
+"Certainly not!" I agreed.  And so we crushed Marie.  "But for Louis de
+Pavannes--"
+
+Catherine interrupted me.  She came out quickly looking a different
+person; her face flushed with anger, her tears dried.
+
+"Anne!" she cried, imperiously, "what is the matter down below--will
+you see?"
+
+I had no difficulty in doing that.  All the sounds of town life came up
+to us on the terrace.  Lounging there we could hear the chaffering over
+the wheat measures in the cloisters of the market-square, the yell of a
+dog, the voice of a scold, the church bell, the watchman's cry.  I had
+only to step to the wall to overlook it all.  On this summer afternoon
+the town had been for the most part very quiet.  If we had not been
+engaged in our own affairs we should have taken the alarm before,
+remarking in the silence the first beginnings of what was now a very
+respectable tumult.  It swelled louder even as we stepped to the wall.
+
+We could see--a bend in the street laying it open--part of the Vidame's
+house; the gloomy square hold which had come to him from his mother.
+His own chateau of Bezers lay far away in Franche Comte, but of late he
+had shown a preference--Catherine could best account for it,
+perhaps--for this mean house in Caylus.  It was the only house in the
+town which did not belong to us.  It was known as the House of the
+Wolf, and was a grim stone building surrounding a courtyard.  Rows of
+wolves' heads carved in stone flanked the windows, whence their bare
+fangs grinned day and night at the church porch opposite.
+
+The noise drew our eyes in this direction; and there lolling in a
+window over the door, looking out on the street with a laughing eye,
+was Bezers himself.  The cause of his merriment--we had not far to look
+for it--was a horseman who was riding up the street under difficulties.
+He was reining in his steed--no easy task on that steep greasy
+pavement--so as to present some front to a score or so of ragged knaves
+who were following close at his heels, hooting and throwing mud and
+pebbles at him.  The man had drawn his sword, and his oaths came up to
+us, mingled with shrill cries of "VIVE LA MESSE!"  and half drowned by
+the clattering of the horse's hoofs.  We saw a stone strike him in the
+face, and draw blood, and heard him swear louder than before.
+
+"Oh!"  cried Catherine, clasping her hands with a sudden shriek of
+indignation, "my letter!  They will get my letter!"
+
+"Death!"  exclaimed Croisette, "She is right!  It is M. de Pavannes'
+courier!  This must be stopped!  We cannot stand this, Anne!"
+
+"They shall pay dearly for it, by our Lady!"  I cried swearing myself.
+"And in peace time too--the villains!  Gil!  Francis!" I shouted,
+"where are you?"
+
+And I looked round for my fowling piece, while Croisette jumped on the
+wall, and forming a trumpet with his hands, shrieked at the top of his
+voice, "Back!  he bears a letter from the Vicomte!"
+
+But the device did not succeed, and I could not find my gun.  For a
+moment we were helpless, and before I could have fetched the gun from
+the house, the horseman and the hooting rabble at his heels, had turned
+a corner and were hidden by the roofs.
+
+Another turn however would bring them out in front of the gateway, and
+seeing this we hurried down the ramp to meet them. I stayed a moment to
+tell Gil to collect the servants, and, this keeping me, Croisette
+reached the narrow street outside before me.  As I followed him I was
+nearly knocked down by the rider, whose face was covered with, dirt and
+blood, while fright had rendered his horse unmanageable.  Darting aside
+I let him pass--he was blinded and could not see me--and then found
+that Croisette--brave lad!  had collared the foremost of the ruffians,
+and was beating him with his sheathed sword, while the rest of the
+rabble stood back, ashamed, yet sullen, and with anger in their eyes.
+A dangerous crew, I thought; not townsmen, most of them.
+
+"Down with the Huguenots!"  cried one, as I appeared, one bolder than
+the rest.
+
+"Down with the CANAILLE!"  I retorted, sternly eyeing the ill-looking
+ring.  "Will you set yourselves above the king's peace, dirt that you
+are?  Go back to your kennels!"
+
+The words were scarcely out of my mouth, before I saw that the fellow
+whom Croisette was punishing had got hold of a dagger.  I shouted a
+warning, but it came too late.  The blade fell, and--thanks to
+God--striking the buckle of the lad's belt, glanced off harmless.  I
+saw the steel flash up again--saw the spite in the man's eyes:  but
+this time I was a step nearer, and before the weapon fell, I passed my
+sword clean through the wretch's body. He went down like a log,
+Croisette falling with him, held fast by his stiffening fingers.
+
+I had never killed a man before, nor seen a man die; and if I had
+stayed to think about it, I should have fallen sick perhaps.  But it
+was no time for thought; no time for sickness.  The crowd were close
+upon us, a line of flushed threatening faces from wall to wall.  A
+single glance downwards told me that the man was dead, and I set my
+foot upon his neck.  "Hounds!  Beasts!"  I cried, not loudly this time,
+for though I was like one possessed with rage, it was inward rage, "go
+to your kennels!  Will you dare to raise a hand against a Caylus?
+Go--or when the Vicomte returns, a dozen of you shall hang in the
+market-place!"
+
+I suppose I looked fierce enough--I know I felt no fear, only a strange
+exaltation--for they slunk away.  Unwillingly, but with little delay
+the group melted, Bezers' following--of whom I knew the dead man was
+one--the last to go.  While I still glared at them, lo!  the street was
+empty; the last had disappeared round the bend.  I turned to find Gil
+and half-a-dozen servants standing with pale faces at my back.
+Croisette seized my hand with a sob.  "Oh, my lord," cried Gil,
+quaveringly.  But I shook one off, I frowned at the other.
+
+"Take up this carrion!"  I said, touching it with my foot, "And hang it
+from the justice-elm.  And then close the gates!  See to it, knaves,
+and lose no time."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE VIDAME'S THREAT.
+
+Croisette used to tell a story, of the facts of which I have no
+remembrance, save as a bad dream.  He would have it that I left my
+pallet that night--I had one to myself in the summer, being the eldest,
+while he and Marie slept on another in the same room--and came to him
+and awoke him, sobbing and shaking and clutching him; and begging him
+in a fit of terror not to let me go.  And that so I slept in his arms
+until morning.  But as I have said, I do not remember anything of this,
+only that I had an ugly dream that night, and that when I awoke I was
+lying with him and Marie; so I cannot say whether it really happened.
+
+At any rate, if I had any feeling of the kind it did not last long; on
+the contrary--it would be idle to deny it--I was flattered by the
+sudden respect, Gil and the servants showed me. What Catherine thought
+of the matter I could not tell.  She had her letter and apparently
+found it satisfactory.  At any rate we saw nothing of her.  Madame
+Claude was busy boiling simples, and tending the messenger's hurts.
+And it seemed natural that I should take command.
+
+There could be no doubt--at any rate we had none that the assault on
+the courier had taken place at the Vidame's instance.  The only wonder
+was that he had not simply cut his throat and taken the letter.  But
+looking back now it seems to me that grown men mingled some
+childishness with their cruelty in those days--days when the religious
+wars had aroused our worst passions.  It was not enough to kill an
+enemy.  It pleased people to make--I speak literally--a football of his
+head, to throw his heart to the dogs.  And no doubt it had fallen in
+with the Vidame's grim humour that the bearer of Pavannes' first love
+letter should enter his mistress's presence, bleeding and plaistered
+with mud. And that the riff-raff about our own gates should have part
+in the insult.
+
+Bezers' wrath would be little abated by the issue of the affair, or the
+justice I had done on one of his men.  So we looked well to bolts, and
+bars, and windows, although the castle is well-nigh impregnable, the
+smooth rock falling twenty feet at least on every side from the base of
+the walls.  The gatehouse, Pavannes had shown us, might be blown up
+with gunpowder indeed, but we prepared to close the iron grating which
+barred the way half-way up the ramp.  This done, even if the enemy
+should succeed in forcing an entrance he would only find himself caught
+in a trap--in a steep, narrow way exposed to a fire from the top of the
+flanking walls, as well as from the front.  We had a couple of
+culverins, which the Vicomte had got twenty years before, at the time
+of the battle of St. Quentin.  We fixed one of these at the head of the
+ramp, and placed the other on the terrace, where by moving it a few
+paces forward we could train it on Bezers' house, which thus lay at our
+mercy.
+
+Not that we really expected an attack.  But we did not know what to
+expect or what to fear.  We had not ten servants, the Vicomte having
+taken a score of the sturdiest lackeys and keepers to attend him at
+Bayonne.  And we felt immensely responsible.  Our main hope was that
+the Vidame would at once go on to Paris, and postpone his vengeance.
+So again and again we cast longing glances at the House of the Wolf
+hoping that each symptom of bustle heralded his departure.
+
+Consequently it was a shock to me, and a great downfall of hopes, when
+Gil with a grave face came to me on the terrace and announced that M.
+le Vidame was at the gate, asking to see Mademoiselle.
+
+"It is out of the question that he should see her," the old servant
+added, scratching his head in grave perplexity.
+
+"Most certainly.  I will see him instead," I answered stoutly. "Do you
+leave Francis and another at the gate, Gil.  Marie, keep within sight,
+lad.  And let Croisette stay with me."
+
+These preparations made--and they took up scarcely a moment--I met the
+Vidame at the head of the ramp.  "Mademoiselle de Caylus," I said,
+bowing, "is, I regret to say, indisposed to-day, Vidame."
+
+"She will not see me?"  he asked, eyeing me very unpleasantly.
+
+"Her indisposition deprives her of the pleasure," I answered with an
+effort.  He was certainly a wonderful man, for at sight of him,
+three-fourths of my courage, and all my importance, oozed out at the
+heels of my boots.
+
+"She will not see me.  Very well," he replied, as if I had not spoken.
+And the simple words sounded like a sentence of death. "Then, M. Anne,
+I have a crow to pick with you.  What compensation do you propose to
+make for the death of my servant? A decent, quiet fellow, whom you
+killed yesterday, poor man, because his enthusiasm for the true faith
+carried him away a little."
+
+"Whom I killed because he drew a dagger on M. St. Croix de Caylus at
+the Vicomte's gate," I answered steadily.  I had thought about this of
+course and was ready for it.  "You are aware, M. de Bezers," I
+continued, "that the Vicomte has jurisdiction extending to life and
+death over all persons within the valley?"
+
+"My household excepted," he rejoined quietly.
+
+"Precisely; while they are within the curtilage of your house," I
+retorted.  "However as the punishment was summary, and the man had no
+time to confess himself, I am willing to--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"To pay Father Pierre to say ten masses for his soul."
+
+The way the Vidame received this surprised me.  He broke into
+boisterous laughter.  "By our Lady, my friend," he cried with rough
+merriment, "but you are a joker!  You are indeed.  Masses? Why the man
+was a Protestant!"
+
+And that startled me more than anything which had gone before; more
+indeed than I can explain.  For it seemed to prove that this man,
+laughing his unholy laugh was not like other men.  He did not pick and
+choose his servants for their religion.  He was sure that the Huguenot
+would stone his fellow at his bidding; the Catholic cry "Vive Coligny!"
+I was so completely taken aback that I found no words to answer him,
+and it was Croisette who said smartly, "Then how about his enthusiasm
+for the true faith, M. le Vidame?"
+
+"The true faith," he answered--"for my servants is my faith." Then a
+thought seemed to strike him.  "What is more."  he continued slowly,
+"that it is the true and only faith for all, thousands will learn
+before the world is ten days older.  Bear my words in mind, boy!  They
+will come back to you.  And now hear me," he went on in his usual tone,
+"I am anxious to accommodate a neighbour.  It goes without saying that
+I would not think of putting you, M. Anne, to any trouble for the sake
+of that rascal of mine.  But my people will expect something.  Let the
+plaguy fellow who caused all this disturbance be given up to me, that I
+may hang him; and let us cry quits."
+
+"That is impossible!"  I answered coolly.  I had no need to ask what he
+meant.  Give up Pavannes' messenger indeed!  Never!
+
+He regarded me--unmoved by my refusal--with a smile under which I
+chafed, while I was impotent to resent it.  "Do not build too much on a
+single blow, young gentleman," he said, shaking his head waggishly.  "I
+had fought a dozen times when I was your age. However, I understand
+that you refuse to give me satisfaction?"
+
+"In the mode you mention, certainly," I replied.  "But--"
+
+"Bah!"  he exclaimed with a sneer, "business first and pleasure
+afterwards!  Bezers will obtain satisfaction in his own way, I promise
+you that!  And at his own time.  And it will not be on unfledged
+bantlings like you.  But what is this for?"  And he rudely kicked the
+culverin which apparently he had not noticed before, "So!  so!
+understand," he continued, casting a sharp glance at one and another of
+us.  "You looked to be besieged! Why you, booby, there is the shoot of
+your kitchen midden, twenty feet above the roof of old Fretis' store!
+And open, I will be sworn!  Do you think that I should have come this
+way while there was a ladder in Caylus!  Did you take the wolf for a
+sheep?"
+
+With that he turned on his heel, swaggering away in the full enjoyment
+of his triumph.  For a triumph it was.  We stood stunned; ashamed to
+look one another in the face.  Of course the shoot was open.  We
+remembered now that it was, and we were so sorely mortified by his
+knowledge and our folly, that I failed in my courtesy, and did not see
+him to the gate, as I should have done.  We paid for that later.
+
+"He is the devil in person!"  I exclaimed angrily, shaking my fist at
+the House of the Wolf, as I strode up and down impatiently.  "I hate
+him worse!"
+
+"So do I!"  said Croisette, mildly.  "But that he hates us is a matter
+of more importance.  At any rate we will close the shoot."
+
+"Wait a moment!"  I replied, as after another volley of complaints
+directed at our visitor, the lad was moving off to see to it. "What is
+going on down there?"
+
+"Upon my word, I believe he is leaving us!"  Croisette rejoined sharply.
+
+For there was a noise of hoofs below us, clattering on the pavement.
+Half-a-dozen horsemen were issuing from the House of the Wolf, the ring
+of their bridles and the sound of their careless voices coming up to us
+through the clear morning air Bezers' valet, whom we knew by sight, was
+the last of them.  He had a pair of great saddle-bags before him, and
+at sight of these we uttered a glad exclamation.  "He is going!"  I
+murmured, hardly able to believe my eyes.  "He is going after all!"
+
+"Wait!"  Croisette answered drily.
+
+But I was right.  We had not to wait long.  He WAS going.  In another
+moment he came out himself, riding a strong iron-grey horse:  and we
+could see that he had holsters to his saddle.  His steward was running
+beside him, to take I suppose his last orders.  A cripple, whom the
+bustle had attracted from his usual haunt, the church porch, held up
+his hand for alms.  The Vidame as he passed, cut him savagely across
+the face with his whip, and cursed him audibly.
+
+"May the devil take him!"  exclaimed Croisette in just rage.  But I
+said nothing, remembering that the cripple was a particular pet of
+Catherine's.  I thought instead of an occasion, not so very long ago,
+when the Vicomte being at home, we had had a great hawking party.
+Bezers and Catherine had ridden up the street together, and Catherine
+giving the cripple a piece of money, Bezers had flung to him all his
+share of the game.  And my heart sank.
+
+Only for a moment, however.  The man was gone; or was going at any
+rate.  We stood silent and motionless, all watching, until, after what
+seemed a long interval, the little party of seven became visible on the
+white road far below us--to the northward, and moving in that
+direction.  Still we watched them, muttering a word to one another, now
+and again, until presently the riders slackened their pace, and began
+to ascend the winding track that led to the hills and Cahors; and to
+Paris also, if one went far enough.
+
+Then at length with a loud "Whoop!"  we dashed across the terrace,
+Croisette leading, and so through the courtyard to the parlour; where
+we arrived breathless.  "He is off!"  Croisette cried shrilly.  "He has
+started for Paris!  And bad luck go with him!"  And we all flung up our
+caps and shouted.
+
+But no answer, such as we expected, came from the women folk. When we
+picked up our caps, and looked at Catherine, feeling rather foolish,
+she was staring at us with a white face and great scornful eyes.
+"Fools!"  she said.  "Fools!"
+
+And that was all.  But it was enough to take me aback.  I had looked to
+see her face lighten at our news; instead it wore an expression I had
+never seen on it before.  Catherine, so kind and gentle, calling us
+fools!  And without cause!  I did not understand it.  I turned
+confusedly to Croisette.  He was looking at her, and I saw that he was
+frightened.  As for Madame Claude, she was crying in the corner.  A
+presentiment of evil made my heart sink like lead.  What had happened?
+
+"Fools!"  my cousin repeated with exceeding bitterness, her foot
+tapping the parquet unceasingly.  "Do you think he would have stooped
+to avenge himself on YOU?  On you!  Or that he could hurt me one
+hundredth part as much here as--as--"  She broke off stammering.  Her
+scorn faltered for an instant.  "Bah!  he is a man!  He knows!"  she
+exclaimed superbly, her chin in the air, "but you are boys.  You do not
+understand!"
+
+I looked amazedly at this angry woman.  I had a difficulty in
+associating her with my cousin.  As for Croisette, he stepped forward
+abruptly, and picked up a white object which was lying at her feet.
+
+"Yes, read it!"  she cried, "read it!  Ah!"  and she clenched her
+little hand, and in her passion struck the oak table beside her, so
+that a stain of blood sprang out on her knuckles.  "Why did you not
+kill him?  Why did you not do it when you had the chance? You were
+three to one," she hissed.  "You had him in your power! You could have
+killed him, and you did not!  Now he will kill me!"
+
+Madame Claude muttered something tearfully; something about Pavannes
+and the saints.  I looked over Croisette's shoulder, and read the
+letter.  It began abruptly without any term of address, and ran thus,
+"I have a mission in Paris, Mademoiselle, which admits of no delay,
+your mission, as well as my own--to see Pavannes.  You have won his
+heart.  It is yours, and I will bring it you, or his right hand in
+token that he has yielded up his claim to yours.  And to this I pledge
+myself."
+
+The thing bore no signature.  It was written in some red fluid--blood
+perhaps--a mean and sorry trick!  On the outside was scrawled a
+direction to Mademoiselle de Caylus.  And the packet was sealed with
+the Vidame's crest, a wolf's head.
+
+"The coward!  the miserable coward!"  Croisette cried.  He was the
+first to read the meaning of the thing.  And his eyes were full of
+tears--tears of rage.
+
+For me I was angry exceedingly.  My veins seemed full of fire, as I
+comprehended the mean cruelty which could thus torture a girl.
+
+"Who delivered this?"  I thundered.  "Who gave it to Mademoiselle? How
+did it reach her hands?  Speak, some one!"
+
+A maid, whimpering in the background, said that Francis had given it to
+her to hand to Mademoiselle.
+
+I ground my teeth together, while Marie, unbidden, left the room to
+seek Francis--and a stirrup leather.  The Vidame had brought the note
+in his pocket no doubt, rightly expecting that he would not get an
+audience of my cousin.  Returning to the gate alone he had seen his
+opportunity, and given the note to Francis, probably with a small fee
+to secure its transmission.
+
+Croisette and I looked at one another, apprehending all this. "He will
+sleep at Cahors to-night," I said sullenly.
+
+The lad shook his head and answered in a low voice, "I am afraid not.
+His horses are fresh.  I think he will push on.  He always travels
+quickly.  And now you know--"
+
+I nodded, understanding only too well.
+
+Catherine had flung herself into a chair.  Her arms lay nerveless on
+the table.  Her face was hidden in them.  But now, overhearing us, or
+stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish.  Her
+face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like
+one in physical pain.  "Oh, I cannot bear it!"  she cried to us in
+dreadful tones.  "Oh, will no one do anything?  I will go to him!  I
+will tell him I will give him up! I will do whatever he wishes if he
+will only spare him!"
+
+Croisette went from the room crying.  It was a dreadful sight for
+us--this girl in agony.  And it was impossible to reassure her! Not one
+of us doubted the horrible meaning of the note, its covert threat.
+Civil wars and religious hatred, and I fancy Italian modes of thought,
+had for the time changed our countrymen to beasts.  Far more dreadful
+things were done then than this which Bezers threatened--even if he
+meant it literally--far more dreadful things were suffered.  But in the
+fiendish ingenuity of his vengeance on her, the helpless, loving woman,
+I thought Raoul de Bezers stood alone.  Alas!  it fares ill with the
+butterfly when the cat has struck it down.  Ill indeed!
+
+Madame Claude rose and put her arms round the girl, dismissing me by a
+gesture.  I went out, passing through two or three scared servants, and
+made at once for the terrace.  I felt as if I could only breathe there.
+I found Marie and St. Croix together, silent, the marks of tears on
+their faces.  Our eyes met and they told one tale.
+
+We all spoke at the same time.  "When?"  we said.  But the others
+looked to me for an answer.
+
+I was somewhat sobered by that, and paused to consider before I
+replied.  "At daybreak to-morrow," I decided presently.  "It is an hour
+after noon already.  We want money, and the horses are out.  It will
+take an hour to bring them in.  After that we might still reach Cahors
+to-night, perhaps; but more haste less speed you know.  At daybreak
+to-morrow we will start."
+
+They nodded assent.
+
+It was a great thing we meditated.  No less than to go to Paris--the
+unknown city so far beyond the hills--and seek out M. de Pavannes, and
+warn him.  It would be a race between the Vidame and ourselves; a race
+for the life of Kit's suitor.  Could we reach Paris first, or even
+within twenty-four hours of Bezers' arrival, we should in all
+probability be in time, and be able to put Pavannes on his guard.  It
+had been the first thought of all of us, to take such men as we could
+get together and fall upon Bezers wherever we found him, making it our
+simple object to kill him.  But the lackeys M. le Vicomte had left with
+us, the times being peaceful and the neighbours friendly, were
+poor-spirited fellows.  Bezers' handful, on the contrary, were reckless
+Swiss riders--like master, like men.  We decided that it would be wiser
+simply to warn Pavannes, and then stand by him if necessary.
+
+We might have despatched a messenger.  But our servants--Gil excepted,
+and he was too old to bear the journey--were ignorant of Paris.  Nor
+could any one of them be trusted with a mission so delicate.  We
+thought of Pavannes' courier indeed.  But he was a Rochellois, and a
+stranger to the capital.  There was nothing for it but to go ourselves.
+
+Yet we did not determine on this adventure with light hearts, I
+remember.  Paris loomed big and awesome in the eyes of all of us. The
+glamour of the court rather frightened than allured us.  We felt that
+shrinking from contact with the world which a country life engenders,
+as well as that dread of seeming unlike other people which is peculiar
+to youth.  It was a great plunge, and a dangerous which we meditated.
+And we trembled.  If we had known more--especially of the future--we
+should have trembled more.
+
+But we were young, and with our fears mingled a delicious excitement.
+We were going on an adventure of knight errantry in which we might win
+our spurs.  We were going to see the world and play men's parts in it!
+to save a friend and make our mistress happy!
+
+We gave our orders.  But we said nothing to Catherine or Madame Claude;
+merely bidding Gil tell them after our departure.  We arranged for the
+immediate despatch of a message to the Vicomte at Bayonne, and charged
+Gil until he should hear from him to keep the gates closed, and look
+well to the shoot of the kitchen midden.  Then, when all was ready, we
+went to our pallets, but it was with hearts throbbing with excitement
+and wakeful eyes.
+
+"Anne!  Anne!"  said Croisette, rising on his elbow and speaking to me
+some three hours later, "what do you think the Vidame meant this
+morning when he said that about the ten days?"
+
+"What about the ten days?"  I asked peevishly.  He had roused me just
+when I was at last falling asleep.
+
+"About the world seeing that his was the true faith--in ten days?"
+
+"I am sure I do not know.  For goodness' sake let us go to sleep," I
+replied.  For I had no patience with Croisette, talking such nonsense,
+when we had our own business to think about.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE ROAD TO PARIS.
+
+The sun had not yet risen above the hills when we three with a single
+servant behind us drew rein at the end of the valley; and easing our
+horses on the ascent, turned in the saddle to take a last look at
+Caylus--at the huddled grey town, and the towers above it.  A little
+thoughtful we all were, I think.  The times were rough and our errand
+was serious.  But youth and early morning are fine dispellers of care;
+and once on the uplands we trotted gaily forward, now passing through
+wide glades in the sparse oak forest, where the trees all leaned one
+way, now over bare, wind-swept downs; or once and again descending into
+a chalky bottom, where the stream bubbled through deep beds of fern,
+and a lonely farmhouse nestled amid orchards.
+
+Four hours' riding, and we saw below us Cahors, filling the bend of the
+river.  We cantered over the Vallandre Bridge, which there crosses the
+Lot, and so to my uncle's house of call in the square.  Here we ordered
+breakfast, and announced with pride that we were going to Paris.
+
+Our host raised his hands.  "Now there!"  he exclaimed, regret in his
+voice.  "And if you had arrived yesterday you could have travelled up
+with the Vidame de Bezers!  And you a small party--saving your
+lordships' presence--and the roads but so-so!"
+
+"But the Vidame was riding with only half-a-dozen attendants also!"  I
+answered, flicking my boot in a careless way.
+
+The landlord shook his head.  "Ah, M. le Vidame knows the world!" he
+answered shrewdly.  "He is not to be taken off his guard, not he!  One
+of his men whispered me that twenty staunch fellows would join him at
+Chateauroux.  They say the wars are over, but"--and the good man,
+shrugging his shoulders, cast an expressive glance at some fine
+flitches of bacon which were hanging in his chimney. "However, your
+lordships know better than I do," he added briskly.  "I am a poor man.
+I only wish to live at peace with my neighbours, whether they go to
+mass or sermon."
+
+This was a sentiment so common in those days and so heartily echoed by
+most men of substance both in town and country, that we did not stay to
+assent to it; but having received from the worthy fellow a token which
+would insure our obtaining fresh cattle at Limoges, we took to the road
+again, refreshed in body, and with some food for thought.
+
+Five-and-twenty attendants were more than even such a man as Bezers,
+who had many enemies, travelled with in those days; unless accompanied
+by ladies.  That the Vidame had provided such a reinforcement seemed to
+point to a wider scheme than the one with which we had credited him.
+But we could not guess what his plans were; since he must have ordered
+his people before he heard of Catherine's engagement.  Either his
+jealousy therefore had put him on the alert earlier, or his threatened
+attack on Pavannes was only part of a larger plot.  In either case our
+errand seemed more urgent, but scarcely more hopeful.
+
+The varied sights and sounds however of the road--many of them new to
+us--kept us from dwelling over much on this.  Our eyes were young, and
+whether it was a pretty girl lingering behind a troop of gipsies, or a
+pair of strollers from Valencia--JONGLEURS they still called
+themselves--singing in the old dialect of Provence, or a Norman
+horse-dealer with his string of cattle tied head and tail, or the Puy
+de Dome to the eastward over the Auvergne hills, or a tattered old
+soldier wounded in the wars--fighting for either side, according as
+their lordships inclined--we were pleased with all.
+
+Yet we never forgot our errand.  We never I think rose in the
+morning--too often stiff and sore--without thinking "To-day or
+to-morrow or the next day--" as the case might be--"we shall make all
+right for Kit!"  For Kit!  Perhaps it was the purest enthusiasm we were
+ever to feel, the least selfish aim we were ever to pursue.  For Kit!
+
+Meanwhile we met few travellers of rank on the road.  Half the nobility
+of France were still in Paris enjoying the festivities which were being
+held to mark the royal marriage.  We obtained horses where we needed
+them without difficulty.  And though we had heard much of the dangers
+of the way, infested as it was said to be by disbanded troopers, we
+were not once stopped or annoyed.
+
+But it is not my intention to chronicle all the events of this my first
+journey, though I dwell on them with pleasure; or to say what I thought
+of the towns, all new and strange to me, through which we passed.
+Enough that we went by way of Limoges, Chateauroux and Orleans, and
+that at Chateauroux we learned the failure of one hope we had formed.
+We had thought that Bezers when joined there by his troopers would not
+be able to get relays; and that on this account we might by travelling
+post overtake him; and possibly slip by him between that place and
+Paris.  But we learned at Chateauroux that his troop had received fresh
+orders to go to Orleans and await him there; the result being that he
+was able to push forward with relays so far.  He was evidently in hot
+haste.  For leaving there with his horses fresh he passed through
+Angerville, forty miles short of Paris, at noon, whereas we reached it
+on the evening of the same day--the sixth after leaving Caylus.
+
+We rode into the yard of the inn--a large place, seeming larger in the
+dusk--so tired that we could scarcely slip from our saddles.  Jean, our
+servant, took the four horses, and led them across to the stables, the
+poor beasts hanging their heads, and following meekly.  We stood a
+moment stamping our feet, and stretching our legs.  The place seemed in
+a bustle, the clatter of pans and dishes proceeding from the windows
+over the entrance, with a glow of light and the sound of feet hurrying
+in the passages.  There were men too, half-a-dozen or so standing at
+the doors of the stables, while others leaned from the windows.  One or
+two lanthorns just kindled glimmered here and there in the
+semi-darkness; and in a corner two smiths were shoeing a horse.
+
+We were turning from all this to go in, when we heard Jean's voice
+raised in altercation, and thinking our rustic servant had fallen into
+trouble, we walked across to the stables near which he and the horses
+were still lingering.  "Well, what is it?"  I said sharply.
+
+"They say that there is no room for the horses," Jean answered
+querulously, scratching his head; half sullen, half cowed, a country
+servant all over.
+
+"And there is not!"  cried the foremost of the gang about the door,
+hastening to confront us in turn.  His tone was insolent, and it needed
+but half an eye to see that his fellows were inclined to back him up.
+He stuck his arms akimbo and faced us with an impudent smile.  A
+lanthorn on the ground beside him throwing an uncertain light on the
+group, I saw that they all wore the same badge.
+
+"Come," I said sternly, "the stables are large, and your horses cannot
+fill them.  Some room must be found for mine."
+
+"To be sure!  Make way for the king!"  he retorted.  While one jeered
+"VIVE LE ROI!"  and the rest laughed.  Not good-humouredly, but with a
+touch of spitefulness.
+
+Quarrels between gentlemen's servants were as common then as they are
+to-day.  But the masters seldom condescended to interfere. "Let the
+fellows fight it out," was the general sentiment.  Here, however, poor
+Jean was over-matched, and we had no choice but to see to it ourselves.
+
+"Come, men, have a care that you do not get into trouble," I urged,
+restraining Croisette by a touch, for I by no means wished to have a
+repetition of the catastrophe which had happened at Caylus.  "These
+horses belong to the Vicomte de Caylus.  If your master be a friend of
+his, as may very probably be the case, you will run the risk of getting
+into trouble."
+
+I thought I heard, as I stopped speaking, a subdued muttering, and
+fancied I caught the words, "PAPEGOT!  Down with the Guises!" But the
+spokesman's only answer aloud was "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
+"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"  he repeated, flapping his arms in defiance. "Here
+is a cock of a fine hackle!"  And so on, and so forth, while he turned
+grinning to his companions, looking for their applause.
+
+I was itching to chastise him, and yet hesitating, lest the thing
+should have its serious side, when a new actor appeared.  "Shame, you
+brutes!"  cried a shrill voice above us in the clouds it seemed.  I
+looked up, and saw two girls, coarse and handsome, standing at a window
+over the stable, a light between them.  "For shame!  Don't you see that
+they are mere children?  Let them be," cried one.
+
+The men laughed louder than ever; and for me, I could not stand by and
+be called a child.  "Come here," I said, beckoning to the man in the
+doorway.  "Come here, you rascal, and I will give you the thrashing you
+deserve for speaking to a gentleman!"
+
+He lounged forward, a heavy fellow, taller than myself and six inches
+wider at the shoulders.  My heart failed me a little as I measured him.
+But the thing had to be done.  If I was slight, I was wiry as a hound,
+and in the excitement had forgotten my fatigue.  I snatched from Marie
+a loaded riding-whip he carried, and stepped forward.
+
+"Have a care, little man!"  cried the girl gaily--yet half in pity, I
+think.  "Or that fat pig will kill you!"
+
+My antagonist did not join in the laugh this time.  Indeed it struck me
+that his eye wandered and that he was not so ready to enter the ring as
+his mates were to form it.  But before I could try his mettle, a hand
+was laid on my shoulder.  A man appearing from I do not know
+where--from the dark fringe of the group, I suppose--pushed me aside,
+roughly, but not discourteously.
+
+"Leave this to me!"  he said, coolly stepping before me.  "Do not dirty
+your hands with the knave, master.  I am pining for work and the job
+will just suit me!  I will fit him for the worms before the nuns above
+can say an AVE!"
+
+I looked at the newcomer.  He was a stout fellow; not over tall, nor
+over big; swarthy, with prominent features.  The plume of his bonnet
+was broken, but he wore it in a rakish fashion; and altogether he
+swaggered with so dare-devil an air, clinking his spurs and swinging
+out his long sword recklessly, that it was no wonder three or four of
+the nearest fellows gave back a foot.
+
+"Come on!"  he cried, boisterously, forming a ring by the simple
+process of sweeping his blade from side to side, while he made the
+dagger in his left hand flash round his head.  "Who is for the game?
+Who will strike a blow for the little Admiral?  Will you come one, two,
+three at once; or all together?  Anyway, come on, you--" And he closed
+his challenge with a volley of frightful oaths, directed at the group
+opposite.
+
+"It is no quarrel of yours," said the big man, sulkily; making no show
+of drawing his sword, but rather drawing back himself.
+
+"All quarrels are my quarrels!  and no quarrels are your quarrels. That
+is about the truth, I fancy!"  was the smart retort; which our champion
+rendered more emphatic by a playful lunge that caused the big bully to
+skip again.
+
+There was a loud laugh at this, even among the enemy's backers. "Bah,
+the great pig!"  ejaculated the girl above.  "Spit him!" and she spat
+down on the whilom Hector--who made no great figure now.
+
+"Shall I bring you a slice of him, my dear?"  asked my rakehelly
+friend, looking up and making his sword play round the shrinking
+wretch.  "Just a tit-bit, my love?"  he added persuasively.  "A
+mouthful of white liver and caper sauce?"
+
+"Not for me, the beast!"  the girl cried, amid the laughter of the yard.
+
+"Not a bit?  If I warrant him tender?  Ladies' meat?"
+
+"Bah!  no!"  and she stolidly spat down again.
+
+"Do you hear?  The lady has no taste for you," the tormentor cried.
+"Pig of a Gascon!"  And deftly sheathing his dagger, he seized the big
+coward by the ear, and turning him round, gave him a heavy kick which
+sent him spinning over a bucket, and down against the wall.  There the
+bully remained, swearing and rubbing himself by turns; while the victor
+cried boastfully, "Enough of him.  If anyone wants to take up his
+quarrel, Blaise Bure is his man.  If not, let us have an end of it.
+Let someone find stalls for the gentlemen's horses before they catch a
+chill; and have done with it.  As for me," he added, and then he turned
+to us and removed his hat with an exaggerated flourish, "I am your
+lordship's servant to command."
+
+I thanked him with a heartiness, half-earnest, half-assumed.  His cloak
+was ragged, his trunk hose, which had once been fine enough, were
+stained, and almost pointless, He swaggered inimitably, and had
+led-captain written large upon him.  But he had done us a service, for
+Jean had no further trouble about the horses.  And besides one has a
+natural liking for a brave man, and this man was brave beyond question.
+
+"You are from Orleans," he said respectfully enough, but as one
+asserting a fact, not asking a question.
+
+"Yes," I answered, somewhat astonished, "Did you see us come in?"
+
+"No, but I looked at your boots, gentlemen," he replied.  "White dust,
+north; red dust, south.  Do you see?"
+
+"Yes, I see," I said, with admiration.  "You must have been brought up
+in a sharp school, M. Bure."
+
+"Sharp masters make sharp scholars," he replied, grinning.  And that
+answer I had occasion to remember afterwards.
+
+"You are from Orleans, also?"  I asked, as we prepared to go in.
+
+"Yes, from Orleans too, gentlemen.  But earlier in the day.  With
+letters--letters of importance!"  And bestowing something like a wink
+of confidence on us, he drew himself up, looked sternly at the
+stable-folk, patted himself twice on the chest, and finally twirled his
+moustaches, and smirked at the girl above, who was chewing straws.
+
+I thought it likely enough that we might find it hard to get rid of
+him.  But this was not so.  After listening with gratification to our
+repeated thanks, he bowed with the same grotesque flourish, and marched
+off as grave as a Spaniard, humming--
+
+  "Ce petit homme tant joli!
+  Qui toujours cause et toujours rit,
+  Qui toujours baise sa mignonne,
+  Dieu gard' de mal ce petit homme!"
+
+On our going in, the landlord met us politely, but with curiosity, and
+a simmering of excitement also in his manner. "From Paris, my lords?"
+he asked, rubbing his hands and bowing low.  "Or from the south?"
+
+"From the south," I answered.  "From Orleans, and hungry and tired,
+Master Host."
+
+"Ah!"  he replied, disregarding the latter part of my answer, while his
+little eyes twinkled with satisfaction.  "Then I dare swear, my lords,
+you have not heard the news?"  He halted in the narrow passage, and
+lifting the candle he carried, scanned our faces closely, as if he
+wished to learn something about us before he spoke.
+
+"News!"  I answered brusquely, being both tired, and as I had told him,
+hungry.  "We have heard none, and the best you can give us will be that
+our supper is ready to be served."
+
+But even this snub did not check his eagerness to tell his news. "The
+Admiral de Coligny," he said, breathlessly, "you have not heard what
+has happened to him?"
+
+"To the admiral?  No, what?"  I inquired rapidly.  I was interested at
+last.
+
+For a moment let me digress.  The few of my age will remember, and the
+many younger will have been told, that at this time the Italian
+queen-mother was the ruling power in France.  It was Catharine de'
+Medici's first object to maintain her influence over Charles the
+Ninth--her son; who, ricketty, weak, and passionate, was already doomed
+to an early grave.  Her second, to support the royal power by balancing
+the extreme Catholics against the Huguenots.  For the latter purpose
+she would coquet first with one party, then with the other.  At the
+present moment she had committed herself more deeply than was her wont
+to the Huguenots.  Their leaders, the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the
+King of Navarre, and the Prince of Conde, were supposed to be high in
+favour, while the chiefs of the other party, the Duke of Guise, and the
+two Cardinals of his house, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Cardinal
+of Guise, were in disgrace; which, as it seemed, even their friend at
+court, the queen's favourite son, Henry of Anjou, was unable to
+overcome.
+
+Such was the outward aspect of things in August, 1572, but there were
+not wanting rumours that already Coligny, taking advantage of the
+footing given him, had gained an influence over the young king, which
+threatened Catharine de' Medici herself.  The admiral, therefore, to
+whom the Huguenot half of France had long looked as to its leader, was
+now the object of the closest interest to all; the Guise faction,
+hating him--as the alleged assassin of the Duke of Guise--with an
+intensity which probably was not to be found in the affection of his
+friends, popular with the latter as he was.
+
+Still, many who were not Huguenots had a regard for him as a great
+Frenchman and a gallant soldier.  We--though we were of the old faith,
+and the other side--had heard much of him, and much good.  The Vicomte
+had spoken of him always as a great man, a man mistaken, but brave,
+honest and capable in his error.  Therefore it was that when the
+landlord mentioned him, I forgot even my hunger.
+
+"He was shot, my lords, as he passed through the Rue des Fosses,
+yesterday," the man declared with bated breath.  "It is not known
+whether he will live or die.  Paris is in an uproar, and there are some
+who fear the worst."
+
+"But," I said doubtfully, "who has dared to do this?  He had a safe
+conduct from the king himself."
+
+Our host did not answer; shrugging his shoulders instead, he opened the
+door, and ushered us into the eating-room.
+
+Some preparations for our meal had already been made at one end of the
+long board.  At the other was seated a man past middle age; richly but
+simply dressed.  His grey hair, cut short about a massive head, and his
+grave, resolute face, square-jawed, and deeply-lined, marked him as one
+to whom respect was due apart from his clothes.  We bowed to him as we
+took our seats.
+
+He acknowledged the salute, fixing us a moment with a penetrating
+glance; and then resumed his meal.  I noticed that his sword and belt
+were propped against a chair at his elbow, and a dag, apparently
+loaded, lay close to his hand by the candlestick.  Two lackeys waited
+behind his chair, wearing the badge we had remarked in the inn yard.
+
+We began to talk, speaking in low tones that we might not disturb him.
+The attack on Coligny had, if true, its bearing on our own business.
+For if a Huguenot so great and famous and enjoying the king's special
+favour still went in Paris in danger of his life, what must be the risk
+that such an one as Pavannes ran?  We had hoped to find the city quiet.
+If instead it should be in a state of turmoil Bezers' chances were so
+much the better; and ours--and Kit's, poor Kit's--so much the worse.
+
+Our companion had by this time finished his supper.  But he still sat
+at table, and seemed to be regarding us with some curiosity. At length
+he spoke.  "Are you going to Paris, young gentlemen?" he asked, his
+tone harsh and high-pitched.
+
+We answered in the affirmative.  "To-morrow?"  he questioned.
+
+"Yes," we answered; and expected him to continue the conversation.  But
+instead he became silent, gazing abstractedly at the table; and what
+with our meal, and our own talk we had almost forgotten him again, when
+looking up, I found him at my elbow, holding out in silence a small
+piece of paper.
+
+I started his face was so grave.  But seeing that there were
+half-a-dozen guests of a meaner sort at another table close by, I
+guessed that he merely wished to make a private communication to us;
+and hastened to take the paper and read it.  It contained a scrawl of
+four words only--
+
+  "Va chasser l'Idole."
+
+No more.  I looked at him puzzled; able to make nothing out of it.  St.
+Croix wrinkled his brow over it with the same result. It was no good
+handing it to Marie, therefore.
+
+"You do not understand?"  the stranger continued, as he put the scrap
+of paper back in his pouch.
+
+"No," I answered, shaking my head.  We had all risen out of respect to
+him, and were standing a little group about him.
+
+"Just so; it is all right then," he answered, looking at us as it
+seemed to me with grave good-nature.  "It is nothing.  Go your way.
+But--I have a son yonder not much younger than you, young gentlemen.
+And if you had understood, I should have said to you, 'Do not go!
+There are enough sheep for the shearer!'"
+
+He was turning away with this oracular saying when Croisette touched
+his sleeve.  "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said
+eagerly, "that the Admiral de Coligny was wounded yesterday?"
+
+"It is true," the other answered, turning his grave eyes on his
+questioner, while for a moment his stern look failed him, "It is true,
+my boy," he added with an air of strange solemnity.  "Whom the Lord
+loveth, He chasteneth.  And, God forgive me for saying it, whom He
+would destroy, He first maketh mad."
+
+He had gazed with peculiar favour at Croisette's girlish face, I
+thought:  Marie and I were dark and ugly by the side of the boy. But he
+turned from him now with a queer, excited gesture, thumping his
+gold-headed cane on the floor.  He called his servants in a loud,
+rasping voice, and left the room in seeming anger, driving them before
+him, the one carrying his dag, and the other, two candles.
+
+When I came down early next morning, the first person I met was Blaise
+Bure.  He looked rather fiercer and more shabby by daylight than
+candlelight.  But he saluted me respectfully; and this, since it was
+clear that he did not respect many people, inclined me to regard him
+with favour.  It is always so, the more savage the dog, the more highly
+we prize its attentions.  I asked him who the Huguenot noble was who
+had supped with us.  For a Huguenot we knew he must be.
+
+"The Baron de Rosny," he answered; adding with a sneer, "He is a
+careful man!  If they were all like him, with eyes on both sides of his
+head and a dag by his candle--well, my lord, there would be one more
+king in France--or one less!  But they are a blind lot:  as blind as
+bats."  He muttered something farther in which I caught the word
+"to-night."  But I did not hear it all; or understand any of it.
+
+"Your lordships are going to Paris?"  he resumed in a different tone.
+When I said that we were, he looked at me in a shamefaced way, half
+timid, half arrogant.  "I have a small favour to ask of you then," he
+said.  "I am going to Paris myself.  I am not afraid of odds, as you
+have seen.  But the roads will be in a queer state if there be anything
+on foot in the city, and--well, I would rather ride with you gentlemen
+than alone."
+
+"You are welcome to join us," I said.  "But we start in half-an-hour.
+Do you know Paris well?"
+
+"As well as my sword-hilt," he replied briskly, relieved I thought by
+my acquiescence, "And I have known that from my breeching.  If you want
+a game at PAUME, or a pretty girl to kiss, I can put you in the way for
+the one or the other."
+
+The half rustic shrinking from the great city which I felt, suggested
+to me that our swashbuckling friend might help us if he would.  "Do you
+know M. de Pavannes?"  I asked impulsively, "Where he lives in Paris, I
+mean?"
+
+"M. Louis de Pavannes?"  quoth he.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I know--" he replied slowly, rubbing his chin and looking at the
+ground in thought--"where he had his lodgings in town a while ago,
+before--Ah!  I do know!  I remember," he added, slapping his thigh,
+"when I was in Paris a fortnight ago I was told that his steward had
+taken lodgings for him in the Rue St. Antoine."
+
+"Good!"  I answered overjoyed.  "Then we want to dismount there, if you
+can guide us straight to the house."
+
+"I can," he replied simply.  "And you will not be the worse for my
+company.  Paris is a queer place when there is trouble to the fore, but
+your lordships have got the right man to pilot you through it."
+
+I did not ask him what trouble he meant, but ran indoors to buckle on
+my sword, and tell Marie and Croisette of the ally I had secured.  They
+were much pleased, as was natural; so that we took the road in
+excellent spirits intending to reach the city in the afternoon.  But
+Marie's horse cast a shoe, and it was some time before we could find a
+smith.  Then at Etampes, where we stopped to lunch, we were kept an
+unconscionable time waiting for it.  And so we approached Paris for the
+first time at sunset.  A ruddy glow was at the moment warming the
+eastern heights, and picking out with flame the twin towers of Notre
+Dame, and the one tall tower of St. Jacques la Boucherie.  A dozen
+roofs higher than their neighbours shone hotly; and a great bank of
+cloud, which lay north and south, and looked like a man's hand
+stretched over the city, changed gradually from blood-red to violet,
+and from violet to black, as evening fell.
+
+Passing within the gates and across first one bridge and then another,
+we were astonished and utterly confused by the noise and hubbub through
+which we rode.  Hundreds seemed to be moving this way and that in the
+narrow streets.  Women screamed to one another from window to window.
+The bells of half-a-dozen churches rang the curfew.  Our country ears
+were deafened.  Still our eyes had leisure to take in the tall houses
+with their high-pitched roofs, and here and there a tower built into
+the wall; the quaint churches, and the groups of townsfolk--sullen
+fellows some of them with a fierce gleam in their eyes--who, standing
+in the mouths of reeking alleys, watched us go by.
+
+But presently we had to stop.  A crowd had gathered to watch a little
+cavalcade of six gentlemen pass across our path.  They were riding two
+and two, lounging in their saddles and chattering to one another,
+disdainfully unconscious of the people about them, or the remarks they
+excited.  Their graceful bearing and the richness of their dress and
+equipment surpassed anything I had ever seen.  A dozen pages and
+lackeys were attending them on foot, and the sound of their jests and
+laughter came to us over the heads of the crowd.
+
+While I was gazing at them, some movement of the throng drove back
+Bure's horse against mine.  Bure himself uttered a savage oath;
+uncalled for so far as I could see.  But my attention was arrested the
+next moment by Croisette, who tapped my arm with his riding whip.
+"Look!"  he cried in some excitement, "is not that he?"
+
+I followed the direction of the lad's finger--as well as I could for
+the plunging of my horse which Bure's had frightened--and scrutinized
+the last pair of the troop.  They were crossing the street in which we
+stood, and I had only a side view of them; or rather of the nearer
+rider.  He was a singularly handsome man, in age about twenty-two or
+twenty-three with long lovelocks falling on his lace collar and cloak
+of orange silk.  His face was sweet and kindly and gracious to a
+marvel.  But he was a stranger to me.
+
+"I could have sworn," exclaimed Croisette, "that that was Louis
+himself--M. de Pavannes!"
+
+"That?"  I answered, as we began to move again, the crowd melting
+before us.  "Oh, dear, no!"
+
+"No!  no!  The farther man!"  he explained.
+
+But I had not been able to get a good look at the farther of the two.
+We turned in our saddles and peered after him.  His back in the dusk
+certainly reminded me of Louis.  Bure, however, who said he knew M. de
+Pavannes by sight, laughed at the idea.  "Your friend," he said, "is a
+wider man than that!"  And I thought he was right there--but then it
+might be the cut of the clothes. "They have been at the Louvre playing
+paume, I'll be sworn!"  he went on.  "So the Admiral must be better.
+The one next us was M. de Teligny, the Admiral's son-in-law.  And the
+other, whom you mean, was the Comte de la Rochefoucault."
+
+We turned as he spoke into a narrow street near the river, and could
+see not far from us a mass of dark buildings which Bure told us was the
+Louvre--the king's residence.  Out of this street we turned into a
+short one; and here Bure drew rein and rapped loudly at some heavy
+gates.  It was so dark that when, these being opened, he led the way
+into a courtyard, we could see little more than a tall, sharp-gabled
+house, projecting over us against a pale sky; and a group of men and
+horses in one corner. Bure spoke to one of the men, and begging us to
+dismount, said the footman would show us to M. de Pavannes.
+
+The thought that we were at the end of our long journey, and in time to
+warn Louis of his danger, made us forget all our exertions, our fatigue
+and stiffness.  Gladly throwing the bridles to Jean we ran up the steps
+after the servant.  The thing was done.  Hurrah!  the thing was done!
+
+The house--as we passed through a long passage and up some
+steps--seemed full of people.  We heard voices and the ring of arms
+more than once.  But our guide, without pausing, led us to a small room
+lighted by a hanging lamp.  "I will inform M. de Pavannes of your
+arrival," he said respectfully, and passed behind a curtain, which
+seemed to hide the door of an inner apartment.  As he did so the clink
+of glasses and the hum of conversation reached us.
+
+"He has company supping with him," I said nervously.  I tried to flip
+some of the dust from my boots with my whip.  I remembered that this
+was Paris.
+
+"He will be surprised to see us," quoth Croisette, laughing--a little
+shyly, too, I think.  And so we stood waiting.
+
+I began to wonder as minutes passed by--the gay company we had seen
+putting it in my mind, I suppose--whether M. de Pavannes, of Paris,
+might not turn out to be a very different person from Louis de
+Pavannes, of Caylus; whether the king's courtier would be as friendly
+as Kit's lover.  And I was still thinking of this without having
+settled the point to my satisfaction, when the curtain was thrust aside
+again.  A very tall man, wearing a splendid suit of black and silver
+and a stiff trencher-like ruff, came quickly in, and stood smiling at
+us, a little dog in his arms.  The little dog sat up and snarled:  and
+Croisette gasped. It was not our old friend Louis certainly!  It was
+not Louis de Pavannes at all.  It was no old friend at all, It was the
+Vidame de Bezers!
+
+"Welcome, gentlemen!"  he said, smiling at us--and never had the cast
+been so apparent in his eyes.  "Welcome to Paris, M. Anne!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ENTRAPPED!
+
+There was a long silence.  We stood glaring at him, and he smiled upon
+us--as a cat smiles.  Croisette told me afterwards that he could have
+died of mortification--of shame and anger that we had been so
+outwitted.  For myself I did not at once grasp the position.  I did not
+understand.  I could not disentangle myself in a moment from the belief
+in which I had entered the house--that it was Louis de Pavannes' house.
+But I seemed vaguely to suspect that Bezers had swept him aside and
+taken his place.  My first impulse therefore--obeyed on the
+instant--was to stride to the Vidame's side and grasp his arm.  "What
+have you done?"  I cried, my voice sounding hoarsely even in my own
+ears.  "What have you done with M. de Pavannes?  Answer me!"
+
+He showed just a little more of his sharp white teeth as he looked down
+at my face--a flushed and troubled face doubtless. "Nothing--yet," he
+replied very mildly.  And he shook me off.
+
+"Then," I retorted, "how do you come here?"
+
+He glanced at Croisette and shrugged his shoulders, as if I had been a
+spoiled child.  "M. Anne does not seem to understand," he said with
+mock courtesy, "that I have the honour to welcome him to my house the
+Hotel Bezers, Rue de Platriere."
+
+"The Hotel Bezers!  Rue de Platriere!"  I cried confusedly.  "But
+Blaise Bure told us that this was the Rue St. Antoine!"
+
+"Ah!"  he replied as if slowly enlightened--the hypocrite!  "Ah! I
+see!"  and he smiled grimly.  "So you have made the acquaintance of
+Blaise Bure, my excellent master of the horse! Worthy Blaise! Indeed,
+indeed, now I understand.  And you thought, you whelps," he continued,
+and as he spoke his tone changed strangely, and he fixed us suddenly
+with angry eyes, "to play a rubber with me!  With me, you imbeciles!
+You thought the wolf of Bezers could be hunted down like any hare!
+Then listen, and I will tell you the end of it.  You are now in my
+house and absolutely at my mercy.  I have two score men within call who
+would cut the throats of three babes at the breast, if I bade them!
+Ay," he, added, a wicked exultation shining in his eyes, "they would,
+and like the job!"
+
+He was going on to say more, but I interrupted him.  The rage I felt,
+caused as much by the thought of our folly as by his arrogance, would
+let me be silent no longer.  "First, M. de Bezers, first," I broke out
+fiercely, my words leaping over one another in my haste, "a word with
+you!  Let me tell you what I think of you!  You are a treacherous
+hound, Vidame!  A cur!  a beast!  And I spit upon you!  Traitor and
+assassin!"  I shouted, "is that not enough?  Will nothing provoke you?
+If you call yourself a gentleman, draw!"
+
+He shook his head; he was still smiling, still unmoved.  "I do not do
+my own dirty work," he said quietly, "nor stint my footmen of their
+sport, boy."
+
+"Very well!"  I retorted.  And with the words I drew my sword, and
+sprang as quick as lightning to the curtain by which he had entered.
+"Very well, we will kill you first!"  I cried wrathfully, my eye on his
+eye, and every savage passion in my breast aroused, "and take our
+chance with the lackeys afterwards! Marie!  Croisette!"  I cried
+shrilly, "on him, lads!"
+
+But they did not answer!  They did not move or draw.  For the moment
+indeed the man was in my power.  My wrist was raised, and I had my
+point at his breast, I could have run him through by a single thrust.
+And I hated him.  Oh, how I hated him!  But he did not stir.  Had he
+spoken, had he moved so much as an eyelid, or drawn back his foot, or
+laid his hand on his hilt, I should have killed him there.  But he did
+not stir and I could not do it.  My hand dropped.  "Cowards!"  I cried,
+glancing bitterly from him to them--they had never failed me before.
+"Cowards!"  I muttered, seeming to shrink into myself as I said the
+word.  And I flung my sword clattering on the floor.
+
+"That is better!"  he drawled quite unmoved, as if nothing more than
+words had passed, as if he had not been in peril at all. "It was what I
+was going to ask you to do.  If the other young gentlemen will follow
+your example, I shall be obliged.  Thank you.  Thank you."
+
+Croisette, and a minute later Marie, obeyed him to the letter!  I could
+not understand it.  I folded my arms and gave up the game in despair,
+and but for very shame I could have put my hands to my face and cried.
+He stood in the middle under the lamp, a head taller than the tallest
+of us; our master.  And we stood round him trapped, beaten, for all the
+world like children.  Oh, I could have cried!  This was the end of our
+long ride, our aspirations, our knight-errantry!
+
+"Now perhaps you will listen to me," he went on smoothly, "and hear
+what I am going to do.  I shall keep you here, young gentlemen, until
+you can serve me by carrying to mademoiselle, your cousin, some news of
+her betrothed.  Oh, I shall not detain you long," he added with an evil
+smile.  "You have arrived in Paris at a fortunate moment.  There is
+going to be a--well, there is a little scheme on foot appointed for
+to-night--singularly lucky you are!--for removing some objectionable
+people, some friends of ours perhaps among them, M. Anne.  That is all.
+You will hear shots, cries, perhaps screams.  Take no notice.  You will
+be in no danger.  For M. de Pavannes," he continued, his voice sinking,
+"I think that by morning I shall be able to give you a--a more
+particular account of him to take to Caylus--to Mademoiselle, you
+understand."
+
+For a moment the mask was off.  His face took a sombre brightness.  He
+moistened his lips with his tongue as though he saw his vengeance
+worked out then and there before him, and were gloating over the
+picture.  The idea that this was so took such a hold upon me that I
+shrank back, shuddering; reading too in Croisette's face the same
+thought--and a late repentance.  Nay, the malignity of Bezers' tone,
+the savage gleam of joy in his eyes appalled me to such an extent that
+I fancied for a moment I saw in him the devil incarnate!
+
+He recovered his composure very quickly, however; and turned carelessly
+towards the door.  "If you will follow me," he said, "I will see you
+disposed of.  You may have to complain of your lodging--I have other
+things to think of to-night than hospitality, But you shall not need to
+complain of your supper."
+
+He drew aside the curtain as he spoke, and passed into the next room
+before us, not giving a thought apparently to the possibility that we
+might strike him from behind.  There certainly was an odd quality
+apparent in him at times which seemed to contradict what we knew of him.
+
+The room we entered was rather long than wide, hung with tapestry, and
+lighted by silver lamps.  Rich plate, embossed, I afterwards learned,
+by Cellini the Florentine--who died that year I remember--and richer
+glass from Venice, with a crowd of meaner vessels filled with meats and
+drinks covered the table; disordered as by the attacks of a numerous
+party.  But save a servant or two by the distant dresser, and an
+ecclesiastic at the far end of the table, the room was empty.
+
+The priest rose as we entered, the Vidame saluting him as if they had
+not met that day.  "You are welcome M. le Coadjuteur," he said; saying
+it coldly, however, I thought.  And the two eyed one another with
+little favour; rather as birds of prey about to quarrel over the spoil,
+than as host and guest.  Perhaps the Coadjutor's glittering eyes and
+great beak-like nose made me think of this.
+
+"Ho!  ho!"  he said, looking piercingly at us--and no doubt we must
+have seemed a miserable and dejected crew enough.  "Who are these?  Not
+the first-fruits of the night, eh?"
+
+The Vidame looked darkly at him.  "No," he answered brusquely. "They
+are not.  I am not particular out of doors, Coadjutor, as you know, but
+this is my house, and we are going to supper. Perhaps you do not
+comprehend the distinction.  Still it exists--for me," with a sneer.
+
+This was as good as Greek to us.  But I so shrank from the priest's
+malignant eyes, which would not quit us, and felt so much disgust
+mingled with my anger that when Bezers by a gesture invited me to sit
+down, I drew back.  "I will not eat with you," I said sullenly;
+speaking out of a kind of dull obstinacy, or perhaps a childish
+petulance.
+
+It did not occur to me that this would pierce the Vidame's armour.  Yet
+a dull red showed for an instant in his cheek, and he eyed me with a
+look, that was not all ferocity, though the veins in his great temples
+swelled.  A moment, nevertheless, and he was himself again.  "Armand,"
+he said quietly to the servant, "these gentlemen will not sup with me.
+Lay for them at the other end."
+
+Men are odd.  The moment he gave way to me I repented of my words.  It
+was almost with reluctance that I followed the servant to the lower
+part of the table.  More than this, mingled with the hatred I felt for
+the Vidame, there was now a strange sentiment towards him--almost of
+admiration; that had its birth I think in the moment, when I held his
+life in my hand, and he had not flinched.
+
+We ate in silence; even after Croisette by grasping my hand under the
+table had begged me not to judge him hastily.  The two at the upper end
+talked fast, and from the little that reached us, I judged that the
+priest was pressing some course on his host, which the latter declined
+to take.
+
+Once Bezers raised his voice.  "I have my own ends to serve!"  he broke
+out angrily, adding a fierce oath which the priest did not rebuke, "and
+I shall serve them.  But there I stop.  You have your own.  Well, serve
+them, but do not talk to me of the cause! The cause?  To hell with the
+cause!  I have my cause, and you have yours, and my lord of Guise has
+his!  And you will not make me believe that there is any other!"
+
+"The king's?"  suggested the priest, smiling sourly.
+
+"Say rather the Italian woman's!"  the Vidame answered
+recklessly--meaning the queen-mother, Catharine de' Medici, I supposed.
+
+"Well, then, the cause of the Church?"  the priest persisted.
+
+"Bah!  The Church?  It is you, my friend!"  Bezers rejoined, rudely
+tapping his companion--at that moment in the act of crossing
+himself--on the chest.  "The Church?"  he continued; "no, no, my
+friend.  I will tell you what you are doing.  You want me to help you
+to get rid of your branch, and you offer in return to aid me with
+mine--and then, say you, there will be no stick left to beat either of
+us.  But you may understand once for all"--and the Vidame struck his
+hand heavily down among the glasses--"that I will have no interference
+with my work, master Clerk!  None!  Do you hear?  And as for yours, it
+is no business of mine.  That is plain speaking, is it not?"
+
+The priest's hand shook as he raised a full glass to his lips, but he
+made no rejoinder, and the Vidame, seeing we had finished, rose.
+"Armand!"  he cried, his face still dark, "take these gentlemen to
+their chamber.  You understand?"
+
+We stiffly acknowledged his salute--the priest taking no notice of
+us--and followed the servant from the room; going along a corridor and
+up a steep flight of stairs, and seeing enough by the way to be sure
+that resistance was hopeless.  Doors opened silently as we passed, and
+grim fellows, in corslets and padded coats, peered out.  The clank of
+arms and murmur of voices sounded continuously about us; and as we
+passed a window the jingle of bits, and the hollow clang of a restless
+hoof on the flags below, told us that the great house was for the time
+a fortress.  I wondered much.  For this was Paris, a city with gates
+and guards; the night a short August night.  Yet the loneliest manor in
+Quercy could scarcely have bristled with more pikes and musquetoons, on
+a winter's night and in time of war.
+
+No doubt these signs impressed us all; and Croisette not least. For
+suddenly I heard him stop, as he followed us up the narrow staircase,
+and begin without warning to stumble down again as fast as he could.  I
+did not know what he was about; but muttering something to Marie, I
+followed the lad to see.  At the foot of the flight of stairs I looked
+back, Marie and the servant were standing in suspense, where I had left
+them.  I heard the latter bid us angrily to return.
+
+But by this time Croisette was at the end of the corridor; and
+reassuring the fellow by a gesture I hurried on, until brought to a
+standstill by a man opening a door in my face.  He had heard our
+returning footsteps, and eyed me suspiciously; but gave way after a
+moment with a grunt of doubt I hastened on, reaching the door of the
+room in which we had supped in time to see something which filled me
+with grim astonishment; so much so that I stood rooted where I was, too
+proud at any rate to interfere.
+
+Bezers was standing, the leering priest at his elbow.  And Croisette
+was stooping forward, his hands stretched out in an attitude of
+supplication.
+
+"Nay, but M. le Vidame," the lad cried, as I stood, the door in my
+hand, "it were better to stab her at once than break her heart!  Have
+pity on her!  If you kill him, you kill her!"
+
+The Vidame was silent, seeming to glower on the boy.  The priest
+sneered.  "Hearts are soon mended--especially women's," he said.
+
+"But not Kit's!"  Croisette said passionately--otherwise ignoring him.
+"Not Kit's!  You do not know her, Vidame!  Indeed you do not!"
+
+The remark was ill-timed.  I saw a spasm of anger distort Bezers' face.
+"Get up, boy!"  he snarled, "I wrote to Mademoiselle what I would do,
+and that I shall do!  A Bezers keeps his word.  By the God above us--if
+there be a God, and in the devil's name I doubt it to-night!--I shall
+keep mine!  Go!"
+
+His great face was full of rage.  He looked over Croisette's head as he
+spoke, as if appealing to the Great Registrar of his vow, in the very
+moment in which he all but denied Him.  I turned and stole back the way
+I had come; and heard Croisette follow.
+
+That little scene completed my misery.  After that I seemed to take no
+heed of anything or anybody until I was aroused by the grating of our
+gaoler's key in the lock, and became aware that he was gone, and that
+we were alone in a small room under the tiles. He had left the candle
+on the floor, and we three stood round it. Save for the long shadows we
+cast on the walls and two pallets hastily thrown down in one corner,
+the place was empty.  I did not look much at it, and I would not look
+at the others.  I flung myself on one of the pallets and turned my face
+to the wall, despairing.  I thought bitterly of the failure we had made
+of it, and of the Vidame's triumph.  I cursed St. Croix especially for
+that last touch of humiliation he had set to it.  Then, forgetting
+myself as my anger abated, I thought of Kit so far away at Caylus--of
+Kit's pale, gentle face, and her sorrow.  And little by little I
+forgave Croisette.  After all he had not begged for us--he had not
+stooped for our sakes, but for hers.
+
+I do not know how long I lay at see-saw between these two moods. Or
+whether during that time the others talked or were silent, moved about
+the room or lay still.  But it was Croisette's hand on my shoulder,
+touching me with a quivering eagerness that instantly communicated
+itself to my limbs, which recalled me to the room and its shadows.
+"Anne!"  he cried.  "Anne!  Are you awake?"
+
+"What is it?"  I said, sitting up and looking at him.
+
+"Marie," he began, "has--"
+
+But there was no need for him to finish.  I saw that Marie was standing
+at the far side of the room by the unglazed window; which, being in a
+sloping part of the roof, inclined slightly also.  He had raised the
+shutter which closed it, and on his tip-toes--for the sill was almost
+his own height from the floor--was peering out.  I looked sharply at
+Croisette.  "Is there a gutter outside?"  I whispered, beginning to
+tingle all over as the thought of escape for the first time occurred to
+me.
+
+"No," he answered in the same tone.  "But Marie says he can see a beam
+below, which he thinks we can reach."
+
+I sprang up, promptly displaced Marie, and looked out.  When my eyes
+grew accustomed to the gloom I discerned a dark chaos of roofs and
+gables stretching as far as I could see before me. Nearer, immediately
+under the window, yawned a chasm--a narrow street.  Beyond this was a
+house rather lower than that in which we were, the top of its roof not
+quite reaching the level of my eyes.
+
+"I see no beam," I said.
+
+"Look below!"  quoth Marie, stolidly,
+
+I did so, and then saw that fifteen or sixteen feet below our window
+there was a narrow beam which ran from our house to the opposite
+one--for the support of both, as is common in towns.  In the shadow
+near the far end of this--it was so directly under our window that I
+could only see the other end of it--I made out a casement, faintly
+illuminated from within.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"We cannot get down to it," I said, measuring the distance to the beam
+and the depth below it, and shivering.
+
+"Marie says we can, with a short rope," Croisette replied.  His eyes
+were glistening with excitement.
+
+"But we have no rope!"  I retorted.  I was dull--as usual.  Marie made
+no answer.  Surely he was the most stolid and silent of brothers.  I
+turned to him.  He was taking off his waistcoat and neckerchief.
+
+"Good!"  I cried.  I began to see now.  Off came our scarves and
+kerchiefs also, and fortunately they were of home make, long and
+strong.  And Marie had a hank of four-ply yarn in his pocket as it
+turned out, and I had some stout new garters, and two or three yards of
+thin cord, which I had brought to mend the girths, if need should
+arise.  In five minutes we had fastened them cunningly together.
+
+"I am the lightest," said Croisette.
+
+"But Marie has the steadiest head," I objected.  We had learned that
+long ago--that Marie could walk the coping-stones of the battlements
+with as little concern as we paced a plank set on the ground.
+
+"True," Croisette had to admit.  "But he must come last, because
+whoever does so will have to let himself down."
+
+I had not thought of that, and I nodded.  It seemed that the lead was
+passing out of my hands and I might resign myself.  Still one thing I
+would have.  As Marie was to come last, I would go first. My weight
+would best test the rope.  And accordingly it was so decided.
+
+There was no time to be lost.  At any moment we might be interrupted.
+So the plan was no sooner conceived than carried out.  The rope was
+made fast to my left wrist.  Then I mounted on Marie's shoulders, and
+climbed--not without quavering--through the window, taking as little
+time over it as possible, for a bell was already proclaiming midnight.
+
+All this I had done on the spur of the moment.  But outside, hanging by
+my hands in the darkness, the strokes of the great bell in my ears, I
+had a moment in which to think.  The sense of the vibrating depth below
+me, the airiness, the space and gloom around, frightened me.  "Are you
+ready?"  muttered Marie, perhaps with a little impatience.  He had not
+a scrap of imagination, had Marie.
+
+"No!  wait a minute!"  I blurted out, clinging to the sill, and taking
+a last look at the bare room, and the two dark figures between me and
+the light.  "No!"  I added, hurriedly. "Croisette--boys, I called you
+cowards just now.  I take it back! I did not mean it!  That is all!"  I
+gasped.  "Let go!"
+
+A warm touch on my hand.  Something like a sob.
+
+The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house, down
+into the depth.  The light shot up.  My head turned giddily. I clung,
+oh, how I clung to that rope!  Half way down the thought struck me that
+in case of accident those above might not be strong enough to pull me
+up again.  But it was too late to think of that, and in another second
+my feet touched the beam.  I breathed again.  Softly, very gingerly, I
+made good my footing on the slender bridge, and, disengaging the rope,
+let it go.  Then, not without another qualm, I sat down astride of the
+beam, and whistled in token of success.  Success so far!
+
+It was a strange position, and I have often dreamed of it since. In the
+darkness about me Paris lay to all seeming asleep.  A veil, and not the
+veil of night only, was stretched between it and me; between me, a mere
+lad, and the strange secrets of a great city; stranger, grimmer, more
+deadly that night than ever before or since.  How many men were
+watching under those dimly-seen roofs, with arms in their hands?  How
+many sat with murder at heart?  How many were waking, who at dawn would
+sleep for ever, or sleeping who would wake only at the knife's edge?
+These things I could not know, any more than I could picture how many
+boon-companions were parting at that instant, just risen from the dice,
+one to go blindly--the other watching him--to his death?  I could not
+imagine, thank Heaven for it, these secrets, or a hundredth part of the
+treachery and cruelty and greed that lurked at my feet, ready to burst
+all bounds at a pistol-shot.  It had no significance for me that the
+past day was the 23rd of August, or that the morrow was St.
+Bartholomew's feast!
+
+No.  Yet mingled with the jubilation which the possibility of triumph
+over our enemy raised in my breast, there was certainly a foreboding.
+The Vidame's hints, no less than his open boasts, had pointed to
+something to happen before morning--something wider than the mere
+murder of a single man.  The warning also which the Baron de Rosny had
+given us at the inn occurred to me with new meaning.  And I could not
+shake the feeling off.  I fancied, as I sat in the darkness astride of
+my beam, that I could see, closing the narrow vista of the street, the
+heavy mass of the Louvre; and that the murmur of voices and the tramp
+of men assembling came from its courts, with now and again the stealthy
+challenge of a sentry, the restrained voice of an officer. Scarcely a
+wayfarer passed beneath me:  so few, indeed, that I had no fear of
+being detected from below.  And yet unless I was mistaken, a furtive
+step, a subdued whisper were borne to me on every breeze, from every
+quarter.  And the night was full of phantoms.
+
+Perhaps all this was mere nervousness, the outcome of my position.  At
+any rate I felt no more of it when Croisette joined me.  We had our
+daggers, and that gave me some comfort.  If we could once gain entrance
+to the house opposite, we had only to beg, or in the last resort force
+our way downstairs and out, and then to hasten with what speed we might
+to Pavannes' dwelling. Clearly it was a question of time only now;
+whether Bezers' band or we should first reach it.  And struck by this I
+whispered Marie to be quick.  He seemed to be long in coming.
+
+He scrambled down hand over hand at last, and then I saw that he had
+not lingered above for nothing.  He had contrived after getting out of
+the window to let down the shutter.  And more he had at some risk
+lengthened our rope, and made a double line of it, so that it ran round
+a hinge of the shutter; and when he stood beside us, he took it by one
+end and disengaged it.  Good, clever Marie!
+
+"Bravo!"  I said softly, clapping him on the back.  "Now they will not
+know which way the birds have flown!"
+
+So there we all were, one of us, I confess, trembling.  We slid easily
+enough along the beam to the opposite house.  But once there in a row
+one behind the other with our faces to the wall, and the night air
+blowing slantwise--well I am nervous on a height and I gasped.  The
+window was a good six feet above the beam, The casement--it was
+unglazed--was open, veiled by a thin curtain, and alas!  protected by
+three horizontal bars--stout bars they looked.
+
+Yet we were bound to get up, and to get in; and I was preparing to rise
+to my feet on the giddy bridge as gingerly as I could, when Marie
+crawled quickly over us, and swung himself up to the narrow sill, much
+as I should mount a horse on the level.  He held out his foot to me,
+and making an effort I reached the same dizzy perch.  Croisette for the
+time remained below.
+
+A narrow window-ledge sixty feet above the pavement, and three bars to
+cling to!  I cowered to my holdfasts, envying even Croisette.  My legs
+dangled airily, and the black chasm of the street seemed to yawn for
+me.  For a moment I turned sick.  I recovered from that to feel
+desperate.  I remembered that go forward we must, bars or no bars.  We
+could not regain our old prison if we would.
+
+It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates should
+object.  On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless. The bars of the
+window were close together.  A woman, a child, could disengage our
+hands, and then--I turned sick again.  I thought of the cruel stones.
+I glued my face to the bars, and pushing aside a corner of the curtain,
+looked in.
+
+There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving about
+fully dressed, late as it was.  The room was a mere attic, the
+counterpart of that we had left.  A box-bed with a canopy roughly
+nailed over it stood in a corner.  A couple of chairs were by the
+hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and bareness.  Yet the woman
+whom we saw was richly dressed, though her silks and velvets were
+disordered.  I saw a jewel gleam in her hair, and others on her hands.
+When she turned her face towards us--a wild, beautiful face, perplexed
+and tear-stained--I knew her instantly for a gentlewoman, and when she
+walked hastily to the door, and laid her hand upon it, and seemed to
+listen--when she shook the latch and dropped her hands in despair and
+went back to the hearth, I made another discovery I knew at once,
+seeing her there, that we were likely but to change one prison for
+another.  Was every house in Paris then a dungeon?  And did each roof
+cover its tragedy?
+
+"Madame!"  I said, speaking softly, to attract her attention. "Madame!"
+
+She started violently, not knowing whence the sound came, and looked
+round, at the door first.  Then she moved towards the window, and with
+an affrighted gesture drew the curtain rapidly aside.
+
+Our eyes met.  What if she screamed and aroused the house?  What,
+indeed?  "Madame," I said again, speaking hurriedly, and striving to
+reassure her by the softness of my voice, "we implore your help!
+Unless you assist us we are lost."
+
+"You!  Who are you?"  she cried, glaring at us wildly, her hand to her
+head.  And then she murmured to herself, "Mon Dieu!  what will become
+of me?"
+
+"We have been imprisoned in the house opposite," I hastened to explain,
+disjointedly I am afraid.  "And we have escaped.  We cannot get back if
+we would.  Unless you let us enter your room and give us shelter--"
+
+"We shall be dashed to pieces on the pavement," supplied Marie, with
+perfect calmness--nay, with apparent enjoyment.
+
+"Let you in here?"  she answered, starting back in new terror; "it is
+impossible."
+
+She reminded me of our cousin, being, like her pale and dark-haired.
+She wore her hair in a coronet, disordered now.  But though she was
+still beautiful, she was older than Kit, and lacked her pliant grace.
+I saw all this, and judging her nature, I spoke out of my despair.
+"Madame," I said piteously, "we are only boys.  Croisette!  Come up!"
+Squeezing myself still more tightly into my corner of the ledge, I made
+room for him between us.  "See, Madame," I cried, craftily, "will you
+not have pity on three boys?"
+
+St. Crois's boyish face and fair hair arrested her attention, as I had
+expected.  Her expression grew softer, and she murmured, "Poor boy!"
+
+I caught at the opportunity.  "We do but seek a passage through your
+room," I said fervently.  Good heavens, what had we not at stake!  What
+if she should remain obdurate?  "We are in trouble--in despair," I
+panted.  "So, I believe, are you.  We will help you if you will first
+save us.  We are boys, but we can fight for you."
+
+"Whom am I to trust?"  she exclaimed, with a shudder.  "But heaven
+forbid," she continued, her eyes on Croisette's face, "that, wanting
+help, I should refuse to give it.  Come in, if you will."
+
+I poured out my thanks, and had forced my head between the bars--at
+imminent risk of its remaining there--before the words were well out of
+her mouth.  But to enter was no easy task after all. Croisette did,
+indeed, squeeze through at last, and then by force pulled first one and
+then the other of us after him.  But only necessity and that chasm
+behind could have nerved us, I think, to go through a process so
+painful.  When I stood, at length on the floor, I seemed to be one
+great abrasion from head to foot.  And before a lady, too!
+
+But what a joy I felt, nevertheless.  A fig for Bezers now.  He had
+called us boys; and we were boys.  But he should yet find that we could
+thwart him.  It could be scarcely half-an-hour after midnight; we might
+still be in time.  I stretched myself and trod the level door
+jubilantly, and then noticed, while doing so, that our hostess had
+retreated to the door and was eyeing us timidly--half-scared.
+
+I advanced to her with my lowest bow--sadly missing my sword. "Madame,"
+I said, "I am M. Anne de Caylus, and these are my brothers.  And we are
+at your service."
+
+"And I," she replied, smiling faintly--I do not know why--"am Madame de
+Pavannes, I gratefully accept your offers of service."
+
+"De Pavannes?"  I exclaimed, amazed and overjoyed.  Madame de Pavannes!
+Why, she must be Louis' kinswoman!  No doubt she could tell us where he
+was lodged, and so rid our task of half its difficulty.  Could anything
+have fallen out more happily?  "You know then M. Louis de Pavannes?"  I
+continued eagerly.
+
+"Certainly," she answered, smiling with a rare shy sweetness this time.
+"Very well indeed.  He is my husband."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.
+
+"He is my husband!"
+
+The statement was made in the purest innocence; yet never, as may well
+be imagined, did words fall with more stunning force.  Not one of us
+answered or, I believe, moved so much as a limb or an eyelid.  We only
+stared, wanting time to take in the astonishing meaning of the words,
+and then more time to think what they meant to us in particular.
+
+Louis de Pavannes' wife!  Louis de Pavannes married!  If the statement
+were true--and we could not doubt, looking in her face, that at least
+she thought she was telling the truth--it meant that we had been fooled
+indeed!  That we had had this journey for nothing, and run this risk
+for a villain.  It meant that the Louis de Pavannes who had won our
+boyish admiration was the meanest, the vilest of court-gallants.  That
+Mademoiselle de Caylus had been his sport and plaything.  And that we
+in trying to be beforehand with Bezers had been striving to save a
+scoundrel from his due.  It meant all that, as soon as we grasped it in
+the least.
+
+"Madame," said Croisette gravely, after a pause so prolonged that her
+smile faded pitifully from her face, scared by our strange looks.
+"Your husband has been some time away from you?  He only returned, I
+think, a week or two ago?"
+
+"That is so," she answered, naively, and our last hope vanished. "But
+what of that?  He was back with me again, and only yesterday--only
+yesterday!"  she continued, clasping her hands, "we were so happy."
+
+"And now, madame?"
+
+She looked at me, not comprehending.
+
+"I mean," I hastened to explain, "we do not understand how you come to
+be here.  And a prisoner."  I was really thinking that her story might
+throw some light upon ours.
+
+"I do not know, myself," she said.  "Yesterday, in the afternoon, I
+paid a visit to the Abbess of the Ursulines."
+
+"Pardon me," Croisette interposed quickly, "but are you not of the new
+faith?  A Huguenot?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered eagerly.  "But the Abbess is a very dear friend
+of mine, and no bigot.  Oh, nothing of that kind, I assure you.  When I
+am in Paris I visit her once a week.  Yesterday, when I left her, she
+begged me to call here and deliver a message."
+
+"Then," I said, "you know this house?"
+
+"Very well, indeed," she replied.  "It is the sign of the 'Hand and
+Glove,' one door out of the Rue Platriere.  I have been in Master
+Mirepoix's shop more than once before.  I came here yesterday to
+deliver the message, leaving my maid in the street, and I was asked to
+come up stairs, and still up until I reached this room.  Asked to wait
+a moment, I began to think it strange that I should be brought to so
+wretched a place, when I had merely a message for Mirepoix's ear about
+some gauntlets.  I tried the door; I found it locked.  Then I was
+terrified, and made a noise."
+
+We all nodded.  We were busy building up theories--or it might be one
+and the same theory--to explain this.  "Yes," I said, eagerly.
+
+"Mirepoix came to me then.  'What does this mean?' I demanded. He
+looked ashamed of himself, but he barred my way.  'Only this,' he said
+at last, 'that your ladyship must remain here a few hours--two days at
+most.  No harm whatever is intended to you. My wife will wait upon you,
+and when you leave us, all shall be explained.' He would say no more,
+and it was in vain I asked him if he did not take me for some one else;
+if he thought I was mad. To all he answered, No.  And when I dared him
+to detain me he threatened force.  Then I succumbed.  I have been here
+since, suspecting I know not what, but fearing everything."
+
+"That is ended, madame," I answered, my hand on my breast, my soul in
+arms for her.  Here, unless I was mistaken, was one more unhappy and
+more deeply wronged even than Kit; one too who owed her misery to the
+same villain.  "Were there nine glovers on the stairs," I declared
+roundly, "we would take you out and take you home!  Where are your
+husband's apartments?"
+
+"In the Rue de Saint Merri, close to the church.  We have a house
+there."
+
+"M. de Pavannes," I suggested cunningly, "is doubtless distracted by
+your disappearance."
+
+"Oh, surely," she answered with earnest simplicity, while the tears
+sprang to her eyes.  Her innocence--she had not the germ of a
+suspicion--made me grind my teeth with wrath.  Oh, the base wretch!
+The miserable rascal!  What did the women see, I wondered--what had we
+all seen in this man, this Pavannes, that won for him our hearts, when
+he had only a stone to give in return?
+
+I drew Croisette and Marie aside, apparently to consider how we might
+force the door.  "What is the meaning of this?"  I said softly,
+glancing at the unfortunate lady.  "What do you think, Croisette?"
+
+I knew well what the answer would be.
+
+"Think!"  he cried with fiery impatience.  "What can any one think
+except that that villain Pavannes has himself planned his wife's
+abduction?  Of course it is so!  His wife out of the way he is free to
+follow up his intrigues at Caylus.  He may then marry Kit or--Curse
+him!"
+
+"No," I said sternly, "cursing is no good.  We must do something more.
+And yet--we have promised Kit, you see, that we would save him--we must
+keep our word.  We must save him from Bezers at least."
+
+Marie groaned.
+
+But Croisette took up the thought with ardour.  "From Bezers?" he
+cried, his face aglow.  "Ay, true!  So we must!  But then we will draw
+lots, who shall fight him and kill him."
+
+I extinguished him by a look.  "We shall fight him in turn," I said,
+"until one of us kill him.  There you are right.  But your turn comes
+last.  Lots indeed!  We have no need of lots to learn which is the
+eldest."
+
+I was turning from him--having very properly crushed him--to look for
+something which we could use to force the door, when he held up his
+hand to arrest my attention.  We listened, looking at one another.
+Through the window came unmistakeable sounds of voices. "They have
+discovered our flight," I said, my heart sinking.
+
+Luckily we had had the forethought to draw the curtain across the
+casement.  Bezers' people could therefore, from their window, see no
+more than ours, dimly lighted and indistinct.  Yet they would no doubt
+guess the way we had escaped, and hasten to cut off our retreat below.
+For a moment I looked at the door of our room, half-minded to attack
+it, and fight our way out, taking the chance of reaching the street
+before Bezers' folk should have recovered from their surprise and gone
+down.  But then I looked at Madame.  How could we ensure her safety in
+the struggle? While I hesitated the choice was taken from us.  We heard
+voices in the house below, and heavy feet on the stairs.
+
+We were between two fires.  I glanced irresolutely round the bare
+garret, with its sloping roof, searching for a better weapon.  I had
+only my dagger.  But in vain.  I saw nothing that would serve.  "What
+will you do?"  Madame de Pavannes murmured, standing pale and trembling
+by the hearth, and looking from one to another.  Croisette plucked my
+sleeve before I could answer, and pointed to the box-bed with its
+scanty curtains.  "If they see us in the room," he urged softly, "while
+they are half in and half out, they will give the alarm.  Let us hide
+ourselves yonder. When they are inside--you understand?"
+
+He laid his hand on his dagger.  The muscles of the lad's face grew
+tense.  I did understand him.  "Madame," I said quickly, "you will not
+betray us?"
+
+She shook her head.  The colour returned to her cheek, and the
+brightness to her eyes.  She was a true woman.  The sense that she was
+protecting others deprived her of fear for herself.
+
+The footsteps were on the topmost stair now, and a key was thrust with
+a rasping sound into the lock.  But before it could be turned--it
+fortunately fitted ill--we three had jumped on the bed and were
+crouching in a row at the head of it, where the curtains of the alcove
+concealed, and only just concealed us, from any one standing at the end
+of the room near the door.
+
+I was the outermost, and through a chink could see what passed. One,
+two, three people came in, and the door was closed behind them.  Three
+people, and one of them a woman!  My heart--which had been in my
+mouth--returned to its place, for the Vidame was not one.  I breathed
+freely; only I dared not communicate my relief to the others, lest my
+voice should be heard.  The first to come in was the woman closely
+cloaked and hooded.  Madame de Pavannes cast on her a single doubtful
+glance, and then to my astonishment threw herself into her arms,
+mingling her sobs with little joyous cries of "Oh, Diane!  oh, Diane!"
+
+"My poor little one!"  the newcomer exclaimed, soothing her with tender
+touches on hair and shoulder.  "You are safe now.  Quite safe!"
+
+"You have come to take me away?"
+
+"Of course we have!"  Diane answered cheerfully, still caressing her.
+"We have come to take you to your husband.  He has been searching for
+you everywhere.  He is distracted with grief, little one."
+
+"Poor Louis!"  ejaculated the wife.
+
+"Poor Louis, indeed!"  the rescuer answered.  "But you will see him
+soon.  We only learned at midnight where you were.  You have to thank
+M. le Coadjuteur here for that.  He brought me the news, and at once
+escorted me here to fetch you."
+
+"And to restore one sister to another," said the priest silkily, as he
+advanced a step.  He was the very same priest whom I had seen two hours
+before with Bezers, and had so greatly disliked! I hated his pale face
+as much now as I had then.  Even the errand of good on which he had
+come could not blind me to his thin-lipped mouth, to his mock humility
+and crafty eyes.  "I have had no task so pleasant for many days," added
+he, with every appearance of a desire to propitiate.
+
+But, seemingly, Madame de Pavannes had something of the same feeling
+towards him which I had myself; for she started at the sound of his
+voice, and disengaging herself from her sister's arms--it seemed it was
+her sister--shrank back from the pair. She bowed indeed in
+acknowledgment of his words.  But there was little gratitude in the
+movement, and less warmth.  I saw the sister's face--a brilliantly
+beautiful face it was--brighter eyes and lips and more lovely auburn
+hair I have never seen--even Kit would have been plain and dowdy beside
+her--I saw it harden strangely.  A moment before, the two had been in
+one another's arms.  Now they stood apart, somehow chilled and
+disillusionised. The shadow of the priest had fallen upon them--had
+come between them.
+
+At this crisis the fourth person present asserted himself. Hitherto he
+had stood silent just within the door:  a plain man, plainly dressed,
+somewhat over sixty and grey-haired.  He looked disconcerted and
+embarrassed, and I took him for Mirepoix--rightly as it turned out.
+
+"I am sure," he now exclaimed, his voice trembling with anxiety, or it
+might be with fear, "your ladyship will regret leaving here!  You will
+indeed!  No harm would have happened to you. Madame d'O does not know
+what she is doing, or she would not take you away.  She does not know
+what she is doing!"  he repeated earnestly.
+
+"Madame d'O!"  cried the beautiful Diane, her brown eyes darting fire
+at the unlucky culprit, her voice full of angry disdain. "How dare
+you--such as you--mention my name?  Wretch!"
+
+She flung the last word at him, and the priest took it up.  "Ay,
+wretch!  Wretched man indeed!"  he repeated slowly, stretching out his
+long thin hand and laying it like the claw of some bird of prey on the
+tradesman's shoulder, which flinched, I saw, under the touch.  "How
+dare you--such as you--meddle with matters of the nobility?  Matters
+that do not concern you?  Trouble!  I see trouble hanging over this
+house, Mirepoix!  Much trouble!"
+
+The miserable fellow trembled visibly under the covert threat. His face
+grew pale.  His lips quivered.  He seemed fascinated by the priest's
+gaze.  "I am a faithful son of the church," he muttered; but his voice
+shook so that the words were scarcely audible.  "I am known to be such!
+None better known in Paris, M. le Coadjuteur."
+
+"Men are known by their works!"  the priest retorted.  "Now, now," he
+continued, abruptly raising his voice, and lifting his hand in a kind
+of exaltation, real or feigned, "is the appointed time! And now is the
+day of salvation!  and woe, Mirepoix, woe! woe!  to the backslider, and
+to him that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back to-night!"
+
+The layman cowered and shrank before his fierce denunciation; while
+Madame de Pavannes gazed from one to the other as if her dislike for
+the priest were so great that seeing the two thus quarrelling, she
+almost forgave Mirepoix his offence.  "Mirepoix said he could explain,"
+she murmured irresolutely.
+
+The Coadjutor fixed his baleful eyes on him.  "Mirepoix," he said
+grimly, "can explain nothing!  Nothing!  I dare him to explain!"
+
+And certainly Mirepoix thus challenged was silent.  "Come," the priest
+continued peremptorily, turning to the lady who had entered with him,
+"your sister must leave with us at once.  We have no time to lose."
+
+"But what what does it mean!"  Madame de Pavannes said, as though she
+hesitated even now.  "Is there danger still?"
+
+"Danger!"  the priest exclaimed, his form seeming to swell, and the
+exaltation I had before read in his voice and manner again asserting
+itself.  "I put myself at your service, Madame, and danger disappears!
+I am as God to-night with powers of life and death!  You do not
+understand me?  Presently you shall.  But you are ready.  We will go
+then.  Out of the way, fellow!"  he thundered, advancing upon the door.
+
+But Mirepoix, who had placed himself with his back to it, to my
+astonishment did not give way.  His full bourgeois face was pale; yet
+peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution.  And
+oddly--very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a
+prisoner, he must be in the wrong--I sympathised with him.  Low-bred
+trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with him, when he
+said firmly:
+
+"She shall not go!"
+
+"I say she shall!"  the priest shrieked, losing all control over
+himself.  "Fool!  Madman!  You know not what you do!"  As the words
+passed his lips, he made an adroit forward movement, surprised the
+other, clutched him by the arms, and with a strength I should never
+have thought lay in his meagre frame, flung him some paces into the
+room.  "Fool!"  he hissed, shaking his crooked fingers at him in
+malignant triumph.  "There is no man in Paris, do you hear--or woman
+either--shall thwart me to-night!"
+
+"Is that so?  Indeed?"
+
+The words, and the cold, cynical voice, were not those of Mirepoix;
+they came from behind.  The priest wheeled round, as if he had been
+stabbed in the back.  I clutched Croisette, and arrested the cramped
+limb I was moving under cover of the noise. The speaker was Bezers!  He
+stood in the open door-way, his great form filling it from post to
+post, the old gibing smile on his face.  We had been so taken up,
+actors and audience alike, with the altercation, that no one had heard
+him ascend the stairs.  He still wore the black and silver suit, but it
+was half hidden now under a dark riding cloak which just disclosed the
+glitter of his weapons.  He was booted and spurred and gloved as for a
+journey.
+
+"Is that so?"  he repeated mockingly, as his gaze rested in turn on
+each of the four, and then travelled sharply round the room. "So you
+will not be thwarted by any man in Paris, to-night, eh? Have you
+considered, my dear Coadjutor, what a large number of people there are
+in Paris?  It would amuse me very greatly now--and I'm sure it would
+the ladies too, who must pardon my abrupt entrance--to see you put to
+the test; pitted against--shall we say the Duke of Anjou?  Or M. de
+Guise, our great man?  Or the Admiral?  Say the Admiral foot to foot?"
+
+Rage and fear--rage at the intrusion, fear of the intruder--struggled
+in the priest's face.  "How do you come here, and what do you want?"
+he inquired hoarsely.  If looks and tones could kill, we three,
+trembling behind our flimsy screen, had been freed at that moment from
+our enemy.
+
+"I have come in search of the young birds whose necks you were for
+stretching, my friend!"  was Bezers' answer.  "They have vanished.
+Birds they must be, for unless they have come into this house by that
+window, they have flown away with wings."
+
+"They have not passed this way," the priest declared stoutly, eager
+only to get rid of the other and I blessed him for the words!  "I have
+been here since I left you."
+
+But the Vidame was not one to accept any man's statement.  "Thank you;
+I think I will see for myself," he answered coolly. "Madame," he
+continued, speaking to Madame de Pavannes as he passed her, "permit me."
+
+He did not look at her, or see her emotion, or I think he must have
+divined our presence.  And happily the others did not suspect her of
+knowing more than they did.  He crossed the floor at his leisure, and
+sauntered to the window, watched by them with impatience.  He drew
+aside the curtain, and tried each of the bars, and peered through the
+opening both up and down, An oath and an expression of wonder escaped
+him.  The bars were standing, and firm and strong; and it did not occur
+to him that we could have passed between them.  I am afraid to say how
+few inches they were apart.
+
+As he turned, he cast a casual glance at the bed--at us; and hesitated.
+He had the candle in his hand, having taken it to the window the better
+to examine the bars; and it obscured his sight. He did not see us.  The
+three crouching forms, the strained white faces, the starting eyes,
+that lurked in the shadow of the curtain escaped him.  The wild beating
+of our hearts did not reach his ears.  And it was well for him that it
+was so.  If he had come up to the bed I think that we should have
+killed him, I know that we should have tried.  All the blood in me had
+gone to my head, and I saw him through a haze--larger than life.  The
+exact spot near the buckle of his cloak where I would strike him,
+downwards and inwards, an inch above the collar-bone,--this only I saw
+clearly.  I could not have missed it.  But he turned away, his face
+darkening, and went back to the group near the door, and never knew the
+risk he had run.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MADAME'S FRIGHT.
+
+And we breathed again.  The agony of suspense, which Bezers' pause had
+created, passed away.  But the night already seemed to us as a week of
+nights.  An age of experience, an aeon of adventures cut us off--as we
+lay shaking behind the curtain--from Caylus and its life.  Paris had
+proved itself more treacherous than we had even expected to find it.
+Everything and everyone shifted, and wore one face one minute, and one
+another.  We had come to save Pavannes' life at the risk of our own; we
+found him to be a villain!  Here was Mirepoix owning himself a
+treacherous wretch, a conspirator against a woman; we sympathised with
+him. The priest had come upon a work of charity and rescue; we loathed
+the sound of his voice, and shrank from him, we knew not why, seeming
+only to read a dark secret, a gloomy threat in each doubtful word he
+uttered.  He was the strangest enigma of all. Why did we fear him?  Why
+did Madame de Pavannes, who apparently had known him before, shudder at
+the touch of his hand?  Why did his shadow come even between her and
+her sister, and estrange them?  so that from the moment Pavannes' wife
+saw him standing by Diane's side, she forgot that the latter had come
+to save, and looked on her in doubt and sorrow, almost with repugnance.
+
+We left the Vidame going back to the fireplace.  He stooped to set down
+the candle by the hearth.  "They are not here," he said, as he
+straightened himself again, and looked curiously at his companions.  He
+had apparently been too much taken up with the pursuit to notice them
+before.  "That is certain, so I have the less time to lose," he
+continued.  "But I would--yes, my dear Coadjutor, I certainly would
+like to know before I go, what you are doing here.  Mirepoix--Mirepoix
+is an honest man.  I did not expect to find you in HIS house.  And two
+ladies?  Two!  Fie, Coadjutor.  Ha!  Madame d'O, is it?  My dear lady,"
+he continued, addressing her in a whimsical tone, "do not start at the
+sound of your own name!  It would take a hundred hoods to hide your
+eyes, or bleach your lips to the common colour; I should have known you
+at once, had I looked at you.  And your companion?  Pheugh!"
+
+He broke off, whistling softly.  It was clear that he recognised Madame
+de Pavannes, and recognised her with astonishment.  The bed creaked as
+I craned my neck to see what would follow.  Even the priest seemed to
+think that some explanation was necessary, for he did not wait to be
+questioned.
+
+"Madame de Pavannes," he said in a dry, husky voice, and without
+looking up, "was spirited hither yesterday; and detained against her
+will by this good man, who will have to answer for it. Madame d'O
+discovered her whereabouts, and asked me to escort her here without
+loss of time to enforce her sister's release."
+
+"And her restoration to her distracted husband?"
+
+"Just so," the priest assented, acquiring confidence, I thought.
+
+"And Madame desires to go?"
+
+"Surely!  Why not?"
+
+"Well," the Vidame drawled, his manner such as to bring the blood to
+Madame de Pavannes' cheek, "it depends on the person who--to use your
+phrase, M. le Coadjuteur--spirited her hither."
+
+"And that," Madame herself retorted, raising her head, while her voice
+quivered with indignation and anger, "was the Abbess of the Ursulines.
+Your suspicions are base, worthy of you and unworthy of me, M. le
+Vidame!  Diane!"  she continued sharply, taking her sister's arm, and
+casting a disdainful glance at Bezers, "let us go.  I want to be with
+my husband.  I am stifled in this room."
+
+"We are going, little one," Diane murmured reassuringly.  But I noticed
+that the speaker's animation, which had been as a soul to her beauty
+when she entered the room, was gone.  A strange stillness was it fear
+of the Vidame?  had taken its place.
+
+"The Abbess of the Ursulines?"  Bezers continued thoughtfully. "SHE
+brought you here, did she?"  There was surprise, genuine surprise, in
+his voice.  "A good soul, and, I think I have heard, a friend of yours.
+Umph!"
+
+"A very dear friend," Madame answered stiffly.  "Now, Diane!"
+
+"A dear friend!  And she spirited you hither yesterday!" commented the
+Vidame, with the air of one solving an anagram. "And Mirepoix detained
+you; respectable Mirepoix, who is said to have a well-filled stocking
+under his pallet, and stands well with the bourgeoisie.  He is in the
+plot.  Then at a very late hour, your affectionate sister, and my good
+friend the Coadjutor, enter to save you.  From what?"
+
+No one spoke.  The priest looked down, his cheeks livid with anger.
+
+"From what?"  Bezers continued with grim playfulness.  "There is the
+mystery.  From the clutches of this profligate Mirepoix, I suppose.
+From the dangerous Mirepoix.  Upon my honour," with a sudden ring of
+resolution in his tone, "I think you are safer here; I think you had
+better stay where you are, Madame, until morning!  And risk Mirepoix!"
+
+"Oh, no!  no!"  Madame cried vehemently.
+
+"Oh, yes!  yes!"  he replied.  "What do you say, Coadjutor?  Do you not
+think so?"
+
+The priest looked down sullenly.  His voice shook as he murmured in
+answer, "Madame will please herself.  She has a character, M. le
+Vidame.  But if she prefer to stay here--well!"
+
+"Oh, she has a character, has she?"  rejoined the giant, his eyes
+twinkling with evil mirth, "and she should go home with you, and my old
+friend Madame d'O, to save it!  That is it, is it?  No, no," he
+continued when he had had his silent laugh out, "Madame de Pavannes
+will do very well here--very well here until morning. We have work to
+do.  Come.  Let us go and do it."
+
+"Do you mean it?"  said the priest, starting and looking up with a
+subtle challenge--almost a threat--in his tone.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+Their eyes met: and seeing their looks, I chuckled, nudging Croisette.
+No fear of their discovering us now.  I recalled the old proverb which
+says that when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own, and
+speculated on the chance of the priest freeing us once for all from M.
+de Bezers.
+
+But the two were ill-matched.  The Vidame could have taken up the other
+with one hand and dashed his head on the floor.  And it did not end
+there.  I doubt if in craft the priest was his equal. Behind a frank
+brutality Bezers--unless his reputation belied him--concealed an
+Italian intellect.  Under a cynical recklessness he veiled a rare
+cunning and a constant suspicion; enjoying in that respect a
+combination of apparently opposite qualities, which I have known no
+other man to possess in an equal degree, unless it might be his late
+majesty, Henry the Great.  A child would have suspected the priest; a
+veteran might have been taken in by the Vidame.
+
+And indeed the priest's eyes presently sank.  "Our bargain is to go for
+nothing?"  he muttered sullenly.
+
+"I know of no bargain," quoth the Vidame.  "And I have no time to lose,
+splitting hairs here.  Set it down to what you like.  Say it is a whim
+of mine, a fad, a caprice.  Only understand that Madame de Pavannes
+stays.  We go.  And--" he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to
+strike him, "though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I
+think Madame d'O had better come too."
+
+"You speak masterfully," the priest said with a sneer, forgetting the
+tone he had himself used a few minutes before to Mirepoix.
+
+"Just so.  I have forty horsemen over the way," was the dry answer.
+"For the moment, I am master of the legions, Coadjutor."
+
+"That is true," Madame d'O said; so softly that I started.  She had
+scarcely spoken since Bezers' entrance.  As she spoke now, she shook
+back the hood from her face and disclosed the chestnut hair clinging
+about her temples--deep blots of colour on the abnormal whiteness of
+her skin, "That is true, M. de Bezers," she said.  "You have the
+legions.  You have the power.  But you will not use it, I think,
+against an old friend.  You will not do us this hurt when I--But
+listen."
+
+He would not.  In the very middle of her appeal he cut her short--brute
+that he was!  "No Madame!"  he burst out violently, disregarding the
+beautiful face, the supplicating glance, that might have moved a stone,
+"that is just what I will not do.  I will not listen!  We know one
+another.  Is not that enough?"
+
+She looked at him fixedly.  He returned her gaze, not smiling now, but
+eyeing her with a curious watchfulness.
+
+And after a long pause she turned from him.  "Very well," she said
+softly, and drew a deep, quivering breath, the sound of which reached
+us.  "Then let us go."  And without--strangest thing of all--bestowing
+a word or look on her sister, who was weeping bitterly in a chair, she
+turned to the door and led the way out, a shrug of her shoulders the
+last thing I marked.
+
+The poor lady heard her departing step however, and sprang up.  It
+dawned upon her that she was being deserted. "Diane!  Diane!"  she
+cried distractedly--and I had to put my hand on Croisette to keep him
+quiet, there was such fear and pain in her tone--"I will go!  I will
+not be left behind in this dreadful place!  Do you hear?  Come back to
+me, Diane!"
+
+It made my blood run wildly.  But Diane did not come back. Strange!
+And Bezers too was unmoved.  He stood between the poor woman and the
+door, and by a gesture bid Mirepoix and the priest pass out before him.
+"Madame," he said--and his voice, stern and hard as ever, expressed no
+jot of compassion for her, rather such an impatient contempt as a
+puling child might elicit--"you are safe here.  And here you will stop!
+Weep if you please," he added cynically, "you will have fewer tears to
+shed to-morrow."
+
+His last words--they certainly were odd ones--arrested her attention.
+She checked her sobs, being frightened I think, and looked up at him.
+Perhaps he had spoken with this in view, for while she still stood at
+gaze, her hands pressed to her bosom, he slipped quickly out and closed
+the door behind him.  I heard a muttering for an instant outside, and
+then the tramp of feet descending the stairs.  They were gone, and we
+were still undiscovered.
+
+For Madame, she had clean forgotten our presence--of that I am
+sure--and the chance of escape we might afford.  On finding herself
+alone she gazed a short time in alarmed silence at the door, and then
+ran to the window and peered out, still trembling, terrified, silent.
+So she remained a while.
+
+She had not noticed that Bezers on going out had omitted to lock the
+door behind him.  I had.  But I was unwilling to move hastily.  Some
+one might return to see to it before the Vidame left the house.  And
+besides the door was not over strong, and if locked would be no
+obstacle to the three of us when we had only Mirepoix to deal with.  So
+I kept the others where they were by a nudge and a pinch, and held my
+breath a moment, straining my ears to catch the closing of the door
+below.  I did not hear that. But I did catch a sound that otherwise
+might have escaped me, but which now riveted my eyes to the door of our
+room.  Some one in the silence, which followed the trampling on the
+stairs, had cautiously laid a hand on the latch.
+
+The light in the room was dim.  Mirepoix had taken one of the candles
+with him, and the other wanted snuffing.  I could not see whether the
+latch moved; whether or no it was rising.  But watching intently, I
+made out that the door was being opened--slowly, noiselessly.  I saw
+someone enter--a furtive gliding shadow.
+
+For a moment I felt nervous--then I recognised the dark hooded figure.
+It was only Madame d'O.  Brave woman!  She had evaded the Vidame and
+slipped back to the rescue.  Ha, ha!  We would defeat the Vidame yet!
+Things were going better!
+
+But then something in her manner--as she stood holding the door and
+peering into the room--something in her bearing startled and frightened
+me.  As she came forward her movements were so stealthy that her
+footsteps made no sound.  Her dark shadow, moving ahead of her across
+the floor, was not more silent than she.  An undefined desire to make a
+noise, to give the alarm, seized me.
+
+Half-way across the room she stopped to listen, and looked round,
+startled herself, I think, by the silence.  She could not see her
+sister, whose figure was blurred by the outlines of the curtain; and no
+doubt she was puzzled to think what had become of her. The suspense
+which I felt, but did not understand, was so great that at last I
+moved, and the bed creaked.
+
+In a moment her face was turned our way, and she glided forwards, her
+features still hidden by the hood of her cloak.  She was close to us
+now, bending over us.  She raised her hand to her head--to shade her
+eyes, as she looked more closely, I supposed, and I was wondering
+whether she saw us--whether she took the shapelessness in the shadow of
+the curtain for her sister, or could not make it out--I was thinking
+how we could best apprise her of our presence without alarming
+her--when Croisette dashed my thoughts to the winds!  Croisette, with a
+tremendous whoop and a crash, bounded over me on to the floor!
+
+She uttered a gasping cry--a cry of intense, awful fear.  I have the
+sound in my ears even now.  With that she staggered back, clutching the
+air.  I heard the metallic clang and ring of something falling on the
+floor.  I heard an answering cry of alarm from the window; and then
+Madame de Pavannes ran forward and caught her in her arms.
+
+It was strange to find the room lately so silent become at once alive
+with whispering forms, as we came hastily to light.  I cursed Croisette
+for his folly, and was immeasurably angry with him, but I had no time
+to waste words on him then.  I hurried to the door to guard it.  I
+opened it a hand's breadth and listened. All was quiet below; the house
+still.  I took the key out of the lock and put it in my pocket and went
+back.  Marie and Croisette were standing a little apart from Madame de
+Pavannes, who, hanging over her sister, was by turns bathing her face
+and explaining our presence.
+
+In a very few minutes Madame d'O seemed to recover, and sat up. The
+first shock of deadly terror had passed, but she was still pale.  She
+still trembled, and shrank from meeting our eyes, though I saw her,
+when our attention was apparently directed elsewhere, glance at one and
+another of us with a strange intentness, a shuddering curiosity.  No
+wonder, I thought.  She must have had a terrible fright--one that might
+have killed a more timid woman!
+
+"What on earth did you do that for!"  I asked Croisette presently, my
+anger certainly not decreasing the more I looked at her beautiful face.
+"You might have killed her!"
+
+In charity I supposed his nerves had failed him, for he could not even
+now give me a straightforward answer.  His only reply was, "Let us get
+away!  Let us get away from this horrible house!" and this he kept
+repeating with a shudder as he moved restlessly to and fro.
+
+"With all my heart!"  I answered, looking at him with some contempt.
+"That is exactly what we are going to do!"
+
+But all the same his words reminded me of something which in the
+excitement of the scene I had momentarily forgotten, and that was our
+duty.  Pavannes must still be saved, though not for Kit; rather to
+answer to us for his sins.  But he must be saved!  And now that the
+road was open, every minute lost was reproach to us. "Yes," I added
+roughly, my thoughts turned into a more rugged channel, "you are right.
+This is no time for nursing.  We must be going.  Madame de Pavannes," I
+went on, addressing myself to her, "you know the way home from here--to
+your house!"  "Oh, yes," she cried.
+
+"That is well," I answered.  "Then we will start.  Your sister is
+sufficiently recovered now, I think.  And we will not risk any further
+delay."
+
+I did not tell her of her husband's danger, or that we suspected him of
+wronging her, and being in fact the cause of her detention.  I wanted
+her services as a guide.  That was the main point, though I was glad to
+be able to put her in a place of safety at the same time that we
+fulfilled our own mission.
+
+She rose eagerly.  "You are sure that we can get out?"  she said.
+
+"Sure," I replied with a brevity worthy of Bezers himself.
+
+And I was right.  We trooped down stairs, making as little noise as
+possible; with the result that Mirepoix only took the alarm, and came
+upon us when we were at the outer door, bungling with the lock.  Then I
+made short work of him, checking his scared words of remonstrance by
+flashing my dagger before his eyes.  I induced him in the same
+fashion--he was fairly taken by surprise--to undo the fastenings
+himself; and so, bidding him follow us at his peril, we slipped out one
+by one.  We softly closed the door behind us.  And lo!  we were at last
+free--free and in the streets of Paris, with the cool night air fanning
+our brows.  A church hard by tolled the hour of two; and the strokes
+were echoed, before we had gone many steps along the ill-paved way, by
+the solemn tones of the bell of Notre Dame.
+
+We were free and in the streets, with a guide who knew the way. If
+Bezers had not gone straight from us to his vengeance, we might thwart
+him yet.  I strode along quickly, Madame d'O by my side the others a
+little way in front.  Here and there an oil-lamp, swinging from a
+pulley in the middle of the road, enabled us to avoid some obstacle
+more foul than usual, or to leap over a pool which had formed in the
+kennel.  Even in my excitement, my country-bred senses rebelled against
+the sights, and smells, the noisome air and oppressive closeness of the
+streets.
+
+The town was quiet, and very dark where the smoky lamps were not
+hanging.  Yet I wondered if it ever slept, for more than once we had to
+stand aside to give passage to a party of men, hurrying along with
+links and arms.  Several times too, especially towards the end of our
+walk, I was surprised by the flashing of bright lights in a courtyard,
+the door of which stood half open to right or left.  Once I saw the
+glow of torches reflected ruddily in the windows of a tall and splendid
+mansion, a little withdrawn from the street.  The source of the light
+was in the fore-court, hidden from us by a low wall, but I caught the
+murmur of voices and stir of many feet.  Once a gate was stealthily
+opened and two armed men looked out, the act and their manner of doing
+it, reminding me on the instant of those who had peeped out to inspect
+us some hours before in Bezers' house.  And once, nay twice, in the
+mouth of a narrow alley I discerned a knot of men standing motionless
+in the gloom.  There was an air of mystery abroad, a feeling as of
+solemn stir and preparation going on under cover of the darkness, which
+awed and unnerved me.
+
+But I said nothing of this, and Madame d'O was equally silent. Like
+most countrymen I was ready to believe in any exaggeration of the
+city's late hours, the more as she made no remark.  I supposed--shaking
+off the momentary impression--that what I saw was innocent and normal.
+Besides, I was thinking what I should say to Pavannes when I saw
+him--in what terms I should warn him of his peril, and cast his perfidy
+in his teeth.  We had hurried along in this way--and in absolute
+silence, save when some obstacle or pitfall drew from us an
+exclamation--for about a quarter of a mile, when my companion, turning
+into a slightly wider street, slackened her speed, and indicated by a
+gesture that we had arrived.  A lamp hung over the porch, to which she
+pointed, and showed the small side gate half open.  We were close
+behind the other three now.  I saw Croisette stoop to enter and as
+quickly fall back a pace.  Why?
+
+In a moment it flashed across my mind that we were too late that the
+Vidame had been before us.
+
+And yet how quiet it all was.
+
+Then I breathed freely again.  I saw that Croisette had only stepped
+back to avoid some one who was coming out--the Coadjutor in fact.  The
+moment the entrance was clear, the lad shot in, and the others after
+him, the priest taking no notice of them, nor they of him.
+
+I was for going in too, when I felt Madame d'O's hand tighten suddenly
+on my arm, and then fall from it.  Apprised of something by this, I
+glanced at the priest's face, catching sight of it by chance just as
+his eyes met hers.  His face was white--nay it was ugly with
+disappointment and rage, bitter snarling rage, that was hardly human.
+He grasped her by the arm roughly and twisted her round without
+ceremony, so as to draw her a few paces aside; yet not so far that I
+could not hear what they said.
+
+"He is not here!"  he hissed.  "Do you understand?  He crossed the
+river to the Faubourg St. Germain at nightfall--searching for her.  And
+he has not come back!  He is on the other side of the water, and
+midnight has struck this hour past!"
+
+She stood silent for a moment as if she had received a blow--silent and
+dismayed.  Something serious had happened.  I could see that.
+
+"He cannot recross the river now?"  she said after a time.  "The
+gates--"
+
+"Shut!"  he replied briefly.  "The keys are at the Louvre."
+
+"And the boats are on this side?"
+
+"Every boat!"  he answered, striking his one hand on the other with
+violence.  "Every boat!  No one may cross until it is over."
+
+"And the Faubourg St. Germain?"  she said in a lower voice.
+
+"There will be nothing done there.  Nothing!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A YOUNG KNIGHT-ERRANT.
+
+I would gladly have left the two together, and gone straight into the
+house.  I was eager now to discharge the errand on which I had come so
+far; and apart from this I had no liking for the priest or wish to
+overhear his talk.  His anger, however, was so patent, and the rudeness
+with which he treated Madame d'O so pronounced that I felt I could not
+leave her with him unless she should dismiss me.  So I stood patiently
+enough--and awkwardly enough too, I daresay--by the door while they
+talked on in subdued tones.  Nevertheless, I felt heartily glad when at
+length, the discussion ending Madame came back to me.  I offered her my
+arm to help her over the wooden foot of the side gate. She laid her
+hand on it, but she stood still.
+
+"M. de Caylus," she said; and at that stopped.  Naturally I looked at
+her, and our eyes met.  Hers brown and beautiful, shining in the light
+of the lamp overhead looked into mine.  Her lips were half parted, and
+one fair tress of hair had escaped from her hood.  "M. de Caylus, will
+you do me a favour," she resumed, softly, "a favour for which I shall
+always be grateful?"
+
+I sighed.  "Madame," I said earnestly, for I felt the solemnity of the
+occasion, "I swear that in ten minutes, if the task I now have in hand
+be finished I will devote my life to your service. For the present--"
+
+"Well, for the present?  But it is the present I want, Master
+Discretion."
+
+"I must see M. de Pavannes!  I am pledged to it," I ejaculated.
+
+"To see M. de Pavannes?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I was conscious that she was looking at me with eyes of doubt, almost
+of suspicion.
+
+"Why?  Why?"  she asked with evident surprise.  "You have restored--and
+nearly frightened me to death in doing it--his wife to her home; what
+more do you want with him, most valiant knight-errant?"
+
+"I must see him," I said firmly.  I would have told her all and been
+thankful, but the priest was within hearing--or barely out of it; and I
+had seen too much pass between him and Bezers to be willing to say
+anything before him.
+
+"You must see M. de Pavannes?"  she repeated, gazing at me.
+
+"I must," I replied with decision.
+
+"Then you shall.  That is exactly what I am going to help you to do,"
+she exclaimed.  "He is not here.  That is what is the matter.  He went
+out at nightfall seeking news of his wife, and crossed the river, the
+Coadjutor says, to the Faubourg St. Germain.  Now it is of the utmost
+importance that he should return before morning--return here."
+
+"But is he not here?"  I said, finding all my calculations at fault.
+"You are sure of it, Madame?"
+
+"Quite sure," she answered rapidly.  "Your brothers will have by this
+time discovered the fact.  Now, M. de Caylus, Pavannes must be brought
+here before morning, not only for his wife's sake--though she will be
+wild with anxiety--but also--"
+
+"I know," I said, eagerly interrupting her, "for his own too! There is
+a danger threatening him."
+
+She turned swiftly, as if startled, and I turned, and we looked at the
+priest.  I thought we understood one another.  "There is," she answered
+softly, "and I would save him from that danger; but he will only be
+safe, as I happen to know, here!  Here, you understand!  He must be
+brought here before daybreak, M. de Caylus.  He must!  He must!"  she
+exclaimed, her beautiful features hardening with the earnestness of her
+feelings.  "And the Coadjutor cannot go.  I cannot go.  There is only
+one man who can save him, and that is yourself.  There is, above all,
+not a moment to be lost."
+
+My thoughts were in a whirl.  Even as she spoke she began to walk back
+the way we had come, her hand on my arm; and I, doubtful, and in a
+confused way unwilling, went with her.  I did not clearly understand
+the position.  I would have wished to go in and confer with Marie and
+Croisette; but the juncture had occurred so quickly, and it might be
+that time was as valuable as she said, and--well, it was hard for me, a
+lad, to refuse her anything when she looked at me with appeal in her
+eyes.  I did manage to stammer, "But I do not know Paris.  I could not
+find my way, I am afraid, and it is night, Madame."
+
+She released my arm and stopped.  "Night!"  she cried, with a scornful
+ring in her voice.  "Night!  I thought you were a man, not a boy!  You
+are afraid!"
+
+"Afraid," I said hotly; "we Cayluses are never afraid."
+
+"Then I can tell you the way, if that be your only difficulty. We turn
+here.  Now, come in with me a moment," she continued, "and I will give
+you something you will need--and your directions."
+
+She had stopped at the door of a tall, narrow house, standing between
+larger ones in a street which appeared to me to be more airy and
+important than any I had yet seen.  As she spoke, she rang the bell
+once, twice, thrice.  The silvery tinkle had scarcely died away the
+third time before the door opened silently; I saw no one, but she drew
+me into a narrow hall or passage.  A taper in an embossed holder was
+burning on a chest. She took it up, and telling me to follow her led
+the way lightly up the stairs, and into a room, half-parlour,
+half-bedroom--such a room as I had never seen before.  It was richly
+hung from ceiling to floor with blue silk, and lighted by the soft rays
+of lamps shaded by Venetian globes of delicate hues.  The scent of
+cedar wood was in the air, and on the hearth in a velvet tray were some
+tiny puppies.  A dainty disorder reigned everywhere. On one table a
+jewel-case stood open, on another lay some lace garments, two or three
+masks and a fan.  A gemmed riding-whip and a silver-hilted poniard hung
+on the same peg.  And, strangest of all, huddled away behind the door,
+I espied a plain, black-sheathed sword, and a man's gauntlets.
+
+She did not wait a moment, but went at once to the jewel-case. She took
+from it a gold ring--a heavy seal ring.  She held this out to me in the
+most matter-of-fact way--scarcely turning, in fact.  "Put it on your
+finger," she said hurriedly.  "If you are stopped by soldiers, or if
+they will not give you a boat to cross the river, say boldly that you
+are on the king's service.  Call for the officer and show that ring.
+Play the man.  Bid him stop you at his peril!"
+
+I hastily muttered my thanks, and she as hastily took something from a
+drawer, and tore it into strips.  Before I knew what she was doing she
+was on her knees by me, fastening a white band of linen round my left
+sleeve.  Then she took my cap, and with the same precipitation fixed a
+fragment of the stuff in it, in the form of a rough cross.
+
+"There," she said.  "Now, listen, M. de Caylus.  There is more afoot
+to-night than you know of.  Those badges will help you across to St.
+Germain, but the moment you land tear them off: Tear them off,
+remember.  They will help you no longer.  You will come back by the
+same boat, and will not need them.  If you are seen to wear them as you
+return, they will command no respect, but on the contrary will bring
+you--and perhaps me into trouble."
+
+"I understand," I said, "but--"
+
+"You must ask no questions," she retorted, waving one snowy finger
+before my eyes.  "My knight-errant must have faith in me, as I have in
+him; or he would not be here at this time of night, and alone with me.
+But remember this also.  When you meet Pavannes do not say you come
+from me.  Keep that in your mind; I will explain the reason afterwards.
+Say merely that his wife is found, and is wild with anxiety about him.
+If you say anything as to his danger he may refuse to come.  Men are
+obstinate."
+
+I nodded a smiling assent, thinking I understood.  At the same time I
+permitted myself in my own mind a little discretion. Pavannes was not a
+fool, and the name of the Vidame--but, however, I should see.  I had
+more to say to him than she knew of.  Meanwhile she explained very
+carefully the three turnings I had to take to reach the river, and the
+wharf where boats most commonly lay, and the name of the house in which
+I should find M. de Pavannes.
+
+"He is at the Hotel de Bailli," she said.  "And there, I think that is
+all."
+
+"No, not all," I said hardily.  "There is one thing I have not got.
+And that is a sword!"
+
+She followed the direction of my eyes, started, and laughed--a little
+oddly.  But she fetched the weapon.  "Take it, and do not," she urged,
+"do not lose time.  Do not mention me to Pavannes.  Do not let the
+white badges be seen as you return. That is really all.  And now good
+luck!"  She gave me her hand to kiss.  "Good luck, my knight-errant,
+good luck--and come back to me soon!"
+
+She smiled divinely, as it seemed to me, as she said these last words,
+and the same smile followed me down stairs:  for she leaned over the
+stair-head with one of the lamps in her hand, and directed me how to
+draw the bolts.  I took one backward glance as I did so at the fair
+stooping figure above me, the shining eyes, and tiny outstretched hand,
+and then darting into the gloom I hurried on my way.
+
+I was in a strange mood.  A few minutes before I had been at Pavannes'
+door, at the end of our journey; on the verge of success.  I had been
+within an ace, as I supposed at least, of executing my errand.  I had
+held the cup of success in my hand. And it had slipped.  Now the
+conflict had to be fought over again; the danger to be faced.  It would
+have been no more than natural if I had felt the disappointment keenly:
+if I had almost despaired.
+
+But it was otherwise--far otherwise.  Never had my heart beat higher or
+more proudly than as I now hurried through the streets, avoiding such
+groups as were abroad in them, and intent only on observing the proper
+turnings.  Never in any moment of triumph in after days, in love or
+war, did anything like the exhilaration, the energy, the spirit, of
+those minutes come back to me.  I had a woman's badge in my cap--for
+the first time--the music of her voice in my ears.  I had a magic ring
+on my finger:  a talisman on my arm.  My sword was at my side again.
+All round me lay a misty city of adventures, of danger and romance,
+full of the richest and most beautiful possibilities; a city of real
+witchery, such as I had read of in stories, through which those fairy
+gifts and my right hand should guide me safely.  I did not even regret
+my brothers, or our separation.  I was the eldest. It was fitting that
+the cream of the enterprise should be reserved for me, Anne de Caylus.
+And to what might it not lead? In fancy I saw myself already a duke and
+peer of France--already I held the baton.
+
+Yet while I exulted boyishly, I did not forget what I was about. I kept
+my eyes open, and soon remarked that the number of people passing to
+and fro in the dark streets had much increased within the last half
+hour.  The silence in which in groups or singly these figures stole by
+me was very striking.  I heard no brawling, fighting or singing; yet if
+it were too late for these things, why were so many people up and
+about?  I began to count presently, and found that at least half of
+those I met wore badges in their hats and on their arms, similar to
+mine, and that they all moved with a businesslike air, as if bound for
+some rendezvous.
+
+I was not a fool, though I was young, and in some matters less quick
+than Croisette.  The hints which had been dropped by so many had not
+been lost on me.  "There is more afoot to-night than you know of!"
+Madame d'O had said.  And having eyes as well as ears I fully believed
+it.  Something was afoot.  Something was going to happen in Paris
+before morning.  But what, I wondered. Could it be that a rebellion was
+about to break out?  If so I was on the king's service, and all was
+well.  I might even be going--and only eighteen--to make history!  Or
+was it only a brawl on a great scale between two parties of nobles?  I
+had heard of such things happening in Paris.  Then--well I did not see
+how I could act in that case.  I must be guided by events.
+
+I did not imagine anything else which it could be.  That is the truth,
+though it may need explanation.  I was accustomed only to the milder
+religious differences, the more evenly balanced parties of Quercy,
+where the peace between the Catholics and Huguenots had been welcome to
+all save a very few.  I could not gauge therefore the fanaticism of the
+Parisian populace, and lost count of the factor, which made possible
+that which was going to happen--was going to happen in Paris before
+daylight as surely as the sun was going to rise!  I knew that the
+Huguenot nobles were present in the city in great numbers, but it did
+not occur to me that they could as a body be in danger.  They were many
+and powerful, and as was said, in favour with the king.  They were
+under the protection of the King of Navarre--France's brother-in-law of
+a week, and the Prince of Conde; and though these princes were young,
+Coligny the sagacious admiral was old, and not much the worse I had
+learned for his wound.  He at least was high in royal favour, a trusted
+counsellor.  Had not the king visited him on his sick-bed and sat by
+him for an hour together?
+
+Surely, I thought, if there were danger, these men would know of it.
+And then the Huguenots' main enemy, Henri le Balafre, the splendid Duke
+of Guise, "our great man," and "Lorraine," as the crowd called him--he,
+it was rumoured, was in disgrace at court. In a word these things, to
+say nothing of the peaceful and joyous occasion which had brought the
+Huguenots to Paris, and which seemed to put treachery out of the
+question, were more than enough to prevent me forecasting the event.
+
+If for a moment, indeed, as I hurried along towards the river, anything
+like the truth occurred to me, I put it from me.  I say with pride I
+put it from me as a thing impossible.  For God forbid--one may speak
+out the truth these forty years back--God forbid, say I, that all
+Frenchmen should bear the blood guiltiness which came of other than
+French brains, though French were the hands that did the work.
+
+I was not greatly troubled by my forebodings therefore:  and the state
+of exaltation to which Madame d'O's confidence had raised my spirits
+lasted until one of the narrow streets by the Louvre brought me
+suddenly within sight of the river.  Here faint moonlight bursting
+momentarily through the clouds was shining on the placid surface of the
+water.  The fresh air played upon, and cooled my temples.  And this
+with the quiet scene so abruptly presented to me, gave check to my
+thoughts, and somewhat sobered me.
+
+At some distance to my left I could distinguish in the middle of the
+river the pile of buildings which crowd the Ile de la Cite, and could
+follow the nearer arm of the stream as it swept landwards of these,
+closely hemmed in by houses, but unbroken as yet by the arches of the
+Pont Neuf which I have lived to see built.  Not far from me on my
+right--indeed within a stone's throw--the bulky mass of the Louvre rose
+dark and shapeless against the sky.  Only a narrow open space--the
+foreshore--separated me from the water; beyond which I could see an
+irregular line of buildings, that no doubt formed the Faubourg St.
+Germain.
+
+I had been told that I should find stairs leading down to the water,
+and boats moored at the foot of them, at this point. Accordingly I
+walked quickly across the open space to a spot, where I made out a
+couple of posts set up on the brink--doubtless to mark the landing
+place.
+
+I had not gone ten paces, however, out of the shadow, before I chanced
+to look round, and discerned with an unpleasant eerie feeling three
+figures detach themselves from it, and advance in a row behind me, so
+as the better to cut off my retreat.  I was not to succeed in my
+enterprise too easily then.  That was clear. Still I thought it better
+to act as if I had not seen my followers, and collecting myself, I
+walked as quickly as I could down to the steps.  The three were by that
+time close upon me--within striking distance almost.  I turned abruptly
+and confronted them.
+
+"Who are you, and what do you want?"  I said, eyeing them warily, my
+hand on my sword.
+
+They did not answer, but separated more widely so as to form a
+half-circle:  and one of them whistled.  On the instant a knot of men
+started out of the line of houses, and came quickly across the strip of
+light towards us.
+
+The position seemed serious.  If I could have run indeed--but I glanced
+round, and found escape in that fashion impossible. There were men
+crouching on the steps behind me, between me and the river.  I had
+fallen into a trap.  Indeed, there was nothing for it now but to do as
+Madame had bidden me, and play the man boldly.  I had the words still
+ringing in my ears.  I had enough of the excitement I had lately felt
+still bounding in my veins to give nerve and daring.  I folded my arms
+and drew myself up.
+
+"Knaves!"  I said, with as much quiet contempt as I could muster, "you
+mistake me.  You do not know whom you have to deal with. Get me a boat,
+and let two of you row me across.  Hinder me, and your necks shall
+answer for it--or your backs!"
+
+A laugh and an oath of derision formed the only response, and before I
+could add more, the larger group arrived, and joined the three.
+
+"Who is it, Pierre?"  asked one of these in a matter-of-fact way, which
+showed I had not fallen amongst mere thieves.
+
+The speaker seemed to be the leader of the band.  He had a feather in
+his bonnet, and I saw a steel corslet gleam under his cloak, when some
+one held up a lanthorn to examine me the better. His trunk-hose were
+striped with black, white, and green--the livery as I learned
+afterwards of Monsieur the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou,
+afterwards Henry the Third; then a close friend of the Duke of Guise,
+and later his murderer.  The captain spoke with a foreign accent, and
+his complexion was dark to swarthiness.  His eyes sparkled and flashed
+like black beads.  It was easy to see that he was an Italian.
+
+"A gallant young cock enough," the soldier who had whistled answered;
+"and not quite of the breed we expected."  He held his lanthorn towards
+me and pointed to the white badge on my sleeve. "It strikes me we have
+caught a crow instead of a pigeon!"
+
+"How comes this?"  the Italian asked harshly, addressing me. "Who are
+you?  And why do you wish to cross the river at this time of night,
+young sir?"
+
+I acted on the inspiration of the moment.  "Play the man boldly!"
+Madame had said.  I would:  and I did with a vengeance.  I sprang
+forward and seizing the captain by the clasp of his cloak, shook him
+violently, and flung him off with all my force, so that he reeled.
+"Dog!"  I exclaimed, advancing, as if I would seize him again.  "Learn
+how to speak to your betters!  Am I to be stopped by such sweepings as
+you?  Hark ye, I am on the King's service!"
+
+He fairly spluttered with rage.  "More like the devil's!"  he
+exclaimed, pronouncing his words abominably, and fumbling vainly for
+his weapon.  "King's service or no service you do not insult Andrea
+Pallavicini!"
+
+I could only vindicate my daring by greater daring, and I saw this even
+as, death staring me in the face, my heart seemed to stop.  The man had
+his mouth open and his hand raised to give an order which would
+certainly have sent Anne de Caylus from the world, when I cried
+passionately--it was my last chance, and I never wished to live more
+strongly than at that moment--I cried passionately, "Andrea
+Pallavicini, if such be your name, look at that!  Look at that!"  I
+repeated, shaking my open hand with the ring on it before his face,
+"and then hinder me if you dare! To-morrow if you have quarterings
+enough, I will see to your quarrel!  Now send me on my way, or your
+fate be on your own head!  Disobey--ay, do but hesitate--and I will
+call on these very men of yours to cut you down!"
+
+It was a bold throw, for I staked all on a talisman of which I did not
+know the value!  To me it was the turn of a die, for I had had no
+leisure to look at the ring, and knew no more than a babe whose it was.
+But the venture was as happy as desperate.
+
+Andrea Pallavicini's expression--no pleasant one at the best of
+times--changed on the instant.  His face fell as he seized my hand, and
+peered at the ring long and intently.  Then he cast a quick glance of
+suspicion at his men, of hatred at me.  But I cared nothing for his
+glance, or his hatred.  I saw already that he had made up his mind to
+obey the charm:  and that for me was everything.  "If you had shown
+that to me a little earlier, young sir, it would, maybe, have been
+better for both of us," he said, a surly menace in his voice.  And
+cursing his men for their stupidity he ordered two of them to unmoor a
+boat.
+
+Apparently the craft had been secured with more care than skill, for to
+loosen it seemed to be a work of time.  Meanwhile I stood waiting in
+the midst of the group, anxious and yet exultant; an object of
+curiosity, and yet curious myself.  I heard the guards whisper
+together, and caught such phrases as "It is the Duc d'Aumale."
+
+"No, it is not D'Aumale.  It is nothing like him."
+
+"Well, he has the Duke's ring, fool!"
+
+"The Duke's?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"Then it is all right, God bless him!"  This last was uttered with
+extreme fervour.
+
+I was conscious too of being the object of many respectful glances; and
+had just bidden the men on the steps below me to be quick, when I
+discovered with alarm three figures moving across the open space
+towards us, and coming apparently from the same point from which
+Pallavicini and his men had emerged.
+
+In a moment I foresaw danger.  "Now be quick there!"  I cried again.
+But scarcely had I spoken before I saw that it was impossible to get
+afloat before these others came up, and I prepared to stand my ground
+resolutely.
+
+The first words, however, with which Pallavicini saluted the new-comers
+scattered my fears.  "Well, what the foul fiend do you want?"  he
+exclaimed rudely; and he rapped out half-a-dozen CORPOS before they
+could answer him.  "What have you brought him here for, when I left him
+in the guard-house?  Imbeciles!"
+
+"Captain Pallavicini," interposed the midmost of the three, speaking
+with patience--he was a man of about thirty, dressed with some
+richness, though his clothes were now disordered as though by a
+struggle--"I have induced these good men to bring me down--"
+
+"Then," cried the captain, brutally interrupting him, "you have lost
+your labour, Monsieur."
+
+"You do not know me," replied the prisoner with sternness--a prisoner
+he seemed to be.  "You do not understand that I am a friend of the
+Prince of Conde, and that--"
+
+He would have said more, but the Italian again cut him short.  "A fig
+for the Prince of Conde!"  he cried; "I understand my duty. You may as
+well take things easily.  You cannot cross, and you cannot go home, and
+you cannot have any explanation; except that it is the King's will!
+Explanation?"  he grumbled, in a lower tone, "you will get it soon
+enough, I warrant!  Before you want it!"
+
+"But there is a boat going to cross," said the other, controlling his
+temper by an effort and speaking with dignity.  "You told me that by
+the King's order no one could cross; and you arrested me because,
+having urgent need to visit St. Germain, I persisted. Now what does
+this mean, Captain Pallavicini?  Others are crossing.  I ask what this
+means?"
+
+"Whatever you please, M. de Pavannes," the Italian retorted
+contemptuously.  "Explain it for yourself!"
+
+I started as the name struck my ear, and at once cried out in surprise,
+"M. de Pavannes!"  Had I heard aright?
+
+Apparently I had, for the prisoner turned to me with a bow. "Yes, sir,"
+he said with dignity, "I am M. de Pavannes.  I have not the honour of
+knowing you, but you seem to be a gentleman." He cast a withering
+glance at the captain as he said this. "Perhaps you will explain to me
+why this violence has been done to me.  If you can, I shall consider it
+a favour; if not, pardon me."
+
+I did not answer him at once, for a good reason--that every faculty I
+had was bent on a close scrutiny of the man himself. He was fair, and
+of a ruddy complexion.  His beard was cut in the short pointed fashion
+of the court; and in these respects he bore a kind of likeness, a
+curious likeness, to Louis de Pavannes. But his figure was shorter and
+stouter.  He was less martial in bearing, with more of the air of a
+scholar than a soldier.  "You are related to M. Louis de Pavannes?"  I
+said, my heart beginning to beat with an odd excitement.  I think I
+foresaw already what was coming.
+
+"I am Louis de Pavannes," he replied with impatience.
+
+I stared at him in silence:  thinking--thinking--thinking.  And then I
+said slowly, "You have a cousin of the same name?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"He fell prisoner to the Vicomte de Caylus at Moncontour?"
+
+"He did," he answered curtly.  "But what of that, sir?"
+
+Again I did not answer--at once.  The murder was out.  I remembered, in
+the dim fashion in which one remembers such things after the event,
+that I had heard Louis de Pavannes, when we first became acquainted
+with him, mention this cousin of the same name; the head of a younger
+branch.  But our Louis living in Provence and the other in Normandy,
+the distance between their homes, and the troubles of the times had
+loosened a tie which their common religion might have strengthened.
+They had scarcely ever seen one another.  As Louis had spoken of his
+namesake but once during his long stay with us, and I had not then
+foreseen the connection to be formed between our families, it was no
+wonder that in the course of months the chance word had passed out of
+my head, and I had clean forgotten the subject of it. Here however, he
+was before my eyes, and seeing him; I saw too what the discovery meant.
+It meant a most joyful thing!  a most wonderful thing which I longed to
+tell Croisette and Marie.  It meant that our Louis de Pavannes--my
+cheek burned for my want of faith in him--was no villain after all, but
+such a noble gentleman as we had always till this day thought him!  It
+meant that he was no court gallant bent on breaking a country heart for
+sport, but Kit's own true lover!  And--and it meant more--it meant that
+he was yet in danger, and still ignorant of the vow that unchained
+fiend Bezers had taken to have his life!  In pursuing his namesake we
+had been led astray, how sadly I only knew now!  And had indeed lost
+most precious time.
+
+"Your wife, M. de Pavannes"--I began in haste, seeing the necessity of
+explaining matters with the utmost quickness.  "Your wife is--"
+
+"Ah, my wife!"  he cried interrupting me, with anxiety in his tone.
+"What of her?  You have seen her!"
+
+"I have.  She is safe at your house in the Rue de St. Merri."
+
+"Thank Heaven for that!"  he replied fervently.  Before he could say
+more Captain Andrea interrupted us.  I could see that his suspicions
+were aroused afresh.  He pushed rudely between us, and addressing me
+said, "Now, young sir, your boat is ready."
+
+"My boat?"  I answered, while I rapidly considered the situation. Of
+course I did not want to cross the river now.  No doubt Pavannes--this
+Pavannes--could guide me to Louis' address.  "My boat?"
+
+"Yes, it is waiting," the Italian replied, his black eyes roving from
+one to the other of us.
+
+"Then let it wait!"  I answered haughtily, speaking with an assumption
+of anger.  "Plague upon you for interrupting us!  I shall not cross the
+river now.  This gentleman can give me the information I want.  I shall
+take him back with me."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"To whom?  To those who sent me, sirrah!"
+
+I thundered.  "You do not seem to be much in the Duke's confidence,
+captain," I went on; "now take a word of advice from me!  There is
+nothing:  so easily cast off as an over-officious servant!  He goes too
+far--and he goes like an old glove!  An old glove," I repeated grimly,
+sneering in his face, "which saves the hand and suffers itself.  Beware
+of too much zeal, Captain Pallavicini!  It is a dangerous thing!"
+
+He turned pale with anger at being thus treated by a beardless boy.
+But he faltered all the same.  What I said was unpleasant, but the
+bravo knew it was true.
+
+I saw the impression I had made, and I turned to the soldiers standing
+round.
+
+"Bring here, my friends," I said, "M. de Pavannes' sword!"
+
+One ran up to the guard house and brought it at once.  They were
+townsfolk, burgher guards or such like, and for some reason betrayed so
+evident a respect for me, that I soberly believe they would have turned
+on their temporary leader at my bidding. Pavannes took his sword, and
+placed it under his arm.  We both bowed ceremoniously to Pallavicini,
+who scowled in response; and slowly, for I was afraid to show any signs
+of haste, we walked across the moonlit space to the bottom of the
+street by which I had come.  There the gloom swallowed us up at once.
+Pavannes touched my sleeve and stopped in the darkness.
+
+"I beg to be allowed to thank you for your aid," he said with emotion,
+turning and facing me.  "Whom have I the honour of addressing?"
+
+"M. Anne de Caylus, a friend of your cousin," I replied.
+
+"Indeed?"  he said "well, I thank you most heartily," and we embraced
+with warmth.
+
+"But I could have done little," I answered modestly, "on your behalf,
+if it had not been for this ring."
+
+"And the virtue of the ring lies in--"
+
+"In--I am sure I cannot say in what!"  I confessed.  And then, in the
+sympathy which the scene had naturally created between us, I forgot one
+portion of my lady's commands and I added impulsively, "All I know is
+that Madame d'O gave it me; and that it has done all, and more than all
+she said it would."
+
+"Who gave it to you?"  he asked, grasping my arm so tightly as to hurt
+me.
+
+"Madame d'O," I repeated.  It was too late to draw back now.
+
+"That woman!"  he ejaculated in a strange low whisper.  "Is it
+possible?  That woman gave it you?"
+
+I wandered what on earth he meant, surprise, scorn and dislike were so
+blended in his tone.  It even seemed to me that he drew off from me
+somewhat.  "Yes, M. de Pavannes," I replied, offended and indignant,
+"It is so far possible that it is the truth; and more, I think you
+would not so speak of this lady if you knew all; and that it was
+through her your wife was to-day freed from those who were detaining
+her, and taken safely home!"
+
+"Ha!"  he cried eagerly.  "Then where has my wife been?"
+
+"At the house of Mirepoix, the glover," I answered coldly, "in the Rue
+Platriere.  Do you know him?  You do.  Well, she was kept there a
+prisoner, until we helped her to escape an hour or so ago."
+
+He did not seem to comprehend even then.  I could see little of his
+face, but there was doubt and wonder in his tone when he spoke.
+"Mirepoix the glover," he murmured.  "He is an honest man enough,
+though a Catholic.  She was kept there!  Who kept her there?"
+
+"The Abbess of the Ursulines seems to have been at the bottom of it," I
+explained, fretting with impatience.  This wonder was misplaced, I
+thought; and time was passing.  "Madame d'O found out where she was," I
+continued, "and took her home, and then sent me to fetch you, hearing
+you had crossed the river.  That is the story in brief."
+
+"That woman sent you to fetch me?"  he repeated again.
+
+"Yes," I answered angrily.  "She did, M. de Pavannes."
+
+"Then," he said slowly, and with an air of solemn conviction which
+could not but impress me, "there is a trap laid for me! She is the
+worst, the most wicked, the vilest of women!  If she sent you, this is
+a trap!  And my wife has fallen into it already!  Heaven help her--and
+me--if it be so!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE PARISIAN MATINS.
+
+There are some statements for which it is impossible to be prepared;
+statements so strong and so startling that it is impossible to answer
+them except by action--by a blow.  And this of M. de Pavannes was one
+of these.  If there had been any one present, I think I should have
+given him the lie and drawn upon him.  But alone with him at midnight
+in the shadow near the bottom of the Rue des Fosses, with no witnesses,
+with every reason to feel friendly towards him, what was I to do?
+
+As a fact, I did nothing.  I stood, silent and stupefied, waiting to
+hear more.  He did not keep me long.
+
+"She is my wife's sister," he continued grimly.  "But I have no reason
+to shield her on that account!  Shield her?  Had you lived at court
+only a month I might shield her all I could, M. de Caylus, it would
+avail nothing.  Not Madame de Sauves is better known.  And I would not
+if I could!  I know well, though my wife will not believe it, that
+there is nothing so near Madame d'O's heart as to get rid of her sister
+and me--of both of us--that she may succeed to Madeleine's inheritance!
+Oh, yes, I had good grounds for being nervous yesterday, when my wife
+did not return," he added excitedly.
+
+"But there at least you wrong Madame d'O!"  I cried, shocked and
+horrified by an accusation, which seemed so much more dreadful in the
+silence and gloom--and withal so much less preposterous than it might
+have seemed in the daylight.  "There you certainly wrong her!  For
+shame!  M. de Pavannes."
+
+He came a step nearer, and laying a hand on my sleeve peered into my
+face.  "Did you see a priest with her?"  he asked slowly.  "A man
+called the Coadjutor--a down-looking dog?"
+
+I said--with a shiver of dread, a sudden revulsion of feeling, born of
+his manner--that I had.  And I explained the part the priest had taken.
+
+"Then," Pavannes rejoined, "I am right There IS a trap laid for me.
+The Abbess of the Ursulines!  She abduct my wife?  Why, she is her
+dearest friend, believe me.  It is impossible.  She would be more
+likely to save her from danger than to--umph!  wait a minute."  I did:
+I waited, dreading what he might discover, until he muttered, checking
+himself--"Can that be it?  Can it be that the Abbess did know of some
+danger threatening us, and would have put Madeleine in a safe retreat?
+I wonder!"
+
+And I wondered; and then--well, thoughts are like gunpowder.  The least
+spark will fire a train.  His words were few, but they formed spark
+enough to raise such a flare in my brain as for a moment blinded me,
+and shook me so that I trembled.  The shock over, I was left face to
+face with a possibility of wickedness such as I could never have
+suspected of myself.  I remembered Mirepoix's distress and the priest's
+eagerness.  I re-called the gruff warning Bezers--even Bezers, and
+there was something very odd in Bezers giving a warning!--had given
+Madame de Pavannes when he told her that she would be better where she
+was.  I thought of the wakefulness which I had marked in the streets,
+the silent hurrying to and fro, the signs of coming strife, and
+contrasted these with the quietude and seeming safety of Mirepoix's
+house; and I hastily asked Pavannes at what time he had been arrested.
+
+"About an hour before midnight," he answered.
+
+"Then you know nothing of what is happening?"  I replied quickly. "Why,
+even while we are loitering here--but listen!"
+
+And with all speed, stammering indeed in my haste and anxiety, I told
+him what I had noticed in the streets, and the hints I had heard, and I
+showed him the badges with which Madame had furnished me.
+
+His manner when he had heard me out frightened me still more.  He drew
+me on in a kind of fury to a house in the windows of which some lighted
+candles had appeared not a minute before.
+
+"The ring!"  he cried, "let me see the ring!  Whose is it?"
+
+He held up my hand to this chance light and we looked at the ring.  It
+was a heavy gold signet, with one curious characteristic:  it had two
+facets.  On one of these was engraved the letter "H," and above it a
+crown.  On the other was an eagle with outstretched wings.
+
+Pavannes let my hand drop and leaned against the wall in sudden
+despair.  "It is the Duke of Guise's," he muttered.  "It is the eagle
+of Lorraine."
+
+"Ha!"  said I softly, seeing light.  The Duke was the idol then, as
+later, of the Parisian populace, and I understood now why the citizen
+soldiers had shown me such respect.  They had taken me for the Duke's
+envoy and confidant.
+
+But I saw no farther.  Pavannes did, and murmured bitterly, "We may say
+our prayers, we Huguenots.  That is our death-warrant. To-morrow night
+there will not be one left in Paris, lad.  Guise has his father's death
+to avenge, and these cursed Parisians will do his bidding like the
+wolves they are!  The Baron de Rosny warned us of this, word for word.
+I would to Heaven we had taken his advice!"
+
+"Stay!"  I cried--he was going too fast for me--"stay!"  His monstrous
+conception, though it marched some way with my own suspicions, outran
+them far!  I saw no sufficient grounds for it. "The King--the king
+would not permit such a thing, M. de Pavannes," I argued.
+
+"Boy, you are blind!"  he rejoined impatiently, for now he saw all and
+I nothing.  "Yonder was the Duke of Anjou's captain--Monsieur's
+officer, the follower of France's brother, mark you! And HE--he obeyed
+the Duke's ring!  The Duke has a free hand to-night, and he hates us.
+And the river.  Why are we not to cross the river?  The King indeed!
+The King has undone us.  He has sold us to his brother and the Guises.
+VA CHASSER L'IDOLE" for the second time I heard the quaint phrase,
+which I learned afterwards was an anagram of the King's name, Charles
+de Valois, used by the Protestants as a password--"VA CHASSER L'IDOLE
+has betrayed us!  I remember the very words he used to the Admiral,
+'Now we have got you here we shall not let you go so easily!' Oh, the
+traitor!  The wretched traitor!"
+
+He leaned against the wall overcome by the horror of the conviction
+which had burst upon him, and unnerved by the imminence of the peril.
+At all times he was an unready man, I fancy, more fit, courage apart,
+for the college than the field; and now he gave way to despair.
+Perhaps the thought of his wife unmanned him.  Perhaps the excitement
+through which he had already gone tended to stupefy him, or the
+suddenness of the discovery.
+
+At any rate, I was the first to gather my wits together, and my
+earliest impulse was to tear into two parts a white handkerchief I had
+in my pouch, and fasten one to his sleeve, the other in his hat, in
+rough imitation of the badges I wore myself.
+
+It will appear from this that I no longer trusted Madame d'O.  I was
+not convinced, it is true, of her conscious guilt, still I did not
+trust her entirely.  "Do not wear them on your return," she had said
+and that was odd; although I could not yet believe that she was such a
+siren as Father Pierre had warned us of, telling tales from old poets.
+Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did so.  Her companionship with that
+vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her
+mysterious directions to me, her anxiety to take her sister home--home,
+where she would be exposed to danger, as being in a known Huguenot's
+house--these things pointed to but one conclusion; still that one was
+so horrible that I would not, even while I doubted and distrusted her,
+I would not, I could not accept it.  I put it from me, and refused to
+believe it, although during the rest of that night it kept coming back
+to me and knocking for admission at my brain.
+
+All this flashed through my mind while I was fixing on Pavannes'
+badges.  Not that I lost time about it, for from the moment I grasped
+the position as he conceived it, every minute we had wasted on
+explanations seemed to me an hour.  I reproached myself for having
+forgotten even for an instant that which had brought us to town--the
+rescue of Kit's lover.  We had small chance now of reaching him in
+time, misled as we had been by this miserable mistake in identity.  If
+my companion's fears were well founded, Louis would fall in the general
+massacre of the Huguenots, probably before we could reach him.  If
+ill-founded, still we had small reason to hope.  Bezers' vengeance
+would not wait.  I knew him too well to think it.  A Guise might spare
+his foe, but the Vidame--the Vidame never!  We had warned Madame de
+Pavannes it was true; but that abnormal exercise of benevolence could
+only, I cynically thought, have the more exasperated the devil within
+him, which now would be ravening like a dog disappointed of its
+victuals.
+
+I glanced up at the line of sky visible between the tall houses, and
+lo!  the dawn was coming.  It wanted scarcely half-an-hour of daylight,
+though down in the dark streets about us the night still reigned.  Yes,
+the morning was coming, bright and hopeful, and the city was quiet.
+There were no signs, no sounds of riot or disorder.  Surely, I thought,
+surely Pavannes must be mistaken.  Either the plot had never existed,
+that was most likely, or it had been abandoned, or perhaps--Crack!
+
+A pistol shot!  Short, sharp, ominous it rang out on the instant, a
+solitary sound in the night!  It was somewhere near us, and I stopped.
+I had been speaking to my companion at the moment. "Where was it?"  I
+cried, looking behind me.
+
+"Close to us.  Near the Louvre," he answered, listening intently. "See!
+See!  Ah, heavens!"  he continued in a voice of despair, "it was a
+signal!"
+
+It was.  One, two, three!  Before I could count so far, lights sprang
+into brightness in the windows of nine out of ten houses in the short
+street where we stood, as if lighted by a single hand.  Before too I
+could count as many more, or ask him what this meant, before indeed, we
+could speak or stir from the spot, or think what we should do, with a
+hurried clang and clash, as if brought into motion by furious frenzied
+hands, a great bell just above our heads began to boom and whirr!  It
+hurled its notes into space, it suddenly filled all the silence.  It
+dashed its harsh sounds down upon the trembling city, till the air
+heaved, and the houses about us rocked.  It made in an instant a
+pandemonium of the quiet night.
+
+We turned and hurried instinctively from the place, crouching and
+amazed, looking upwards with bent shoulders and scared faces. "What is
+it?  What is it?"  I cried, half in resentment; half in terror.  It
+deafened me.
+
+"The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois!"  he shouted in answer. "The
+Church of the Louvre.  It is as I said.  We are doomed!"
+
+"Doomed?  No!"  I replied fiercely, for my courage seemed to rise again
+on the wave of sound and excitement as if rebounding from the momentary
+shock.  "Never!  We wear the devil's livery, and he will look after his
+own.  Draw, man, and let him that stops us look to himself.  You know
+the way.  Lead on!"  I cried savagely.
+
+He caught the infection and drew his sword.  So we started boldly, and
+the result justified my confidence.  We looked, no doubt, as like
+murderers as any who were abroad that night. Moving in this desperate
+guise we hastened up that street and into another--still pursued by the
+din and clangour of the bell--and then a short distance along a third.
+We were not stopped or addressed by anyone, though numbers, increasing
+each moment as door after door opened, and we drew nearer to the heart
+of the commotion, were hurrying in the same direction, side by side
+with us; and though in front, where now and again lights gleamed on a
+mass of weapons, or on white eager faces, filling some alley from wall
+to wall, we heard the roar of voices rising and falling like the murmur
+of an angry sea.
+
+All was blur, hurry, confusion, tumult.  Yet I remember, as we pressed
+onwards with the stream and part of it, certain sharp outlines.  I
+caught here and there a glimpse of a pale scared face at a window, a
+half-clad form at a door, of the big, wondering eyes of a child held up
+to see us pass, of a Christ at a corner ruddy in the smoky glare of a
+link, of a woman armed, and in man's clothes, who walked some distance
+side by side with us, and led off a ribald song.  I retain a memory of
+these things:  of brief bursts of light and long intervals of darkness,
+and always, as we tramped forwards, my hand on Pavannes' sleeve, of an
+ever-growing tumult in front--an ever-rising flood of noise.
+
+At last we came to a standstill where a side street ran out of ours.
+Into this the hurrying throng tried to wheel, and, unable to do so,
+halted, and pressed about the head of the street, which was already
+full to overflowing; and so sought with hungry eyes for places whence
+they might look down it.  Pavannes and I struggled only to get through
+the crowd--to get on; but the efforts of those behind partly aiding and
+partly thwarting our own, presently forced us to a position whence we
+could not avoid seeing what was afoot.
+
+The street--this side street was ablaze with light.  From end to end
+every gable, every hatchment was glowing, every window was flickering
+in the glare of torches.  It was paved too with faces--human faces, yet
+scarcely human--all looking one way, all looking upward; and the noise,
+as from time to time this immense crowd groaned or howled in unison,
+like a wild beast in its fury, was so appalling, that I clutched
+Pavannes' arm and clung to him in momentary terror.  I do not wonder
+now that I quailed, though sometimes I have heard that sound since.
+For there is nothing in the world so dreadful as that brute beast we
+call the CANAILLE, when the chain is off and its cowardly soul is
+roused.
+
+Near our end of the street a group of horsemen rising island-like from
+the sea of heads, sat motionless in their saddles about a gateway.
+They were silent, taking no notice of the rioting fiends shouting at
+their girths, but watching in grim quiet what was passing within the
+gates.  They were handsomely dressed, although some wore corslets over
+their satin coats or lace above buff jerkins.  I could even at that
+distance see the jewels gleam in the bonnet of one who seemed to be
+their leader.  He was in the centre of the band, a very young man,
+perhaps twenty or twenty-one, of most splendid presence, sitting his
+horse superbly.  He wore a grey riding-coat, and was a head taller than
+any of his companions.  There was pride in the very air with which his
+horse bore him.
+
+I did not need to ask Pavannes who he was.  I KNEW that he was the Duke
+of Guise, and that the house before which he stood was Coligny's.  I
+knew what was being done there.  And in the same moment I sickened with
+horror and rage.  I had a vision of grey hairs and blood and fury
+scarcely human, And I rebelled.  I battled with the rabble about me.  I
+forced my way through them tooth and nail after Pavannes, intent only
+on escaping, only on getting away from there.  And so we neither halted
+nor looked back until we were clear of the crowd and had left the blaze
+of light and the work doing by it some way behind us.
+
+We found ourselves then in the mouth of an obscure alley which my
+companion whispered would bring us to his house; and here we paused to
+take breath and look back.  The sky was red behind us, the air full of
+the clash and din of the tocsin, and the flood of sounds which poured
+from every tower and steeple.  From the eastward came the rattle of
+drums and random shots, and shrieks of "A BAS COLIGNY!"  "A BAS LES
+HUGUENOTS!"  Meanwhile the city was rising as one man, pale at this
+dread awakening.  From every window men and women, frightened by the
+uproar, were craning their necks, asking or answering questions or
+hurriedly calling for and kindling tapers.  But as yet the general
+populace seemed to be taking no active part in the disorder.
+
+Pavannes raised his hat an instant as we stood in the shadow of the
+houses.  "The noblest man in France is dead," he said, softly and
+reverently.  "God rest his soul!  They have had their way with him and
+killed him like a dog.  He was an old man and they did not spare him!
+A noble, and they have called in the CANAILLE to tear him.  But be
+sure, my friend"--and as the speaker's tone changed and grew full and
+proud, his form seemed to swell with it--"be sure the cruel shall not
+live out half their days!  No. He that takes the knife shall perish by
+the knife!  And go to his own place!  I shall not see it, but you will!"
+
+His words made no great impression on me then.  My hardihood was
+returning.  I was throbbing with fierce excitement, and tingling for
+the fight.  But years afterwards, when the two who stood highest in the
+group about Coligny's threshold died, the one at thirty-eight, the
+other at thirty-five--when Henry of Guise and Henry of Valois died
+within six months of one another by the assassin's knife--I remembered
+Pavannes' augury.  And remembering it, I read the ways of Providence,
+and saw that the very audacity of which Guise took advantage to entrap
+Coligny led him too in his turn to trip smiling and bowing, a comfit
+box in his hand and the kisses of his mistress damp on his lips, into a
+king's closet--a king's closet at Blois!  Led him to lift the
+curtain--ah!  to lift the curtain, what Frenchman does not know the
+tale?--behind which stood the Admiral!
+
+To return to our own fortunes; after a hurried glance we resumed our
+way, and sped through the alley, holding a brief consultation as we
+went.  Pavannes' first hasty instinct to seek shelter at home began to
+lose its force, and he to consider whether his return would not
+endanger his wife.  The mob might be expected to spare her, he argued.
+Her death would not benefit any private foes if he escaped.  He was for
+keeping away therefore.  But I would not agree to this.  The priest's
+crew of desperadoes--assuming Pavannes' suspicions to be correct--would
+wait some time, no doubt, to give the master of the house a chance to
+return, but would certainly attack sooner or later out of greed, if
+from no other motive.  Then the lady's fate would at the best be
+uncertain.  I was anxious myself to rejoin my brothers, and take all
+future chances, whether of saving our Louis, or escaping ourselves,
+with them.  United we should be four good swords, and might at least
+protect Madame de Pavannes to a place of safety, if no opportunity of
+succouring Louis should present itself.  We had too the Duke's ring,
+and this might be of service at a pinch. "No," I urged, "let us get
+together.  We two will slip in at the front gate, and bolt and bar it,
+and then we will all escape in a body at the back, while they are
+forcing the gateway."
+
+"There is no door at the back," he answered, shaking his head.
+
+"There are windows?"
+
+"They are too strongly barred.  We could not break out in the time," he
+explained, with a groan.
+
+I paused at that, crestfallen.  But danger quickened my wits.  In a
+moment I had another plan, not so hopeful and more dangerous, yet worth
+trying I thought, I told him of it, and he agreed to it.  As he nodded
+assent we emerged into a street, and I saw--for the grey light of
+morning was beginning to penetrate between the houses--that we were
+only a few yards from the gateway, and the small door by which I had
+seen my brothers enter.  Were they still in the house?  Were they safe?
+I had been away an hour at least.
+
+Anxious as I was about them, I looked round me very keenly as we
+flitted across the road, and knocked gently at the door.  I thought it
+so likely that we should be fallen upon here, that I stood on my guard
+while we waited.  But we were not molested. The street, being at some
+distance from the centre of the commotion, was still and empty, with no
+signs of life apparent except the rows of heads poked through the
+windows--all possessing eyes which watched us heedfully and in perfect
+silence.  Yes, the street was quite empty:  except, ah!  except, for
+that lurking figure, which, even as I espied it, shot round a distant
+angle of the wall, and was lost to sight.
+
+"There!"  I cried, reckless now who might hear me, "knock!  knock
+louder!  never mind the noise.  The alarm is given.  A score of people
+are watching us, and yonder spy has gone off to summon his friends."
+
+The truth was my anger was rising.  I could bear no longer the silent
+regards of all those eyes at the windows.  I writhed under them--cruel,
+pitiless eyes they were.  I read in them a morbid curiosity, a patient
+anticipation that drove me wild.  Those men and women gazing on us so
+stonily knew my companion's rank and faith.  They had watched him
+riding in and out daily, one of the sights of their street, gay and
+gallant; and now with the same eyes they were watching greedily for the
+butchers to come.  The very children took a fresh interest in him, as
+one doomed and dying; and waited panting for the show to begin.  So I
+read them.
+
+"Knock!"  I repeated angrily, losing all patience.  Had I been foolish
+in bringing him back to this part of the town where every soul knew
+him?  "Knock; we must get in, whether or no.  They cannot all have left
+the house!"
+
+I kicked the door desperately, and my relief was great when it opened.
+A servant with a pale face stood before me, his knees visibly shaking.
+And behind him was Croisette.
+
+I think we fell straightway into one another's arms.
+
+"And Marie," I cried, "Marie?"
+
+"Marie is within, and madame," he answered joyfully; "we are together
+again and nothing matters, But oh, Anne, where have you been?  And what
+is the matter?  Is it a great fire?  Or is the king dead?  Or what is
+it?"
+
+I told him.  I hastily poured out some of the things which had happened
+to me, and some which I feared were in store for others. Naturally he
+was surprised and shocked by the latter, though his fears had already
+been aroused.  But his joy and relief, when he heard the mystery of
+Louis de Pavannes' marriage explained, were so great that they
+swallowed up all other feelings.  He could not say enough about it.  He
+pictured Louis again and again as Kit's lover, as our old friend, our
+companion; as true, staunch, brave without fear, without reproach:  and
+it was long before his eyes ceased to sparkle, his tongue to run
+merrily, the colour to mantle in his cheeks--long that is as time is
+counted by minutes. But presently the remembrance of Louis' danger and
+our own position returned more vividly.  Our plan for rescuing him had
+failed--failed!
+
+"No!  no!"  cried Croisette, stoutly.  He would not hear of it. He
+would not have it at any price.  "No, we will not give up hope!  We
+will go shoulder to shoulder and find him.  Louis is as brave as a lion
+and as quick as a weasel.  We will find him in time yet.  We will go
+when--I mean as soon as--"
+
+He faltered, and paused.  His sudden silence as he looked round the
+empty forecourt in which we stood was eloquent.  The cold light, faint
+and uncertain yet, was stealing into the court, disclosing a row of
+stables on either side, and a tiny porter's hutch by the gates, and
+fronting us a noble house of four storys, tall, grey, grim-looking.
+
+I assented; gloomily however.  "Yes," I said, "we will go when--"
+
+And I too stopped.  The same thought was in my mind.  How could we
+leave these people?  How could we leave madame in her danger and
+distress?  How could we return her kindness by desertion?  We could
+not.  No, not for Kit's sake.  Because after all Louis, our Louis, was
+a man, and must take his chance.  He must take his chance.  But I
+groaned.
+
+So that was settled.  I had already explained our plan to Croisette:
+and now as we waited he began to tell me a story, a long, confused
+story about Madame d'O.  I thought he was talking for the sake of
+talking--to keep up our spirits--and I did not attend much to him; so
+that he had not reached the gist of it, or at least I had not grasped
+it, when a noise without stayed his tongue.  It was the tramp of
+footsteps, apparently of a large party in the street.  It forced him to
+break off, and promptly drove us all to our posts.
+
+But before we separated a slight figure, hardly noticeable in that dim,
+uncertain light, passed me quickly, laying for an instant a soft hand
+in mine as I stood waiting by the gates.  I have said I scarcely saw
+the figure, though I did see the kind timid eyes, and the pale cheeks
+under the hood; but I bent over the hand and kissed it, and felt, truth
+to tell, no more regret nor doubt where our duty lay.  But stood,
+waiting patiently.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE HEAD OF ERASMUS.
+
+Waiting, and waiting alone!  The gates were almost down now.  The gang
+of ruffians without, reinforced each moment by volunteers eager for
+plunder, rained blows unceasingly on hinge and socket; and still hotter
+and faster through a dozen rifts in the timbers came the fire of their
+threats and curses.  Many grew tired, but others replaced them.  Tools
+broke, but they brought more and worked with savage energy.  They had
+shown at first a measure of prudence; looking to be fired on, and to be
+resisted by men, surprised, indeed, but desperate; and the bolder of
+them only had advanced.  But now they pressed round unchecked, meeting
+no resistance.  They would scarcely stand back to let the sledges have
+swing; but hallooed and ran in on the creaking beams and beat them with
+their fists, whenever the gates swayed under a blow.
+
+One stout iron bar still held its place.  And this I watched as if
+fascinated.  I was alone in the empty courtyard, standing a little
+aside, sheltered by one of the stone pillars from which the gates hung.
+Behind me the door of the house stood ajar. Candles, which the daylight
+rendered garish, still burned in the rooms on the first floor, of which
+the tall narrow windows were open.  On the wide stone sill of one of
+these stood Croisette, a boyish figure, looking silently down at me,
+his hand on the latticed shutter.  He looked pale, and I nodded and
+smiled at him.  I felt rather anger than fear myself; remembering, as
+the fiendish cries half-deafened me, old tales of the Jacquerie and its
+doings, and how we had trodden it out.
+
+Suddenly the din and tumult flashed to a louder note; as when hounds on
+the scent give tongue at sight.  I turned quickly from the house,
+recalled to a sense of the position and peril.  The iron bar was
+yielding to the pressure.  Slowly the left wing of the gate was sinking
+inwards.  Through the widening chasm I caught a glimpse of wild, grimy
+faces and bloodshot eyes, and heard above the noise a sharp cry from
+Croisette--a cry of terror.  Then I turned and ran, with a defiant
+gesture and an answering yell, right across the forecourt and up the
+steps to the door.
+
+I ran the faster for the sharp report of a pistol behind me, and the
+whirr of a ball past my ear.  But I was not scared by it: and as my
+feet alighted with a bound on the topmost step, I glanced back.  The
+dogs were halfway across the court.  I made a bungling attempt to shut
+and lock the great door--failed in this; and heard behind me a roar of
+coarse triumph.  I waited for no more. I darted up the oak staircase
+four steps at a time, and rushed into the great drawing-room on my
+left, banging the door behind me.
+
+The once splendid room was in a state of strange disorder.  Some of the
+rich tapestry had been hastily torn down.  One window was closed and
+shuttered; no doubt Croisette had done it.  The other two were open--as
+if there had not been time to close them--and the cold light which they
+admitted contrasted in ghastly fashion with the yellow rays of candles
+still burning in the sconces. The furniture had been huddled aside or
+piled into a barricade, a CHEVAUX DE FRISE of chairs and tables
+stretching across the width of the room, its interstices stuffed with,
+and its weakness partly screened by, the torn-down hangings.  Behind
+this frail defence their backs to a door which seemed to lead to an
+inner room, stood Marie and Croisette, pale and defiant.  The former
+had a long pike; the latter levelled a heavy, bell-mouthed arquebuse
+across the back of a chair, and blew up his match as I entered.  Both
+had in addition procured swords.  I darted like a rabbit through a
+little tunnel left on purpose for me in the rampart, and took my stand
+by them.
+
+"Is all right?"  ejaculated Croisette turning to me nervously.
+
+"All right, I think," I answered.  I was breathless.
+
+"You are not hurt?"
+
+"Not touched!"
+
+I had just time then to draw my sword before the assailants streamed
+into the room, a dozen ruffians, reeking and tattered, with flushed
+faces and greedy, staring eyes.  Once inside, however, suddenly--so
+suddenly that an idle spectator might have found the change
+ludicrous--they came to a stop.  Their wild cries ceased, and tumbling
+over one another with curses and oaths they halted, surveying us in
+muddled surprise; seeing what was before them, and not liking it.
+Their leader appeared to be a tall butcher with a pole-axe on his
+half-naked shoulder; but there were among them two or three soldiers in
+the royal livery and carrying pikes.  They had looked for victims only,
+having met with no resistance at the gate, and the foremost recoiled
+now on finding themselves confronted by the muzzle of the arquebuse and
+the lighted match.
+
+I seized the occasion.  I knew, indeed, that the pause presented our
+only chance, and I sprang on a chair and waved my hand for silence.
+The instinct of obedience for the moment asserted itself; there was a
+stillness in the room.
+
+"Beware!"  I cried loudly--as loudly and confidently as I could,
+considering that there was a quaver at my heart as I looked on those
+savage faces, which met and yet avoided my eye.  "Beware of what you
+do!  We are Catholics one and all like yourselves, and good sons of the
+Church.  Ay, and good subjects too!  VIVE LE ROI, gentlemen!  God save
+the King!  I say."  And I struck the barricade with my sword until the
+metal rang again.  "God save the King!"
+
+"Cry VIVE LA MESSE!"  shouted one.
+
+"Certainly, gentlemen!"  I replied, with politeness.  "With all my
+heart.  VIVE LA MESSE!  VIVE LA MESSE!"
+
+This took the butcher, who luckily was still sober, utterly aback.  He
+had never thought of this.  He stared at us as if the ox he had been
+about to fell had opened its mouth and spoken, and grievously at a
+loss, he looked for help to his companions.
+
+Later in the day, some Catholics were killed by the mob.  But their
+deaths as far as could be learned afterwards were due to private feuds.
+Save in such cases--and they were few--the cry of VIVE LA MESSE!
+always obtained at least a respite:  more easily of course in the
+earlier hours of the morning when the mob were scarce at ease in their
+liberty to kill, while killing still seemed murder, and men were not
+yet drunk with bloodshed.
+
+I read the hesitation of the gang in their faces:  and when one asked
+roughly who we were, I replied with greater boldness, "I am M. Anne de
+Caylus, nephew to the Vicomte de Caylus, Governor, under the King, of
+Bayonne and the Landes!"  This I said with what majesty I could.  "And
+these" I continued--"are my brothers. You will harm us at your peril,
+gentlemen.  The Vicomte, believe me, will avenge every hair of our
+heads."
+
+I can shut my eyes now and see the stupid wonder, the baulked ferocity
+of those gaping faces.  Dull and savage as the men were they were
+impressed; they saw reason indeed, and all seemed going well for us
+when some one in the rear shouted, "Cursed whelps! Throw them over!"
+
+I looked swiftly in the direction whence the voice came--the darkest
+corner of the room the corner by the shuttered window.  I thought I
+made out a slender figure, cloaked and masked--a woman's it might be
+but I could not be certain and beside it a couple of sturdy fellows,
+who kept apart from the herd and well behind their fugleman.
+
+The speaker's courage arose no doubt from his position at the back of
+the room, for the foremost of the assailants seemed less determined.
+We were only three, and we must have gone down, barricade and all,
+before a rush.  But three are three.  And an arquebuse--Croisette's
+match burned splendidly--well loaded with slugs is an ugly weapon at
+five paces, and makes nasty wounds, besides scattering its charge
+famously.  This, a good many of them and the leaders in particular,
+seemed to recognise.  We might certainly take two or three lives:  and
+life is valuable to its owner when plunder is afoot.  Besides most of
+them had common sense enough to remember that there were scores of
+Huguenots--genuine heretics--to be robbed for the killing, so why go
+out of the way, they reasoned, to cut a Catholic throat, and perhaps
+get into trouble.  Why risk Montfaucon for a whim?  and offend a man of
+influence like the Vicomte de Caylus, for nothing!
+
+Unfortunately at this crisis their original design was recalled to
+their minds by the same voice behind, crying out, "Pavannes! Where is
+Pavannes?"
+
+"Ay!"  shouted the butcher, grasping the idea, and at the same time
+spitting on his hands and taking a fresh grip of the axe, "Show us the
+heretic dog, and go!  Let us at him."
+
+"M. de Pavannes," I said coolly--but I could not take my eyes off the
+shining blade of that man's axe, it was so very broad and sharp--"is
+not here!"
+
+"That is a lie!  He is in that room behind you!"  the prudent gentleman
+in the background called out.  "Give him up!"
+
+"Ay, give him up!"  echoed the man of the pole-axe almost good
+humouredly, "or it will be the worse for you.  Let us have at him and
+get you gone!"
+
+This with an air of much reason, while a growl as of a chained beast
+ran through the crowd, mingled with cries of "A MORT LES HUGUENOTS!
+VIVE LORRAINE!"--cries which seemed to show that all did not approve of
+the indulgence offered us.
+
+"Beware, gentlemen, beware," I urged, "I swear he is not here!  I swear
+it, do you hear?"
+
+A howl of impatience and then a sudden movement of the crowd as though
+the rush were coming warned me to temporize no longer. "Stay!  Stay!"
+I added hastily.  "One minute!  Hear me!  You are too many for us.
+Will you swear to let us go safe and untouched, if we give you passage?"
+
+A dozen voices shrieked assent.  But I looked at the butcher only.  He
+seemed to be an honest man, out of his profession.
+
+"Ay, I swear it!"  he cried with a nod.
+
+"By the Mass?"
+
+"By the Mass."
+
+I twitched Croisette's sleeve, and he tore the fuse from his weapon,
+and flung the gun--too heavy to be of use to us longer--to the ground.
+It was done in a moment.  While the mob swept over the barricade, and
+smashed the rich furniture of it in wanton malice, we filed aside, and
+nimbly slipped under it one by one.  Then we hurried in single file to
+the end of the room, no one taking much notice of us.  All were
+pressing on, intent on their prey.  We gained the door as the butcher
+struck his first blow on that which we had guarded--on that which we
+had given up. We sprang down the stairs with bounding hearts, heard as
+we reached the outer door the roar of many voices, but stayed not to
+look behind--paused indeed for nothing.  Fear, to speak candidly, lent
+us wings.  In three seconds we had leapt the prostrate gates, and were
+in the street.  A cripple, two or three dogs, a knot of women looking
+timidly yet curiously in, a horse tethered to the staple--we saw
+nothing else.  No one stayed us.  No one raised a hand, and in another
+minute we had turned a corner, and were out of sight of the house.
+
+"They will take a gentleman's word another time," I said with a quiet
+smile as I put up my sword.
+
+"I would like to see her face at this moment," Croisette replied. "You
+saw Madame d'O?"
+
+I shook my head, not answering.  I was not sure, and I had a queer,
+sickening dread of the subject.  If I had seen her, I had seen oh!  it
+was too horrible, too unnatural!  Her own sister! Her own brother
+in-law!
+
+I hastened to change the subject.  "The Pavannes," I made shift to say,
+"must have had five minutes' start."
+
+"More," Croisette answered, "if Madame and he got away at once. If all
+has gone well with them, and they have not been stopped in the streets
+they should be at Mirepoix's by now.  They seemed to be pretty sure
+that he would take them in."
+
+"Ah!"  I sighed.  "What fools we were to bring madame from that place!
+If we had not meddled with her affairs we might have reached Louis long
+ago our Louis, I mean."
+
+"True," Croisette answered softly, "but remember that then we should
+not have saved the other Louis as I trust we have.  He would still be
+in Pallavicini's hands.  Come, Anne, let us think it is all for the
+best," he added, his face shining with a steady courage that shamed me.
+"To the rescue!  Heaven will help us to be in time yet!"
+
+"Ay, to the rescue!"  I replied, catching his spirit.  "First to the
+right, I think, second to the left, first on the right again. That was
+the direction given us, was it not?  The house opposite a book-shop
+with the sign of the Head of Erasmus.  Forward, boys! We may do it yet."
+
+But before I pursue our fortunes farther let me explain.  The room we
+had guarded so jealously was empty!  The plan had been mine and I was
+proud of it.  For once Croisette had fallen into his rightful place.
+My flight from the gate, the vain attempt to close the house, the
+barricade before the inner door--these were all designed to draw the
+assailants to one spot.  Pavannes and his wife--the latter hastily
+disguised as a boy--had hidden behind the door of the hutch by the
+gates--the porter's hutch, and had slipped out and fled in the first
+confusion of the attack.
+
+Even the servants, as we learned afterwards, who had hidden themselves
+in the lower parts of the house got away in the same manner, though
+some of them--they were but few in all were stopped as Huguenots and
+killed before the day ended.  I had the more reason to hope that
+Pavannes and his wife would get clear off, inasmuch as I had given the
+Duke's ring to him, thinking it might serve him in a strait, and
+believing that we should have little to fear ourselves once clear of
+his house; unless we should meet the Vidame indeed.
+
+We did not meet him as it turned out; but before we had traversed a
+quarter of the distance we had to go we found that fears based on
+reason were not the only terrors we had to resist.  Pavannes' house,
+where we had hitherto been, stood at some distance from the centre of
+the blood-storm which was enwrapping unhappy Paris that morning.  It
+was several hundred paces from the Rue de Bethisy where the Admiral
+lived, and what with this comparative remoteness and the excitement of
+our own little drama, we had not attended much to the fury of the
+bells, the shots and cries and uproar which proclaimed the state of the
+city.  We had not pictured the scenes which were happening so near.
+Now in the streets the truth broke upon us, and drove the blood from
+our cheeks.  A hundred yards, the turning of a corner, sufficed.  We
+who but yesterday left the country, who only a week before were boys,
+careless as other boys, not recking of death at all, were plunged now
+into the midst of horrors I cannot describe.  And the awful contrast
+between the sky above and the things about us! Even now the lark was
+singing not far from us; the sunshine was striking the topmost storeys
+of the houses; the fleecy clouds were passing overhead, the freshness
+of a summer morning was--
+
+Ah! where was it?  Not here in the narrow lanes surely, that echoed and
+re-echoed with shrieks and curses and frantic prayers: in which bands
+of furious men rushed up and down, and where archers of the guard and
+the more cruel rabble were breaking in doors and windows, and hurrying
+with bloody weapons from house to house, seeking, pursuing, and at last
+killing in some horrid corner, some place of darkness--killing with
+blow on blow dealt on writhing bodies!  Not here, surely, where each
+minute a child, a woman died silently, a man snarling like a
+wolf--happy if he had snatched his weapon and got his back to the wall:
+where foul corpses dammed the very blood that ran down the kennel, and
+children--little children--played with them!
+
+I was at Cahors in 1580 in the great street fight; and there women were
+killed, I was with Chatillon nine years later, when he rode through the
+Faubourgs of Paris, with this very day and his father Coligny in his
+mind, and gave no quarter.  I was at Courtas and Ivry, and more than
+once have seen prisoners led out to be piked in batches--ay, and by
+hundreds!  But war is war, and these were its victims, dying for the
+most part under God's heaven with arms in their hands:  not men and
+women fresh roused from their sleep.  I felt on those occasions no such
+horror, I have never felt such burning pity and indignation as on the
+morning I am describing, that long-past summer morning when I first saw
+the sun shining on the streets of Paris.  Croisette clung to me, sick
+and white, shutting his eyes and ears, and letting me guide him as I
+would.  Marie strode along on the other side of him, his lips closed,
+his eyes sinister.  Once a soldier of the guard whose blood-stained
+hands betrayed the work he had done, came reeling--he was drunk, as
+were many of the butchers--across our path, and I gave way a little.
+Marie did not, but walked stolidly on as if he did not see him, as if
+the way were clear, and there were no ugly thing in God's image
+blocking it.
+
+Only his hand went as if by accident to the haft of his dagger. The
+archer--fortunately for himself and for us too--reeled clear of us.  We
+escaped that danger.  But to see women killed and pass by--it was
+horrible!  So horrible that if in those moments I had had the
+wishing-cap, I would have asked but for five thousand riders, and leave
+to charge with them through the streets of Paris!  I would have had the
+days of the Jacquerie back again, and my men-at-arms behind me!
+
+For ourselves, though the orgy was at its height when we passed, we
+were not molested.  We were stopped indeed three times--once in each of
+the streets we traversed--by different bands of murderers.  But as we
+wore the same badges as themselves, and cried "VIVE LA MESSE!"  and
+gave our names, we were allowed to proceed.  I can give no idea of the
+confusion and uproar, and I scarcely believe myself now that we saw
+some of the things we witnessed.  Once a man gaily dressed, and
+splendidly mounted, dashed past us, waving his naked sword and crying
+in a frenzied way "Bleed them!  Bleed them!  Bleed in May, as good
+to-day!" and never ceased crying out the same words until he passed
+beyond our hearing.  Once we came upon the bodies of a father and two
+sons, which lay piled together in the kennel; partly stripped already.
+The youngest boy could not have been more than thirteen, I mention this
+group, not as surpassing others in pathos, but because it is well known
+now that this boy, Jacques Nompar de Caumont, was not dead, but lives
+to-day, my friend the Marshal de la Force.
+
+This reminds me too of the single act of kindness we were able to
+perform.  We found ourselves suddenly, on turning a corner, amid a gang
+of seven or eight soldiers, who had stopped and surrounded a handsome
+boy, apparently about fourteen.  He wore a scholar's gown, and had some
+books under his arm, to which he clung firmly--though only perhaps by
+instinct--notwithstanding the furious air of the men who were
+threatening him with death.  They were loudly demanding his name, as we
+paused opposite them.  He either could not or would not give it, but
+said several times in his fright that he was going to the College of
+Burgundy.  Was he a Catholic?  they cried.  He was silent.  With an
+oath the man who had hold of his collar lifted up his pike, and
+naturally the lad raised the books to guard his face.  A cry broke from
+Croisette. We rushed forward to stay the blow.
+
+"See!  see!"  he exclaimed loudly, his voice arresting the man's arm in
+the very act of falling.  "He has a Mass Book!  He has a Mass Book!  He
+is not a heretic!  He is a Catholic!"
+
+The fellow lowered his weapon, and sullenly snatched the books. He
+looked at them stupidly with bloodshot wandering eyes, the red cross on
+the vellum bindings, the only thing he understood.  But it was enough
+for him; he bid the boy begone, and released him with a cuff and an
+oath.
+
+Croisette was not satisfied with this, though I did not understand his
+reason; only I saw him exchange a glance with the lad.  "Come, come!"
+he said lightly.  "Give him his books!  You do not want them!"
+
+But on that the men turned savagely upon us.  They did not thank us for
+the part we had already taken; and this they thought was going too far.
+They were half drunk and quarrelsome, and being two to one, and two
+over, began to flourish their weapons in our faces.  Mischief would
+certainly have been done, and very quickly, had not an unexpected ally
+appeared on our side.
+
+"Put up! put up!" this gentleman cried in a boisterous voice--he was
+already in our midst.  "What is all this about?  What is the use of
+fighting amongst ourselves, when there is many a bonny throat to cut,
+and heaven to be gained by it!  put up, I say!"
+
+"Who are you?"  they roared in chorus.
+
+"The Duke of Guise!"  he answered coolly.  "Let the gentlemen go, and
+be hanged to you, you rascals!"
+
+The man's bearing was a stronger argument than his words, for I am sure
+that a stouter or more reckless blade never swaggered in church or
+street.  I knew him instantly, and even the crew of butchers seemed to
+see in him their master.  They hung back a few curses at him, but
+having nothing to gain they yielded.  They threw down the books with
+contempt--showing thereby their sense of true religion; and trooped off
+roaring, "TUES!  TUES!  Aux Huguenots!"  at the top of their voices.
+
+The newcomer thus left with us was Bure--Blaise Bure--the same who only
+yesterday, though it seemed months and months back, had lured us into
+Bezers' power.  Since that moment we had not seen him.  Now he had
+wiped off part of the debt, and we looked at him, uncertain whether to
+reproach him or no.  He, however, was not one whit abashed, but
+returned our regards with a not unkindly leer.
+
+"I bear no malice, young gentlemen," he said impudently.
+
+"No, I should think not," I answered.
+
+"And besides, we are quits now," the knave continued.
+
+"You are very kind," I said.
+
+"To be sure.  You did me a good turn once," he answered, much to my
+surprise.  He seemed to be in earnest now.  "You do not remember it,
+young gentleman, but it was you and your brother here"--he pointed to
+Croisette--"did it!  And by the Pope and the King of Spain I have not
+forgotten it!"
+
+"I have," I said.
+
+"What!  You have forgotten spitting that fellow at Caylus ten days ago?
+CA!  SA!  You remember.  And very cleanly done, too! A pretty stroke!
+Well, M. Anne, that was a clever fellow, a very clever fellow.  He
+thought so and I thought so, and what was more to the purpose the most
+noble Raoul de Bezers thought so too. You understand!"
+
+He leered at me and I did understand.  I understood that unwittingly I
+had rid Blaise Bure of a rival.  This accounted for the respectful,
+almost the kindly way in which he had--well, deceived us.
+
+"That is all," he said.  "If you want as much done for you, let me
+know.  For the present, gentlemen, farewell!"
+
+He cocked his hat fiercely, and went off at speed the way we had
+ourselves been going; humming as he went,
+
+  "Ce petit homme tant joli,
+   Qui toujours cause et toujours rit,
+   Qui toujours baise sa mignonne
+   Dieu gard' de mal ce petit homme!"
+
+His reckless song came back to us on the summer breeze.  We watched him
+make a playful pass at a corpse which some one had propped in ghastly
+fashion against a door--and miss it--and go on whistling the same
+air--and then a corner hid him from view.
+
+We lingered only a moment ourselves; merely to speak to the boy we had
+befriended.
+
+"Show the books if anyone challenges you," said Croisette to him
+shrewdly.  Croisette was so much of a boy himself, with his fair hair
+like a halo about his white, excited face, that the picture of the two,
+one advising the other, seemed to me a strangely pretty one.  "Show the
+books and point to the cross on them.  And Heaven send you safe to your
+college."
+
+"I would like to know your name, if you please," said the boy. His
+coolness and dignity struck me as admirable under the circumstances.
+"I am Maximilian de Bethune, son of the Baron de Rosny."
+
+"Then," said Croisette briskly, "one good turn has deserved another.
+Your father, yesterday, at Etampes--no it was the day before, but we
+have not been in bed--warned us--"
+
+He broke off suddenly; then cried, "Run!  run!"
+
+The boy needed no second warning indeed.  He was off like the wind down
+the street, for we had seen and so had he, the stealthy approach of two
+or three prowling rascals on the look out for a victim.  They caught
+sight of him and were strongly inclined to follow him; but we were
+their match in numbers.  The street was otherwise empty at the moment:
+and we showed them three excellent reasons why they should give him a
+clear start.
+
+His after adventures are well-known:  for he, too, lives.  He was
+stopped twice after he left us.  In each case he escaped by showing his
+book of offices.  On reaching the college the porter refused to admit
+him, and he remained for some time in the open street exposed to
+constant danger of losing his life, and knowing not what to do.  At
+length he induced the gatekeeper, by the present of some small pieces
+of money, to call the principal of the college, and this man humanely
+concealed him for three days. The massacre being then at an end, two
+armed men in his father's pay sought him out and restored him to his
+friends.  So near was France to losing her greatest minister, the Duke
+de Sully.
+
+To return to ourselves.  The lad out of sight, we instantly resumed our
+purpose, and trying to shut our eyes and ears to the cruelty, and
+ribaldry, and uproar through which we had still to pass, we counted our
+turnings with a desperate exactness, intent only on one thing--to reach
+Louis de Pavannes, to reach the house opposite to the Head of Erasmus,
+as quickly as we could.  We presently entered a long, narrow street.
+At the end of it the river was visible gleaming and sparkling in the
+sunlight.  The street was quiet; quiet and empty.  There was no living
+soul to be seen from end to end of it, only a prowling dog.  The noise
+of the tumult raging in other parts was softened here by distance and
+the intervening houses.  We seemed to be able to breathe more freely.
+
+"This should be our street," said Croisette.
+
+I nodded.  At the same moment I espied, half-way down it, the sign we
+needed and pointed to it, But ah!  were we in time?  Or too late?  That
+was the question.  By a single impulse we broke into a run, and shot
+down the roadway at speed.  A few yards short of the Head of Erasmus we
+came, one by one, Croisette first, to a full stop.  A full stop!
+
+The house opposite the bookseller's was sacked!  gutted from top to
+bottom.  It was a tall house, immediately fronting the street, and
+every window in it was broken.  The door hung forlornly on one hinge,
+glaring cracks in its surface showing where the axe had splintered it.
+Fragments of glass and ware, hung out and shattered in sheer
+wantonness, strewed the steps:  and down one corner of the latter a
+dark red stream trickled--to curdle by and by in the gutter.  Whence
+came the stream?  Alas!  there was something more to be seen yet,
+something our eyes instinctively sought last of all.  The body of a man.
+
+It lay on the threshold, the head hanging back, the wide glazed eyes
+looking up to the summer sky whence the sweltering heat would soon pour
+down upon it.  We looked shuddering at the face. It was that of a
+servant, a valet who had been with Louis at Caylus.  We recognised him
+at once for we had known and liked him.  He had carried our guns on the
+hills a dozen times, and told us stories of the war.  The blood crawled
+slowly from him. He was dead.
+
+Croisette began to shake all over.  He clutched one of the pillars,
+which bore up the porch, and pressed his face against its cold surface,
+hiding his eyes from the sight.  The worst had come.  In our hearts I
+think we had always fancied some accident would save our friend, some
+stranger warn him.
+
+"Oh, poor, poor Kit!"  Croisette cried, bursting suddenly into violent
+sobs.  "Oh, Kit!  Kit!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
+
+His late Majesty, Henry the Fourth, I remember--than whom no braver man
+wore sword, who loved danger indeed for its own sake, and courted it as
+a mistress--could never sleep on the night before an action.  I have
+heard him say himself that it was so before the fight at Arques.
+Croisette partook of this nature too, being high-strung and apt to be
+easily over-wrought, but never until the necessity for exertion had
+passed away:  while Marie and I, though not a whit stouter at a pinch,
+were slower to feel and less easy to move--more Germanic in fact.
+
+I name this here partly lest it should be thought after what I have
+just told of Croisette that there was anything of the woman about
+him--save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted at this
+crisis each after his manner.  While Croisette turned pale and
+trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from the desolate
+house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and back again;
+wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces since daybreak, and a
+plenitude of suffering in all dreadful shapes, how Providence could let
+this happen to us.  To us!  In his instincts man is as selfish as any
+animal that lives.
+
+I saw nothing indeed of the dead face and dead house after the first
+convincing glance.  I saw instead with hot, hot eyes the old castle at
+home, the green fields about the brook, and the grey hills rising from
+them; and the terrace, and Kit coming to meet us, Kit with white face
+and parted lips and avid eyes that questioned us!  And we with no
+comfort to give her, no lover to bring back to her!
+
+A faint noise behind as of a sign creaking in the wind, roused me from
+this most painful reverie.  I turned round, not quickly or in surprise
+or fear.  Rather in the same dull wonder.  The upper part of the
+bookseller's door was ajar.  It was that I had heard opened.  An old
+woman was peering out at us.
+
+As our eyes met, she made a slight movement to close the door again.
+But I did not stir, and seeming to be reassured by a second glance, she
+nodded to me in a stealthy fashion.  I drew a step nearer, listlessly.
+"Pst!  Pst!"  she whispered.  Her wrinkled old face, which was like a
+Normandy apple long kept, was soft with pity as she looked at
+Croisette.  "Pst!"
+
+"Well!"  I said, mechanically.
+
+"Is he taken?"  she muttered.
+
+"Who taken?"  I asked stupidly.
+
+She nodded towards the forsaken house, and answered, "The young lord
+who lodged there?  Ah!  sirs," she continued, "he looked gay and
+handsome, if you'll believe me, as he came from the king's court yester
+even!  As bonny a sight in his satin coat, and his ribbons, as my eyes
+ever saw!  And to think that they should be hunting him like a rat
+to-day!"
+
+The woman's words were few and simple.  But what a change they made in
+my world!  How my heart awoke from its stupor, and leapt up with a new
+joy and a new-born hope!  "Did he get away?"  I cried eagerly.  "Did he
+escape, mother, then?"
+
+"Ay, that he did!"  she replied quickly.  "That poor fellow, yonder--he
+lies quiet enough now God forgive him his heresy, say I!--kept the door
+manfully while the gentleman got on the roof, and ran right down the
+street on the tops of the houses, with them firing and hooting at him:
+for all the world as if he had been a squirrel and they a pack of boys
+with stones!"
+
+"And he escaped?"
+
+"Escaped!"  she answered more slowly, shaking her old head in doubt.
+"I do not know about that I fear they have got him by now, gentlemen.
+I have been shivering and shaking up stairs with my husband--he is in
+bed, good man, and the safest place for him--the saints have mercy upon
+us!  But I heard them go with their shouting and gunpowder right along
+to the river, and I doubt they will take him between this and the
+CHATELET!  I doubt they will."
+
+"How long ago was it, dame?"  I cried.
+
+"Oh!  may be half an hour.  Perhaps you are friends of his?"  she added
+questioningly.
+
+But I did not stay to answer her.  I shook Croisette, who had not heard
+a word of this, by the shoulder. "There is a chance that he has
+escaped!"  I cried in his ear.  "Escaped, do you hear?"  And I told him
+hastily what she had said.
+
+It was fine, indeed, and a sight, to see the blood rush to his cheeks,
+and the tears dry in his eyes, and energy and decision spring to life
+in every nerve and muscle of his face, "Then there is hope?"  he cried,
+grasping my arm.  "Hope, Anne!  Come!  Come! Do not let us lose another
+instant.  If he be alive let us join him!"
+
+The old woman tried to detain us, but in vain.  Nay, pitying us, and
+fearing, I think, that we were rushing on our deaths, she cast aside
+her caution, and called after us aloud.  We took no heed, running after
+Croisette, who had not waited for our answer, as fast as young limbs
+could carry us down the street.  The exhaustion we had felt a moment
+before when all seemed lost be it remembered that we had not been to
+bed or tasted food for many hours--fell from us on the instant, and was
+clean gone and forgotten in the joy of this respite.  Louis was living
+and for the moment had escaped.
+
+Escaped!  But for how long?  We soon had our answer.  The moment we
+turned the corner by the river-side, the murmur of a multitude not loud
+but continuous, struck our ears, even as the breeze off the water swept
+our cheeks.  Across the river lay the thousand roofs of the Ile de la
+Cite, all sparkling in the sunshine.  But we swept to the right,
+thinking little of THAT sight, and checked our speed on finding
+ourselves on the skirts of the crowd. Before us was a bridge--the Pont
+au Change, I think--and at its head on our side of the water stood the
+CHATELET, with its hoary turrets and battlements.  Between us and the
+latter, and backed only by the river, was a great open space
+half-filled with people, mostly silent and watchful, come together as
+to a show, and betraying, at present at least, no desire to take an
+active part in what was going on.
+
+We hurriedly plunged into the throng, and soon caught the clue to the
+quietness and the lack of movement which seemed to prevail, and which
+at first sight had puzzled us.  For a moment the absence of the
+dreadful symptoms we had come to know so well--the flying and pursuing,
+the random blows, the shrieks and curses and batterings on doors, the
+tipsy yells, had reassured us.  But the relief was short-lived.  The
+people before us were under control. A tighter grip seemed to close
+upon our hearts as we discerned this, for we knew that the wild fury of
+the populace, like the rush of a bull, might have given some chance of
+escape--in this case as in others.  But this cold-blooded ordered
+search left none.
+
+Every face about us was turned in the same direction; away from the
+river and towards a block of old houses which stood opposite to it.
+The space immediately in front of these was empty, the people being
+kept back by a score or so of archers of the guard set at intervals,
+and by as many horsemen, who kept riding up and down, belabouring the
+bolder spirits with the flat of their swords, and so preserving a line.
+At each extremity of this--more noticeably on our left where the line
+curved round the angle of the buildings--stood a handful of riders,
+seven in a group perhaps.  And alone in the middle of the space so kept
+clear, walking his horse up and down and gazing at the houses rode a
+man of great stature, booted and armed, the feather nodding in his
+bonnet.  I could not see his face, but I had no need to see it. I knew
+him, and groaned aloud.  It was Bezers!
+
+I understood the scene better now.  The horsemen, stern, bearded
+Switzers for the most part, who eyed the rabble about them with grim
+disdain, and were by no means chary of their blows, were all in his
+colours and armed to the teeth.  The order and discipline were of his
+making:  the revenge of his seeking.  A grasp as of steel had settled
+upon our friend, and I felt that his last chance was gone.  Louis de
+Pavannes might as well be lying on his threshold with his dead servant
+by his side, as be in hiding within that ring of ordered swords.
+
+It was with despairing eyes we looked at the old wooden houses. They
+seemed to be bowing themselves towards us, their upper stories
+projected so far, they were so decrepit.  Their roofs were a wilderness
+of gutters and crooked gables, of tottering chimneys and wooden
+pinnacles and rotting beams, Amongst these I judged Kit's lover was
+hiding.  Well, it was a good place for hide and seek--with any other
+player than DEATH.  In the ground floors of the houses there were no
+windows and no doors; by reason, I learned afterwards, of the frequent
+flooding of the river.  But a long wooden gallery raised on struts ran
+along the front, rather more than the height of a man from the ground,
+and access to this was gained by a wooden staircase at each end. Above
+this first gallery was a second, and above that a line of windows set
+between the gables.  The block--it may have run for seventy or eighty
+yards along the shore--contained four houses, each with a door opening
+on to the lower gallery.  I saw indeed that but for the Vidame's
+precautions Louis might well have escaped.  Had the mob once poured
+helter-skelter into that labyrinth of rooms and passages he might with
+luck have mingled with them, unheeded and unrecognized, and effected
+his escape when they retreated.
+
+But now there were sentries on each gallery and more on the roof.
+Whenever one of the latter moved or seemed to be looking inward--where
+a search party, I understood, were at work--indeed, if he did but turn
+his head, a thrill ran through the crowd and a murmur arose, which once
+or twice swelled to a savage roar such as earlier had made me tremble.
+When this happened the impulse came, it seemed to me, from the farther
+end of the line.  There the rougher elements were collected, and there
+I more than once saw Bezers' troopers in conflict with the mob.  In
+that quarter too a savage chant was presently struck up, the whole
+gathering joining in and yelling with an indescribably appalling effect:
+
+  "Hau!  Hau!  Huguenots!
+   Faites place aux Papegots!"
+
+in derision of the old song said to be popular amongst the Protestants.
+But in the Huguenot version the last words were of course transposed.
+
+We had worked our way by this time to the front of the line, and
+looking into one another's eyes, mutely asked a question; but not even
+Croisette had an answer ready.  There could be no answer but one.  What
+could we do?  Nothing.  We were too late.  Too late again!  And yet how
+dreadful it was to stand still among the cruel, thoughtless mob and see
+our friend, the touch of whose hand we knew so well, done to death for
+their sport!  Done to death as the old woman had said like any rat, not
+a soul save ourselves pitying him!  Not a soul to turn sick at his cry
+of agony, or shudder at the glance of his dying eyes.  It was dreadful
+indeed.
+
+"Ah, well," muttered a woman beside me to her companion--there were
+many women in the crowd--"it is down with the Huguenots, say I!  It is
+Lorraine is the fine man!  But after all yon is a bonny fellow and a
+proper, Margot!  I saw him leap from roof to roof over Love Lane, as if
+the blessed saints had carried him. And him a heretic!"
+
+"It is the black art," the other answered, crossing herself.
+
+"Maybe it is!  But he will need it all to give that big man the slip
+to-day," replied the first speaker comfortably.
+
+"That devil!"  Margot exclaimed, pointing with a stealthy gesture of
+hate at the Vidame.  And then in a fierce whisper, with inarticulate
+threats, she told a story of him, which made me shudder.  "He did!  And
+she in religion too!"  she concluded. "May our Lady of Loretto reward
+him."
+
+The tale might be true for aught I knew, horrible as it was!  I had
+heard similar ones attributing things almost as fiendish to him, times
+and again; from that poor fellow lying dead on Pavannes' doorstep for
+one, and from others besides.  As the Vidame in his pacing to and fro
+turned towards us, I gazed at him fascinated by his grim visage and
+that story.  His eye rested on the crowd about us, and I trembled, lest
+even at that distance he should recognise us.
+
+And he did!  I had forgotten his keenness of sight.  His face flashed
+suddenly into a grim smile.  The tail of his eye resting upon us, and
+seeming to forbid us to move, he gave some orders. The colour fled from
+my face.  To escape indeed was impossible, for we were hemmed in by the
+press and could scarcely stir a limb.  Yet I did make one effort.
+
+"Croisette!"  I muttered he was the rearmost--"stoop down.  He may not
+have seen you.  Stoop down, lad!"
+
+But St. Croix was obstinate and would not stoop.  Nay, when one of the
+mounted men came, and roughly ordered us into the open, it was
+Croisette who pushing past us stepped out first with a lordly air.  I,
+following him, saw that his lips were firmly compressed and that there
+was an eager light in his eyes.  As we emerged, the crowd in our wake
+broke the line, and tried to pursue us; either hostilely or through
+eagerness to see what it meant.  But a dozen blows of the long pikes
+drove them back, howling and cursing to their places.
+
+I expected to be taken to Bezers; and what would follow I could not
+tell.  But he did always it seemed what we least expected, for he only
+scowled at us now, a grim mockery on his lip, and cried, "See that they
+do not escape again!  But do them no harm, sirrah, until I have the
+batch of them!"
+
+He turned one way, and I another, my heart swelling with rage. Would he
+dare to harm us?  Would even the Vidame dare to murder a Caylus' nephew
+openly and in cold blood?  I did not think so. And yet--and yet--
+
+Croisette interrupted the train of my thoughts.  I found that he was
+not following me.  He had sprung away, and in a dozen strides reached
+the Vidame's stirrup, and was clasping his knee when I turned.  I could
+not hear at the distance at which I stood, what he said, and the
+horseman to whom Bezers had committed us spurred between us.  But I
+heard the Vidame's answer.
+
+"No!  no!  no!"  he cried with a ring of restrained fury in his voice.
+"Let my plans alone!  What do you know of them?  And if you speak to me
+again, M. St. Croix--I think that is your name, boy--I will--no, I will
+not kill you.  That might please you, you are stubborn, I can see.  But
+I will have you stripped and lashed like the meanest of my scullions!
+Now go, and take care!"
+
+Impatience, hate and wild passion flamed in his face for the
+moment--transfiguring it.  Croisette came back to us slowly,
+white-lipped and quiet.  "Never mind," I said bitterly.  "The third
+time may bring luck."
+
+Not that I felt much indignation at the Vidame's insult, or any anger
+with the lad for incurring it; as I had felt on that other occasion.
+Life and death seemed to be everything on this morning.  Words had
+ceased to please and annoy, for what are words to the sheep in the
+shambles?  One man's life and one woman's happiness outside ourselves
+we thought only of these now. And some day I reflected Croisette might
+remember even with pleasure that he had, as a drowning man clutching at
+straws, stooped to a last prayer for them.
+
+We were placed in the middle of a knot of troopers who closed the line
+to the right.  And presently Marie touched me.  He was gazing intently
+at the sentry on the roof of the third house from us; the farthest but
+one.  The man's back was to the parapet, and he was gesticulating
+wildly.
+
+"He sees him!"  Marie muttered.
+
+I nodded almost in apathy.  But this passed away, and I started
+involuntarily and shuddered, as a savage roar, breaking the silence,
+rang along the front of the mob like a rolling volley of firearms.
+What was it?  A man posted at a window on the upper gallery had dropped
+his pike's point, and was levelling it at some one inside:  we could
+see no more.
+
+But those in front of the window could; they saw too much for the
+Vidame's precautions, as a moment showed.  He had not laid his account
+with the frenzy of a rabble, the passions of a mob which had tasted
+blood.  I saw the line at its farther end waver suddenly and toss to
+and fro.  Then a hundred hands went up, and confused angry cries rose
+with them.  The troopers struck about them, giving back slowly as they
+did so.  But their efforts were in vain.  With a scream of triumph a
+wild torrent of people broke through between them, leaving them
+stranded; and rushed in a headlong cataract towards the steps.  Bezers
+was close to us at the time.  "S'death!"  he cried, swearing oaths
+which even his sovereign could scarce have equalled.  "They will snatch
+him from me yet, the hell-hounds!"
+
+He whirled his horse round and spurred him in a dozen bounds to the
+stairs at our end of the gallery.  There he leaped from him, dropping
+the bridle recklessly; and bounding up three steps at a time, he ran
+along the gallery.  Half-a-dozen of the troopers about us stayed only
+to fling their reins to one of their number, and then followed, their
+great boots clattering on the planks.
+
+My breath came fast and short, for I felt it was a crisis.  It was a
+race between the two parties, or rather between the Vidame and the
+leaders of the mob.  The latter had the shorter way to go.  But on the
+narrow steps they were carried off their feet by the press behind them,
+and fell over and hampered one another and lost time.  The Vidame, free
+from this drawback, was some way along the gallery before they had set
+foot on it.
+
+How I prayed--amid a scene of the wildest uproar and excitement--that
+the mob might be first!  Let there be only a short conflict between
+Bezers' men and the people, and in the confusion Pavannes might yet
+escape.  Hope awoke in the turmoil.  Above the yells of the crowd a
+score of deep voices about me thundered "a Wolf!  a Wolf!"  And I too,
+lost my head, and drew my sword, and screamed at the top of my voice,
+"a Caylus!  a Caylus!"  with the maddest.
+
+Thousands of eyes besides mine were strained on the foremost figures on
+either side.  They met as it chanced precisely at the door of the
+house.  The mob leader was a slender man, I saw; a priest apparently,
+though now he was girt with unpriestly weapons, his skirts were tucked
+up, and his head was bare.  So much my first glance showed me.  It was
+at the second look it was when I saw the blood forsake his pale
+lowering face and leave it whiter than ever, when horror sprang along
+with recognition to his eyes, when borne along by the crowd behind he
+saw his position and who was before him--it was only then when his mean
+figure shrank, and he quailed and would have turned but could not, that
+I recognized the Coadjutor.
+
+I was silent now, my mouth agape.  There are seconds which are minutes;
+ay, and many minutes.  A man may die, a man may come into life in such
+a second.  In one of these, it seemed to me, those two men paused, face
+to face; though in fact a pause was for one of them impossible.  He was
+between--and I think he knew it--the devil and the deep sea.  Yet he
+seemed to pause, while all, even that yelling crowd below, held their
+breath.  The next moment, glaring askance at one another like two dogs
+unevenly coupled, he and Bezers shot shoulder to shoulder into the
+doorway, and in another jot of time would have been out of sight. But
+then, in that instant, I saw something happen.  The Vidame's hand
+flashed up above the priest's head, and the cross-hilt of his sheathed
+sword crashed down with awful force, and still more awful passion, on
+the other's tonsure!  The wretch went down like a log, without a word,
+without a cry!  Amid a roar of rage from a thousand throats, a roar
+that might have shaken the stoutest heart, and blanched the swarthiest
+cheek, Bezers disappeared within!
+
+It was then I saw the power of discipline and custom.  Few as were the
+troopers who had followed him--a mere handful--they fell without
+hesitation on the foremost of the crowd, who were already in confusion,
+stumbling and falling over their leader's body; and hurled them back
+pell-mell along the gallery.  The throng below had no firearms, and
+could give no aid at the moment; the stage was narrow; in two minutes
+the Vidame's people had swept it clear of the crowd and were in
+possession of it.  A tall fellow took up the priest's body, dead or
+alive, I do not know which, and flung it as if it had been a sack of
+corn over the rail.  It fell with a heavy thud on the ground.  I heard
+a piercing scream that rose above that babel--one shrill scream!  and
+the mob closed round and hid the thing.
+
+If the rascals had had the wit to make at once for the right-hand
+stairs, where we stood with two or three of Bezers' men who had kept
+their saddles, I think they might easily have disposed of us,
+encumbered as we were, by the horses; and then they could have attacked
+the handful on the gallery on both flanks.  But the mob had no leaders,
+and no plan of operations.  They seized indeed two or three of the
+scattered troopers, and tearing them from their horses, wreaked their
+passion upon them horribly.  But most of the Switzers escaped, thanks
+to the attention the mob paid to the houses and what was going forward
+on the galleries; and these, extricating themselves joined us one by
+one, so that gradually a little ring of stern faces gathered about the
+stair-foot.  A moment's hesitation, and seeing no help for it, we
+ranged ourselves with them; and, unchecked as unbidden, sprang on three
+of the led horses.
+
+All this passed more quickly than I can relate it:  so that before our
+feet were well in the stirrups a partial silence, then a mightier roar
+of anger at once proclaimed and hailed the re-appearance of the Vidame.
+Bigoted beyond belief were the mob of Paris of that day, cruel,
+vengeful, and always athirst for blood; and this man had killed not
+only their leader but a priest.  He had committed sacrilege!  What
+would they do?  I could just, by stooping forward, command a side view
+of the gallery, and the scene passing there was such that I forgot in
+it our own peril.
+
+For surely in all his reckless life Bezers had never been so
+emphatically the man for the situation--had never shown to such
+advantage as at this moment when he stood confronting the sea of faces,
+the sneer on his lip, a smile in his eyes; and looked down unblenching,
+a figure of scorn, on the men who were literally agape for his life.
+The calm defiance of his steadfast look fascinated even me.  Wonder and
+admiration for the time took the place of dislike.  I could scarcely
+believe that there was not some atom of good in this man so fearless.
+And no face but one no face I think in the world, but one--could have
+drawn my eyes from him.  But that one face was beside him.  I clutched
+Marie's arm, and pointed to the bareheaded figure at Bezers' right hand.
+
+It was Louis himself:  our Louis de Pavannes, But he was changed indeed
+from the gay cavalier I remembered, and whom I had last seen riding
+down the street at Caylus, smiling back at us, and waving his adieux to
+his mistress!  Beside the Vidame he had the air of being slight, even
+short.  The face which I had known so bright and winning, was now white
+and set.  His fair, curling hair--scarce darker than Croisette's--hung
+dank, bedabbled with blood which flowed from a wound in his head.  His
+sword was gone; his dress was torn and disordered and covered with
+dust.  His lips moved.  But he held up his head, he bore himself
+bravely with it all; so bravely, that I choked, and my heart seemed
+bursting as I looked at him standing there forlorn and now unarmed.  I
+knew that Kit seeing him thus would gladly have died with him; and I
+thanked God she did not see him.  Yet there was a quietness in his
+fortitude which made a great difference between his air and that of
+Bezers.  He lacked, as became one looking unarmed on certain death, the
+sneer and smile of the giant beside him.
+
+What was the Vidame about to do?  I shuddered as I asked myself. Not
+surrender him, not fling him bodily to the people?  No not that:  I
+felt sure he would let no others share his vengeance that his pride
+would not suffer that.  And even while I wondered the doubt was solved.
+I saw Bezers raise his hand in a peculiar fashion.  Simultaneously a
+cry rang sharply out above the tumult, and down in headlong charge
+towards the farther steps came the band of horsemen, who had got clear
+of the crowd on that side. They were but ten or twelve, but under his
+eye they charged, as if they had been a thousand.  The rabble shrank
+from the collision, and fled aside.  Quick as thought the riders
+swerved; and changing their course, galloped through the looser part of
+the throng, and in a trice drew rein side by side with us, a laugh and
+a jeer on their reckless lips.
+
+It was neatly done:  and while it was being done the Vidame and his
+knot of men, with those who had been searching the building, hurried
+down the gallery towards us, their rear cleared for the moment by the
+troopers' feint.  The dismounted men came bundling down the steps,
+their eyes aglow with the war-fire, and got horses as they could.
+Among them I lost sight of Louis, but perceived him presently, pale and
+bewildered, mounted behind a trooper.  A man sprang up before each of
+us too, greeting our appearance merely by a grunt of surprise.  For it
+was no time to ask or answer.  The mob was recovering itself, and each
+moment brought it reinforcements, while its fury was augmented by the
+trick we had played it, and the prospect of our escape.
+
+We were under forty, all told; and some men were riding double. Bezers'
+eye glanced hastily over his array, and lit on us three. He turned and
+gave some order to his lieutenant.  The fellow spurred his horse, a
+splendid grey, as powerful as his master's, alongside of Croisette,
+threw his arm round the lad, and dragged him dexterously on to his own
+crupper.  I did not understand the action, but I saw Croisette settle
+himself behind Blaise Bure--for he it was--and supposed no harm was
+intended.  The next moment we had surged forward, and were swaying to
+and fro in the midst of the crowd.
+
+What ensued I cannot tell.  The outlook, so far as I was concerned, was
+limited to wildly plunging horses--we were in the centre of the band
+and riders swaying in the saddle--with a glimpse here and there of a
+fringe of white scowling faces and tossing arms.  Once, a lane opening,
+I saw the Vidame's charger--he was in the van--stumble and fall among
+the crowd and heard a great shout go up.  But Bezers by a mighty effort
+lifted it to its legs again.  And once too, a minute later, those
+riding on my right, swerved outwards, and I saw something I never
+afterwards forgot.
+
+It was the body of the Coadjutor, lying face upwards, the eyes open and
+the teeth bared in a last spasm.  Prostrate on it lay a woman, a young
+woman, with hair like red gold falling about her neck, and skin like
+milk.  I did not know whether she was alive or dead; but I noticed that
+one arm stuck out stiffly and the crowd flying before the sudden impact
+of the horses must have passed over her, even if she had escaped the
+iron hoofs which followed.  Still in the fleeting glance I had of her
+as my horse bounded aside, I saw no wound or disfigurement.  Her one
+arm was cast about the priest's breast; her face was hidden on it.  But
+for all that, I knew her--knew her, shuddering for the woman whose
+badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my side; and I
+remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before, made in her
+presence, "There is no man in Paris shall thwart me to-night!"
+
+It had been a vain boast indeed!  No hand in all that host of thousands
+was more feeble than his now:  for good or ill!  No brain more dull, no
+voice less heeded.  A righteous retribution indeed had overtaken him.
+He had died by the sword he had drawn--died, a priest, by violence!
+The cross he had renounced had crushed him.  And all his schemes and
+thoughts, and no doubt they had been many, had perished with him.  It
+had come to this, only this, the sum of the whole matter, that there
+was one wicked man the less in Paris--one lump of breathless clay the
+more.
+
+For her--the woman on his breast--what man can judge a woman, knowing
+her?  And not knowing her, how much less?  For the present I put her
+out of my mind, feeling for the moment faint and cold.
+
+We were clear of the crowd, and clattering unmolested down a paved
+street before I fully recovered from the shock which this sight had
+caused me.  Wonder whither we were going took its place.  To Bezers'
+house?  My heart sank at the prospect if that were so.  Before I
+thought of an alternative, a gateway flanked by huge round towers
+appeared before us, and we pulled up suddenly, a confused jostling mass
+in the narrow way; while some words passed between the Vidame and the
+Captain of the Guard.  A pause of several minutes followed; and then
+the gates rolled slowly open, and two by two we passed under the arch.
+Those gates might have belonged to a fortress or a prison, a dungeon or
+a palace, for all I knew.
+
+They led, however, to none of these, but to an open space, dirty and
+littered with rubbish, marked by a hundred ruts and tracks, and fringed
+with disorderly cabins and make-shift booths.  And beyond this--oh, ye
+gods!  the joy of it--beyond this, which we crossed at a rapid trot,
+lay the open country!
+
+The transition and relief were so wonderful that I shall never forget
+them.  I gazed on the wide landscape before me, lying quiet and
+peaceful in the sunlight, and could scarce believe in my happiness.  I
+drew the fresh air into my lungs, I threw up my sheathed sword and
+caught it again in a frenzy of delight, while the gloomy men about me
+smiled at my enthusiasm.  I felt the horse beneath me move once more
+like a thing of life.  No enchanter with his wand, not Merlin nor
+Virgil, could have made a greater change in my world, than had the
+captain of the gate with his simple key!  Or so it seemed to me in the
+first moments of freedom, and escape--of removal from those loathsome
+streets.
+
+I looked back at Paris--at the cloud of smoke which hung over the
+towers and roofs; and it seemed to me the canopy of hell itself. I
+fancied that my head still rang with the cries and screams and curses,
+the sounds of death.  In very fact, I could hear the dull reports of
+firearms near the Louvre, and the jangle of the bells. Country-folk
+were congregated at the cross-roads, and in the villages, listening and
+gazing; asking timid questions of the more good-natured among us, and
+showing that the rumour of the dreadful work doing in the town had
+somehow spread abroad.  And this though I learned afterwards that the
+keys of the city had been taken the night before to the king, and that,
+except a party with the Duke of Guise, who had left at eight in pursuit
+of Montgomery and some of the Protestants--lodgers, happily for
+themselves, in the Faubourg St. Germain--no one had left the town
+before ourselves.
+
+While I am speaking of our departure from Paris, I may say what I have
+to say of the dreadful excesses of those days, ay, and of the following
+days; excesses of which France is now ashamed, and for which she
+blushed even before the accession of his late Majesty.  I am sometimes
+asked, as one who witnessed them, what I think, and I answer that it
+was not our country which was to blame.  A something besides Queen
+Catharine de' Medici had been brought from Italy forty years before, a
+something invisible but very powerful; a spirit of cruelty and
+treachery.  In Italy it had done small harm.  But grafted on French
+daring and recklessness, and the rougher and more soldierly manners of
+the north, this spirit of intrigue proved capable of very dreadful
+things.  For a time, until it wore itself out, it was the curse of
+France.  Two Dukes of Guise, Francis and Henry, a cardinal of Guise,
+the Prince of Conde, Admiral Coligny, King Henry the Third all these
+the foremost men of their day--died by assassination within little more
+than a quarter of a century, to say nothing of the Prince of Orange,
+and King Henry the Great.
+
+Then mark--a most curious thing--the extreme youth of those who were in
+this business.  France, subject to the Queen-Mother, of course, was
+ruled at the time by boys scarce out of their tutors' hands.  They were
+mere lads, hot-blooded, reckless nobles, ready for any wild brawl,
+without forethought or prudence.  Of the four Frenchmen who it is
+thought took the leading parts, one, the king, was twenty-two;
+Monsieur, his brother, was only twenty; the Duke of Guise was
+twenty-one.  Only the Marshal de Tavannes was of mature age.  For the
+other conspirators, for the Queen-Mother, for her advisers Retz and
+Nevers and Birague, they were Italians; and Italy may answer for them
+if Florence, Mantua and Milan care to raise the glove.
+
+To return to our journey.  A league from the town we halted at a large
+inn, and some of us dismounted.  Horses were brought out to fill the
+places of those lost or left behind, and Bure had food served to us.
+We were famished and exhausted, and ate it ravenously, as if we could
+never have enough.
+
+The Vidame sat his horse apart, served by his page, I stole a glance at
+him, and it struck me that even on his iron nature the events of the
+night had made some impression.  I read, or thought I read, in his
+countenance, signs of emotions not quite in accordance with what I knew
+of him--emotions strange and varied. I could almost have sworn that as
+he looked at us a flicker of kindliness lit up his stern and cruel
+gloom; I could almost have sworn he smiled with a curious sadness.  As
+for Louis, riding with a squad who stood in a different part of the
+yard, he did not see us; had not yet seen us at all.  His side face,
+turned towards me, was pale and sad, his manner preoccupied, his mien
+rather sorrowful than downcast.  He was thinking, I judged, as much of
+the many brave men who had yesterday been his friends--companions at
+board and play-table--as of his own fate.  When we presently, at a
+signal from Bure, took to the road again, I asked no permission, but
+thrusting my horse forward, rode to his side as he passed through the
+gateway.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A NIGHT OF SORROW.
+
+"Louis!  Louis!"
+
+He turned with a start at the sound of my voice, joy and
+bewilderment--and no wonder--in his countenance.  He had not supposed
+us to be within a hundred leagues of him.  And lo!  here we were, knee
+to knee, hand meeting hand in a long grasp, while his eyes, to which
+tears sprang unbidden, dwelt on my face as though they could read in it
+the features of his sweetheart. Some one had furnished him with a hat,
+and enabled him to put his dress in order, and wash his wound, which
+was very slight, and these changes had improved his appearance; so that
+the shadow of grief and despondency passing for a moment from him in
+the joy of seeing me, he looked once more his former self:  as he had
+looked in the old days at Caylus on his return from hawking, or from
+some boyish escapade among the hills.  Only, alas!  he wore no sword.
+
+"And now tell me all," he cried, after his first exclamation of wonder
+had found vent.  "How on earth do you come here?  Here, of all places,
+and by my side?  Is all well at Caylus?  Surely Mademoiselle is not--"
+
+"Mademoiselle is well!  perfectly well!  And thinking of you, I swear!"
+I answered passionately.  "For us," I went on, eager for the moment to
+escape that subject--how could I talk of it in the daylight and under
+strange eyes?--"Marie and Croisette are behind.  We left Caylus eight
+days ago.  We reached Paris yesterday evening.  We have not been to
+bed!  We have passed, Louis, such a night as I never--"
+
+He stopped me with a gesture.  "Hush!"  he said, raising his hand.
+"Don't speak of it, Anne!"  and I saw that the fate of his friends was
+still too recent, the horror of his awakening to those dreadful sights
+and sounds was still too vivid for him to bear reference to them.  Yet
+after riding for a time in silence--though his lips moved--he asked me
+again what had brought us up.
+
+"We came to warn you--of him," I answered, pointing to the solitary,
+moody figure of the Vidame, who was riding ahead of the party.  "He--he
+said that Kit should never marry you, and boasted of what he would do
+to you, and frightened her.  So, learning he was going to Paris, we
+followed him--to put you on your guard, you know."  And I briefly
+sketched our adventures, and the strange circumstances and mistakes
+which had delayed us hour after hour, through all that strange night,
+until the time had gone by when we could do good.
+
+His eyes glistened and his colour rose as I told the story.  He wrung
+my hand warmly, and looked back to smile at Marie and Croisette.  "It
+was like you!"  he ejaculated with emotion.  "It was like her cousins!
+Brave, brave lads!  The Vicomte will live to be proud of you!  Some day
+you will all do great things!  I say it!"
+
+"But oh, Louis!"  I exclaimed sorrowfully, though my heart was bounding
+with pride at his words, "if we had only been in time! If we had only
+come to you two hours earlier!"
+
+"You would have spoken to little purpose then, I fear," he replied,
+shaking his head.  "We were given over as a prey to the enemy.
+Warnings?  We had warnings in plenty.  De Rosny warned us, and we
+scoffed at him.  The king's eye warned us, and we trusted him.  But--"
+and Louis' form dilated and his hand rose as he went on, and I thought
+of his cousin's prediction--"it will never be so again in France, Anne!
+Never!  No man will after this trust another!  There will be no honour,
+no faith, no quarter, and no peace!  And for the Valois who has done
+this, the sword will never depart from his house!  I believe it!  I do
+believe it!"
+
+How truly he spoke we know now.  For two-and-twenty years after that
+twenty-fourth of August, 1572, the sword was scarcely laid aside in
+France for a single month.  In the streets of Paris, at Arques, and
+Coutras, and Ivry, blood flowed like water that the blood of the St.
+Bartholomew might be forgotten--that blood which, by the grace of God,
+Navarre saw fall from the dice box on the eve of the massacre.  The
+last of the Valois passed to the vaults of St. Denis:  and a greater
+king, the first of all Frenchmen, alive or dead, the bravest, gayest,
+wisest of the land, succeeded him:  yet even he had to fall by the
+knife, in a moment most unhappy for his country, before France,
+horror-stricken, put away the treachery and evil from her.
+
+Talking with Louis as we rode, it was not unnatural--nay, it was the
+natural result of the situation--that I should avoid one subject.  Yet
+that subject was the uppermost in my thoughts. What were the Vidame's
+intentions?  What was the meaning of this strange journey?  What was to
+be Louis' fate?  I shrank with good reason from asking him these
+questions.  There could be so little room for hope, even after that
+smile which I had seen Bezers smile, that I dared not dwell upon them.
+I should but torture him and myself.
+
+So it was he who first spoke about it.  Not at that time, but after
+sunset, when the dusk had fallen upon us, and found us still plodding
+southward with tired horses; a link outwardly like other links in the
+long chain of riders, toiling onwards.  Then he said suddenly, "Do you
+know whither we are going, Anne?"
+
+I started, and found myself struggling with a strange confusion before
+I could reply.  "Home," I suggested at random.
+
+"Home?  No.  And yet nearly home.  To Cahors," he answered with an odd
+quietude.  "Your home, my boy, I shall never see again, Nor Kit!  Nor
+my own Kit!"  It was the first time I had heard him call her by the
+fond name we used ourselves.  And the pathos in his tone as of the
+past, not the present, as of pure memory--I was very thankful that I
+could not in the dusk see his face--shook my self-control.  I wept.
+"Nay, my lad," he went on, speaking softly and leaning from his saddle
+so that he could lay his hand on my shoulder "we are all men together.
+We must be brave.  Tears cannot help us, so we should leave them to
+the--women."
+
+I cried more passionately at that.  Indeed his own voice quavered over
+the last word.  But in a moment he was talking to me coolly and
+quietly.  I had muttered something to the effect that the Vidame would
+not dare--it would be too public.
+
+"There is no question of daring in it," he replied.  "And the more
+public it is, the better he will like it.  They have dared to take
+thousands of lives since yesterday.  There is no one to call him to
+account since the king--our king forsooth!--has declared every Huguenot
+an outlaw, to be killed wherever he be met with.  No, when Bezers
+disarmed me yonder," he pointed as he spoke to his wound, "I looked of
+course for instant death.  Anne! I saw blood in his eyes!  But he did
+not strike."
+
+"Why not?"  I asked in suspense.
+
+"I can only guess," Louis answered with a sigh.  "He told me that my
+life was in his hands, but that he should take it at his own time.
+Further that if I would not give my word to go with him without trying
+to escape, he would throw me to those howling dogs outside.  I gave my
+word.  We are on the road together.  And oh, Anne!  yesterday, only
+yesterday, at this time I was riding home with Teligny from the Louvre,
+where we had been playing at paume with the king!  And the world--the
+world was very fair."
+
+"I saw you, or rather Croisette did," I muttered as his sorrow--not for
+himself, but his friends--forced him to stop.  "Yet how, Louis, do you
+know that we are going to Cahors?"
+
+"He told me, as we passed through the gates, that he was appointed
+Lieutenant-Governor of Quercy to carry out the edict against the
+religion.  Do you not see, Anne?"  my companion added bitterly, "to
+kill me at once were too small a revenge for him! He must torture
+me--or rather he would if he could--by the pains of anticipation.
+
+"Besides, my execution will so finely open his bed of justice. Bah!"
+and Pavannes raised his head proudly, "I fear him not!  I fear him not
+a jot!"
+
+For a moment he forgot Kit, the loss of his friends, his own doom.  He
+snapped his fingers in derision of his foe.
+
+But my heart sank miserably.  The Vidame's rage I remembered had been
+directed rather against my cousin than her lover; and now by the light
+of his threats I read Bezers' purpose more clearly than Louis could.
+His aim was to punish the woman who had played with him.  To do so he
+was bringing her lover from Paris that he might execute him--AFTER
+GIVING HER NOTICE!  That was it:  after giving her notice, it might be
+in her very presence!  He would lure her to Cahors, and then--
+
+I shuddered.  I well might feel that a precipice was opening at my
+feet.  There was something in the plan so devilish, yet so accordant
+with those stories I had heard of the Wolf, that I felt no doubt of my
+insight.  I read his evil mind, and saw in a moment why he had troubled
+himself with us.  He hoped to draw Mademoiselle to Cahors by our means.
+
+Of course I said nothing of this to Louis.  I hid my feelings as well
+as I could.  But I vowed a great vow that at the eleventh hour we would
+baulk the Vidame.  Surely if all else failed we could kill him, and,
+though we died ourselves, spare Kit this ordeal.  My tears were dried
+up as by a fire.  My heart burned with a great and noble rage:  or so
+it seemed to me!
+
+I do not think that there was ever any journey so strange as this one
+of ours.  We met with the same incidents which had pleased us on the
+road to Paris.  But their novelty was gone.  Gone too were the cosy
+chats with old rogues of landlords and good-natured dames.  We were
+travelling now in such force that our coming was rather a terror to the
+innkeeper than a boon.  How much the Lieutenant-Governor of Quercy,
+going down to his province, requisitioned in the king's name; and for
+how much he paid, we could only judge from the gloomy looks which
+followed us as we rode away each morning.  Such looks were not solely
+due I fear to the news from Paris, although for some time we were the
+first bearers of the tidings.
+
+Presently, on the third day of our journey I think, couriers from the
+Court passed us:  and henceforth forestalled us.  One of these
+messengers--who I learned from the talk about me was bound for Cahors
+with letters for the Lieutenant-Governor and the Count-Bishop--the
+Vidame interviewed and stopped.  How it was managed I do not know, but
+I fear the Count-Bishop never got his letters, which I fancy would have
+given him some joint authority. Certainly we left the messenger--a
+prudent fellow with a care for his skin--in comfortable quarters at
+Limoges, whence I do not doubt he presently returned to Paris at his
+leisure.
+
+The strangeness of the journey however arose from none of these things,
+but from the relations of our party to one another. After the first day
+we four rode together, unmolested, so long as we kept near the centre
+of the straggling cavalcade.  The Vidame always rode alone, and in
+front, brooding with bent head and sombre face over his revenge, as I
+supposed.  He would ride in this fashion, speaking to no one and giving
+no orders, for a day together.  At times I came near to pitying him.
+He had loved Kit in his masterful way, the way of one not wont to be
+thwarted, and he had lost her--lost her, whatever might happen.  He
+would get nothing after all by his revenge.  Nothing but ashes in the
+mouth.  And so I saw in softer moments something inexpressibly
+melancholy in that solitary giant-figure pacing always alone.
+
+He seldom spoke to us.  More rarely to Louis.  When he did, the
+harshness of his voice and his cruel eyes betrayed the gloomy hatred in
+which he held him.  At meals he ate at one end of the table:  we four
+at the other, as three of us had done on that first evening in Paris.
+And sometimes the covert looks, the grim sneer he shot at his
+rival--his prisoner--made me shiver even in the sunshine.  Sometimes,
+on the other hand, when I took him unawares, I found an expression on
+his face I could not read.
+
+I told Croisette, but warily, my suspicions of his purpose.  He heard
+me, less astounded to all appearance than I had expected. Presently I
+learned the reason.  He had his own view.  "Do you not think it
+possible, Anne?"  he suggested timidly--we were of course alone at the
+time--"that he thinks to make Louis resign Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Resign her!"  I exclaimed obtusely.  "How?"
+
+"By giving him a choice--you understand?"
+
+I did understand I saw it in a moment.  I had been dull not to see it
+before.  Bezers might put it in this way:  let M. de Pavannes resign
+his mistress and live, or die and lose her.
+
+"I see," I answered.  "But Louis would not give her up.  Not to him!"
+
+"He would lose her either way," Croisette answered in a low tone. "That
+is not however the worst of it.  Louis is in his power. Suppose he
+thinks to make Kit the arbiter, Anne, and puts Louis up to ransom,
+setting Kit for the price?  And gives her the option of accepting
+himself, and saving Louis' life; or refusing, and leaving Louis to die?"
+
+"St. Croix!"  I exclaimed fiercely.  "He would not be so base!" And yet
+was not even this better than the blind vengeance I had myself
+attributed to him?
+
+"Perhaps not," Croisette answered, while he gazed onwards through the
+twilight.  We were at the time the foremost of the party save the
+Vidame; and there was nothing to interrupt our view of his gigantic
+figure as he moved on alone before us with bowed shoulders.  "Perhaps
+not," Croisette repeated thoughtfully. "Sometimes I think we do not
+understand him; and that after all there may be worse people in the
+world than Bezers."
+
+I looked hard at the lad, for that was not what I had meant. "Worse?"
+I said.  "I do not think so.  Hardly!"
+
+"Yes, worse," he replied, shaking his head.  "Do you remember lying
+under the curtain in the box-bed at Mirepoix's?"
+
+"Of course I do!  Do you think I shall ever forget it?"
+
+"And Madame d'O coming in?"
+
+"With the Coadjutor?"  I said with a shudder.  "Yes."
+
+"No, the second time," he answered, "when she came back alone. It was
+pretty dark, you remember, and Madame de Pavannes was at the window,
+and her sister did not see her?"
+
+"Well, well, I remember," I said impatiently.  I knew from the tone of
+his voice that he had something to tell me about Madame d'O, and I was
+not anxious to hear it.  I shrank, as a wounded man shrinks from the
+cautery, from hearing anything about that woman; herself so beautiful,
+yet moving in an atmosphere of suspicion and horror.  Was it shame, or
+fear, or some chivalrous feeling having its origin in that moment when
+I had fancied myself her knight?  I am not sure, for I had not made up
+my mind even now whether I ought to pity or detest her; whether she had
+made a tool of me, or I had been false to her.
+
+"She came up to the bed, you remember, Anne?"  Croisette went on. "You
+were next to her.  She saw you indistinctly, and took you for her
+sister.  And then I sprang from the bed."
+
+"I know you did!"  I exclaimed sharply.  All this time I had forgotten
+that grievance.  "You nearly frightened her out of her wits, St. Croix.
+I cannot think what possessed you--why you did it?"
+
+"To save your life, Anne," he answered solemnly, "and her from a crime!
+an unutterable, an unnatural crime.  She had come back to I can hardly
+tell it you--to murder her sister.  You start.  You do not believe me.
+It sounds too horrible.  But I could see better than you could.  She
+was exactly between you and the light.  I saw the knife raised.  I saw
+her wicked face!  If I had not startled her as I did, she would have
+stabbed you.  She dropped the knife on the floor, and I picked it up
+and have it. See!"
+
+I looked furtively, and turned away again, shivering.  "Why," I
+muttered, "why did she do it?"
+
+"She had failed you know to get her sister back to Pavannes' house,
+where she would have fallen an easy victim.  Bezers, who knew Madame
+d'O, prevented that.  Then that fiend slipped back with her knife;
+thinking that in the common butchery the crime would be overlooked, and
+never investigated, and that Mirepoix would be silent!"
+
+I said nothing.  I was stunned.  Yet I believed the story.  When I went
+over the facts in my mind I found that a dozen things, overlooked at
+the time and almost forgotten in the hurry of events, sprang up to
+confirm it.  M. de Pavannes'--the other M. de Pavannes'--suspicions had
+been well founded.  Worse than Bezers was she?  Ay!  worse a hundred
+times.  As much worse as treachery ever is than violence; as the
+pitiless fraud of the serpent is baser than the rage of the wolf.
+
+"I thought," Croisette added softly, not looking at me, "when I
+discovered that you had gone off with her, that I should never see you
+again, Anne.  I gave you up for lost.  The happiest moment of my life I
+think was when I saw you come back."
+
+"Croisette," I whispered piteously, my cheeks burning, "let us never
+speak of her again."
+
+And we never did--for years.  But how strange is life.  She and the
+wicked man with whom her fate seemed bound up had just crossed our
+lives when their own were at the darkest.  They clashed with us, and,
+strangers and boys as we were, we ruined them.  I have often asked
+myself what would have happened to me had I met her at some earlier and
+less stormy period--in the brilliance of her beauty.  And I find but
+one answer.  I should bitterly have rued the day.  Providence was good
+to me.  Such men and such women, we may believe have ceased to exist
+now.  They flourished in those miserable days of war and divisions, and
+passed away with them like the foul night-birds of the battle-field.
+
+To return to our journey.  In the morning sunshine one could not but be
+cheerful, and think good things possible.  The worst trial I had came
+with each sunset.  For then--we generally rode late into the
+evening--Louis sought my side to talk to me of his sweetheart.  And how
+he would talk of her!  How many thousand messages he gave me for her!
+How often he recalled old days among the hills, with each laugh and
+jest and incident, when we five had been as children!  Until I would
+wonder passionately, the tears running down my face in the darkness,
+how he could--how he could talk of her in that quiet voice which
+betrayed no rebellion against fate, no cursing of Providence!  How he
+could plan for her and think of her when she should be alone!
+
+Now I understand it.  He was still labouring under the shock of his
+friends' murder.  He was still partially stunned.  Death seemed natural
+and familiar to him, as to one who had seen his allies and companions
+perish without warning or preparation. Death had come to be normal to
+him, life the exception; as I have known it seem to a child brought
+face to face with a corpse for the first time.
+
+One afternoon a strange thing happened.  We could see the Auvergne
+hills at no great distance on our left--the Puy de Dome above them--and
+we four were riding together.  We had fallen--an unusual thing--to the
+rear of the party.  Our road at the moment was a mere track running
+across moorland, sprinkled here and there with gorse and brushwood.
+The main company had straggled on out of sight.  There were but half a
+dozen riders to be seen an eighth of a league before us, a couple
+almost as far behind. I looked every way with a sudden surging of the
+heart.  For the first time the possibility of flight occurred to me.
+The rough Auvergne hills were within reach.  Supposing we could get a
+lead of a quarter of a league, we could hardly be caught before
+darkness came and covered us.  Why should we not put spurs to our
+horses and ride off?
+
+"Impossible!"  said Pavannes quietly, when I spoke.
+
+"Why?"  I asked with warmth.
+
+"Firstly," he replied, "because I have given my word to go with the
+Vidame to Cahors."
+
+My face flushed hotly.  But I cried, "What of that?  You were taken by
+treachery!  Your safe conduct was disregarded.  Why should you be
+scrupulous?  Your enemies are not.  This is folly?"
+
+"I think not.  Nay," Louis answered, shaking his head, "you would not
+do it yourself in my place."
+
+"I think I should," I stammered awkwardly.
+
+"No, you would not, lad," he said smiling.  "I know you too well. But
+if I would do it, it is impossible."  He turned in the saddle and,
+shading his eyes with his hand from the level rays of the sun, looked
+back intently.  "It is as I thought," he continued. "One of those men
+is riding grey Margot, which Bure said yesterday was the fastest mare
+in the troop.  And the man on her is a light weight.  The other fellow
+has that Norman bay horse we were looking at this morning.  It is a
+trap laid by Bezers, Anne. If we turned aside a dozen yards, those two
+would be after us like the wind."
+
+"Do you mean," I cried, "that Bezers has drawn his men forward on
+purpose?"
+
+"Precisely;" was Louis's answer.  "That is the fact.  Nothing would
+please him better than to take my honour first, and my life afterwards.
+But, thank God, only the one is in his power."
+
+And when I came to look at the horsemen, immediately before us, they
+confirmed Louis's view.  They were the best mounted of the party:  all
+men of light weight too.  One or other of them was constantly looking
+back.  As night fell they closed in upon us with their usual care.
+When Bure joined us there was a gleam of intelligence in his bold eyes,
+a flash of conscious trickery.  He knew that we had found him out, and
+cared nothing for it.
+
+And the others cared nothing.  But the thought that if left to myself I
+should have fallen into the Vidame's cunning trap filled me with new
+hatred towards him; such hatred and such fear--for there was
+humiliation mingled with them--as I had scarcely felt before.  I
+brooded over this, barely noticing what passed in our company for
+hours--nay, not until the next day when, towards evening, the cry arose
+round me that we were within sight of Cahors.  Yes, there it lay below
+us, in its shallow basin, surrounded by gentle hills.  The domes of the
+cathedral, the towers of the Vallandre Bridge, the bend of the Lot,
+where its stream embraces the town--I knew them all.  Our long journey
+was over.
+
+And I had but one idea.  I had some time before communicated to
+Croisette the desperate design I had formed--to fall upon Bezers and
+kill him in the midst of his men in the last resort.  Now the time had
+come if the thing was ever to be done:  if we had not left it too long
+already.  And I looked about me.  There was some confusion and jostling
+as we halted on the brow of the hill, while two men were despatched
+ahead to announce the governor's arrival, and Bure, with half a dozen
+spears, rode out as an advanced guard.
+
+The road where we stood was narrow, a shallow cutting winding down the
+declivity of the hills.  The horses were tired, It was a bad time and
+place for my design, and only the coming night was in my favour.  But I
+was desperate.
+
+Yet before I moved or gave a signal which nothing could recall, I
+scanned the landscape eagerly, scrutinizing in turn the small, rich
+plain below us, warmed by the last rays of the sun, the bare hills here
+glowing, there dark, the scattered wood-clumps and spinneys that filled
+the angles of the river, even the dusky line of helm-oaks that crowned
+the ridge beyond--Caylus way.  So near our own country there might be
+help!  If the messenger whom we had despatched to the Vicomte before
+leaving home had reached him, our uncle might have returned, and even
+be in Cahors to meet us.
+
+But no party appeared in sight:  and I saw no place where an ambush
+could be lying.  I remembered that no tidings of our present plight or
+of what had happened could have reached the Vicomte.  The hope faded
+out of life as soon as despair had given it birth.  We must fend for
+ourselves and for Kit.
+
+That was my justification.  I leaned from my saddle towards
+Croisette--I was riding by his side--and muttered, as I felt my horse's
+head and settled myself firmly in the stirrups, "You remember what I
+said?  Are you ready?"
+
+He looked at me in a startled way, with a face showing white in the
+shadow:  and from me to the one solitary figure seated like a pillar a
+score of paces in front with no one between us and it. "There need be
+but two of us," I muttered, loosening my sword. "Shall it be you or
+Marie?  The others must leap their horses out of the road in the
+confusion, cross the river at the Arembal Ford if they are not
+overtaken, and make for Caylus."
+
+He hesitated.  I do not know whether it had anything to do with his
+hesitation that at that moment the cathedral bell in the town below us
+began to ring slowly for Vespers.  Yes, he hesitated. He--a Caylus.
+Turning to him again, I repeated my question impatiently.  "Which shall
+it be?  A moment, and we shall be moving on, and it will be too late."
+
+He laid his hand hurriedly on my bridle, and began a rambling answer.
+Rambling as it was I gathered his meaning.  It was enough for me!  I
+cut him short with one word of fiery indignation, and turned to Marie
+and spoke quickly.  "Will you, then?"  I said.
+
+But Marie shook his head in perplexity, and answering little, said the
+same.  So it happened a second time.
+
+Strange!  Yet strange as it seemed, I was not greatly surprised. Under
+other circumstances I should have been beside myself with anger at the
+defection.  Now I felt as if I had half expected it, and without
+further words of reproach I dropped my head and gave it up.  I passed
+again into the stupor of endurance.  The Vidame was too strong for me.
+It was useless to fight against him.  We were under the spell.  When
+the troop moved forward, I went with them, silent and apathetic.
+
+We passed through the gate of Cahors, and no doubt the scene was worthy
+of note; but I had only a listless eye for it--much such an eye as a
+man about to be broken on the wheel must have for that curious
+instrument, supposing him never to have seen it before.  The whole
+population had come out to line the streets through which we rode, and
+stood gazing, with scarcely veiled looks of apprehension, at the
+procession of troopers and the stern face of the new governor.
+
+We dismounted passively in the courtyard of the castle, and were for
+going in together, when Bure intervened.  "M. de Pavannes," he said,
+pushing rather rudely between us, "will sup alone to-night.  For you,
+gentlemen, this way, if you please."
+
+I went without remonstrance.  What was the use?  I was conscious that
+the Vidame from the top of the stairs leading to the grand entrance was
+watching us with a wolfish glare in his eyes.  I went quietly.  But I
+heard Croisette urging something with passionate energy.
+
+We were led through a low doorway to a room on the ground floor; a
+place very like a cell.  Were we took our meal in silence. When it was
+over I flung myself on one of the beds prepared for us, shrinking from
+my companions rather in misery than in resentment.
+
+No explanation had passed between us.  Still I knew that the other two
+from time to time eyed me doubtfully.  I feigned therefore to be
+asleep, but I heard Bure enter to bid us good-night--and see that we
+had not escaped.  And I was conscious too of the question Croisette put
+to him, "Does M. de Pavannes lie alone to-night, Bure?"
+
+"Not entirely," the captain answered with gloomy meaning.  Indeed he
+seemed in bad spirits himself, or tired.  "The Vidame is anxious for
+his soul's welfare, and sends a priest to him."
+
+They sprang to their feet at that.  But the light and its bearer, who
+so far recovered himself as to chuckle at his master's pious thought,
+had disappeared.  They were left to pace the room, and reproach
+themselves and curse the Vidame in an agony of late repentance.  Not
+even Marie could find a loop-hole of escape from here.  The door was
+double-locked; the windows so barred that a cat could scarcely pass
+through them; the walls were of solid masonry.
+
+Meanwhile I lay and feigned to sleep, and lay feigning through long,
+long hours; though my heart like theirs throbbed in response to the
+dull hammering that presently began without, and not far from us, and
+lasted until daybreak.  From our windows, set low and facing a wall, we
+could see nothing.  But we could guess what the noise meant, the dull,
+earthy thuds when posts were set in the ground, the brisk, wooden
+clattering when one plank was laid to another.  We could not see the
+progress of the work, or hear the voices of the workmen, or catch the
+glare of their lights.  But we knew what they were doing.  They were
+raising the scaffold.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+JOY IN THE MORNING.
+
+I was too weary with riding to go entirely without sleep.  And moreover
+it is anxiety and the tremor of excitement which make the pillow
+sleepless, not, heaven be thanked, sorrow.  God made man to lie awake
+and hope:  but never to lie awake and grieve. An hour or two before
+daybreak I fell asleep, utterly worn out. When I awoke, the sun was
+high, and shining slantwise on our window.  The room was gay with the
+morning rays, and soft with the morning freshness, and I lay a while,
+my cheek on my hand, drinking in the cheerful influence as I had done
+many and many a day in our room at Caylus.  It was the touch of Marie's
+hand, laid timidly on my arm, which roused me with a shock to
+consciousness.  The truth broke upon me.  I remembered where we were,
+and what was before us.  "Will you get up, Anne?" Croisette said.  "The
+Vidame has sent for us."
+
+I got to my feet, and buckled on my sword.  Croisette was leaning
+against the wall, pale and downcast.  Bure filled the open doorway, his
+feathered cap in his hand, a queer smile on his face.  "You are a good
+sleeper, young gentleman," he said.  "You should have a good
+conscience."
+
+"Better than yours, no doubt!"  I retorted, "or your master's."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and, bidding us by a sign to follow him, led
+the way through several gloomy passages.  At the end of these, a flight
+of stone steps leading upwards seemed to promise something better; and
+true enough, the door at the top being opened, the murmur of a crowd
+reached our ears, with a burst of sunlight and warmth.  We were in a
+lofty room, with walls in some places painted, and elsewhere hung with
+tapestry; well lighted by three old pointed windows reaching to the
+rush-covered floor. The room was large, set here and there with stands
+of arms, and had a dais with a raised carved chair at one end.  The
+ceiling was of blue, with gold stars set about it.  Seeing this, I
+remembered the place.  I had been in it once, years ago, when I had
+attended the Vicomte on a state visit to the governor.  Ah! that the
+Vicomte were here now!
+
+I advanced to the middle window, which was open.  Then I started back,
+for outside was the scaffold built level with the floor, and
+rush-covered like it!  Two or three people were lounging on it.  My
+eyes sought Louis among the group, but in vain.  He was not there:  and
+while I looked for him, I heard a noise behind me, and he came in,
+guarded by four soldiers with pikes.
+
+His face was pale and grave, but perfectly composed.  There was a
+wistful look in his eyes indeed, as if he were thinking of something or
+some one far away--Kit's face on the sunny hills of Quercy where he had
+ridden with her, perhaps; a look which seemed to say that the doings
+here were nothing to him, and the parting was yonder where she was.
+But his bearing was calm and collected, his step firm and fearless.
+When he saw us, indeed his face lightened a moment and he greeted us
+cheerfully, even acknowledging Bure's salutation with dignity and good
+temper. Croisette sprang towards him impulsively, and cried his
+name--Croisette ever the first to speak.  But before Louis could grasp
+his hand, the door at the bottom of the hall was swung open, and the
+Vidame came hurriedly in.
+
+He was alone.  He glanced round, his forbidding face, which was
+somewhat flushed as if by haste, wearing a scowl.  Then he saw us, and,
+nodding haughtily, strode up the floor, his spurs clanking heavily on
+the boards.  We gave us no greeting, but by a short word dismissed Bure
+and the soldiers to the lower end of the room.  And then he stood and
+looked at us four, but principally at his rival; and looked, and looked
+with eyes of smouldering hate.  And there was a silence, a long
+silence, while the murmur of the crowd came almost cheerfully through
+the window, and the sparrows under the eaves chirped and twittered, and
+the heart that throbbed least painfully was, I do believe, Louis de
+Pavannes'!
+
+At last Bezers broke the silence.
+
+"M. de Pavannes!"  he began, speaking hoarsely, yet concealing all
+passion under a cynical smile and a mock politeness, "M. de Pavannes, I
+hold the king's commission to put to death all the Huguenots within my
+province of Quercy.  Have you anything to say, I beg, why I should not
+begin with you?  Or do you wish to return to the Church?"
+
+Louis shrugged his shoulders as in contempt, and held his peace, I saw
+his captor's great hands twitch convulsively at this, but still the
+Vidame mastered himself, and when he spoke again he spoke slowly.
+"Very well," he continued, taking no heed of us, the silent witnesses
+of this strange struggle between the two men, but eyeing Louis only.
+"You have wronged me more than any man alive.  Alive or dead!  or dead!
+You have thwarted me, M. de Pavannes, and taken from me the woman I
+loved.  Six days ago I might have killed you.  I had it in my power.  I
+had but to leave you to the rabble, remember, and you would have been
+rotting at Montfaucon to-day, M. de Pavannes."
+
+"That is true," said Louis quietly.  "Why so many words?"
+
+But the Vidame went on as if he had not heard.  "I did not leave you to
+them," he resumed, "and yet I hate you--more than I ever hated any man
+yet, and I am not apt to forgive.  But now the time has come, sir, for
+my revenge!  The oath I swore to your mistress a fortnight ago I will
+keep to the letter.  I--Silence, babe!" he thundered, turning suddenly,
+"or I will keep my word with you too!"
+
+Croisette had muttered something, and this had drawn on him the glare
+of Bezers' eyes.  But the threat was effectual.  Croisette was silent.
+The two were left henceforth to one another.
+
+Yet the Vidame seemed to be put out by the interruption. Muttering a
+string of oaths he strode from us to the window and back again.  The
+cool cynicism, with which he was wont to veil his anger and impose on
+other men, while it heightened the effect of his ruthless deeds, in
+part fell from him.  He showed himself as he was--masterful, and
+violent, hating, with all the strength of a turbulent nature which had
+never known a check.  I quailed before him myself.  I confess it.
+
+"Listen!"  he continued harshly, coming back and taking his place in
+front of us at last, his manner more violent than before the
+interruption.  "I might have left you to die in that hell yonder! And I
+did not leave you.  I had but to hold my hand and you would have been
+torn to pieces!  The wolf, however, does not hunt with the rats, and a
+Bezers wants no help in his vengeance from king or CANAILLE!  When I
+hunt my enemy down I will hunt him alone, do you hear?  And as there is
+a heaven above me"--he paused a moment--"if I ever meet you face to
+face again, M. de Pavannes, I will kill you where you stand!"
+
+He paused, and the murmur of the crowd without came to my ears; but
+mingled with and heightened by some confusion in my thoughts. I
+struggled feebly with this, seeing a rush of colour to Croisette's
+face, a lightening in his eyes as if a veil had been raised from before
+them.  Some confusion--for I thought I grasped the Vidame's meaning;
+yet there he was still glowering on his victim with the same grim
+visage, still speaking in the same rough tone.  "Listen, M. de
+Pavannes," he continued, rising to his full height and waving his hand
+with a certain majesty towards the window--no one had spoken.  "The
+doors are open! Your mistress is at Caylus.  The road is clear, go to
+her; go to her, and tell her that I have saved your life, and that I
+give it to you not out of love, but out of hate!  If you had flinched I
+would have killed you, for so you would have suffered most, M. de
+Pavannes.  As it is, take your life--a gift!  and suffer as I should if
+I were saved and spared by my enemy!"
+
+Slowly the full sense of his words came home to me.  Slowly; not in its
+full completeness indeed until I heard Louis in broken phrases, phrases
+half proud and half humble, thanking him for his generosity.  Even then
+I almost lost the true and wondrous meaning of the thing when I heard
+his answer.  For he cut Pavannes short with bitter caustic gibes,
+spurned his proffered gratitude with insults, and replied to his
+acknowledgments with threats.
+
+"Go!  go!"  he continued to cry violently.  "Have I brought you so far
+safely that you will cheat me of my vengeance at the last, and provoke
+me to kill you?  Away!  and take these blind puppies with you!  Reckon
+me as much your enemy now as ever!  And if I meet you, be sure you will
+meet a foe!  Begone, M. de Pavannes, begone!"
+
+"But, M. de Bezers," Louis persisted, "hear me.  It takes two to--"
+
+"Begone!  begone!  before we do one another a mischief!"  cried the
+Vidame furiously.  "Every word you say in that strain is an injury to
+me.  It robs me of my vengeance.  Go!  in God's name!"
+
+And we went; for there was no change, no promise of softening in his
+malignant aspect as he spoke; nor any as he stood and watched us draw
+off slowly from him.  We went one by one, each lingering after the
+other, striving, out of a natural desire to thank him, to break through
+that stern reserve.  But grim and unrelenting, a picture of scorn to
+the last, he saw us go.
+
+My latest memory of that strange man--still fresh after a lapse of two
+and fifty years--is of a huge form towering in the gloom below the
+state canopy, the sunlight which poured in through the windows and
+flooded us, falling short of him; of a pair of fierce cross eyes, that
+seemed to glow as they covered us; of a lip that curled as in the
+enjoyment of some cruel jest.  And so I--and I think each of us four
+saw the last of Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers, in this life.
+
+He was a man whom we cannot judge by to-day's standard; for he was such
+an one in his vices and his virtues as the present day does not know;
+one who in his time did immense evil--and if his friends be believed,
+little good.  But the evil is forgotten; the good lives.  And if all
+that good save one act were buried with him, this one act alone, the
+act of a French gentleman, would be told of him--ay!  and will be
+told--as long as the kingdom of France, and the gracious memory of the
+late king, shall endure.
+
+*      *      *      *      *
+
+I see again by the simple process of shutting my eyes, the little party
+of five--for Jean, our servant, had rejoined us--who on that summer day
+rode over the hills to Caylus, threading the mazes of the holm-oaks,
+and galloping down the rides, and hallooing the hare from her form, but
+never pursuing her; arousing the nestling farmhouses from their sleepy
+stillness by joyous shout and laugh, and sniffing, as we climbed the
+hill-side again, the scent of the ferns that died crushed under our
+horses' hoofs--died only that they might add one little pleasure more
+to the happiness God had given us.  Rare and sweet indeed are those few
+days in life, when it seems that all creation lives only that we may
+have pleasure in it, and thank God for it.  It is well that we should
+make the most of them, as we surely did of that day.
+
+It was nightfall when we reached the edge of the uplands, and looked
+down on Caylus.  The last rays of the sun lingered with us, but the
+valley below was dark; so dark that even the rock about which our homes
+clustered would have been invisible save for the half-dozen lights that
+were beginning to twinkle into being on its summit.  A silence fell
+upon us as we slowly wended our way down the well-known path.
+
+All day long we had ridden in great joy; if thoughtless, yet innocent;
+if selfish, yet thankful; and always blithely, with a great exultation
+and relief at heart, a great rejoicing for our own sakes and for Kit's.
+
+Now with the nightfall and the darkness, now when we were near our
+home, and on the eve of giving joy to another, we grew silent.  There
+arose other thoughts--thoughts of all that had happened since we had
+last ascended that track; and so our minds turned naturally back to him
+to whom we owed our happiness--to the giant left behind in his pride
+and power and his loneliness. The others could think of him with full
+hearts, yet without shame.  But I reddened, reflecting how it would
+have been with us if I had had my way; if I had resorted in my
+shortsightedness to one last violent, cowardly deed, and killed him, as
+I had twice wished to do.
+
+Pavannes would then have been lost almost certainly.  Only the Vidame
+with his powerful troop--we never knew whether he had gathered them for
+that purpose or merely with an eye to his government--could have saved
+him.  And few men however powerful--perhaps Bezers only of all men in
+Paris would have dared to snatch him from the mob when once it had
+sighted him.  I dwell on this now that my grandchildren may take
+warning by it, though never will they see such days as I have seen.
+
+And so we clattered up the steep street of Caylus with a pleasant
+melancholy upon us, and passed, not without a more serious thought, the
+gloomy, frowning portals, all barred and shuttered, of the House of the
+Wolf, and under the very window, sombre and vacant, from which Bezers
+had incited the rabble in their attack on Pavannes' courier.  We had
+gone by day, and we came back by night.  But we had gone trembling, and
+we came back in joy.
+
+We did not need to ring the great bell.  Jean's cry, "Ho!  Gate there!
+Open for my lords!"  had scarcely passed his lips before we were
+admitted.  And ere we could mount the ramp, one person outran those who
+came forth to see what the matter was; one outran Madame Claude, outran
+old Gil, outran the hurrying servants, and the welcome of the house.  I
+saw a slender figure all in white break away from the little crowd and
+dart towards us, disclosing as it reached me a face that seemed still
+whiter than its robes, and yet a face that seemed all eyes--eyes that
+asked the question the lips could not frame.
+
+I stood aside with a low bow, my hat in my hand; and said simply--it
+was the great effect of my life--"VOILA Monsieur!"
+
+And then I saw the sun rise in a woman's face.
+
+*      *      *      *      *
+
+The Vidame de Bezers died as he had lived.  He was still Governor of
+Cahors when Henry the Great attacked it on the night of the 17th of
+June, 1580.  Taken by surprise and wounded in the first confusion of
+the assault, he still defended himself and his charge with desperate
+courage, fighting from street to street, and house to house for five
+nights and as many days.  While he lived Henry's destiny and the fate
+of France trembled in the balance.  But he fell at length, his brain
+pierced by the ball of an arquebuse, and died an hour before sunset on
+the 22nd of June. The garrison immediately surrendered.
+
+Marie and I were present in this action on the side of the King of
+Navarre, and at the request of that prince hastened to pay such honours
+to the body of the Vidame as were due to his renown and might serve to
+evince our gratitude.  A year later his remains were removed from
+Cahors, and laid where they now rest in his own Abbey Church of Bezers,
+under a monument which very briefly tells of his stormy life and his
+valour.  No matter.  He has small need of a monument whose name lives
+in the history of his country, and whose epitaph is written in the
+lives of men.
+
+NOTE.--THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF VIDAME DE BEZERS, AS THEY APPEAR IN
+THE ABOVE MEMOIR FIND A PARALLEL IN AN ACCOUNT GIVEN BY DE THOU OF ONE
+OF THE MOST REMARKABLE INCIDENTS IN THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW:
+"AMID SUCH EXAMPLES," HE WRITES, "OF THE FEROCITY OF THE CITY, A THING
+HAPPENED WORTHY TO BE RELATED, AND WHICH MAY PERHAPS IN SOME DEGREE
+WEIGH AGAINST THESE ATROCITIES. THERE WAS A DEADLY HATRED, WHICH UP TO
+THIS TIME THE INTERVENTION OF THEIR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS HAD FAILED
+TO APPEASE, BETWEEN TWO MEN--VEZINS, THE LIEUTENANT OF HONORATUS OF
+SAVOY, MARSHAL VILLARS, A MAN NOTABLE AMONG THE NOBILITY OF THE
+PROVINCE FOR HIS VALOUR, BUT OBNOXIOUS TO MANY OWING TO HIS BRUTAL
+DISPOSITION (ferina natura), AND REGNIER, A YOUNG MAN OF LIKE RANK AND
+VIGOUR, BUT OF MILDER CHARACTER.  WHEN REGNIER THEN, IN THE MIDDLE OF
+THAT GREAT UPROAR, DEATH MEETING HIS EYE EVERYWHERE, WAS MAKING UP HIS
+MIND TO THE WORST, HIS DOOR WAS SUDDENLY BURST OPEN, AND VEZINS, WITH
+TWO OTHER MEN, STOOD BEFORE HIM SWORD IN HAND.  UPON THIS REGNIER,
+ASSURED OF DEATH, KNELT DOWN AND ASKED MERCY OF HEAVEN:  BUT VEZINS IN
+A HARSH VOICE BID HIM RISE FROM HIS PRAYERS AND MOUNT A PALFREY ALREADY
+STANDING READY IN THE STREET FOR HIM.  SO HE LED REGNIER--UNCERTAIN FOR
+THE TIME WHITHER HE WAS BEING TAKEN--OUT OF THE CITY, AND PUT HIM ON
+HIS HONOUR TO GO WITH HIM WITHOUT TRYING TO ESCAPE.  AND TOGETHER,
+WITHOUT PAUSING IN THEIR JOURNEY, THE TWO TRAVELLED ALL THE WAY TO
+GUIENNE.  DURING THIS TIME VEZINS HONOURED REGNIER WITH VERY LITTLE
+CONVERSATION; BUT SO FAR CARED FOR HIM THAT FOOD WAS PREPARED FOR HIM
+AT THE INNS BY HIS SERVANTS:  AND SO THEY CAME TO QUERCY AND THE CASTLE
+OF REGNIER.  THERE VEZINS TURNED TO HIM AND SAID, "YOU KNOW HOW I HAVE
+FOR A LONG TIME BACK SOUGHT TO AVENGE MYSELF ON YOU, AND HOW EASILY I
+MIGHT NOW HAVE DONE IT TO THE FULL, HAD I BEEN WILLING TO USE THIS
+OPPORTUNITY.  BUT SHAME WOULD NOT SUFFER IT; AND BESIDES, YOUR COURAGE
+SEEMED WORTHY TO BE SET AGAINST MINE ON EVEN TERMS.  TAKE THEREFORE THE
+LIFE WHICH YOU OWE TO MY KINDNESS."  WITH MUCH MORE WHICH THE CURIOUS
+WILL FIND IN THE 2ND (FOLIO) VOLUME OF DE THOU.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The House of the Wolf, by Stanley Weyman
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