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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe,
+Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France, by Stanley J. 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: Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France
+
+Author: Stanley J. Weyman
+
+Release Date: March 14, 2012 [EBook #39136]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL ROMANCES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/historicalromanc00weymiala
+
+   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HISTORICAL ROMANCES
+
+                         _UNDER THE RED ROBE_
+
+                           _COUNT HANNIBAL_
+
+                       _A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
+
+       THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
+       A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE
+       UNDER THE RED ROBE
+       SHREWSBURY
+       SOPHIA
+       COUNT HANNIBAL
+       IN KINGS' BYWAYS
+       STARVECROW FARM
+       LAID UP IN LAVENDER
+       OVINGTON'S BANK
+       THE TRAVELLER IN THE FUR CLOAK
+       QUEEN'S FOLLY
+       THE _LIVELY PEGGY_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HISTORICAL ROMANCES
+
+                         _Under The Red Robe_
+
+                           _Count Hannibal_
+
+                       _A Gentleman of France_
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                          STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+
+
+
+
+                       LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
+                       55 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         HISTORICAL ROMANCES
+
+                 UNDER THE RED ROBE * COUNT HANNIBAL
+                        A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE
+
+
+
+             COPYRIGHT * 1893 * 1894 * 1900 * 1901 * 1921
+                         BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN
+
+
+
+
+
+               PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+
+                          UNDER THE RED ROBE
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+         I. At Zaton's.
+
+        II. At the Green Pillar.
+
+       III. The House in the Wood.
+
+        IV. Madam and Mademoiselle.
+
+         V. Revenge.
+
+        VI. Under the Pic du Midi.
+
+       VII. A Master Stroke.
+
+      VIII. The Question.
+
+        IX. Clon.
+
+         X. The Arrest.
+
+        XI. The Road to Paris.
+
+       XII. At the Finger-Post
+
+      XIII. St. Martin's Eve.
+
+       XIV. St. Martin's Summer.
+
+
+
+
+
+                          UNDER THE RED ROBE
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                              AT ZATON'S
+
+
+"Marked cards!"
+
+There were a score round us when the fool, little knowing the man with
+whom he had to deal, and as little how to lose like a gentleman, flung
+the words in my teeth. He thought, I'll be sworn, that I should storm
+and swear and ruffle it like any common cock of the hackle. But that
+was never Gil de Berault's way. For a few seconds after he had spoken
+I did not even look at him. I passed my eye instead--smiling, _bien
+entendu_--round the ring of waiting faces, saw that there was no one
+except De Pombal I had cause to fear; and then at last I rose and
+looked at the fool with the grim face I have known impose on older and
+wiser men.
+
+"Marked cards, M. l'Anglais?" I said, with a chilling sneer. "They are
+used, I am told, to trap players--not unbirched schoolboys."
+
+"Yet I say that they are marked!" he replied hotly, in his queer
+foreign jargon. "In my last hand I had nothing. You doubled the
+stakes. Bah, Sir, you knew! You have swindled me!"
+
+"Monsieur is easy to swindle--when he plays with a mirror behind him,"
+I answered tartly. And at that there was a great roar of laughter,
+which might have been heard in the street, and which brought to the
+table every one in the eating-house whom his violence had not already
+attracted. But I did not relax my face. I waited until all was quiet
+again, and then waving aside two or three who stood between us and the
+entrance, I pointed gravely to the door. "There is a little space
+behind the church of St. Jacques, M. l'Etranger," I said, putting on
+my hat and taking my cloak on my arm. "Doubtless you will accompany me
+thither?"
+
+He snatched up his hat, his face burning with shame and rage. "With
+pleasure!" he blurted out. "To the devil, if you like!"
+
+I thought the matter arranged, when the Marquis laid his hand on the
+young fellow's arm and checked him. "This must not be," he said,
+turning from him to me with his grand fine-gentleman's air. "You know
+me, M. de Berault. This matter has gone far enough."
+
+"Too far, M. de Pombal!" I answered bitterly. "Still, if you wish to
+take the gentleman's place, I shall raise no objection."
+
+"Chut, man!" he retorted, shrugging his shoulders negligently. "I know
+you, and I do not fight with men of your stamp. Nor need this
+gentleman."
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied, bowing low, "if he prefers to be caned in
+the streets."
+
+That stung the Marquis. "Have a care! have a care!" he cried hotly.
+"You go too far, M. Berault."
+
+"De Berault, if you please," I objected, eyeing him sternly. "My
+family has borne the _de_ as long as yours, M. de Pombal."
+
+He could not deny that, and he answered, "As you please"; at the same
+time restraining his friend by a gesture. "But none the less, take my
+advice," he continued. "The Cardinal has forbidden duelling, and this
+time he means it! You have been in trouble once and gone free. A
+second time it may fare worse with you. Let this gentleman go,
+therefore, M. de Berault. Besides--why, shame upon you, man!" he
+exclaimed hotly; "he is but a lad!"
+
+Two or three who stood behind me applauded that. But I turned and they
+met my eye; and they were as mum as mice. "His age is his own
+concern," I said grimly. "He was old enough a while ago to insult me."
+
+"And I will prove my words!" the lad cried, exploding at last. He had
+spirit enough, and the Marquis had had hard work to restrain him so
+long. "You do me no service, M. de Pombal," he continued, pettishly
+shaking off his friend's hand. "By your leave, this gentleman and I
+will settle this matter."
+
+"That is better," I said, nodding drily, while the Marquis stood
+aside, frowning and baffled. "Permit me to lead the way."
+
+Zaton's eating-house stands scarcely a hundred paces from St. Jacques
+la Boucherie, and half the company went thither with us. The evening
+was wet, the light in the streets was waning, the streets themselves
+were dirty and slippery. There were few passers in the Rue St.
+Antoine; and our party, which earlier in the day must have attracted
+notice and a crowd, crossed unmarked, and entered without interruption
+the paved triangle which lies immediately behind the church. I saw in
+the distance one of the Cardinal's guard loitering in front of the
+scaffolding round the new Hôtel Richelieu; and the sight of the
+uniform gave me pause for a moment. But it was too late to repent.
+
+The Englishman began at once to strip off his clothes. I closed mine
+to the throat, for the air was chilly. At that moment, while we stood
+preparing and most of the company seemed a little inclined to stand
+off from me, I felt a hand on my arm, and, turning, saw the dwarfish
+tailor at whose house in the Rue Savonnerie I lodged at the time. The
+fellow's presence was unwelcome, to say the least of it; and though
+for want of better company I had sometimes encouraged him to be free
+with me at home, I took that to be no reason why I should be plagued
+with him before gentlemen. I shook him off, therefore, hoping by a
+frown to silence him.
+
+He was not to be so easily put down, however. And perforce I had to
+speak to him. "Afterwards, afterwards," I said. "I am engaged now."
+
+"For God's sake, don't, Sir!" was the poor fool's answer. "Don't do
+it! You will bring a curse on the house. He is but a lad, and--"
+
+"You, too!" I exclaimed, losing patience. "Be silent, you scum! What
+do you know about gentlemen's quarrels? Leave me; do you hear?"
+
+"But the Cardinal!" he cried in a quavering voice. "The Cardinal, M.
+de Berault? The last man you killed is not forgotten yet. This time he
+will be sure to--"
+
+"Do you hear?" I hissed. The fellow's impudence passed all bounds. It
+was as bad as his croaking. "Begone!" I said. "I suppose you are
+afraid he will kill me, and you will lose your money?"
+
+Frison fell back at that almost as if I had struck him, and I turned
+to my adversary, who had been awaiting my motions with impatience. God
+knows he did look young; as he stood with his head bare and his fair
+hair drooping over his smooth woman's forehead--a mere lad fresh from
+the College of Burgundy, if they have such a thing in England. I felt
+a sudden chill as I looked at him: a qualm, a tremor, a presentiment.
+What was it the little tailor had said? That I should--but there, he
+did not know. What did he know of such things? If I let this pass I
+must kill a man a day, or leave Paris and the eating-house, and
+starve.
+
+"A thousand pardons," I said gravely, as I drew and took my place. "A
+dun. I am sorry that the poor devil caught me so inopportunely. Now,
+however, I am at your service."
+
+He saluted, and we crossed swords and began. But from the first I had
+no doubt what the result would be. The slippery stones and fading
+light gave him, it is true, some chance, some advantage, more than he
+deserved; but I had no sooner felt his blade than I knew that he was
+no swordsman. Possibly he had taken half-a-dozen lessons in rapier
+art, and practised what he learned with an Englishman as heavy and
+awkward as himself. But that was all. He made a few wild, clumsy
+rushes, parrying widely. When I had foiled these, the danger was over,
+and I held him at my mercy.
+
+I played with him a little while, watching the sweat gather on his
+brow, and the shadow of the church-tower fall deeper and darker, like
+the shadow of doom, on his face. Not out of cruelty--God knows I have
+never erred in that direction!--but because, for the first time in my
+life, I felt a strange reluctance to strike the blow. The curls clung
+to his forehead; his breath came and went in gasps; I heard the men
+behind me murmur, and one or two of them drop an oath; and then I
+slipped--slipped, and was down in a moment on my right side, my elbow
+striking the pavement so sharply that the arm grew numb to the wrist.
+
+He held off! I heard a dozen voices cry, "Now! now you have him!" But
+he held off. He stood back and waited with his breast heaving and his
+point lowered, until I had risen and stood again on my guard.
+
+"Enough! enough!" a rough voice behind me cried. "Don't hurt the man
+after that."
+
+"On guard, Sir!" I answered coldly--for he seemed to waver. "It was an
+accident. It shall not avail you again."
+
+Several voices cried "Shame!" and one, "You coward!" But the
+Englishman stepped forward, a fixed look in his blue eyes. He took his
+place without a word. I read in his drawn white face that he had made
+up his mind to the worst, and his courage won my admiration. I would
+gladly and thankfully have set one of the lookers-on--any of the
+lookers-on--in his place; but that could not be. So I thought of
+Zaton's closed to me, of Pombal's insult, of the sneers and slights I
+had long kept at the sword's point; and, pressing him suddenly in a
+heat of affected anger, I thrust strongly over his guard, which had
+grown feeble, and ran him through the chest.
+
+When I saw him lying, laid out on the stones with his eyes half shut,
+and his face glimmering white in the dusk--not that I saw him thus
+long, for there were a dozen kneeling round him in a twinkling--I felt
+an unwonted pang. It passed, however, in a moment. For I found myself
+confronted by a ring of angry faces--of men who, keeping at a
+distance, hissed and threatened me.
+
+They were mostly canaille, who had gathered during the fight, and had
+viewed all that passed from the farther side of the railings. While
+some snarled and raged at me like wolves, calling me "Butcher!" and
+"Cut-throat!" and the like, or cried out that Berault was at his trade
+again, others threatened me with the vengeance of the Cardinal, flung
+the edict in my teeth, and said with glee that the guard were
+coming--they would see me hanged yet.
+
+"His blood is on your head!" one cried furiously. "He will be dead in
+an hour. And you will swing for him! Hurrah!"
+
+"Begone to your kennel!" I answered, with a look which sent him a yard
+backwards, though the railings were between us. And I wiped my blade
+carefully, standing a little apart. For--well, I could understand
+it--it was one of those moments when a man is not popular. Those who
+had come with me from the eating-house eyed me askance, and turned
+their backs when I drew nearer; and those who had joined us and
+obtained admission were scarcely more polite.
+
+But I was not to be outdone in _sangfroid_. I cocked my hat, and
+drawing my cloak over my shoulders, went out with a swagger which
+drove the curs from the gate before I came within a dozen paces of it.
+The rascals outside fell back as quickly, and in a moment I was in the
+street. Another moment and I should have been clear of the place and
+free to lie by for a while, when a sudden scurry took place round me.
+The crowd fled every way into the gloom, and in a hand-turn a dozen of
+the Cardinal's guard closed round me.
+
+I had some acquaintance with the officer in command, and he saluted me
+civilly. "This is a bad business, M. de Berault," he said. "The man is
+dead they tell me."
+
+"Neither dying nor dead," I answered lightly. "If that be all, you may
+go home again."
+
+"With you," he replied, with a grin, "certainly. And as it rains, the
+sooner the better. I must ask you for your sword, I am afraid."
+
+"Take it," I said, with the philosophy which never deserts me. "But
+the man will not die."
+
+"I hope that may avail you," he answered in a tone I did not like.
+"Left wheel, my friends! To the Châtelet! March!"
+
+"There are worse places," I said, and resigned myself to fate. After
+all, I had been in prison before, and learned that only one jail lets
+no prisoner escape.
+
+But when I found that my friend's orders were to hand me over to the
+watch, and that I was to be confined like any common jail-bird caught
+cutting a purse or slitting a throat, I confess my heart sank. If I
+could get speech with the Cardinal, all would probably be well; but if
+I failed in this, or if the case came before him in strange guise, or
+he were in a hard mood himself, then it might go ill with me. The
+edict said, death!
+
+And the lieutenant at the Châtelet did not put himself to much trouble
+to hearten me. "What! again, M. de Berault?" he said, raising his
+eyebrows as he received me at the gate, and recognized me by the light
+of the brazier which his men were just kindling outside. "You are a
+very bold man, Sir, or a very foolhardy one, to come here again. The
+old business, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, but he is not dead," I answered coolly.
+
+"He has a trifle--a mere scratch. It was behind the church of St.
+Jacques."
+
+"He looked dead enough," my friend the guardsman interposed. He had
+not yet gone.
+
+"Bah!" I answered scornfully. "Have you ever known me make a mistake?
+When I kill a man, I kill him. I put myself to pains, I tell you, not
+to kill this Englishman. Therefore he will live."
+
+"I hope so," the lieutenant said, with a dry smile. "And you had
+better hope so, too, M. de Berault. For if not--"
+
+"Well?" I said, somewhat troubled. "If not, what, my friend?"
+
+"I fear he will be the last man you will fight," he answered. "And
+even if he lives, I would not be too sure, my friend. This time the
+Cardinal is determined to put it down."
+
+"He and I are old friends," I said confidently.
+
+"So I have heard," he answered, with a short laugh. "I think the same
+was said of Chalais. I do not remember that it saved his head."
+
+This was not reassuring. But worse was to come. Early in the morning
+orders were received that I should be treated with especial
+strictness, and I was given the choice between irons and one of the
+cells below the level. Choosing the latter, I was left to reflect upon
+many things; among others, on the queer and uncertain nature of the
+Cardinal, who loved, I knew, to play with a man as a cat with a mouse;
+and on the ill effects which sometimes attend a high chest-thrust,
+however carefully delivered. I only rescued myself at last from these
+and other unpleasant reflections by obtaining the loan of a pair of
+dice; and the light being just enough to enable me to reckon the
+throws, I amused myself for hours by casting them on certain
+principles of my own. But a long run again and again upset my
+calculations; and at last brought me to the conclusion that a run of
+bad luck may be so persistent as to see out the most sagacious player.
+This was not a reflection very welcome to me at the moment.
+
+Nevertheless, for three days it was all the company I had. At the end
+of that time the knave of a jailer who attended me, and who had never
+grown tired of telling me, after the fashion of his kind, that I
+should be hanged, came to me with a less assured air. "Perhaps you
+would like a little water?" he said civilly.
+
+"Why, rascal?" I asked.
+
+"To wash with," he answered.
+
+"I asked for some yesterday, and you would not bring it," I grumbled.
+"However, better late than never. Bring it now. If I must hang, I will
+hang like a gentleman. But, depend upon it, the Cardinal will not
+serve an old friend so scurvy a trick."
+
+"You are to go to him," he answered, when he came back with the water.
+
+"What? To the Cardinal?" I cried.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"Good!" I exclaimed; and in my joy I sprang up at once, and began to
+refresh my dress. "So all this time I have been doing him an
+injustice. _Vive Monseigneur!_ I might have known it."
+
+"Don't make too sure!" the man answered spitefully. Then he went on:
+"I have something else for you. A friend of yours left it at the
+gate," he added. And he handed me a packet.
+
+"Quite so!" I said, reading his rascally face aright. "And you kept it
+as long as you dared--as long as you thought I should hang, you knave!
+Was not that so? But there, do not lie to me. Tell me instead which of
+my friends left it." For, to confess the truth, I had not so many
+friends at this time; and ten good crowns--the packet contained no
+less a sum--argued a pretty staunch friend, and one of whom a man
+might be proud.
+
+The knave sniggered maliciously. "A crooked, dwarfish man left it," he
+said. "I doubt I might call him a tailor and not be far out."
+
+"Chut!" I answered; but I was a little out of countenance. "I
+understand. An honest fellow enough, and in debt to me! I am glad he
+remembered. But when am I to go, friend?"
+
+"In an hour," he answered sullenly. Doubtless he had looked to get one
+of the crowns; but I was too old a hand for that. If I came back I
+could buy his services; and if I did not I should have wasted my
+money.
+
+Nevertheless, a little later, when I found myself on my way to the
+Hôtel Richelieu under so close a guard that I could see nothing except
+the figures that immediately surrounded me, I wished I had given him
+the money. At such times, when all hangs in the balance and the sky is
+overcast, the mind runs on luck and old superstitions, and is prone to
+think a crown given here may avail there--though there be a hundred
+leagues away.
+
+The Palais Richelieu was at this time in building, and we were
+required to wait in a long, bare gallery, where the masons were at
+work. I was kept a full hour here, pondering uncomfortably on the
+strange whims and fancies of the great man who then ruled France as
+the King's Lieutenant-General, with all the King's powers; and whose
+life I had once been the means of saving by a little timely
+information. On occasion he had done something to wipe out the debt;
+and at other times he had permitted me to be free with him. We were
+not unknown to one another, therefore.
+
+Nevertheless, when the doors were at last thrown open, and I was led
+into his presence, my confidence underwent a shock. His cold glance,
+that, roving over me, regarded me not as a man but an item, the steely
+glitter of his southern eyes, chilled me to the bone. The room was
+bare, the floor without carpet or covering. Some of the woodwork lay
+about, unfinished and in pieces. But the man--this man, needed no
+surroundings. His keen, pale face, his brilliant eyes, even his
+presence--though he was of no great height and began already to stoop
+at the shoulders--were enough to awe the boldest. I recalled as I
+looked at him a hundred tales of his iron will, his cold heart, his
+unerring craft. He had humbled the King's brother, the splendid Duke
+of Orleans, in the dust. He had curbed the Queen-mother. A dozen
+heads, the noblest in France, had come to the block through him. Only
+two years before he had quelled Rochelle; only a few months before he
+had crushed the great insurrection in Languedoc: and though the south,
+stripped of its old privileges, still seethed with discontent, no one
+in this year 1630 dared lift a hand against him--openly, at any rate.
+Under the surface a hundred plots, a thousand intrigues, sought his
+life or his power; but these, I suppose, are the hap of every great
+man.
+
+No wonder, then, that the courage on which I plumed myself sank low at
+sight of him; or that it was as much as I could do to mingle with the
+humility of my salute some touch of the _sangfroid_ of old
+acquaintanceship.
+
+And perhaps that had been better left out. For this man was without
+bowels. For a moment, while he stood looking at me and before he spoke
+to me, I gave myself up for lost. There was a glint of cruel
+satisfaction in his eyes that warned me, before he spoke, what he was
+going to say to me.
+
+"I could not have made a better catch, M. de Berault," he said,
+smiling villainously, while he gently smoothed the fur of a cat that
+had sprung on the table beside him. "An old offender and an excellent
+example. I doubt it will not stop with you. But later, we will make
+you the warrant for flying at higher game."
+
+"Monseigneur has handled a sword himself," I blurted out. The very
+room seemed to be growing darker, the air colder. I was never nearer
+fear in my life.
+
+"Yes?" he said, smiling delicately. "And so?"
+
+"Will not be too hard on the failings of a poor gentleman."
+
+"He shall suffer no more than a rich one," he replied suavely, as he
+stroked the cat. "Enjoy that satisfaction, M. de Berault. Is that
+all?"
+
+"Once I was of service to your Eminence," I said desperately.
+
+"Payment has been made," he answered, "more than once. But for that I
+should not have seen you, M. de Berault."
+
+"The King's face!" I cried, snatching at the straw he seemed to hold
+out.
+
+He laughed cynically, smoothly. His thin face, his dark moustache, and
+whitening hair, gave him an air of indescribable keenness. "I am not
+the King," he said. "Besides, I am told you have killed as many as six
+men in duels. You owe the King, therefore, one life at least. You must
+pay it. There is no more to be said, M. de Berault," he continued
+coldly, turning away and beginning to collect some papers. "The law
+must take its course."
+
+I thought he was about to nod to the lieutenant to withdraw me, and a
+chilling sweat broke out down my back. I saw the scaffold, I felt the
+cords. A moment, and it would be too late! "I have a favour to ask," I
+stammered desperately, "if your Eminence would give me a moment
+alone."
+
+"To what end?" he answered, turning and eyeing me with cold disfavour.
+"I know you--your past--all. It can do no good, my friend."
+
+"Nor harm!" I cried. "And I am a dying man, Monseigneur!"
+
+"That is true," he said thoughtfully. Still he seemed to hesitate; and
+my heart beat fast. At last he looked at the lieutenant. "You may
+leave us," he said shortly. "Now," when the officer had withdrawn and
+left us alone, "what is it? Say what you have to say quickly. And
+above all, do not try to fool me, M. de Berault."
+
+But his piercing eyes so disconcerted me that now I had my chance I
+could not find a word to say, and stood before him mute. I think this
+pleased him, for his face relaxed.
+
+"Well?" he said at last. "Is that all?"
+
+"The man is not dead," I muttered.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "What of that?" he said.
+"That was not what you wanted to say to me."
+
+"Once I saved your Eminence's life," I faltered miserably.
+
+"Admitted," he answered, in his thin, incisive voice. "You mentioned
+the fact before. On the other hand, you have taken six to my
+knowledge, M. de Berault. You have lived the life of a bully, a common
+bravo, a gamester. You, a man of family! For shame! And it has brought
+you to this. Yet on that one point I am willing to hear more," he
+added abruptly.
+
+"I might save your Eminence's life again," I cried. It was a sudden
+inspiration.
+
+"You know something," he said quickly, fixing me with his eyes. "But
+no," he continued, shaking his head gently. "Pshaw! the trick is old.
+I have better spies than you, M. de Berault."
+
+"But no better sword," I cried hoarsely. "No, not in all your guard!"
+
+"That is true," he said. "That is true." To my surprise, he spoke in a
+tone of consideration; and he looked down at the floor. "Let me think,
+my friend," he continued.
+
+He walked two or three times up and down the room, while I stood
+trembling. I confess it trembling. The man whose pulses danger has no
+power to quicken, is seldom proof against suspense; and the sudden
+hope his words awakened in me so shook me that his figure, as he trod
+lightly to and fro, with the cat rubbing against his robe and turning
+time for time with him, wavered before my eyes. I grasped the table to
+steady myself. I had not admitted even in my own mind how darkly the
+shadow of Montfaucon and the gallows had fallen across me.
+
+I had leisure to recover myself, for it was some time before he spoke.
+When he did, it was in a voice harsh, changed, imperative. "You have
+the reputation of a man faithful, at least, to his employer," he said.
+"Do not answer me. I say it is so. Well, I will trust you. I will give
+you one more chance--though it is a desperate one. Woe to you if you
+fail me! Do you know Cocheforêt in Béarn? It is not far from Auch."
+
+"No, your Eminence."
+
+"Nor M. de Cocheforêt?"
+
+"No, your Eminence."
+
+"So much the better," he retorted. "But you have heard of him. He has
+been engaged in every Gascon plot since the late King's death, and
+gave me more trouble last year in the Vivarais than any man twice his
+years. At present he is at Bosost in Spain, with other refugees, but I
+have learned that at frequent intervals he visits his wife at
+Cocheforêt, which is six leagues within the border. On one of these
+visits he must be arrested."
+
+"That should be easy," I said.
+
+The Cardinal looked at me. "Tush, man! what do you know about it?" he
+answered bluntly. "It is whispered at Cocheforêt if a soldier crosses
+the street at Auch. In the house are only two or three servants, but
+they have the country-side with them to a man, and they are a
+dangerous breed. A spark might kindle a fresh rising. The arrest,
+therefore, must be made secretly."
+
+I bowed.
+
+"One resolute man inside the house, with the help of two or three
+servants whom he could summon to his aid at will, might effect it,"
+the Cardinal continued, glancing at a paper which lay on the table.
+"The question is, will you be the man, my friend?"
+
+I hesitated; then I bowed. What choice had I?
+
+"Nay, nay, speak out!" he said sharply. "Yes or no, M. de Berault?"
+
+"Yes, your Eminence," I said reluctantly. Again, I say, what choice
+had I?
+
+"You will bring him to Paris, and alive. He knows things, and that is
+why I want him. You understand?"
+
+"I understand, Monseigneur," I answered.
+
+"You will get into the house as you can," he continued. "For that you
+will need strategy, and good strategy. They suspect everybody. You
+must deceive them. If you fail to deceive them, or, deceiving them,
+are found out later, M. de Berault--I do not think you will trouble me
+again, or break the edict a second time. On the other hand, should you
+deceive _me_"--he smiled still more subtly, but his voice sank to a
+purring note--"I will break you on the wheel like the ruined gamester
+you are!"
+
+I met his look without quailing. "So be it!" I said recklessly. "If I
+do not bring M. de Cocheforêt to Paris, you may do that to me, and
+more also!"
+
+"It is a bargain!" he answered slowly. "I think you will be faithful.
+For money, here are a hundred crowns. That sum should suffice; but if
+you succeed you shall have twice as much more. Well, that is all, I
+think. You understand?"
+
+"Yes, Monseigneur."
+
+"Then why do you wait?"
+
+"The lieutenant?" I said modestly.
+
+Monseigneur laughed to himself, and sitting down wrote a word or two
+on a slip of paper. "Give him that," he said, in high good-humour. "I
+fear, M. de Berault, you will never get your deserts--in this world!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                         AT THE GREEN PILLAR.
+
+
+Cocheforêt lies in a billowy land of oak and beech and chestnut--a
+land of deep, leafy bottoms, and hills clothed with forest. Ridge and
+valley, glen and knoll, the woodland, sparsely peopled and more
+sparsely tilled, stretches away to the great snow mountains that here
+limit France. It swarms with game--with wolves and bears, deer and
+boars. To the end of his life I have heard that the great King loved
+this district, and would sigh, when years and State fell heavily on
+him, for the beech-groves and box-covered hills of South Béarn. From
+the terraced steps of Auch you can see the forest roll away in light
+and shadow, vale and upland, to the base of the snow-peaks; and,
+though I come from Brittany and love the smell of the salt wind, I
+have seen few sights that outdo this.
+
+It was the second week in October when I came to Cocheforêt, and,
+dropping down from the last wooded brow, rode quietly into the place
+at evening. I was alone, and had ridden all day in a glory of ruddy
+beech-leaves, through the silence of forest roads, across clear brooks
+and glades still green. I had seen more of the quiet and peace of the
+country than had been my share since boyhood, and I felt a little
+melancholy; it might be for that reason, or because I had no great
+taste for the task before me--the task now so imminent. In good faith,
+it was not a gentleman's work, look at it how you might.
+
+But beggars must not be choosers, and I knew that this feeling would
+pass away. At the inn, in the presence of others, under the spur of
+necessity, or in the excitement of the chase, were that once begun, I
+should lose the feeling. When a man is young, he seeks solitude: when
+he is middle-aged he flies it and his thoughts. I made without ado for
+the Green Pillar, a little inn in the village street, to which I had
+been directed at Auch, and, thundering on the door with the knob of my
+riding-switch, railed at the man for keeping me waiting.
+
+Here and there at hovel doors in the street--which was a mean, poor
+place, not worthy of the name--men and women looked out at me
+suspiciously. But I affected to ignore them; and at last the host
+came. He was a fair-haired man, half Basque, half Frenchman, and had
+scanned me well, I was sure, through some window or peephole; for,
+when he came out, he betrayed no surprise at the sight of a
+well-dressed stranger--a portent in that out-of-the-way village--but
+eyed me with a kind of sullen reserve.
+
+"I can lie here to-night, I suppose?" I said, dropping the reins on
+the sorrel's neck. The horse hung its head.
+
+"I don't know," he answered stupidly.
+
+I pointed to the green bough which topped a post that stood opposite
+the door.
+
+"This is an inn, is it not?" I said.
+
+"Yes," he answered slowly; "it is an inn. But--"
+
+"But you are full, or you are out of food, or your wife is ill, or
+something else is amiss," I answered peevishly. "All the same, I am
+going to lie here. So you must make the best of it, and your wife,
+too--if you have one."
+
+He scratched his head, looking at me with an ugly glitter in his eyes.
+But he said nothing, and I dismounted.
+
+"Where can I stable my horse?" I asked.
+
+"I'll put it up," he answered sullenly, stepping forward and taking
+the reins in his hands.
+
+"Very well," I said; "but I go with you. A merciful man is merciful to
+his beast, and where-ever I go I see my horse fed."
+
+"It will be fed," he said shortly. And then he waited for me to go
+into the house. "The wife is in there," he continued, looking at me
+stubbornly.
+
+"_Imprimis_--if you understand Latin, my friend," I answered, "the
+horse in the stall."
+
+As if he saw it was no good, he turned the sorrel slowly round, and
+began to lead it across the village street. There was a shed behind
+the inn, which I had already marked and taken for the stable, and I
+was surprised when I found he was not going there. But I made no
+remark, and in a few minutes saw the horse well stabled in a hovel
+which seemed to belong to a neighbour.
+
+This done, the man led the way back to the inn, carrying my valise.
+
+"You have no other guests?" I said, with a casual air. I knew he was
+watching me closely.
+
+"No," he answered.
+
+"This is not much in the way to anywhere, I suppose?"
+
+"No."
+
+That was evident; a more retired place I never saw. The hanging woods,
+rising steeply to a great height, so shut the valley in that I was
+puzzled to think how a man could leave it save by the road I had come.
+The cottages, which were no more than mean, small huts, ran in a
+straggling double line, with many gaps--through fallen trees and
+ill-cleared meadows. Among them a noisy brook ran in and out. And the
+inhabitants--charcoal-burners, or swineherds, or poor people of the
+like class, were no better than their dwellings. I looked in vain for
+the Château. It was not to be seen, and I dared not ask for it.
+
+The man led me into the common room of the tavern--a low-roofed, poor
+place, lacking a chimney or glazed windows, and grimy with smoke and
+use. The fire--a great half-burned tree--smouldered on a stone hearth,
+raised a foot from the floor. A huge black pot simmered over it, and
+beside one window lounged a country fellow talking with the goodwife.
+In the dusk I could not see his face, but I gave the woman a word, and
+sat down to wait for my supper.
+
+She seemed more silent than the common run of women; but this might be
+because her husband was present. While she moved about, getting my
+meal, he took his place against the doorpost and fell to staring at me
+so persistently that I felt by no means at my ease. He was a tall,
+strong fellow, with a rough moustache and brown beard, cut in the mode
+Henri Quatre; and on the subject of that king--a safe one, I knew,
+with a Béarnais--and on that alone, I found it possible to make him
+talk. Even then there was a suspicious gleam in his eyes that bade me
+abstain from questions; and as the darkness deepened behind him, and
+the firelight played more and more strongly on his features, and I
+thought of the leagues of woodland that lay between this remote valley
+and Auch. I recalled the Cardinal's warning that if I failed in my
+attempt I should be little likely to trouble Paris again.
+
+The lout by the window paid no attention to me; nor I to him, when I
+had once satisfied myself that he was really what he seemed to be. But
+by and by two or three men--rough, uncouth fellows--dropped in to
+reinforce the landlord, and they, too, seemed to have no other
+business than to sit in silence looking at me, or now and again to
+exchange a word in a _patois_ of their own. By the time my supper was
+ready, the knaves numbered six in all; and, as they were armed to a
+man with huge Spanish knives, and evidently resented my presence in
+their dull rustic fashion--every rustic is suspicious--I began to
+think that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a wasp's nest.
+
+Nevertheless, I ate and drank with apparent appetite; but little that
+passed within the circle of light cast by the smoky lamp escaped me. I
+watched the men's looks and gestures at least as sharply as they
+watched mine; and all the time I was racking my wits for some mode of
+disarming their suspicions--or failing that, of learning something
+more of the position, which, it was clear, far exceeded in difficulty
+and danger anything I had expected. The whole valley, it would seem,
+was on the lookout to protect my man!
+
+I had purposely brought with me from Auch a couple of bottles of
+choice Armagnac; and these had been carried into the house with my
+saddlebags. I took one out now and opened it, and carelessly offered a
+dram of the spirit to the landlord. He took it. As he drank it, I saw
+his face flush; he handed back the cup reluctantly, and on that hint I
+offered him another. The strong spirit was already beginning to work.
+He accepted, and in a few minutes began to talk more freely and with
+less of the constraint which had marked us. Still, his tongue ran
+chiefly on questions--he would know this, he would learn that; but
+even this was a welcome change. I told him openly whence I had come,
+by what road, how long I had stayed in Auch, and where; and so far I
+satisfied his curiosity. Only when I came to the subject of my visit
+to Cocheforêt I kept a mysterious silence, hinting darkly at business
+in Spain and friends across the border, and this and that, and giving
+the peasants to understand, if they pleased, that I was in the same
+interest as their exiled master.
+
+They took the bait, winked at one another, and began to look at me in
+a more friendly way--the landlord foremost. But when I had led them so
+far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit myself and be found
+out. I stopped, therefore, and, harking back to general subjects,
+chanced to compare my province with theirs. The landlord, now become
+almost talkative, was not slow to take up this challenge; and it
+presently led to my acquiring a curious piece of knowledge. He was
+boasting of his great snow mountains, the forests that propped them,
+the bears that roamed in them, the izards that loved the ice, and the
+boars that fed on the oak mast.
+
+"Well," I said, quite by chance, "we have not these things, it is
+true. But we have things in the north you have not. We have tens of
+thousands of good horses--not such ponies as you breed here. At the
+horse fair at Fécamp my sorrel would be lost in the crowd. Here in the
+south you will not meet his match in a long day's journey."
+
+"Do not make too sure of that!" the man replied, his eyes bright with
+triumph and the dram. "What would you say if I showed you a better--in
+my own stable?"
+
+I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other hearers,
+and that such of them as understood--for two or three of them talked
+their _patois_ only--looked at him angrily; and in a twinkling I began
+to comprehend. But I affected dulness, and laughed scornfully.
+
+"Seeing is believing," I said. "I doubt if you know a good horse here
+when you see one, my friend."
+
+"Oh, don't I?" he said, winking. "Indeed!"
+
+"I doubt it," I answered stubbornly.
+
+"Then come with me, and I will show you one," he retorted, discretion
+giving way to vainglory. His wife and the others, I saw, looked at him
+dumbfounded; but, without paying any heed to them, he took up a
+lanthorn, and, assuming an air of peculiar wisdom, opened the door.
+"Come with me," he continued. "I don't know a good horse when I see
+one, don't I? I know a better than yours, at any rate!"
+
+I should not have been surprised if the other men had interfered;
+but--I suppose he was a leader among them, and they did not, and in a
+moment we were outside. Three paces through the darkness took us to
+the stable, an offset at the back of the inn. My man twirled the pin,
+and, leading the way in, raised his lanthorn. A horse whinnied softly,
+and turned its bright, soft eyes on us--a baldfaced chestnut, with
+white hairs in its tail and one white stocking.
+
+"There!" my guide exclaimed, waving the lanthorn to and fro
+boastfully, that I might see its points. "What do you say to that? Is
+that an undersized pony?"
+
+"No," I answered, purposely stinting my praise. "It is pretty
+fair--for this country."
+
+"Or any country," he answered wrathfully. "Any country, I say--I don't
+care where it is! And I have reason to know! Why, man, that horse
+is-- But there, that is a good horse, if ever you saw one!" And with
+that he ended abruptly and lamely, lowering the lanthorn with a sudden
+gesture, and turning to the door. He was on the instant in such hurry,
+that he almost shouldered me out.
+
+But I understood. I knew that he had nearly betrayed all--that he had
+been on the point of blurting out that that was M. de Cocheforêt's
+horse! M. de Cocheforêt's, _comprenez bien!_ And while I turned away
+my face in the darkness, that he might not see me smile, I was not
+surprised to find the man in a moment changed, and become, in the
+closing of the door, as sober and suspicious as before, ashamed of
+himself and enraged with me, and in a mood to cut my throat for a
+trifle.
+
+It was not my cue to quarrel, however--anything but that. I made,
+therefore, as if I had seen nothing, and when we were back in the inn
+praised the horse grudgingly, and like a man but half convinced. The
+ugly looks and ugly weapons I saw around me were fine incentives to
+caution; and no Italian, I flatter myself, could have played his part
+more nicely than I did. But I was heartily glad when it was over,
+and I found myself, at last, left alone for the night in a little
+garret--a mere fowl-house--upstairs, formed by the roof and gable
+walls, and hung with strings of apples and chestnuts. It was a poor
+sleeping-place--rough, chilly, and unclean. I ascended to it by a
+ladder; my cloak and a little fern formed my only bed. But I was glad
+to accept it. It enabled me to be alone and to think out the position
+unwatched.
+
+Of course M. de Cocheforêt was at the Château. He had left his horse
+here, and gone up on foot: probably that was his usual plan. He was
+therefore within my reach, in one sense--I could not have come at a
+better time--but in another he was as much beyond it as if I were
+still in Paris. So far was I from being able to seize him that I dared
+not ask a question or let fall a rash word, or even look about me
+freely. I saw I dared not. The slightest hint of my mission, the
+faintest breath of distrust, would lead to throat-cutting--and the
+throat would be mine; while the longer I lay in the village, the
+greater suspicion I should incur, and the closer would be the watch
+kept over me.
+
+In such a position some men might have given up the attempt and saved
+themselves across the border. But I have always valued myself on my
+fidelity, and I did not shrink. If not to-day, to-morrow; if not this
+time, next time. The dice do not always turn up aces. Bracing myself,
+therefore, to the occasion, I crept, as soon as the house was quiet,
+to the window, a small, square, open lattice, much cobwebbed, and
+partly stuffed with hay. I looked out. The village seemed to be
+asleep. The dark branches of trees hung a few feet away, and almost
+obscured a grey, cloudy sky, through which a wet moon sailed drearily.
+Looking downwards, I could at first see nothing; but as my eyes grew
+used to the darkness--I had only just put out my rushlight--I made out
+the stable-door and the shadowy outlines of the lean-to roof.
+
+I had hoped for this. I could now keep watch, and learn at least
+whether Cocheforêt left before morning. If he did not I should know he
+was still here. If he did, I should be the better for seeing his
+features, and learning, perhaps, other things that might be of use.
+
+Making up my mind to be uncomfortable, I sat down on the floor by the
+lattice, and began a vigil that might last, I knew, until morning. It
+did last about an hour. At the end of that time I heard whispering
+below, then footsteps; then, as some persons turned a corner, a voice
+speaking aloud and carelessly. I could not catch the words spoken; but
+the voice was a gentleman's, and its bold accents and masterful tone
+left me in no doubt that the speaker was M. de Cocheforêt himself.
+Hoping to learn more, I pressed my face nearer to the opening, and I
+had just made out through the gloom two figures--one that of a tall,
+slight man, wearing a cloak, the other, I thought, a woman's, in a
+sheeny white dress--when a thundering rap on the door of my garret
+made me spring back a yard from the lattice, and lie down hurriedly on
+my couch. The noise was repeated.
+
+"Well?" I cried, cursing the untimely interruption. I was burning with
+anxiety to see more. "What is it? What is the matter?"
+
+The trapdoor was lifted a foot or more. The landlord thrust up his
+head.
+
+"You called, did you not?" he asked. He held up a rushlight, which
+illumined half the room and lit up his grinning face.
+
+"Called--at this hour of the night, you fool?" I answered angrily.
+"No! I did not call. Go to bed, man!"
+
+But he remained on the ladder, gaping stupidly.
+
+"I heard you," he said.
+
+"Go to bed! You are drunk!" I answered, sitting up. "I tell you I did
+not call."
+
+"Oh, very well," he answered slowly. "And you do not want anything?"
+
+"Nothing--except to be left alone!" I replied sourly.
+
+"Umph!" he said. "Good-night!"
+
+"Good-night! Good-night!" I answered, with what patience I might. The
+tramp of the horse's hoofs as it was led out of the stable was in my
+ear at the moment. "Good-night!" I continued feverishly, hoping he
+would still retire in time, and I have a chance to look out. "I want
+to sleep."
+
+"Good," he said, with a broad grin. "But it is early yet, and you have
+plenty of time." And then, at last, he slowly let down the trapdoor,
+and I heard him chuckle as he went down the ladder.
+
+Before he reached the bottom I was at the window. The woman whom I had
+seen still stood below, in the same place; and beside her a man in a
+peasant's dress, holding a lanthorn, But the man, the man I wanted to
+see was no longer there. And it was evident that he was gone; it was
+evident that the others no longer feared me, for while I gazed the
+landlord came out to them with another lanthorn, and said something to
+the lady, and she looked up at my window and laughed.
+
+It was a warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I
+could see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the firm
+contour of her beautiful face; which, if any fault might be found with
+it, erred in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by
+nature to meet dangers and difficulties; and even here, at midnight,
+in the midst of these desperate men, she seemed in place. It was
+possible that under her queenly exterior, and behind the contemptuous
+laugh with which she heard the land lord's story, there lurked a
+woman's soul capable of folly and tenderness. But no outward sign
+betrayed its presence.
+
+I scanned her very carefully; and secretly, if the truth be told, I
+was glad to find Madame de Cocheforêt such a woman. I was glad that
+she had laughed as she had--that she was not a little, tender,
+child-like woman, to be crushed by the first pinch of trouble. For if
+I succeeded in my task, if I--but, pish! Women, I said, were all
+alike. She would find consolation quickly enough.
+
+I watched until the group broke up, and Madame, with one of the men,
+went her way round the corner of the inn, and out of my sight. Then I
+retired to bed again, feeling more than ever perplexed what course I
+should adopt. It was clear that, to succeed, I must obtain admission
+to the house. This was garrisoned, unless my instructions erred, by
+two or three old men-servants only, and as many women; since Madame,
+to disguise her husband's visits the more easily, lived, and gave out
+that she lived, in great retirement. To seize her husband at home,
+therefore, might be no impossible task; though here, in the heart of
+the village, a troop of horse might make the attempt, and fail.
+
+But how was I to gain admission to the house--a house guarded by
+quick-witted women, and hedged in with all the precautions love could
+devise? That was the question; and dawn found me still debating it,
+still as far as ever from an answer. With the first light I was glad
+to get up. I thought that the fresh air might inspire me, and I was
+tired, besides, of my stuffy closet. I crept stealthily down the
+ladder, and managed to pass unseen through the lower room, in which
+several persons were snoring heavily. The outer door was not fastened,
+and in a hand-turn I stood in the street.
+
+It was still so early that the trees stood up black against the
+reddening sky, but the bough upon the post before the door was growing
+green, and in a few minutes the grey light would be everywhere.
+Already even in the road way there was a glimmering of it; and as
+I stood at the corner of the house--where I could command both the
+front and the side on which the stable opened--looking greedily for
+any trace of the midnight departure, my eyes detected something
+light-coloured lying on the ground. It was not more than two or
+three paces from me, and I stepped to it and picked it up curiously,
+hoping it might be a note. It was not a note, however, but a tiny
+orange-coloured sachet, such as women carry in the bosom. It was full
+of some faintly scented powder, and bore on one side the initial "E,"
+worked in white silk; and was altogether a dainty little toy, such as
+women love.
+
+Doubtless Madame de Cocheforêt had dropped it in the night. I turned
+it over and over; and then I put it away with a smile, thinking it
+might be useful some time, and in some way. I had scarcely done this,
+and turned with the intention of exploring the street, when the door
+behind me creaked on its leather hinges, and in a moment my host stood
+at my elbow.
+
+Evidently his suspicions were again aroused, for from that time he
+managed to be with me, on one pretence or another, until noon.
+Moreover, his manner grew each moment more churlish, his hints
+plainer; until I could scarcely avoid noticing the one or the other.
+About midday, having followed me for the twentieth time into the
+street, he came at last to the point, by asking me rudely if I did not
+need my horse.
+
+"No," I said. "Why do you ask?"
+
+"Because," he answered, with an ugly smile, "this is not a very
+healthy place for strangers."
+
+"Ah!" I retorted. "But the border air suits me, you see."
+
+It was a lucky answer; for, taken with my talk of the night before, it
+puzzled him, by again suggesting that I was on the losing side, and
+had my reasons for lying near Spain. Before he had done scratching his
+head over it, the clatter of hoofs broke the sleepy quiet of the
+village street, and the lady I had seen the night before rode quickly
+round the corner, and drew her horse on to its haunches. Without
+looking at me, she called to the innkeeper to come to her stirrup.
+
+He went. The moment his back was turned, I slipped away, and in a
+twinkling was hidden by a house. Two or three glum-looking fellows
+stared at me as I passed, but no one moved; and in two minutes I was
+clear of the village, and in a half-worn track which ran through the
+wood, and led--if my ideas were right--to the Château. To discover the
+house and learn all that was to be learned about its situation was my
+most pressing need: even at the risk of a knife-thrust, I was
+determined to satisfy it.
+
+I had not gone two hundred paces along the path before I heard the
+tread of a horse behind me, and I had just time to hide myself before
+Madame came up and rode by me, sitting her horse gracefully, and with
+all the courage of a northern woman. I watched her pass, and then,
+assured by her presence that I was in the right road, I hurried after
+her. Two minutes' walking at speed brought me to a light wooden bridge
+spanning a stream. I crossed this, and, the wood opening, saw before
+me first a wide, pleasant meadow, and beyond this a terrace. On the
+terrace, pressed upon on three sides by thick woods, stood a grey
+mansion, with the corner tourelles, steep, high roofs, and round
+balconies that men loved and built in the days of the first Francis.
+
+It was of good size, but wore, I fancied, a gloomy aspect. A great yew
+hedge, which seemed to enclose a walk or bowling-green, hid the ground
+floor of the east wing from view, while a formal rose garden, stiff
+even in neglect, lay in front of the main building. The west wing,
+whose lower roofs fell gradually away to the woods, probably contained
+the stables and granaries.
+
+I stood a moment only, but I marked all, and noted how the road
+reached the house, and which windows were open to attack; then I
+turned and hastened back. Fortunately, I met no one between the house
+and the village, and was able to enter the inn with an air of the most
+complete innocence.
+
+Short as had been my absence, I found things altered there. Round the
+door loitered and chattered three strangers--stout, well-armed
+fellows, whose bearing suggested a curious mixture of smugness and
+independence. Half-a-dozen pack-horses stood tethered to the post in
+front of the house; and the landlord's manner, from being rude and
+churlish only, had grown perplexed and almost timid. One of the
+strangers, I soon found, supplied him with wine; the others were
+travelling merchants, who rode in the first one's company for the sake
+of safety. All were substantial men from Tarbes--solid burgesses; and
+I was not long in guessing that my host, fearing what might leak out
+before them, and particularly that I might refer to the previous
+night's disturbance, was on tenterhooks while they remained.
+
+For a time this did not suggest anything to me. But when we had all
+taken our seats for supper there came an addition to the party. The
+door opened, and the fellow whom I had seen the night before with
+Madame de Cocheforêt entered, and took a stool by the fire. I felt
+sure that he was one of the servants at the Château; and in a flash
+his presence inspired me with the most feasible plan for obtaining
+admission which I had yet hit upon. I felt myself growing hot at the
+thought--it seemed so full of promise and of danger--and on the
+instant, without giving myself time to think too much, I began to
+carry it into effect.
+
+I called for two or three bottles of better wine, and, assuming a
+jovial air, passed it round the table. When we had drunk a few
+glasses, I fell to talking, and, choosing politics, took the side of
+the Languedoc party and the malcontents, in so reckless a fashion that
+the innkeeper was beside himself at my imprudence. The merchants, who
+belonged to the class with whom the Cardinal was always most popular,
+looked first astonished and then enraged. But I was not to be checked.
+Hints and sour looks were lost upon me. I grew more outspoken with
+every glass, I drank to the Rochellois, I swore it would not be long
+before they raised their heads again; and at last, while the innkeeper
+and his wife were engaged lighting the lamp, I passed round the bottle
+and called on all for a toast.
+
+"I'll give you one to begin," I bragged noisily. "A gentleman's toast!
+A southern toast! Here is confusion to the Cardinal, and a health to
+all who hate him!"
+
+"Mon Dieu!" one of the strangers cried, springing from his seat in a
+rage. "I am not going to stomach that! Is your house a common
+treason-hole," he continued, turning furiously on the landlord, "that
+you suffer this?"
+
+"Hoity-toity!" I answered, coolly keeping my seat. "What is all this?
+Don't you relish my toast, little man?"
+
+"No--nor you!" he retorted hotly, "whoever you may be!"
+
+"Then I will give you another," I answered, with a hiccough. "Perhaps
+it will be more to your taste. Here is the Duke of Orleans, and may he
+soon be King!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                        THE HOUSE IN THE WOOD.
+
+
+MY words fairly startled the three men out of their anger. For a
+moment they glared at me as if they had seen a ghost. Then the
+wine-merchant clapped his hand on the table. "That is enough!" he
+said, with a look at his companions. "I think there can be no mistake
+about that. As damnable treason as ever I heard whispered! I
+congratulate you, Sir, on your boldness. As for you," he continued,
+turning with an ugly sneer to the landlord, "I shall know now the
+company you keep! I was not aware that my wine wet whistles to such a
+tune!"
+
+But if he was startled, the innkeeper was furious, seeing his
+character thus taken away; and, being at no time a man of many words,
+he vented his rage exactly in the way I wished. In a twinkling he
+raised such an uproar as can scarcely be conceived. With a roar like a
+bull's he ran headlong at the table, and overturned it on the top of
+me. The woman saved the lamp and fled with it into a corner, whence
+she and the man from the Château watched the skirmish in silence; but
+the pewter cups and platters flew spinning across the floor, while the
+table pinned me to the ground among the ruins of my stool. Having me
+at this disadvantage--for at first I made no resistance--the landlord
+began to belabour me with the first thing he snatched up, and when I
+tried to defend myself cursed me with each blow for a treacherous
+rogue and a vagrant. Meanwhile, the three merchants, delighted with
+the turn things had taken, skipped round us laughing; and now hounded
+him on, now bantered me with "How is that for the Duke of Orleans?"
+and "How now, traitor?"
+
+When I thought this had lasted long enough--or, to speak more plainly,
+when I could stand the innkeeper's drubbing no longer--I threw him off
+by a great effort, and struggled to my feet. But still, though the
+blood was trickling down my face, I refrained from drawing my sword. I
+caught up instead a leg of the stool which lay handy, and, watching my
+opportunity, dealt the landlord a shrewd blow under the ear, which
+laid him out in a moment on the wreck of his own table.
+
+"Now!" I cried, brandishing my new weapon, which fitted the hand to a
+nicety, "come on! Come on, if you dare to strike a blow, you peddling,
+truckling, huckstering knaves! A fig for you and your shaveling
+Cardinal!"
+
+The red-faced wine-merchant drew his sword in a one-two. "Why, you
+drunken fool," he said wrathfully, "put that stick down, or I will
+spit you like a lark!"
+
+"Lark in your teeth!" I cried, staggering as if the wine were in my
+head. "Another word, and I--"
+
+He made a couple of savage passes at me, but in a twinkling his sword
+flew across the room.
+
+"_Voilà!_" I shouted, lurching forward, as if I had luck and not skill
+to thank for it. "Now the next! Come on, come on--you white-livered
+knaves!" And, pretending a drunken frenzy, I flung my weapon bodily
+amongst them, and seizing the nearest, began to wrestle with him.
+
+In a moment they all threw themselves upon me, and, swearing
+copiously, bore me back to the door. The wine-merchant cried
+breathlessly to the woman to open it, and in a twinkling they had me
+through it and half way across the road. The one thing I feared was a
+knife-thrust in the mêlée; but I had to run that risk, and the men
+were honest enough and, thinking me drunk, indulgent. In a trice I
+found myself on my back in the dirt, with my head humming; and heard
+the bars of the door fall noisily into their places.
+
+I got up and went to the door, and, to play out my part, hammered on
+it frantically, crying out to them to let me in. But the three
+travellers only jeered at me, and the landlord, coming to the window,
+with his head bleeding, shook his fist at me and cursed me for a
+mischief-maker.
+
+Baffled in this I retired to a log which lay in the road a few paces
+from the house, and sat down on it to await events. With torn clothes
+and bleeding face, hatless and covered with dirt, I was in scarcely
+better case than my opponent. It was raining, too, and the dripping
+branches swayed over my head. The wind was in the south--the coldest
+quarter. I began to feel chilled and dispirited. If my scheme failed,
+I had forfeited roof and bed to no purpose, and placed future progress
+out of the question. It was a critical moment.
+
+But at last that happened for which I had been looking. The door swung
+open a few inches, and a man came noiselessly out; the door was
+quickly barred behind him. He stood a moment, waiting on the threshold
+and peering into the gloom; and seemed to expect to be attacked.
+Finding himself unmolested, however, and all quiet, he went off
+steadily down the street--towards the Château.
+
+I let a couple of minutes go by and then I followed. I had no
+difficulty in hitting on the track at the end of the street, but when
+I had once plunged into the wood, I found myself in darkness so
+intense that I soon strayed from the path, and fell over roots, and
+tore my clothes with thorns, and lost my temper twenty times before I
+found the path again. However, I gained the bridge at last, and caught
+sight of a light twinkling before me. To make for it across the meadow
+and terrace was an easy task; yet when I had reached the door and had
+hammered upon it, I was in so sorry a plight that I sank down, and had
+no need to play a part or pretend to be worse than I was.
+
+For a long time no one answered. The dark house towering above me
+remained silent. I could hear, mingled with the throbbings of my
+heart, the steady croaking of the frogs in a pond near the stables;
+but no other sound. In a frenzy of impatience and disgust I stood up
+again and hammered, kicking with my heels on the nail-studded door,
+and crying out desperately, "_A moi_! _A moi!_"
+
+Then, or a moment later, I heard a remote door opened; footsteps as of
+more than one person drew near. I raised my voice and cried again, "_A
+moi!_"
+
+"Who is there?" a voice asked.
+
+"A gentleman in distress," I answered piteously, moving my hands
+across the door. "For God's sake open and let me in. I am hurt, and
+dying of cold."
+
+"What brings you here?" the voice asked sharply. Despite its tartness,
+I fancied it was a woman's.
+
+"Heaven knows!" I answered desperately. "I cannot tell. They
+maltreated me at the inn, and threw me into the street. I crawled
+away, and have been wandering in the wood for hours. Then I saw a
+light here."
+
+Thereon, some muttering took place on the other side of the door, to
+which I had my ear. It ended in the bars being lowered. The door swung
+partly open and a light shone out, dazzling me. I tried to shade my
+eyes with my fingers, and as I did so fancied I heard a murmur of
+pity. But when I looked in under screen of my hand I saw only one
+person--the man who held the light, and his aspect was so strange, so
+terrifying, that, shaken as I was by fatigue, I recoiled a step.
+
+He was a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short scanty
+jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to bend his
+neck, he carried his head with a strange stiffness.
+
+And that head! Never did living man show a face so like death. His
+forehead was bald and white, his cheek-bones stood out under the
+strained skin, all the lower part of his face fell in, his jaws
+receded, his cheeks were hollow, his lips and chin were thin and
+fleshless. He seemed to have only one expression--a fixed grin.
+
+While I stood looking at this formidable creature he made a quick
+motion to shut the door again, smiling more widely. I had the presence
+of mind to thrust in my foot, and, before he could resent the act, a
+voice in the background cried: "For shame, Clon! Stand back. Stand
+back, do you hear? I am afraid, Monsieur, that you are hurt."
+
+The last words were my welcome to that house; and, spoken at an hour
+and in circumstances so gloomy, they made a lasting impression. Round
+the hall ran a gallery, and this, the height of the apartment, and the
+dark panelling seemed to swallow up the light. I stood within the
+entrance (as it seemed to me) of a huge cave; the skull-headed porter
+had the air of an ogre. Only the voice which greeted me dispelled the
+illusion. I turned trembling towards the quarter whence it came, and,
+shading my eyes, made out a woman's form standing in a doorway under
+the gallery. A second figure, which I took to be that of the servant I
+had seen at the inn, loomed uncertainly beside her.
+
+I bowed in silence. My teeth were chattering I was faint without
+feigning, and felt a kind of terror, hard to explain, at the sound of
+this woman's voice.
+
+"One of our people has told me about you," she continued, speaking out
+of the darkness. "I am sorry that this has happened to you here, but I
+am afraid that you were indiscreet."
+
+"I take all the blame, Madame," I answered humbly. "I ask only shelter
+for the night."
+
+"The time has not yet come when we cannot give our friends that!" she
+answered, with noble courtesy. "When it does, Monsieur, we shall be
+homeless ourselves."
+
+I shivered, looking anywhere but at her; for I had not sufficiently
+pictured this scene of my arrival--I had not foreseen its details; and
+now I took part in it I felt a miserable meanness weigh me down. I had
+never from the first liked the work! But, I had had no choice. And I
+had no choice now. Luckily, the guise in which I came, my fatigue, and
+wound were a sufficient mark, or I should have incurred suspicion at
+once. For I am sure that if ever in this world a brave man wore a
+hang-dog air, or Gil de Berault fell below himself, it was then and
+there--on Madame de Cocheforêt's threshold, with her welcome sounding
+in my ears.
+
+One, I think, did suspect me. Clon, the porter, continued to hold the
+door obstinately ajar and to eye me with grinning spite, until his
+mistress, with some sharpness, bade him drop the bars, and conduct me
+to a room.
+
+"Do you go also, Louis," she continued, speaking to the man beside
+her, "and see this gentleman comfortably disposed. I am sorry," she
+added, addressing me in the graceful tone she had before used, and I
+thought I could see her head bend in the darkness, "that our present
+circumstances do not permit us to welcome you more fitly, Monsieur.
+But the troubles of the times--however, you will excuse what is
+lacking. Until to-morrow, I have the honour to bid you goodnight."
+
+"Good-night, Madame," I stammered, trembling. I had not been able to
+distinguish her face in the gloom of the doorway, but her voice, her
+greeting, her presence, unmanned me. I was troubled and perplexed; I
+had not spirit to kick a dog. I followed the two servants from the
+hall without heeding how we went; nor was it until we came to a full
+stop at a door in a whitewashed corridor, and it was forced upon me
+that something was in question between my two conductors, that I began
+to take notice.
+
+Then I saw that one of them, Louis, wished to lodge me here where we
+stood. The porter, on the other hand, who held the keys, would not. He
+did not speak a word, nor did the other--and this gave a queer ominous
+character to the debate; but he continued to jerk his head towards the
+farther end of the corridor, and, at last, he carried his point. Louis
+shrugged his shoulders, and moved on, glancing askance at me; and I,
+not understanding the matter in debate, followed the pair in silence.
+
+We reached the end of the corridor, and there, for an instant, the
+monster with the keys paused and grinned at me. Then he turned into a
+narrow passage on the left, and after following it for some paces,
+halted before a small, strong door. His key jarred in the lock, but he
+forced it shrieking round, and with a savage flourish threw the door
+open.
+
+I walked in and saw a mean, bare chamber with barred windows. The
+floor was indifferently clean, there was no furniture. The yellow
+light of the lanthorn falling on the stained walls gave the place the
+look of a dungeon. I turned to the two men. "This is not a very good
+room," I said. "And it feels damp. Have you no other?"
+
+Louis looked doubtfully at his companion. But the porter shook his
+head stubbornly.
+
+"Why does he not speak?" I asked with impatience.
+
+"He is dumb," Louis answered.
+
+"Dumb!" I exclaimed. "But he hears."
+
+"He has ears," the servant answered drily. "But he has no tongue,
+Monsieur."
+
+I shuddered. "How did he lose it?" I asked.
+
+"At Rochelle. He was a spy, and the King's people took him the day the
+town surrendered. They spared his life, but cut out his tongue."
+
+"Ah!" I said. I wished to say more, to be natural, to show myself at
+my ease. But the porter's eyes seemed to burn into me, and my own
+tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. He opened his lips and pointed
+to his throat with a horrid gesture, and I shook my head and turned
+from him-- "You can let me have some bedding?" I murmured hastily, for
+the sake of saying something, and to escape.
+
+"Of course, Monsieur," Louis answered. "I will fetch some."
+
+He went away, thinking doubtless that Clon would stay with me. But
+after waiting a minute the porter strode off also with the lanthorn,
+leaving me to stand in the middle of the damp, dark room, and reflect
+on the position. It was plain that Clon suspected me. This prison-like
+room, with its barred window at the back of the house, and in the wing
+farthest from the stables, proved so much. Clearly, he was a dangerous
+fellow, of whom I must beware. I had just begun to wonder how Madame
+could keep such a monster in her house, when I heard his step
+returning. He came in, lighting Louis, who carried a small pallet and
+a bundle of coverings.
+
+The dumb man had, besides the lanthorn, a bowl of water and a piece of
+rag in his hand. He set them down, and going out again, fetched in a
+stool. Then he hung up the lanthorn on a nail, took the bowl and rag,
+and invited me to sit down.
+
+I was loth to let him touch me; but he continued to stand over me,
+pointing and grinning with dark persistence, and, rather than stand on
+a trifle, I sat down at last, and gave him his way. He bathed my head
+carefully enough, and I dare say did it good; but I understood. I knew
+that his only desire was to learn whether the cut was real or a
+pretence. I began to fear him more and more, and, until he was gone
+from the room, dared scarcely lift my face, lest he should read too
+much in it.
+
+Alone, even, I felt uncomfortable. This seemed so sinister a business,
+and so ill begun. I was in the house. But Madame's frank voice haunted
+me, and the dumb man's eyes, full of suspicion and menace. When I
+presently got up and tried my door, I found it locked. The room
+smelled dank and close--like a vault. I could not see through the
+barred window; but I could hear the boughs sweep it in ghostly
+fashion; and I guessed that it looked out where the wood grew close to
+the walls of the house; and that even in the day the sun never peeped
+through it.
+
+Nevertheless, tired and worn out, I slept at last. When I awoke the
+room was full of grey light, the door stood open, and Louis, looking
+ashamed of himself, waited by my pallet with a cup of wine in his
+hand, and some bread and fruit on a platter.
+
+"Will Monsieur be good enough to rise?" he said. "It is eight
+o'clock."
+
+"Willingly," I answered tartly. "Now that the door is unlocked."
+
+He turned red. "It was an oversight," he stammered. "Clon is
+accustomed to lock the door, and he did it inadvertently, forgetting
+that there was any one--"
+
+"Inside!" I said drily.
+
+"Precisely, Monsieur."
+
+"Ah!" I replied. "Well, I do not think the oversight would please
+Madame de Cocheforêt, if she heard of it?"
+
+"If Monsieur would have the kindness not to--"
+
+"Mention it, my good fellow?" I answered, looking at him with meaning,
+as I rose. "No; but it must not occur again."
+
+I saw that this man was not like Clon. He had the instincts of the
+family servant, and freed from the influences of darkness, felt
+ashamed of his conduct. While he arranged my clothes, he looked round
+the room with an air of distaste, and muttered once or twice that the
+furniture of the principal chambers was packed away.
+
+"M. de Cocheforêt is abroad, I think?" I said, as I dressed.
+
+"And likely to remain there," the man answered carelessly, shrugging
+his shoulders. "Monsieur will doubtless have heard that he is in
+trouble. In the meantime, the house is triste, and Monsieur must
+overlook much, if he stays. Madame lives retired, and the roads are
+ill-made and visitors few."
+
+"When the lion was ill the jackals left him," I said.
+
+Louis nodded. "It is true," he answered simply. He made no boast or
+brag on his own account, I noticed; and it came home to me that he was
+a faithful fellow, such as I love. I questioned him discreetly, and
+learned that he and Clon and an older man who lived over the stables
+were the only male servants left of a great household. Madame, her
+sister-in-law, and three women completed the family.
+
+It took me some time to repair my wardrobe, so that I dare say it was
+nearly ten when I left my dismal little room. I found Louis waiting in
+the corridor, and he told me that Madame de Cocheforêt and
+Mademoiselle were in the rose-garden, and would be pleased to receive
+me. I nodded, and he guided me through several dim passages to a
+parlour with an open door, through which the sun shone in gaily.
+Cheered by the morning air and this sudden change to pleasantness and
+life, I stepped lightly out.
+
+The two ladies were walking up and down a wide path which bisected the
+garden. The weeds grew rankly in the gravel underfoot, the rose-bushes
+which bordered the walk thrust their branches here and there in
+untrained freedom, a dark yew hedge which formed the background
+bristled with rough shoots and sadly needed trimming. But I did not
+see any of these things then. The grace, the noble air, the
+distinction of the two women who paced slowly to meet me--and who
+shared all these qualities greatly as they differed in others--left me
+no power to notice trifles.
+
+Mademoiselle was a head shorter than her _belle s[oe]ur_--a slender
+woman and petite, with a beautiful face and a fair complexion. She
+walked with dignity, but beside Madame's stately figure she seemed
+almost childish. And it was characteristic of the two that
+Mademoiselle as they drew near to me regarded me with sorrowful
+attention, Madame with a grave smile.
+
+I bowed low. They returned the salute. "This is my sister," Madame de
+Cocheforêt said, with a slight, a very slight air of condescension.
+"Will you please to tell me your name, Monsieur?"
+
+"I am M. de Barthe, a gentleman of Normandy," I said, taking the name
+of my mother. My own, by a possibility, might be known.
+
+Madame's face wore a puzzled look. "I do not know your name, I think,"
+she said thoughtfully. Doubtless she was going over in her mind all
+the names with which conspiracy had made her familiar.
+
+"That is my misfortune, Madame," I said humbly.
+
+"Nevertheless I am going to scold you," she rejoined, still eyeing me
+with some keenness. "I am glad to see that you are none the worse for
+your adventure--but others may be. And you should have borne that in
+mind."
+
+"I do not think that I hurt the man seriously," I stammered.
+
+"I do not refer to that," she answered coldly. "You know, or should
+know, that we are in disgrace here; that the Government regards us
+already with an evil eye, and that a very small thing would lead them
+to garrison the village and perhaps oust us from the little the wars
+have left us. You should have known this and considered it," she
+continued. "Whereas--I do not say that you are a braggart, M. de
+Barthe. But on this one occasion you seem to have played the part of
+one."
+
+"Madame, I did not think," I stammered.
+
+"Want of thought causes much evil," she answered, smiling. "However, I
+have spoken, and we trust that while you stay with us you will be more
+careful. For the rest, Monsieur," she continued graciously, raising
+her hand to prevent me speaking, "we do not know why you are here, or
+what plans you are pursuing. And we do not wish to know. It is enough
+that you are of our side. This house is at your service as long as you
+please to use it. And if we can aid you in any other way we will do
+so."
+
+"Madame!" I exclaimed; and there I stopped. I could not say any more.
+The rose-garden, with its air of neglect, the shadow of the quiet
+house that fell across it, the great yew hedge which backed it, and
+was the pattern of one under which I had played in childhood--all had
+points that pricked me. But the women's kindness, their unquestioning
+confidence, the noble air of hospitality which moved them! Against
+these and their placid beauty in its peaceful frame I had no shield. I
+turned away, and feigned to be overcome by gratitude. "I have no
+words--to thank you!" I muttered presently. "I am a little shaken this
+morning. I--pardon me."
+
+"We will leave you for a while," Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt said, in
+gentle, pitying tones. "The air will revive you. Louis shall call you
+when we go to dinner, M. de Barthe. Come, Elise."
+
+I bowed low to hide my face, and they nodded pleasantly--not looking
+closely at me--as they walked by me to the house. I watched the two
+gracious, pale-robed figures until the doorway swallowed them, and
+then I walked away to a quiet corner where the shrubs grew highest and
+the yew hedge threw its deepest shadow, and I stood to think.
+
+They were strange thoughts, I remember. If the oak can think at the
+moment the wind uproots it, or the gnarled thorn-bush when the
+landslip tears it from the slope, they may have such thoughts. I
+stared at the leaves, at the rotting blossoms, into the dark cavities
+of the hedge; I stared mechanically, dazed and wondering. What was the
+purpose for which I was here? What was the work I had come to do?
+Above all, how--my God! how was I to do it in the face of these
+helpless women, who trusted me--who opened their house to me? Clon had
+not frightened me, nor the loneliness of the leagued village, nor the
+remoteness of this corner where the dread Cardinal seemed a name, and
+the King's writ ran slowly, and the rebellion, long quenched
+elsewhere, still smouldered. But Madame's pure faith, the younger
+woman's tenderness--how was I to face these?
+
+I cursed the Cardinal, I cursed the English fool who had brought me to
+this, I cursed the years of plenty and scarceness and the Quartier
+Marais, and Zaton's, where I had lived like a pig, and--
+
+A touch fell on my arm. I turned. It was Clon. How he had stolen up so
+quietly, how long he had been at my elbow, I could not tell. But his
+eyes gleamed spitefully in their deep sockets, and he laughed with his
+fleshless lips; and I hated him. In the daylight the man looked more
+like a death's-head than ever. I fancied I read in his face that he
+knew my secret, and I flashed into rage at sight of him.
+
+"What is it?" I cried, with another oath. "Don't lay your corpse-claws
+on me!"
+
+He mowed at me, and, bowing with ironical politeness, pointed to the
+house. "Is Madame served?" I said impatiently, crushing down my anger.
+"Is that what you mean, fool?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Very well," I retorted. "I can find my way, then. You may go!"
+
+He fell behind, and I strode back through the sunshine and flowers,
+and along the grass-grown paths, to the door by which I had come. I
+walked fast, but his shadow kept pace with me, driving out the strange
+thoughts in which I had been indulging. Slowly but surely it darkened
+my mood. After all, this was a little, little place; the people who
+lived here--I shrugged my shoulders. France, power, pleasure, life lay
+yonder in the great city. A boy might wreck himself here for a fancy;
+a man of the world, never. When I entered the room, where the two
+ladies stood waiting for me by the table, I was myself again.
+
+"Clon made you understand, then?" the younger woman said kindly.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," I answered. On which I saw the two smile at one
+another, and I added: "He is a strange creature. I wonder you can bear
+to have him near you."
+
+"Poor man! You do not know his story?" Madame said.
+
+"I have heard something of it," I answered. "Louis told me."
+
+"Well, I do shudder at him, sometimes," she replied, in a low voice.
+"He has suffered--and horribly, and for us. But I wish it had been on
+any other service. Spies are necessary things, but one does not wish
+to have to do with them! Anything in the nature of treachery is so
+horrible."
+
+"Quick, Louis! the cognac, if you have any there!" Mademoiselle
+exclaimed. "I am sure you are--still feeling ill, Monsieur."
+
+"No, I thank you," I muttered hoarsely, making an effort to recover
+myself. "I am quite well. It was an old wound that sometimes touches
+me."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                       MADAME AND MADEMOISELLE.
+
+
+To be frank, however, it was not the old wound that touched me so
+nearly, but Madame's words; which, finishing what Clon's sudden
+appearance in the garden had begun, went a long way towards hardening
+me and throwing me back into myself. I saw with bitterness--what I had
+perhaps forgotten for a moment--how great was the chasm which
+separated me from these women; how impossible it was we could long
+think alike; how far apart in views, in experience, in aims we were.
+And while I made a mock in my heart of their high-flown sentiments--or
+thought I did--I laughed no less at the folly which had led me to
+dream, even for a moment, that I could, at my age, go back--go back
+and risk all for a whim, a scruple, the fancy of a lonely hour.
+
+I dare say something of this showed in my face: for Madame's eyes
+mirrored a dim reflection of trouble as she looked at me, and
+Mademoiselle ate nervously and at random. At any rate, I fancied so,
+and I hastened to compose myself; and the two, in pressing upon me the
+simple dainties of the table, soon forgot, or appeared to forget, the
+incident.
+
+Yet in spite of this _contretemps_, that first meal had a strange
+charm for me. The round table whereat we dined was spread inside the
+open door which led to the garden, so that the October sunshine fell
+full on the spotless linen and quaint old plate, and the fresh balmy
+air filled the room with the scent of sweet herbs. Louis served us
+with the mien of major-domo, and set on each dish as though it had
+been a peacock or a mess of ortolans. The woods provided the larger
+portion of our meal; the garden did its part; the confections
+Mademoiselle had cooked with her own hand.
+
+By-and-bye, as the meal went on, as Louis trod to and fro across the
+polished floor, and the last insects of summer hummed sleepily
+outside, and the two gracious faces continued to smile at me out of
+the gloom--for the ladies sat with their backs to the door--I began to
+dream again. I began to sink again into folly--that was half pleasure,
+half pain. The fury of the gaming-house and the riot of Zaton's seemed
+far away. The triumphs of the fencing-room--even they grew cheap and
+tawdry. I thought of existence as one outside it. I balanced this
+against that, and wondered whether, after all, the red soutane were so
+much better than the homely jerkin, or the fame of a day than ease and
+safety.
+
+And life at Cocheforêt was all after the pattern of this dinner. Each
+day, I might almost say each meal, gave rise to the same sequence of
+thoughts. In Clon's presence, or when some word of Madame's,
+unconsciously harsh, reminded me of the distance between us, I was
+myself. At other times, in face of this peaceful and intimate life,
+which was only rendered possible by the remoteness of the place and
+the peculiar circumstances in which the ladies stood, I felt a strange
+weakness. The loneliness of the woods that encircled the house, and
+here and there afforded a distant glimpse of snow-clad peaks; the
+absence of any link to bind me to the old life, so that at intervals
+it seemed unreal; the remoteness of the great world, all tended to sap
+my will and weaken the purpose which had brought me to this place.
+
+On the fourth day after my coming, however, something happened to
+break the spell. It chanced that I came late to dinner, and entered
+the room hastily and without ceremony, expecting to find Madame and
+her sister already seated. Instead, I found them talking in a low tone
+by the open door, with every mark of disorder in their appearance;
+while Clon and Louis stood at a little distance with downcast faces
+and perplexed looks.
+
+I had tune to see all this, and then my entrance wrought a sudden
+change. Clon and Louis sprang to attention; Madame and her sister came
+to the table and sat down, and made a shallow pretence of being at
+their ease. But Mademoiselle's face was pale, her hand trembled; and
+though Madame's greater self-command enabled her to carry off the
+matter better, I saw that she was not herself. Once or twice she spoke
+harshly to Louis; she fell at other times into a brown study; and when
+she thought I was not watching her, her face wore a look of deep
+anxiety.
+
+I wondered what all this meant; and I wondered more when, after the
+meal, the two walked in the garden for an hour with Clon. Mademoiselle
+came from this interview alone, and I was sure that she had been
+weeping. Madame and the dark porter stayed outside some time longer;
+then she, too, came in, and disappeared.
+
+Clon did not return with her, and when I went into the garden five
+minutes later Louis also had vanished. Save for two women who sat
+sewing at an upper window, the house seemed to be deserted. Not a
+sound broke the afternoon stillness of room or garden, and yet I felt
+that more was happening in this silence than appeared on the surface.
+I began to grow curious--suspicious; and presently slipped out myself
+by way of the stables, and, skirting the wood at the back of the
+house, gained with a little trouble the bridge which crossed the
+stream and led to the village.
+
+Turning round at this point, I could see the house, and I moved a
+little aside into the underwood, and stood gazing at the windows,
+trying to unriddle the matter. It was not likely that M. de Cocheforêt
+would repeat his visit so soon; and, besides, the women's emotions had
+been those of pure dismay and grief, unmixed with any of the
+satisfaction to which such a meeting, though snatched by stealth,
+would give rise. I discarded my first thought, therefore--that he had
+returned unexpectedly--and I sought for another solution.
+
+But none was on the instant forthcoming. The windows remained
+obstinately blind, no figures appeared on the terrace, the garden lay
+deserted, and without life. My departure had not, as I half expected
+it would, drawn the secret into light.
+
+I watched a while, at times cursing my own meanness; but the
+excitement of the moment and the quest tided me over that. Then I
+determined to go down into the village and see whether anything was
+moving there. I had been down to the inn once, and had been received
+half sulkily, half courteously, as a person privileged at the great
+house, and therefore to be accepted. It would not be thought odd if I
+went again; and after a moment's thought, I started down the track.
+
+This, where it ran through the wood, was so densely shaded that the
+sun penetrated to it little, and in patches only. A squirrel stirred
+at times, sliding round a trunk, or scampering across the dry leaves.
+Occasionally a pig grunted and moved farther into the wood. But the
+place was very quiet, and I do not know how it was that I surprised
+Clon instead of being surprised by him.
+
+He was walking along the path before me with his eyes on the
+ground--walking so slowly, and with his lean frame so bent that I
+might have supposed him ill if I had not remarked the steady movement
+of his head from right to left, and the alert touch with which he now
+and again displaced a clod of earth or a cluster of leaves. By-and-bye
+he rose stiffly, and looked round him suspiciously; but by that time I
+had slipped behind a trunk, and was not to be seen; and after a brief
+interval he went back to his task, stooping over it more closely, if
+possible, than before, and applying himself with even greater care.
+
+By that time I had made up my mind that he was tracking some one. But
+whom? I could not make a guess at that. I only knew that the plot was
+thickening, and began to feel the eagerness of the chase. Of course,
+if the matter had not to do with Cocheforêt, it was no affair of mine;
+but though it seemed unlikely that anything could bring him back so
+soon, he might still be at the bottom of this. And, besides, I felt a
+natural curiosity. When Clon at last improved his pace, and went on to
+the village, I took up his task. I called to mind all the wood-lore I
+had ever known, and scanned trodden mould and crushed leaves with
+eager eyes. But in vain. I could make nothing of it at all, and rose
+at last with an aching back and no advantage.
+
+I did not go on to the village after that, but returned to the house,
+where I found Madame pacing the garden. She looked up eagerly on
+hearing my step; and I was mistaken if she was not disappointed--if
+she had not been expecting some one else. She hid the feeling bravely,
+however, and met me with a careless word; but she turned to the house
+more than once while we talked, and she seemed to be all the while on
+the watch, and uneasy. I was not surprised when Clon's figure
+presently appeared in the doorway, and she left me abruptly, and went
+to him. I only felt more certain than before that there was something
+strange on foot. What it was, and whether it had to do with M. de
+Cocheforêt, I could not tell. But there it was, and I grew more
+curious the longer I remained alone.
+
+She came back to me presently, looking thoughtful and a trifle
+downcast. "That was Clon, was it not?" I said, studying her face.
+
+"Yes," she answered. She spoke absently, and did not look at me.
+
+"How does he talk to you?" I asked, speaking a trifle curtly.
+
+As I intended, my tone roused her. "By signs," she said.
+
+"Is he--is he not a little mad?" I ventured. I wanted to make her talk
+and forget herself.
+
+She looked at me with sudden keenness, then dropped her eyes.
+
+"You do not like him?" she said, a note of challenge in her voice. "I
+have noticed that, Monsieur."
+
+"I think he does not like me," I replied.
+
+"He is less trustful than we are," she answered naïvely. "It is
+natural that he should be. He has seen more of the world."
+
+That silenced me for a moment, but she did not seem to notice it. "I
+was looking for him a little while ago, and I could not find him," I
+said, after a pause.
+
+"He has been into the village," she answered.
+
+I longed to pursue the matter farther; but though she seemed to
+entertain no suspicion of me, I dared not run the risk. I tried her,
+instead, on another tack. "Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt does not seem
+very well to-day?" I said.
+
+"No?" she answered carelessly. "Well, now you speak of it, I do not
+think she is. She is often anxious about--my husband."
+
+She uttered the last two words with a little hesitation, and looked at
+me quickly when she had spoken them. We were sitting at the moment on
+a stone seat which had the wall of the house for a back; and,
+fortunately, I was toying with the branch of a creeping plant that
+hung over it, so that she could not see more than the side of my face.
+For I knew that it altered. Over my voice, however, I had more
+control, and I hastened to answer, "Yes, I suppose so," as innocently
+as possible.
+
+"He is at Bosost--in Spain. You knew that, I conclude?" she said, with
+a certain sharpness. And she looked me in the face again very
+directly.
+
+"Yes," I answered, beginning to tremble.
+
+"I suppose you have heard, too, that he--that he sometimes crosses the
+border?" she continued, in a low voice, but with a certain ring of
+insistence in her tone. "Or, if you have not heard it, you guess it?"
+
+I was in a quandary, and grew, in one second, hot all over. Uncertain
+what amount of knowledge I ought to admit, I took refuge in gallantry.
+"I should be surprised if he did not," I answered, with a bow, "being,
+as he is, so close, and having such an inducement to return, Madame."
+
+She drew a long, shivering sigh--at the thought of his peril, I
+fancied, and sat back against the wall. Nor did she say any more,
+though I heard her sigh again. In a moment she rose. "The afternoons
+are growing chilly," she said; "I will go in and see how Mademoiselle
+is. Sometimes she does not come to supper. If she cannot descend this
+evening, I am afraid you must excuse me too, Monsieur."
+
+I said what was right, and watched her go in; and, as I did so, I
+loathed my errand, and the mean contemptible curiosity which it had
+planted in my mind, more than at any former time. These women--I could
+find it in my heart to hate them for their frankness, for their
+foolish confidence, and the silly trustfulness that made them so easy
+a prey!
+
+_Nom de Dieu!_ What did the woman mean by telling me all this? To meet
+me in such a way, to disarm one by such methods, was to take an unfair
+advantage. It put a vile--ay, the vilest--aspect, on the work I had to
+do.
+
+Yet it was very odd! What could M. de Cocheforêt mean by returning so
+soon, if M. de Cocheforêt was here? And, on the other hand, if it was
+not his unexpected presence that had so upset the house, what was the
+secret? Whom had Clon been tracking? And what was the cause of
+Madame's anxiety? In a few minutes I began to grow curious again; and,
+as the ladies did not appear at supper, I had leisure to give my brain
+full license, and in the course of an hour thought of a hundred keys
+to the mystery. But none exactly fitted the lock, or laid open the
+secret.
+
+A false alarm that evening helped to puzzle me still more. I was
+sitting, about an hour after supper, on the same seat in the garden--I
+had my cloak and was smoking--when Madame came out like a ghost, and,
+without seeing me, flitted away through the darkness toward the
+stables. For a moment I hesitated, then I followed her. She went down
+the path and round the stables, and so far I understood; but when she
+had in this way gained the rear of the west wing, she took a track
+through the thicket to the east of the house again, and so came back
+to the garden. This gained, she came up the path and went in through
+the parlour door, and disappeared--after making a clear circuit of the
+house, and not once pausing or looking to right or left! I confess I
+was fairly baffled. I sank back on the seat I had left, and said to
+myself that this was the lamest of all conclusions. I was sure that
+she had exchanged no word with any one. I was equally sure that she
+had not detected my presence behind her. Why, then, had she made this
+strange promenade, alone, unprotected, an hour after nightfall? No dog
+had bayed, no one had moved, she had not once paused, or listened,
+like a person expecting a rencontre. I could not make it out. And I
+came no nearer to solving it, though I lay awake an hour beyond my
+usual time.
+
+In the morning neither of the ladies descended to dinner, and I heard
+that Mademoiselle was not so well. After a lonely meal, therefore--I
+missed them more than I should have supposed--I retired to my
+favourite seat, and fell to meditating.
+
+The day was fine, and the garden pleasant. Sitting there with my eyes
+on the old-fashioned herb-beds, with the old-fashioned scents in the
+air, and the dark belt of trees bounding the view on either side, I
+could believe that I had been out of Paris not three weeks, but three
+months. The quiet lapped me round. I could fancy that I had never
+loved anything else. The wood-doves cooed in the stillness;
+occasionally the harsh cry of a jay jarred the silence. It was an hour
+after noon, and hot. I think I nodded.
+
+On a sudden, as if in a dream, I saw Clon's face peering at me round
+the angle of the parlour door. He looked, and in a moment withdrew,
+and I heard whispering. The door was gently closed. Then all was still
+again.
+
+But I was wide awake now, and thinking hard. Clearly the people of the
+house wished to assure themselves that I was asleep and safely out of
+the way. As clearly, it was to my interest to know what was passing.
+Giving way to the temptation, I rose quietly, and, stooping below the
+level of the windows, slipped round the east end of the house, passing
+between it and the great yew hedge. Here I found all still, and no
+one stirring. So, keeping a wary eye about me, I went on round
+the house--reversing the route which Madame had taken the night
+before--until I gained the rear of the stables. Here I had scarcely
+paused a second to scan the ground before two persons came out of the
+stable-court They were Madame and the porter.
+
+They stood a brief while outside, and looked up and down. Then Madame
+said something to the man, and he nodded. Leaving him standing where
+he was, she crossed the grass with a quick, light step, and vanished
+among the trees.
+
+In a moment my mind was made up to follow; and, as Clon turned at once
+and went in, I was able to do so before it was too late. Bending low
+among the shrubs, I ran hot-foot to the point where Madame had entered
+the wood. Here I found a narrow path, and ran nimbly along it, and
+presently saw her grey robe fluttering among the trees before me. It
+only remained to keep out of her sight and give her no chance of
+discovering that she was followed; and this I set myself to do. Once
+or twice she glanced round, but the wood was of beech, the light which
+passed between the leaves was mere twilight, and my clothes were
+dark-coloured. I had every advantage, therefore, and little to fear as
+long as I could keep her in view and still remain myself at such a
+distance that the rustle of my tread would not disturb her.
+
+Assured that she was on her way to meet her husband, whom my presence
+kept from the house, I felt that the crisis had come at last; and I
+grew more excited with each step I took. True, I detested the task of
+watching her: it filled me with peevish disgust. But in proportion as
+I hated it I was eager to have it done and be done with it, and
+succeed, and stuff my ears and begone from the scene. When she
+presently came to the verge of the beech wood, and, entering a little
+open clearing, seemed to loiter, I went cautiously. This, I thought,
+must be the rendezvous; and I held back warily, looking to see him
+step out of the thicket.
+
+But he did not, and by-and-bye she quickened her pace. She crossed the
+open and entered a wide ride cut through a low, dense wood of alder
+and dwarf oak--a wood so closely planted, and so intertwined with
+hazel and elder and box that the branches rose like a solid wall,
+twelve feet high, on either side of the track.
+
+Down this she passed, and I stood and watched her go; for I dared not
+follow. The ride stretched away as straight as a line for four or five
+hundred yards, a green path between green walls. To enter it was to be
+immediately detected, if she turned; while the thicket itself
+permitted no passage. I stood baffled and raging, and watched her pass
+along. It seemed an age before she at last reached the end, and,
+turning sharply to the right, was in an instant gone from sight.
+
+I waited then no longer. I started off, and, running as lightly and
+quietly as I could, I sped down the green alley. The sun shone into
+it, the trees kept off the wind, and between heat and haste, I sweated
+finely. But the turf was soft, and the ground fell slightly, and in
+little more than a minute I gained the end. Fifty yards short of the
+turning I stayed myself, and, stealing on, looked cautiously the way
+she had gone.
+
+I saw before me a second ride, the twin of the other, and a hundred
+and fifty paces down it her grey figure tripping on between the green
+hedges. I stood and took breath, and cursed the wood and the heat and
+Madame's wariness. We must have come a league or two-thirds of a
+league, at least. How far did the man expect her to plod to meet him?
+I began to grow angry. There is moderation even in the cooking of
+eggs, and this wood might stretch into Spain, for all I knew!
+
+Presently she turned the corner and was gone again, and I had to
+repeat my man[oe]uvre. This time, surely, I should find a change. But
+no! Another green ride stretched away into the depths of the forest,
+with hedges of varying shades--here light and there dark, as hazel and
+elder, or thorn, and yew and box prevailed--but always high and stiff
+and impervious. Half-way down the ride Madame's figure tripped
+steadily on, the only moving thing in sight. I wondered, stood, and,
+when she vanished, followed--only to find that she had entered another
+track, a little narrower, but in every other respect alike.
+
+And so it went on for quite half an hour. Sometimes Madame turned to
+the right, sometimes to the left. The maze seemed to be endless. Once
+or twice I wondered whether she had lost her way, and was merely
+seeking to return. But her steady, purposeful gait, her measured pace,
+forbade the idea. I noticed, too, that she seldom looked behind
+her--rarely to right or left. Once the ride down which she passed was
+carpeted not with green, but with the silvery, sheeny leaves of some
+creeping plant that in the distance had a shimmer like that of water
+at evening. As she trod this, with her face to the low sun, her tall
+grey figure had a pure air that for the moment startled me--she looked
+unearthly. Then I swore in scorn of myself, and at the next corner I
+had my reward. She was no longer walking on. She had stopped, I found,
+and seated herself on a fallen tree that lay in the ride.
+
+For some time I stood in ambush watching her, and with each minute I
+grew more impatient. At last I began to doubt--to have strange
+thoughts. The green walls were growing dark. The sun was sinking; a
+sharp, white peak, miles and miles away, which closed the vista of the
+ride began to flush and colour rosily. Finally, but not before I had
+had leisure to grow uneasy, she stood up and walked on more slowly. I
+waited, as usual, until the next turning hid her. Then I hastened
+after her, and, warily passing round the corner--came face to face
+with her!
+
+I knew all in a moment--that she had fooled me, tricked me, lured me
+away. Her face was white with scorn, her eyes blazed; her figure, as
+she confronted me, trembled with anger and infinite contempt.
+
+"You spy!" she cried. "You hound! You--gentleman! Oh, _mon Dieu!_ if
+you are one of us--if you are really not _canaille_--we shall pay for
+this some day! We shall pay a heavy reckoning in the time to come! I
+did not think," she continued--her every syllable like the lash of a
+whip--"that there was anything so vile as you in this world!"
+
+I stammered something--I do not know what. Her words burned into
+me--into my heart! Had she been a man, I would have struck her dead!
+
+"You thought you deceived me yesterday," she continued, lowering her
+tone, but with no lessening of the passion and contempt which curled
+her lip and gave fulness to her voice. "You plotter! You surface
+trickster! You thought it an easy task to delude a woman--you find
+yourself deluded. God give you shame that you may suffer!" she
+continued mercilessly. "You talked of Clon, but Clon beside you is the
+most honourable of men!"
+
+"Madame," I said hoarsely--and I know my face was grey as ashes--"let
+us understand one another."
+
+"God forbid!" she cried, on the instant. "I would not soil myself!"
+
+"Fie! Madame," I said, trembling. "But then, you are a woman. That
+should cost a man his life!"
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+"You say well," she retorted. "I am not a man. Neither am I Madame.
+Madame de Cocheforêt has spent this afternoon--thanks to your absence
+and your imbecility--with her husband. Yes, I hope that hurts you!"
+she went on, savagely snapping her little white teeth together. "To
+spy and do vile work, and do it ill, Monsieur Mouchard--Monsieur de
+Mouchard, I should say--I congratulate you!"
+
+"You are not Madame de Cocheforêt!" I cried, stunned--even in the
+midst of my shame and rage--by this blow.
+
+"No, Monsieur!" she answered grimly. "I am not! And permit me to point
+out--for we do not all lie easily--that I never said I was. You
+deceived yourself so skilfully that we had no need to trick you."
+
+"Mademoiselle, then?" I muttered.
+
+"Is Madame!" she cried. "Yes, and I am Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt. And
+in that character, and in all others, I beg from this moment to close
+our acquaintance, Sir. When we meet again--if we ever do meet--which
+God forbid!" she cried, her eyes sparkling, "do not presume to speak
+to me, or I will have you flogged by the grooms. And do not stain our
+roof by sleeping under it again. You may lie to-night in the inn. It
+shall not be said that Cocheforêt," she continued proudly, "returned
+even treachery with inhospitality; and I will give orders to that end.
+To-morrow begone back to your master, like the whipped cur you are!
+Spy and coward!"
+
+With the last fierce words she moved away. I would have said
+something, I could almost have found it in my heart to stop her and
+make her hear. Nay, I had dreadful thoughts; for I was the stronger,
+and I might have done with her as I pleased. But she swept by me so
+fearlessly--as I might pass some loathsome cripple in the road--that I
+stood turned to stone. Without looking at me--without turning her head
+to see whether I followed or remained, or what I did--she went
+steadily down the track until the trees and the shadow and the growing
+darkness hid her grey figure from me; and I found myself alone.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                               REVENGE.
+
+
+And full of black rage! Had she only reproached me, or, turning on me
+in the hour of _my_ victory, said all she had now said in the moment
+of her own, I could have borne it. She might have shamed me then, and
+I might have taken the shame to myself, and forgiven her. But, as it
+was, I stood there in the gathering dusk, between the darkening
+hedges, baffled, tricked, defeated! And by a woman! She had pitted her
+wits against mine, her woman's will against my experience, and she had
+come off the victor. And then she had reviled me. As I took it all in,
+and began to comprehend, also, the more remote results, and how
+completely her move had made further progress on my part impossible,
+I hated her. She had tricked me with her gracious ways and her
+slow-coming smile. And, after all--for what she had said--it was this
+man's life or mine. What had I done that another man would not do?
+_Mon Dieu!_ In the future there was nothing I would not do. I would
+make her smart for those words of hers! I would bring her to her
+knees!
+
+Still, hot as I was, an hour might have restored me to coolness. But
+when I started to return, I fell into a fresh rage, for I remembered
+that I did not know my way out of the maze of rides and paths into
+which she had drawn me; and this and the mishaps which followed kept
+my rage hot. For a full hour I wandered in the wood, unable, though I
+knew where the village lay, to find any track which led continuously
+in one direction. Whenever, at the end of each attempt, the thicket
+brought me up short, I fancied I heard her laughing on the farther
+side of the brake; and the ignominy of this chance punishment, the
+check which the confinement placed on my rage, almost maddened me. In
+the darkness, I fell, and rose cursing; I tore my hands with thorns; I
+stained my suit, which had suffered sadly once before. At length, when
+I had almost resigned myself to lie in the wood, I caught sight of the
+lights of the village, and trembling between haste and anger, pressed
+towards them. In a few minutes I stood in the little street.
+
+The lights of the inn shone only fifty yards away; but before I could
+show myself even there pride suggested that I should do something to
+repair my clothes. I stopped, and scraped and brushed them; and, at
+the same time, did what I could to compose my features. Then I
+advanced to the door and knocked. Almost on the instant the landlord's
+voice cried from the inside, "Enter, Monsieur!"
+
+I raised the latch and went in. The man was alone, squatting over the
+fire, warming his hands A black pot simmered on the ashes: as I
+entered, he raised the lid and peeped inside. Then he glanced over his
+shoulder.
+
+"You expected me?" I said defiantly, walking to the hearth, and
+setting one of my damp boots on the logs.
+
+"Yes," he answered, nodding curtly. "Your supper is just ready. I
+thought you would be in about this time."
+
+He grinned as he spoke, and it was with difficulty I suppressed my
+wrath "Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt told you," I said, affecting
+indifference, "where I was?"
+
+"Ay, Mademoiselle--or Madame," he replied, grinning afresh.
+
+So she had told him where she had left me, and how she had tricked me!
+She had made me the village laughing-stock! My rage flashed out afresh
+at the thought, and, at the sight of his mocking face, I raised my
+fist.
+
+But he read the threat in my eyes, and was up in a moment, snarling,
+with his hand on his knife. "Not again, Monsieur!" he cried, in his
+vile _patois_, "My head is sore still. Raise your hand, and I will rip
+you up as I would a pig!"
+
+"Sit down, fool," I said. "I am not going to harm you. Where is your
+wife?"
+
+"About her business."
+
+"Which should be getting my supper," I retorted sharply.
+
+He rose sullenly, and, fetching a platter, poured the mess of broth
+and vegetables into it. Then he went to a cupboard and brought out a
+loaf of black bread and a measure of wine, and set them also on the
+table. "You see it," he said laconically.
+
+"And a poor welcome!" I exclaimed.
+
+He flamed into sudden passion at that. Leaning with both his hands on
+the table, he thrust his rugged face and blood-shot eyes close to
+mine. His mustachios bristled; his beard trembled. "Hark ye, Sirrah!"
+he muttered, with sullen emphasis--"be content! I have my suspicions.
+And if it were not for my lady's orders I would put a knife into you,
+fair or foul, this very night. You would lie snug outside, instead of
+inside, and I do not think any one would be the worse. But, as it is,
+be content. Keep a still tongue; and when you turn your back on
+Cocheforêt to-morrow keep it turned."
+
+"Tut! tut!" I said--but I confess I was a little out of countenance.
+"Threatened men live long, you rascal!"
+
+"In Paris!" he answered significantly. "Not here, Monsieur."
+
+He straightened himself with that, nodded once, and went back to the
+fire, and I shrugged my shoulders and began to eat, affecting to
+forget his presence. The logs on the hearth burned sullenly, and gave
+no light. The poor oil-lump, casting weird shadows from wall to wall,
+served only to discover the darkness. The room, with its low roof and
+earthen floor, and foul clothes flung here and there, reeked of stale
+meals and garlic and vile cooking. I thought of the parlour at
+Cocheforêt, and the dainty table, and the stillness, and the scented
+pot-herbs; and, though I was too old a soldier to eat the worse
+because my spoon lacked washing, I felt the change, and laid it
+savagely at Mademoiselle's door.
+
+The landlord, watching me stealthily from his place by the hearth,
+read my thoughts, and chuckled aloud. "Palace fare, palace manners!"
+he muttered scornfully. "Set a beggar on horseback, and he will
+ride--back to the inn!"
+
+"Keep a civil tongue, will you!" I answered, scowling at him.
+
+"Have you finished?" he retorted.
+
+I rose, without deigning to reply, and, going to the fire, drew off my
+boots, which were wet through. He, on the instant, swept off the wine
+and loaf to the cupboard, and then, coming back for the platter I had
+used, took it, opened the back door, and went out, leaving the door
+ajar. The draught which came in beat the flame of the lamp this way
+and that, and gave the dingy, gloomy room an air still more miserable.
+I rose angrily from the fire, and went to the door, intending to close
+it with a bang.
+
+But when I reached it, I saw something, between door and jamb, which
+stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in which the housewife washed
+pots and the like. I felt some surprise, therefore, when I found a
+light there at this time of night; still more surprise when I saw what
+she was doing.
+
+She was seated on the mud floor, with a rushlight before her, and on
+either side of her a high-piled heap of refuse and rubbish. From one
+of these, at the moment I caught sight of her, she was sorting
+things--horrible, filthy sweepings of road or floor--to the other;
+shaking and sifting each article as she passed it across, and then
+taking up another and repeating the action with it, and so on: all
+minutely, warily, with an air of so much patience and persistence that
+I stood wondering. Some things--rags--she held up between her eyes and
+the light, some she passed through her fingers, some she fairly tore
+in pieces. And all the time her husband stood watching her greedily,
+my platter still in his hand, as if her strange occupation fascinated
+him.
+
+I stood looking, also, for half a minute, perhaps; then the man's eye,
+raised for a single second to the doorway, met mine. He started,
+muttered something to his wife, and, quick as thought, kicked the
+light out, leaving the shed in darkness. Cursing him for an
+ill-conditioned fellow, I walked back to the fire, laughing. In a
+twinkling he followed me, his face dark with rage.
+
+"_Ventre saint gris!_" he exclaimed, thrusting it close to mine. "Is
+not a man's house his own?"
+
+"It is, for me," I answered coolly, shrugging my shoulders. "And his
+wife: if she likes to pick dirty rags at this hour, that is your
+affair."
+
+"Pig of a spy!" he cried, foaming with rage.
+
+I was angry enough at bottom, but I had nothing to gain by quarrelling
+with the fellow; and I curtly bade him remember himself. "Your
+mistress gave you your orders," I said contemptuously. "Obey them!"
+
+He spat on the floor, but at the same time he grew calmer. "You are
+right there," he answered spitefully. "What matter, after all, since
+you leave to-morrow at six? Your horse has been sent down, and your
+baggage is above."
+
+"I will go to it," I retorted. "I want none of your company. Give me a
+light, fellow!"
+
+He obeyed reluctantly, and, glad to turn my back on him, I went up the
+ladder, still wondering faintly, in the midst of my annoyance, what
+his wife was about that my chance detection of her had so enraged him.
+Even now he was not quite himself. He followed me with abuse, and,
+deprived by my departure of any other means of showing his spite, fell
+to shouting through the floor, bidding me remember six o'clock, and be
+stirring; with other taunts, which did not cease until he had tired
+himself out.
+
+The sight of my belongings--which I had left a few hours before at the
+Château--strewn about the floor of this garret, went some way towards
+firing me again. But I was worn out. The indignities and mishaps of
+the evening had, for once, crushed my spirit, and after swearing an
+oath or two I began to pack my bags. Vengeance I would have; but the
+time and manner I left for daylight thought. Beyond six o'clock in the
+morning I did not look forward; and if I longed for anything it was
+for a little of the good Armagnac I had wasted on those louts of
+merchants in the kitchen below. It might have done me good now.
+
+I had wearily strapped up one bag, and nearly filled the other, when I
+came upon something which did, for the moment, rouse the devil in me.
+This was the tiny orange-coloured sachet which Mademoiselle had
+dropped the night I first saw her at the inn, and which, it will be
+remembered, I picked up. Since that night I had not seen it, and had
+as good as forgotten it. Now, as I folded up my other doublet, the one
+I had then been wearing, it dropped from the pocket.
+
+The sight of it recalled all--that night, and Mademoiselle's face in
+the lanthorn light, and my fine plans, and the end of them; and, in a
+fit of childish fury, the outcome of long suppressed passion, I
+snatched up the sachet from the floor and tore it across and across,
+and flung the pieces down. As they fell, a cloud of fine pungent dust
+burst from them, and with the dust something heavier, which tinkled
+sharply on the boards. I looked down to see what this was--perhaps I
+already repented of my act--but for the moment I could see nothing.
+The floor was grimy and uninviting, and the light bad.
+
+In certain moods, however, a man is obstinate about small things, and
+I moved the taper nearer. As I did so, a point of light, a flashing
+sparkle that shone for a second among the dirt and refuse on the
+floor, caught my eye. It was gone in a moment, but I had seen it. I
+stared, and moved the light again, and the spark flashed out afresh,
+this time in a different place. Much puzzled, I knelt, and, in a
+twinkling, found a tiny crystal. Hard by lay another--and another;
+each as large as a fair-sized pea. I took up the three, and rose to my
+feet again, the light in one hand, the crystals in the palm of the
+other.
+
+They were diamonds!--diamonds of price! I knew it in a moment. As I
+moved the taper to and fro above them, and watched the fire glow and
+tremble in their depths, I knew that I held that which would buy the
+crazy inn and all its contents a dozen times over. They were diamonds!
+Gems so fine, and of so rare a water--or I had never seen gems--that
+my hand trembled as I held them, and my head grew hot, and my heart
+beat furiously. For a moment I thought I dreamed, that my fancy played
+me some trick; and I closed my eyes and did not open them again for a
+minute. But when I did, there they were, hard, real, and angular.
+Convinced at last, in a maze of joy and fear, I closed my hand upon
+them, and, stealing on tip-toe to the trapdoor, laid first my saddle
+on it, and then my bags, and over all my cloak, breathing fast the
+while.
+
+Then I stole back; and, taking up the light again, began to search the
+floor, patiently, inch by inch, with naked feet, every sound making me
+tremble as I crept hither and thither over the creaking boards. And
+never was search more successful or better paid. In the fragments of
+the sachet I found six smaller diamonds and a pair of rubies. Eight
+large diamonds I found on the floor. One, the largest and last-found,
+had bounded away, and lay against the wall in the farthest corner. It
+took me an hour to run that one to earth; but afterwards I spent
+another hour on my hands and knees before I gave up the search, and,
+satisfied at last that I had collected all, sat down on my saddle on
+the trap-door, and, by the last flickering light of a candle which I
+had taken from my bag, gloated over my treasure--a treasure worthy of
+fabled Golconda.
+
+Hardly could I believe in its reality, even now. Recalling the jewels
+which the English Duke of Buckingham wore on the occasion of his visit
+to Paris in 1625, and of which there was so much talk, I took these to
+be as fine, though less in number. They should be worth fifteen
+thousand crowns, more or less. Fifteen thousand crowns! And I held
+them in the hollow of my hand--I who was scarcely worth ten thousand
+sous.
+
+The candle going out cut short my admiration. Left in the dark with
+these precious atoms, my first thought was how I might dispose of them
+safely; which I did, for the time, by secreting them in the lining of
+my boot. My second thought turned on the question how they had come
+where I had found them, among the powdered spice and perfumes in
+Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt's sachet.
+
+A minute's reflection enabled me to come very near the secret, and at
+the same time shed a flood of light on several dark places. What Clon
+had been seeking on the path between the house and the village, what
+the goodwife of the inn had sought among the sweepings of yard and
+floor, I knew now,--the sachet. I knew, too, what had caused the
+marked and sudden anxiety I had noticed at the Château--the loss of
+this sachet.
+
+And there for a while I came to a check. But one step more up the
+ladder of thought brought all in view. In a flash I guessed how the
+jewels had come to be in the sachet; and that it was not Mademoiselle
+but M. de Cocheforêt who had mislaid them. And I thought the discovery
+so important that I began to pace the room softly, unable, in my
+excitement, to remain still.
+
+Doubtless he had dropped the jewels in the hurry of his start from the
+inn that night! Doubtless, too, he had carried them in that bizarre
+hiding-place for the sake of safety, considering it unlikely that
+robbers, if he fell into their hands, would take the sachet from him;
+as still less likely that they would suspect it to contain anything of
+value. Everywhere it would pass for a love-gift, the work of his
+mistress.
+
+Nor did my penetration stop there. Ten to one the gems were family
+property, the last treasure of the house; and M. de Cocheforêt, when I
+saw him at the inn, was on his way to convey them out of the country;
+either to secure them from seizure by the Government, or to raise
+money by selling them--money to be spent in some last desperate
+enterprise. For a day or two, perhaps, after leaving Cocheforêt, while
+the mountain road and its chances occupied his thoughts, he had not
+discovered his loss. Then he had searched for the precious sachet,
+missed it, and returned hot-foot on his tracks.
+
+I was certain that I had hit on the true solution; and all that night
+I sat wakeful in the darkness, pondering what I should do. The stones,
+unset as they were, could never be identified, never be claimed. The
+channel by which they had come to my hands could never be traced. To
+all intents they were mine--mine, to do with as I pleased! Fifteen
+thousand crowns!--perhaps twenty thousand crowns!--and I to leave at
+six in the morning, whether I would or no! I might leave for Spain
+with the jewels in my pocket.
+
+I confess I was tempted. The gems were so fine that I doubt not some
+indifferently honest men would have sold salvation for them. But a
+Berault his honour? No! I was tempted, but not for long. Thank God, a
+man may be reduced to living by the fortunes of the dice, and may even
+be called by a woman spy and coward without becoming a thief. The
+temptation soon left me--I take credit for it--and I fell to thinking
+of this and that plan for making use of them. Once it occurred to me
+to take the jewels to the Cardinal and buy my pardon with them; again,
+to use them as a trap to capture Cocheforêt; again to--and then about
+five in the morning, as I sat up on my wretched pallet, while the
+first light stole slowly in through the cobwebbed, hay-stuffed
+lattice, there came to me the real plan, the plan of plans, on which I
+acted.
+
+It charmed me. I smacked my lips over it, and hugged myself, and felt
+my eyes dilate in the darkness, as I conned it. It seemed cruel, it
+seemed mean; I cared nothing. Mademoiselle had boasted of her victory
+over me, of her woman's wits and her acuteness; and of my dulness. She
+had said her grooms should flog me, she had rated me as if I had been
+a dog. Very well; we would see now whose brains were the better, whose
+was the master mind, whose should be the whipping.
+
+The one thing required by my plan was that I should get speech with
+her; that done, I could trust myself, and my new-found weapon, for the
+rest. But that was absolutely necessary; and seeing that there might
+be some difficulty about it, I determined to descend as if my mind
+were made up to go; then, on pretence of saddling my horse, I would
+slip away on foot, and lie in wait near the Château until I saw her
+come out. Or if I could not effect my purpose in that way--either by
+reason of the landlord's vigilance, or for any other cause--my course
+was still easy. I would ride away, and when I had proceeded a mile or
+so, tie up my horse in the forest and return to the wooden bridge.
+Thence I could watch the garden and front of the Château until time
+and chance gave me the opportunity I sought.
+
+So I saw my way quite clearly; and when the fellow below called me,
+reminding me rudely that I must be going, and that it was six o'clock,
+I was ready with my answer. I shouted sulkily that I was coming, and,
+after a decent delay, I took up my saddle and bags and went down.
+
+Viewed by the cold morning light, the inn room looked more smoky, more
+grimy, more wretched than when I had last seen it. The goodwife was
+not visible. The fire was not lighted. No provision, not so much as a
+stirrup-cup or bowl of porridge cheered the heart. I looked round,
+sniffing the stale smell of last night's lamp, and grunted. "Are you
+going to send me out fasting?" I said, affecting a worse humour than I
+felt.
+
+The landlord was standing by the window, stooping over a great pair of
+frayed and furrowed thigh-boots, which he was labouring to soften with
+copious grease. "Mademoiselle ordered no breakfast," he answered, with
+a malicious grin.
+
+"Well, it does not much matter," I replied grandly. "I shall be at
+Auch by noon."
+
+"That is as may be," he answered, with another grin. I did not
+understand him, but I had something else to think about, and I opened
+the door and stepped out, intending to go to the stable. Then in a
+second I comprehended. The cold air laden with woodland moisture met
+me and went to my bones; but it was not that which made me shiver.
+Outside the door, in the road, sitting on horseback in silence, were
+two men. One was Clon. The other, who held a spare horse by the
+rein--my horse--was a man I had seen at the inn, a rough,
+shock-headed, hard-bitten fellow. Both were armed, and Clon was
+booted. His mate rode barefoot, with a rusty spur strapped to one
+heel.
+
+The moment I saw them a sure and certain fear crept into my mind: it
+was that made me shiver. But I did not speak to them. I went in again,
+and closed the door behind me. The landlord was putting on the boots.
+"What does this mean?" I said hoarsely. I had a clear prescience of
+what was coming. "Why are these men here?"
+
+"Orders," he answered laconically.
+
+"Whose orders?" I retorted.
+
+"Whose?" he answered bluntly. "Well, Monsieur, that is my business.
+Enough that we mean to see you out of the country, and out of harm's
+way."
+
+"But if I will not go?" I cried.
+
+"Monsieur will go," he answered coolly. "There are no strangers in the
+village to-day," he added, with a significant smile.
+
+"Do you mean to kidnap me?" I replied, in a rage. Behind the rage
+was something--I will not call it terror, for the brave feel no
+terror--but it was near akin to it. I had had to do with rough men all
+my life, but there was a grimness and truculence in the aspect of
+these three that shook me. When I thought of the dark paths and narrow
+lanes and cliff-sides we must traverse, whichever road we took, I
+trembled.
+
+"Kidnap you, Monsieur?" he answered, with an everyday air. "That is as
+you please to call it. One thing is certain, however," he continued,
+maliciously touching an arquebuss which he had produced and set
+upright against a chair while I was at the door; "if you attempt the
+slightest resistance, we shall know how to put an end to it, either
+here or on the road."
+
+I drew a deep breath. The very imminence of the danger restored me to
+the use of my faculties I changed my tone and laughed aloud. "So that
+is your plan, is it?" I said. "The sooner we start the better, then.
+And the sooner I see Auch and your back turned, the more I shall be
+pleased."
+
+He rose. "After you, Monsieur," he said.
+
+I could not restrain a slight shiver. His newborn politeness alarmed
+me more than his threats. I knew the man and his ways, and I was sure
+that it boded ill for me.
+
+But I had no pistols, and only my sword and knife, and I knew that
+resistance at this point must be worse than vain. I went out jauntily,
+therefore, the landlord coming after me with my saddle and bags.
+
+The street was empty, save for the two waiting horsemen who sat in
+their saddles looking doggedly before them. The sun had not yet risen,
+the air was raw. The sky was grey, cloudy, and cold. My thoughts flew
+back to the morning on which I had found the sachet--at that very
+spot, almost at that very hour; and for a moment I grew warm again at
+the thought of the little packet I carried in my boot. But the
+landlord's dry manner, the sullen silence of his two companions, whose
+eyes steadily refused to meet mine, chilled me again. For an instant
+the impulse to refuse to mount, to refuse to go, was almost
+irresistible; then, knowing the madness of such a course, which might,
+and probably would, give the men the chance they desired, I crushed it
+down and went slowly to my stirrup.
+
+"I wonder you do not want my sword," I said by way of sarcasm, as I
+swung myself up.
+
+"We are not afraid of it," the innkeeper answered gravely. "You may
+keep it--for the present."
+
+I made no answer--what answer had I to make?--and we rode at a
+foot-pace down the street; he and I leading, Clon and the shock-headed
+man bringing up the rear. The leisurely mode of our departure, the
+absence of hurry or even haste, the men's indifference whether they
+were seen, or what was thought, all served to sink my spirits, and
+deepen my sense of peril. I felt that they suspected me, that they
+more than half guessed the nature of my errand at Cocheforêt, and that
+they were not minded to be bound by Mademoiselle's orders. In
+particular I augured the worst from Clon's appearance. His lean
+malevolent face and sunken eyes, his very dumbness chilled me. Mercy
+had no place there.
+
+We rode soberly, so that nearly half an hour elapsed before we gained
+the brow from which I had taken my first look at Cocheforêt. Among the
+dwarf oaks whence I had viewed the valley we paused to breathe our
+horses, and the strange feelings with which I looked back on the scene
+may be imagined. But I had short time for indulging in sentiment or
+recollections. A curt word, and we were moving again.
+
+A quarter of a mile farther on the road to Auch dipped into the
+valley. When we were already half-way down this descent the innkeeper
+suddenly stretched out his hand and caught my rein. "This way!" he
+said.
+
+I saw he would have me turn into a by-path leading south-westwards--a
+mere track, faint and little trodden and encroached on by trees, which
+led I knew not whither. I checked my horse. "Why?" I said
+rebelliously. "Do you think I do not know the road? This is the way to
+Auch."
+
+"To Auch--yes," he answered bluntly. "But we are not going to Auch."
+
+"Whither then?" I said angrily.
+
+"You will see presently," he replied, with an ugly smile.
+
+"Yes, but I will know now!" I retorted, passion getting the better of
+me. "I have come so far with you. You will find it more easy to take
+me farther, if you tell me your plans."
+
+"You are a fool!" he cried, with a snarl.
+
+"Not so," I answered. "I ask only to know whither I am going."
+
+"Into Spain," he said. "Will that satisfy you?"
+
+"And what will you do with me there?" I asked, my heart giving a great
+bound.
+
+"Hand you over to some friends of ours," he answered curtly, "if you
+behave yourself. If not, there is a shorter way, and one that will
+save us some travelling. Make up your mind. Monsieur. Which shall it
+be?"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                        UNDER THE PIC DU MIDI.
+
+
+So that was their plan. Two or three hours to the southward, the long
+white glittering wall stretched east and west above the brown woods.
+Beyond that lay Spain. Once across the border, I might be detained, if
+no worse happened to me, as a prisoner of war; for we were then at war
+with Spain on the Italian side. Or I might be handed over to one of
+the savage bands, half smugglers, half brigands, that held the passes;
+or be delivered--worst fate of all--into the power of the French
+exiles, of whom some would be likely to recognize me and cut my
+throat.
+
+"It is a long way into Spain," I muttered, watching in a kind of
+fascination Clon handling his pistols.
+
+"I think you will find the other road longer still!" the landlord
+answered grimly. "But choose, and be quick about it."
+
+They were three to one, and they had firearms. In effect I had no
+choice. "Well, if I must I must!" I cried, making up my mind with
+seeming recklessness. "_Vogue la galère!_ Spain be it. It will not be
+the first time I have heard the dons talk."
+
+The men nodded, as much as to say that they had known what the end
+would be; the landlord released my rein; and in a trice we were riding
+down the narrow track, with our faces set towards the mountains.
+
+On one point my mind was now more easy. The men meant fairly by me;
+and I had no longer to fear, as I had feared, a pistol shot in the
+back at the first convenient ravine. As far as that went, I might ride
+in peace. On the other hand, if I let them carry me across the border
+my fate was sealed. A man set down without credentials or guards among
+the wild desperadoes who swarmed in war time in the Asturian passes
+might consider himself fortunate if an easy death fell to his lot. In
+my case I could make a shrewd guess what would happen. A single nod of
+meaning, one muttered word, dropped among the savage men with whom I
+should be left, and the diamonds hidden in my boot would go neither to
+the Cardinal nor back to Mademoiselle--nor would it matter to me
+whither they went.
+
+So while the others talked in their taciturn fashion, or sometimes
+grinned at my gloomy face, I looked out over the brown woods with eyes
+that saw, yet did not see. The red squirrel swarming up the trunk, the
+startled pigs that rushed away grunting from their feast of mast, the
+solitary rider who met us, armed to the teeth, and passed northwards
+after whispering with the landlord--all these I saw. But my mind was
+not with them. It was groping and feeling about like a hunted mole for
+some way of escape. For time pressed. The slope we were on was growing
+steeper. By-and-bye we fell into a southward valley, and began to
+follow it steadily upwards, crossing and recrossing a swiftly rushing
+stream. The snow-peaks began to be hidden behind the rising bulk of
+hills that overhung us; and sometimes we could see nothing before or
+behind but the wooded walls of our valley rising sheer and green a
+thousand paces on either hand, with grey rocks half masked by fern and
+ivy getting here and there through the firs and alders.
+
+It was a wild and sombre scene even at that hour, with the midday sun
+shining on the rushing water and drawing the scent out of the pines;
+but I knew that there was worse to come, and sought desperately for
+some ruse by which I might at least separate the men. Three were too
+many; with one I might deal. At last, when I had cudgelled my brain
+for an hour, and almost resigned myself to a sudden charge on the men
+single-handed--a last desperate resort--I thought of a plan,
+dangerous, too, and almost desperate, but which still seemed to
+promise something. It came of my fingers resting in my pocket on the
+fragments of the orange sachet, which, without having any particular
+design in my mind, I had taken care to bring with me. I had torn the
+sachet into four pieces--four corners. As I played mechanically with
+them, one of my fingers fitted into one, as into a glove; a second
+finger into another. And the plan came.
+
+Still, before I could move in it, I had to wait until we stopped to
+bait the flagging horses, which we did about noon at the head of the
+valley. Then, pretending to drink from the stream, I managed to secure
+unseen a handful of pebbles, slipping them into the same pocket with
+the morsels of stuff. On getting to horse again, I carefully fitted a
+pebble, not too tightly, into the largest scrap, and made ready for
+the attempt.
+
+The landlord rode on my left, abreast of me; the other two knaves
+behind. The road at this stage favoured me, for the valley, which
+drained the bare uplands that lay between the lower spurs and the base
+of the real mountains, had become wide and shallow. Here were no
+trees, and the path was a mere sheep-track covered with short crisp
+grass, and running sometimes on this bank of the stream and sometimes
+on that.
+
+I waited until the ruffian beside me turned to speak to the men
+behind. The moment he did so and his eyes were averted, I slipped out
+the scrap of satin in which I had placed the pebble, and balancing it
+carefully on my right thigh as I rode, I flipped it forward with all
+the strength of my thumb and finger. I meant it to fall a few paces
+before us in the path, where it could be seen. But alas for my hopes!
+At the critical moment my horse started, my finger struck the scrap
+aslant, the pebble flew out, and the bit of stuff fluttered into a
+whin-bush close to my stirrup--and was lost!
+
+I was bitterly disappointed, for the same thing might happen again,
+and I had now only three scraps left. But fortune favoured me, by
+putting it into my neighbour's head to plunge into a hot debate with
+the shock-headed man on the nature of some animals seen on a distant
+brow; which he said were izards, while the other maintained that they
+were common goats. He continued, on this account, to ride with his
+face turned the other way. I had time to fit another pebble into the
+second piece of stuff, and sliding it on to my thigh, poised it, and
+flipped it.
+
+This time my finger struck the tiny missile fairly in the middle, and
+shot it so far and so truly that it dropped exactly in the path ten
+paces in front of us. The moment I saw it fall I kicked my neighbour's
+nag in the ribs; it started, and he, turning in a rage, hit it. The
+next instant he pulled it almost on to its haunches.
+
+"Saint Gris!" he cried; and sat glaring at the bit of yellow satin,
+with his face turned purple and his jaw fallen.
+
+"What is it?" I said, staring at him in turn. "What is the matter,
+fool?"
+
+"Matter?" he blurted out. "_Mon Dieu!_"
+
+But Clon's excitement surpassed even his. The dumb man no sooner saw
+what had attracted his comrade's attention, than he uttered an
+inarticulate and horrible noise, and tumbling off his horse, more like
+a beast than a man, threw himself bodily on the precious morsel.
+
+The innkeeper was not far behind him. An instant and he was down, too,
+peering at the thing; and for an instant I thought that they would
+fight over it. However, though their jealousy was evident, their
+excitement cooled a little when they discovered that the scrap of
+stuff was empty; for, fortunately, the pebble had fallen out of it.
+Still, it threw them into such a fever of eagerness as it was
+wonderful to witness. They nosed the ground where it had lain, they
+plucked up the grass and turf, and passed it through their fingers,
+they ran to and fro like dogs on a trail; and, glancing askance at one
+another, came back always together to the point of departure. Neither
+in his jealousy would suffer the other to be there alone.
+
+The shock-headed man and I sat our horses and looked on; he
+marvelling, and I pretending to marvel. As the two searched up and
+down the path, we moved a little out of it to give them space; and
+presently, when all their heads were turned from me, I let a second
+morsel drop under a gorse-bush. The shock-headed man, by-and-bye,
+found this, and gave it to Clon; and, as from the circumstances of the
+first discovery no suspicion attached to me, I ventured to find the
+third and last scrap myself. I did not pick it up, but I called the
+innkeeper, and he pounced on it as I have seen a hawk pounce on a
+chicken.
+
+They hunted for the fourth morsel, but, of course, in vain, and in the
+end they desisted, and fitted the three they had together; but neither
+would let his own portion out of his hands, and each looked at the
+other across the spoil with eyes of suspicion. It was strange to see
+them in that wide-stretching valley, whence grey boar-backs of hills
+swelled up into the silence of the snow--it was strange, I say, in
+that vast solitude to see these two, mere dots on its bosom, circling
+round one another in fierce forgetfulness of the outside world,
+glaring and shifting their ground like cocks about to engage, and
+wholly engrossed--by three scraps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty
+paces!
+
+At last the innkeeper cried with an oath: "I am going back. This must
+be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you go with
+Antoine. It will be all right."
+
+But Clon, waving a scrap in either hand and thrusting his ghastly mask
+into the other's face, shook his head in passionate denial. He could
+not speak, but he made it clear that if any one went back with the
+news he was the man to go.
+
+"Nonsense!" the landlord retorted fiercely. "We cannot leave Antoine
+to go on alone with him. Give me the stuff."
+
+But Clon would not. He had no thought of resigning the credit of the
+discovery, and I began to think that the two would really come to
+blows. But there was an alternative, and first one and then the other
+looked at me. It was a moment of peril, and I knew it. My stratagem
+might react on myself, and the two, to put an end to this difficulty,
+agree to put an end to me. But I faced them so coolly and showed so
+bold a front, and the ground was so open, that the idea took no root.
+They fell to wrangling again more viciously than before. One tapped
+his gun and the other his pistols. The landlord scolded, the dumb man
+gurgled. At last their difference ended as I had hoped it would.
+
+"Very well then, we will both go back!" the innkeeper cried in a rage.
+"And Antoine must see him on. But the blame be on your head. Do you
+give the lad your pistols."
+
+Clon took one pistol and gave it to the shock-headed man.
+
+"The other!" the innkeeper said impatiently.
+
+But Clon shook his head with a grim smile, and pointed to the
+arquebuss.
+
+By a sudden movement the landlord snatched the pistol, and averted
+Clon's vengeance by placing both it and the gun in the shock-headed
+man's hands. "There!" he said, addressing the latter, "now can you do?
+If Monsieur tries to escape or turn back, shoot him! But four hours'
+riding should bring you to the Roca Blanca. You will find the men
+there, and will have no more to do with it."
+
+Antoine did not see things quite in that light, however. He looked at
+me, and then at the wild track in front of us; and he muttered an oath
+and said he would die if he would. But the landlord, who was in a
+frenzy of impatience, drew him aside and talked to him, and in the end
+seemed to persuade him; for in a few minutes the matter was settled.
+Antoine came back and said sullenly, "Forward, Monsieur," the two
+others stood on one side, I shrugged my shoulders and kicked up my
+horse, and in a twinkling we two were riding on together--man to man.
+I turned once or twice to see what those we had left behind were
+doing, and always found them standing in apparent debate; but my guard
+showed so much jealousy of these movements that I presently shrugged
+my shoulders again and desisted.
+
+I had racked my brains to bring about this state of things. But,
+strange to say, now I had succeeded, I found it less satisfactory than
+I had hoped. I had reduced the odds and got rid of my most dangerous
+antagonists; but Antoine, left to himself, proved to be as full of
+suspicion as an egg of meat. He rode a little behind me with his gun
+across his saddle-bow, and a pistol near his hand, and at the
+slightest pause on my part, or if I turned to look at him, he muttered
+his constant "Forward, Monsieur!" in a tone that warned me that his
+finger was on the trigger. At such a distance he could not miss; and I
+saw nothing for it but to go on meekly before him--to the Roca Blanca
+and my fate.
+
+What was to be done? The road presently reached the end of the valley
+and entered a narrow pine-clad defile, strewn with rocks and boulders,
+over which the torrent plunged and eddied with a deafening roar. In
+front the white gleam of waterfalls broke the sombre ranks of climbing
+trunks. The snow-line lay less than half a mile away on either hand;
+and crowning all--at the end of the pass, as it seemed to the
+eye--rose the pure white pillar of the Pic du Midi shooting up six
+thousand feet into the blue of heaven. Such a scene, so suddenly
+disclosed, was enough to drive the sense of danger from my mind; and
+for a moment I reined in my horse. But "Forward, Monsieur!" came the
+grating order. I fell to earth again, and went on. What was to be
+done?
+
+I was at my wit's end to know. The man refused to talk, refused to
+ride abreast of me, would have no dismounting, no halting, no
+communication; at all. He would have nothing but this silent, lonely
+procession of two, with the muzzle of his gun at my back. And
+meanwhile we were fast climbing the pass. We had left the others an
+hour--nearly two. The sun was declining; the time, I supposed, about
+half-past three.
+
+If he would only let me come within reach of him! Or if anything would
+fall out to take his attention! When the pass presently widened into a
+bare and dreary valley, strewn with huge boulders, and with snow lying
+here and there in the hollows, I looked desperately before me, and
+scanned even the vast snow-fields that overhung us and stretched away
+to the base of the ice-peak. But I saw nothing. No bear swung across
+the path, no izard showed itself on the cliffs. The keen sharp air cut
+our cheeks and warned me that we were approaching the summit of the
+ridge. On all sides were silence and desolation.
+
+_Mon Dieu!_ And the ruffians on whose tender mercies I was to be
+thrown might come to meet us! They might appear at any moment. In my
+despair I loosened my hat on my head, and let the first gust carry it
+to the ground, and then with an oath of annoyance tossed my feet loose
+to go after it. But the rascal roared to me to keep my seat.
+
+"Forward, Monsieur!" he shouted brutally. "Go on!"
+
+"But my hat!" I cried. "_Mille tonnerres_, man! I must--"
+
+"Forward, Monsieur, or I shoot!" he replied inexorably, raising his
+gun. "One--two--"
+
+And I went on. But, oh, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should
+be outwitted and led by the nose, like a ringed bull, by this Gascon
+lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared--if it did not love--the
+terror of Zaton's, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow
+and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not
+be! Surely in the last resort I could give an account of one man,
+though his belt were stuffed with pistols!
+
+But how? Only, it seemed, by open force. My heart began to flutter as
+I planned it; and then grew steady again. A hundred paces before us a
+gully or ravine on the left ran up into the snow-field. Opposite its
+mouth a jumble of stones and broken rocks covered the path. I marked
+this for the place. The knave would need both his hands to hold up his
+nag over the stones, and, if I turned on him suddenly enough, he might
+either drop his gun, or fire it harmlessly.
+
+But, in the meantime, something happened; as, at the last moment,
+things do happen. While we were still fifty yards short of the place,
+I found his horse's nose creeping forward on a level with my crupper;
+and, still advancing, until I could see it out of the tail of my eye,
+and my heart gave a great bound. He was coming abreast of me: he was
+going to deliver himself into my hands! To cover my excitement, I
+began to whistle.
+
+"Hush!" he muttered fiercely: his voice sounding strange and
+unnatural. My first thought was that he was ill, and I turned to him.
+But he only said again, "Hush! Pass by here quietly, Monsieur."
+
+"Why?" I asked mutinously, curiosity getting the better of me. For had
+I been wise I had taken no notice; every second his horse was coming
+up with mine. Its nose was level with my stirrup already.
+
+"Hush, man!" he said again. This time there was no mistake about the
+panic in his voice. "They call this the Devil's Chapel. God send us
+safe by it! It is late to be here. Look at those!" he continued,
+pointing with a finger which visibly shook.
+
+I looked. At the mouth of the gully, in a small space partly cleared
+of stones stood three broken shafts, raised on rude pedestals. "Well?"
+I said in a low voice. The sun which was near setting flushed the
+great peak above to the colour of blood; but the valley was growing
+grey and each moment more dreary. "Well, what of those?" I said. In
+spite of my peril and the excitement of the coming struggle I felt the
+chill of his fear. Never had I seen so grim, so desolate, so
+Godforsaken a place! Involuntarily I shivered.
+
+"They were crosses," he muttered, in a voice little above a whisper,
+while his eyes roved this way and that in terror. "The Curé of Gabas
+blessed the place, and set them up. But next morning they were as you
+see them now. Come on, Monsieur, come on!" he continued, plucking at
+my arm. "It is not safe here after sunset. Pray God, Satan be not at
+home!"
+
+He had completely forgotten in his panic that he had anything to fear
+from me. His gun dropped loosely across his saddle, his leg rubbed
+mine. I saw this, and I changed my plan of action. As our horses
+reached the stones I stooped, as if to encourage mine, and by a sudden
+clutch snatched the gun bodily from his hand; at the same time I
+backed my horse with all my strength. It was done in a moment! A
+second and I had him at the end of the gun, and my finger was on the
+trigger. Never was victory more easily gained.
+
+He looked at me between rage and terror, his jaw fallen. "Are you
+mad?" he cried, his teeth chattering as he spoke. Even in this strait
+his eyes left me and wandered round in alarm.
+
+"No, sane!" I retorted fiercely. "But I do not like this place any
+better than you do!" Which was true enough, if not quite true. "So, by
+your right, quick march!" I continued imperatively. "Turn your horse,
+my friend, or take the consequences."
+
+He turned like a lamb, and headed down the valley again, without
+giving a thought to his pistols. I kept close to him, and in less than
+a minute we had left the Devil's Chapel well behind us, and were
+moving down again as we had come up. Only now I held the gun.
+
+When we had gone half a mile or so--until then I did not feel
+comfortable myself, and though I thanked Heaven the place existed,
+thanked Heaven also that I was out of it--I bade him halt. "Take off
+your belt!" I said curtly, "and throw it down. But, mark me, if you
+turn, I fire!"
+
+The spirit was quite gone out of him. He obeyed mechanically. I jumped
+down, still covering him with the gun, and picked up the belt, pistols
+and all. Then I remounted, and we went on. By-and-bye he asked me
+sullenly what I was going to do.
+
+"Go back," I said, "and take the road to Auch when I come to it."
+
+"It will be dark in an hour," he answered sulkily.
+
+"I know that," I retorted. "We must camp and do the best we can."
+
+And as I said, we did. The daylight held until we gained the skirts of
+the pine-wood at the head of the pass. Here I chose a corner a little
+off the track, and well-sheltered from the wind, and bade him light a
+fire. I tethered the horses near this and within sight. It remained
+only to sup. I had a piece of bread; he had another and an onion. We
+ate in silence, sitting on opposite sides of the fire.
+
+But after supper I found myself in a dilemma; I did not see how I was
+to sleep. The ruddy light which gleamed on the knave's swart face and
+sinewy hands showed also his eyes, black, sullen, and watchful. I knew
+that the man was plotting revenge; that he would not hesitate to plant
+his knife between my ribs should I give him a chance. I could find
+only one alternative to remaining awake. Had I been bloody-minded, I
+should have chosen it and solved the question at once and in my favour
+by shooting him as he sat.
+
+But I have never been a cruel man, and I could not find it in my heart
+to do this. The silence of the mountain and the sky--which seemed a
+thing apart from the roar of the torrent and not to be broken by
+it--awed me. The vastness of the solitude in which we sat, the dark
+void above through which the stars kept shooting, the black gulf below
+in which the unseen waters boiled and surged, the absence of other
+human company or other signs of human existence put such a face upon
+the deed that I gave up the thought of it with a shudder, and resigned
+myself, instead, to watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean
+night. Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the
+blaze, and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It
+seemed years since I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The old
+life, the old employments--should I ever go back to them?--seemed dim
+and distant. Would Cocheforêt, the forest and the mountain, the grey
+Château and its mistresses, seem one day as dim! And if one bit of
+life could fade so quickly at the unrolling of another, and seem in a
+moment pale and colourless, would all life some day and somewhere, and
+all the things we--But faugh! I was growing foolish. I sprang up and
+kicked the wood together, and, taking up the gun, began to pace to and
+fro under the cliff. Strange that a little moonlight, a few stars, a
+breath of solitude should carry a man back to childhood and childish
+things!
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+It was three in the afternoon of the next day, and the sun lay hot on
+the oak groves, and the air was full of warmth as we began to climb
+the slope, on which the road to Auch shoots out of the track. The
+yellow bracken and the fallen leaves underfoot seemed to throw up
+light of themselves, and here and there a patch of ruddy beech lay
+like a bloodstain on the hillside. In front a herd of pigs routed
+among the mast, and grunted lazily; and high above us a boy lay
+watching them. "We part here," I said to my companion. It was my plan
+to ride a little way on the road to Auch so as to blind his eyes;
+then, leaving my horse in the forest, I would go on foot to the
+Château.
+
+"The sooner the better!" he answered, with a snarl. "And I hope I may
+never see your face again, Monsieur!"
+
+But when we came to the wooden cross at the fork of the roads, and
+were about to part, the boy we had seen leapt out of the fern and came
+to meet us. "Hollo!" he cried, in a sing-song tone.
+
+"Well!" my companion answered, drawing rein impatiently. "What is it?"
+
+"There are soldiers in the village."
+
+"Soldiers?" Antoine cried incredulously.
+
+"Ay, devils on horseback!" the lad answered, spitting on the ground.
+"Three score of them! From Auch!"
+
+Antoine turned to me, his face transformed with fury. "Curse you!" he
+cried. "This is some of your work! Now we are all undone! And my
+mistresses! _Sacré!_ if I had that gun I would shoot you like a rat!"
+
+"Steady, fool!" I answered roughly. "I know no more of this than you
+do!"
+
+This was so true that my surprise was as great as his. The Cardinal,
+who rarely made a change of front, had sent me hither that he might
+not be forced to send soldiers, and run the risk of all that might
+arise from such a movement. What of this invasion, then, than which
+nothing could be less consistent with his plans? I wondered. It was
+possible, of course, that the travelling merchants, before whom I had
+played at treason, had reported the facts; and that on this the
+Commandant at Auch had acted. But it seemed unlikely. He had had his
+orders, too; and, under the Cardinal's rule, there was small place for
+individual enterprise. I could not understand it.
+
+One thing was clear, however. I might now enter the village as I
+pleased. "I am going on to look into this," I said to Antoine. "Come,
+my man."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, and stood still. "Not I!" he answered, with
+an oath. "No soldiers for me! I have lain out one night, and I can lie
+out another!"
+
+I nodded indifferently, for I no longer wanted him; and we parted.
+After this, twenty minutes' riding brought me to the entrance of the
+village; and here the change was great indeed. Not one of the ordinary
+dwellers in the place was to be seen: either they had shut themselves
+up in their hovels, or, like Antoine, they had fled to the woods.
+Their doors were closed, their windows shuttered. But lounging about
+the street were a score of dragoons, in boots and breastplates, whose
+short-barrelled muskets, with pouches and bandoliers attached, were
+piled near the inn door. In an open space where there was a gap in the
+street, a long row of horses, linked head to head, stood bending their
+muzzles over bundles of rough forage, and on all sides the cheerful
+jingle of chains and bridles and the sound of coarse jokes and
+laughter filled the air.
+
+As I rode up to the inn door an old sergeant, with squinting eyes and
+his tongue in his cheeks, eyed me inquisitively, and started to cross
+the street to challenge me. Fortunately, at that moment the two knaves
+whom I had brought from Paris with me, and whom I had left at Auch to
+await my orders, came up. I made them a sign not to speak to me, and
+they passed on; but I suppose that they told the sergeant that I was
+not the man he wanted, for I saw no more of him.
+
+After picketing my horse behind the inn--I could find no better
+stable, every place being full--I pushed my way through the group at
+the door, and entered. The old room, with the low grimy roof and the
+reeking floor, was half full of strange figures, and for a few minutes
+I stood unseen in the smoke and confusion. Then the landlord came my
+way, and as he passed me I caught his eye. He uttered a low curse,
+dropped the pitcher he was carrying, and stood glaring at me, like a
+man possessed.
+
+The soldier whose wine he was carrying flung a crust in his face,
+with, "Now, greasy fingers! What are you staring at?"
+
+"The devil!" the landlord muttered, beginning to tremble.
+
+"Then let me look at him!" the man retorted and he turned on his
+stool.
+
+He started, finding me standing over him. "At your service!" I said
+grimly. "A little time and it will be the other way, my friend."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                           A MASTER STROKE.
+
+
+I HAVE a way with me which commonly commands respect; and when the
+landlord's first terror was over and he would serve me, I managed to
+get my supper--the first good meal I had had in two days--pretty
+comfortably in spite of the soldiers' presence. The crowd, too, which
+filled the room, soon began to melt. The men strayed off in groups to
+water their horses, or went to hunt up their quarters, until only two
+or three were left. Dusk had fallen outside; the noise in the street
+grew less. The firelight began to glow and flicker on the walls,
+and the wretched room to look as homely as it was in its nature to
+look. I was pondering for the twentieth time what step I should take
+next--under these new circumstances--and why the soldiers were here,
+and whether I should let the night pass before I moved, when the door,
+which had been turning on its hinges almost without pause for an hour,
+opened again, and a woman came in.
+
+She paused a moment on the threshold looking round, and I saw that she
+had a shawl on her head and a milk-pitcher in her hand, and that her
+feet and ankles were bare. There was a great rent in her coarse stuff
+petticoat, and the hand which held the shawl together was brown and
+dirty. More I did not see; supposing her to be a neighbour stolen in
+now that the house was quiet to get some milk for her child or the
+like, I took no further heed of her. I turned to the fire again and
+plunged into my thoughts.
+
+But to get to the hearth where the goodwife was fidgeting, the woman
+had to pass in front of me; and as she passed I suppose she stole a
+look at me from under her shawl. For just when she came between me and
+the blaze she uttered a low cry and shrank aside--so quickly that she
+almost stepped on the hearth. The next moment she turned her back to
+me and was stooping, whispering in the housewife's ear. A stranger
+might have thought that she had merely trodden on a hot ember.
+
+But another idea, and a very sharp one, came into my mind; and I stood
+up silently. The woman's back was towards me, but something in her
+height, her shape, the pose of her head, hidden as it was by her
+shawl, seemed familiar. I waited while she hung over the fire
+whispering, and while the goodwife slowly filled her pitcher out of
+the great black pot. But when she turned to go, I took a step forward
+so as to bar her way. And our eyes met.
+
+I could not see her features; they were lost in the shadow of the
+hood. But I saw a shiver run through her from head to foot. And I knew
+then that I had made no mistake.
+
+"That is too heavy for you, my girl," I said familiarly, as I might
+have spoken to a village wench. "I will carry it for you."
+
+One of the men, who remained lolling at the table, laughed, and the
+other began to sing a low song. The woman trembled in rage or fear,
+but she kept silence and let me take the jug from her hands. And when
+I went to the door and opened it, she followed mechanically. An
+instant, and the door fell to behind us, shutting off the light and
+glow, and we two stood together in the growing dusk.
+
+"It is late for you to be out, Mademoiselle," I said politely. "You
+might meet with some rudeness, dressed as you are. Permit me to see
+you home."
+
+She shuddered, and I thought I heard her sob, but she did not answer.
+Instead, she turned and walked quickly through the village in the
+direction of the Château, keeping in the shadow of the houses. I
+carried the pitcher and walked beside her; and in the dark I smiled. I
+knew how shame and impotent rage were working in her. This was
+something like revenge!
+
+Presently I spoke. "Well, Mademoiselle," I said. "Where are your
+grooms?"
+
+She gave me one look, her eyes blazing with anger, her face like hate
+itself; and after that I said no more, but left her in peace, and
+contented myself with walking at her shoulder until we came to the end
+of the village, where the track to the great house plunged into the
+wood. There she stopped, and turned on me like a wild creature at bay.
+"What do you want?" she cried hoarsely, breathing as if she had been
+running.
+
+"To see you safe to the house," I answered coolly.
+
+"And if I will not?" she retorted.
+
+"The choice does not lie with you, Mademoiselle," I answered sternly.
+"You will go to the house with me, and on the way you will give me an
+interview; but not here. Here we are not private enough. We may be
+interrupted at any moment, and I wish to speak to you at length."
+
+I saw her shiver. "What if I will not?" she said again.
+
+"I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are," I
+answered coolly. "I might, but I should not. That were a clumsy way of
+punishing you, and I know a better way. I should go to the captain,
+Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse is locked up in the inn stable.
+A trooper told me--as some one had told him--that it belonged to one
+of his officers; but I looked through the crack, and I knew the horse
+again."
+
+She could not repress a groan. I waited. Still she did not speak.
+"Shall I go to the captain?" I said ruthlessly.
+
+She shook the hood back from her face, and looked at me. "Oh, you
+coward! you coward!" she hissed through her teeth. "If I had a knife!"
+
+"But you have not, Mademoiselle," I answered, unmoved. "Be good
+enough, therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I to go
+with my news to the captain, or am I to come with you?"
+
+"Give me the pitcher!" she said harshly.
+
+I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage gesture
+far into the bushes. "Come!" she said, "if you will. But some day God
+will punish you!"
+
+Without another word she turned and entered the path through the
+trees, and I followed her. I suppose every turn in its course, every
+hollow and broken place in it had been known to her from childhood,
+for she followed it swiftly and unerringly, barefoot as she was. I had
+to walk fast through the darkness to keep up with her. The wood was
+quiet, but the frogs were beginning to croak in the pool, and their
+persistent chorus reminded me of the night when I had come to the
+house-door hurt and worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had
+stood under the gallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I
+had seen but a very little way ahead. Now all was plain. The
+Commandant might be here with all his soldiers, but it was I who held
+the strings.
+
+We came to the little wooden bridge and saw beyond the dark meadows
+the lights of the house. All the windows were bright. Doubtless the
+troopers were making merry. "Now, Mademoiselle," I said quietly. "I
+must trouble you to stop here, and give me your attention for a few
+minutes. Afterwards you may go your way."
+
+"Speak!" she said defiantly. "And be quick! I cannot breathe the air
+where you are! It poisons me!"
+
+"Ah!" I said slowly. "Do you think you make things better by such
+speeches as those?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried--and I heard her teeth click together. "Would you have
+me fawn on you?"
+
+"Perhaps not," I answered. "Still you make one mistake."
+
+"What is it?" she panted.
+
+"You forget that I am to be feared as well as--loathed!" I answered
+grimly. "Ay, Mademoiselle, to be feared!" I continued. "Do you think
+that I do not know why you are here in this guise? Do you think that I
+do not know for whom that pitcher of broth was intended? Or who will
+now have to fast to-night? I tell you I know all these things. Your
+house is full of soldiers; your servants were watched and could not
+leave. You had to come yourself and get food for him!"
+
+She clutched at the hand-rail of the bridge, and for an instant clung
+to it for support. Her face, from which the shawl had fallen,
+glimmered white in the shadow of the trees. At last I had shaken her
+pride. At last! "What is your price?" she murmured faintly.
+
+"I am going to tell you," I replied, speaking so that every word might
+fall distinctly on her ears, and sating my eyes on her proud face. I
+had never dreamed of such revenge as this! "About a fortnight ago, M.
+de Cocheforêt left here at night with a little orange-coloured sachet
+in his possession."
+
+She uttered a stifled cry, and drew herself stiffly erect.
+
+"It contained--but there, Mademoiselle, you know its contents," I went
+on. "Whatever they were, M. de Cocheforêt lost it and them at
+starting. A week ago he came back--unfortunately for himself--to seek
+them."
+
+She was looking full in my face now. She seemed scarcely to breathe in
+the intensity of her surprise and expectation. "You had a search made,
+Mademoiselle," I continued quietly. "Your servants left no place
+unexplored. The paths, the roads, the very woods were ransacked. But
+in vain, because all the while the orange sachet lay whole and
+unopened in my pocket."
+
+"No!" she cried impetuously. "You lie, Sir! The sachet was found, torn
+open, many leagues from this place!"
+
+"Where I threw it, Mademoiselle," I replied, "that I might mislead
+your rascals and be free to return. Oh! believe me," I continued,
+letting something of myself, something of my triumph, appear at last
+in my voice. "You have made a mistake! You would have done better had
+you trusted me. I am no bundle of sawdust, Mademoiselle, but a man: a
+man with an arm to shield and a brain to serve, and--as I am going to
+teach you--a heart also!"
+
+She shivered.
+
+"In the orange-coloured sachet that you lost I believe there were
+eighteen stones of great value?"
+
+She made no answer, but she looked at me as if I fascinated her. Her
+very breath seemed to pause and wait on my words. She was so little
+conscious of anything else, of anything outside ourselves, that a
+score of men might have come up behind her unseen and unnoticed.
+
+I took from my breast a little packet wrapped in soft leather, and
+held it towards her. "Will you open this?" I said. "I believe it
+contains what you lost. That it contains all I will not answer,
+Mademoiselle, because I spilled the stones on the floor of my room,
+and I may have failed to find some. But the others can be recovered--I
+know where they are."
+
+She took the packet slowly and began to unroll it, her fingers
+shaking. A few turns and the mild lustre of the stones made a kind of
+moonlight in her hands--such a shimmering glory of imprisoned light as
+has ruined many a woman and robbed many a man of his honour.
+_Morbleu!_ as I looked at them--and as she stood looking at them in
+dull, entranced perplexity--I wondered how I had come to resist the
+temptation.
+
+While I gazed her hands began to waver. "I cannot count," she muttered
+helplessly. "How many are there?"
+
+"In all, eighteen.'
+
+"They should be eighteen," she said.
+
+She closed her hand on them with that, and opened it again, and did so
+twice, as if to reassure herself that the stones were real and that
+she was not dreaming. Then she turned to me with sudden fierceness,
+and I saw that her beautiful face, sharpened by the greed of
+possession, was grown as keen and vicious as before. "Well?" she
+muttered between her teeth. "Your price, man? Your price?"
+
+"I am coming to it now, Mademoiselle," I said gravely. "It is a simple
+matter. You remember the afternoon when I followed you--clumsily and
+thoughtlessly perhaps--through the wood to restore these things? It
+seems about a month ago. I believe it happened the day before
+yesterday. You called me then some very harsh names, which I will not
+hurt you by repeating. The only price I ask for restoring your jewels
+is that you recall those names.
+
+"How?" she muttered. "I do not understand."
+
+I repeated my words very slowly. "The only price or reward I ask,
+Mademoiselle, is that you take back those names, and say that they
+were not deserved."
+
+"And the jewels?" she exclaimed hoarsely.
+
+"They are yours. They are nothing to me. Take them, and say that you
+do not think of me-- Nay, I cannot say the words, Mademoiselle."
+
+"But there is something--else! What else?" she cried, her head thrown
+back, her eyes, bright as any wild animal's, searching mine. "Ha! my
+brother? What of him? What of him, Sir?"
+
+"For him, Mademoiselle--I would prefer that you should tell me no more
+than I know already," I answered in a low voice. "I do not wish to be
+in that affair. But yes, there is one thing I have not mentioned. You
+are right."
+
+She sighed so deeply that I caught the sound.
+
+"It is," I continued slowly, "that you will permit me to remain at
+Cocheforêt for a few days, while the soldiers are here. I am told that
+there are twenty men and two officers quartered in your house. Your
+brother is away. I ask to be permitted, Mademoiselle, to take his
+place for the time, and to be privileged to protect your sister and
+yourself from insult. That is all."
+
+She raised her hand to her head. After a long pause: "The frogs!" she
+muttered, "they croak! I cannot hear."
+
+And then, to my surprise, she turned suddenly on her heel, and walked
+over the bridge, leaving me there. For a moment I stood aghast,
+peering after her shadowy figure, and wondering what had taken her.
+Then, in a minute or less, she came quickly back to me, and I
+understood. She was crying.
+
+"M. de Barthe," she said, in a trembling voice, which told me that the
+victory was won. "Is there nothing else? Have you no other penance for
+me?"
+
+"None, Mademoiselle."
+
+She had drawn the shawl over her head, and I no longer saw her face.
+"That is all you ask?" she murmured.
+
+"That is all I ask--now," I answered.
+
+"It is granted," she said slowly and firmly. "Forgive me if I seem to
+speak lightly--if I seem to make little of your generosity or my
+shame; but I can say no more now. I am so deep in trouble and so
+gnawed by terror that--I cannot feel anything much to-night, either
+shame or gratitude. I am in a dream; God grant it may pass as a dream!
+We are sunk in trouble. But for you and what you have done, M. de
+Barthe--I--" she paused and I heard her fighting with the sobs which
+choked her--"forgive me.... I am overwrought. And my--my feet are
+cold," she added suddenly and irrelevantly. "Will you take me home?"
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle," I cried remorsefully, "I have been a beast! You
+are barefoot, and I have kept you here."
+
+"It is nothing," she said in a voice which thrilled me. "My heart is
+warm, Monsieur--thanks to you. It is many hours since it has been as
+warm."
+
+She stepped out of the shadow as she spoke--and there, the thing was
+done. As I had planned, so it had come about. Once more I was crossing
+the meadow in the dark to be received at Cocheforêt a welcome guest.
+The frogs croaked in the pool and a bat swooped round us in circles;
+and surely never--never, I thought, with a kind of exultation in my
+breast--had man been placed in a stranger position.
+
+Somewhere in the black wood behind us--probably in the outskirts of
+the village--lurked M. de Cocheforêt. In the great house before us,
+outlined by a score of lighted windows, were the soldiers come from
+Auch to take him. Between the two, moving side by side in the
+darkness, in a silence which each found to be eloquent, were
+Mademoiselle and I: she who knew so much, I who knew all--all but one
+little thing!
+
+We reached the house, and I suggested that she should steal in first
+by the way she had come out, and that I should wait a little and knock
+at the door when she had had time to explain matters to Clon.
+
+"They do not let me see Clon," she answered slowly.
+
+"Then your woman must tell him," I rejoined. "Or he may say something
+and betray me."
+
+"They will not let our woman come to us."
+
+"What?" I cried, astonished. "But this is infamous. You are not
+prisoners!"
+
+Mademoiselle laughed harshly. "Are we not? Well, I suppose not; for if
+we wanted company, Captain Larolle said he would be delighted to see
+us--in the parlour."
+
+"He has taken your parlour?" I said.
+
+"He and his lieutenant sit there. But I suppose we should be
+thankful," she added bitterly. "We have still our bed-rooms left to
+us."
+
+"Very well," I said. "Then I must deal with Clon as I can. But I have
+still a favour to ask, Mademoiselle. It is only that you and your
+sister will descend to-morrow at your usual time. I shall be in the
+parlour."
+
+"I would rather not," she said, pausing and speaking in a troubled
+voice.
+
+"Are you afraid?"
+
+"No, Monsieur; I am not afraid," she answered proudly. "But--"
+
+"You will come?" I said.
+
+She sighed before she spoke. At length, "Yes, I will come--if you wish
+it," she answered; and the next moment she was gone round the corner
+of the house, while I laughed to think of the excellent watch these
+gallant gentlemen were keeping. M. de Cocheforêt might have been with
+her in the garden, might have talked with her as I had talked, might
+have entered the house even, and passed under their noses scot-free.
+But that is the way of soldiers. They are always ready for the enemy,
+with drums beating and flags flying--at ten o'clock in the morning.
+But he does not always come at that hour.
+
+I waited a little, and then I groped my way to the door, and knocked
+on it with the hilt of my sword. The dogs began to bark at the back,
+and the chorus of a drinking-song, which came fitfully from the east
+wing, ceased altogether. An inner door opened, and an angry voice,
+apparently an officer's, began to rate some one for not coming.
+Another moment, and a clamour of voices and footsteps seemed to pour
+into the hall, and fill it. I heard the bar jerked away, the door was
+flung open, and in a twinkling a lanthorn, behind which a dozen
+flushed visages were dimly seen, was thrust into my face.
+
+"Why, who the fiend is this?" cried one, glaring at me in
+astonishment.
+
+"_Morbleu!_ It is the man!" another shrieked. "Seize him!"
+
+In a moment half a dozen hands were laid on my shoulders, but I only
+bowed politely. "The officer, my friends," I said, "M. le Capitaine
+Larolle. Where is he?"
+
+"_Diable!_ but who are you, first?" the lanthorn-bearer retorted
+bluntly. He was a tall, lanky sergeant, with a sinister face.
+
+"Well, I am not M. de Cocheforêt," I replied; "and that must satisfy
+you, my man. For the rest, if you do not fetch Captain Larolle at once
+and admit me, you will find the consequences inconvenient."
+
+"Ho! ho!" he said, with a sneer. "You can crow, it seems. Well, come
+in."
+
+They made way, and I walked into the hall, keeping my hat on. On the
+great hearth a fire had been kindled, but it had gone out. Three or
+four carbines stood against one wall, and beside them lay a heap of
+haversacks and some straw. A shattered stool, broken in a frolic, and
+half a dozen empty wine-skins strewed the floor, and helped to give
+the place an air of untidiness and disorder. I looked round with eyes
+of disgust, and my gorge rose. They had spilled oil, and the place
+reeked foully.
+
+"_Ventre bleu!_" I said. "Is this conduct in a gentleman's house, you
+rascals? _Ma vie!_ If I had you, I would send half of you to the
+wooden horse!"
+
+They gazed at me open-mouthed. My arrogance startled them. The
+sergeant alone scowled. When he could find his voice for rage--
+
+"This way!" he said. "We did not know a general officer was coming, or
+we would have been better prepared!" And muttering oaths under his
+breath, he led me down the well-known passage. At the door of the
+parlour he stopped. "Introduce yourself!" he said rudely. "And if you
+find the air warm, don't blame me!"
+
+I raised the latch and went in. At a table in front of the hearth,
+half covered with glasses and bottles, sat two men playing hazard. The
+dice rang sharply as I entered, and he who had just thrown kept the
+box over them while he turned, scowling, to see who came in. He was a
+fair-haired, blonde man, large-framed and florid. He had put off his
+cuirass and boots, and his doublet showed frayed and stained where the
+armour had pressed on it. But otherwise he was in the extreme of last
+year's fashion. His deep cravat, folded over so that the laced ends
+drooped a little in front, was of the finest; his great sash of blue
+and silver was a foot wide. He had a little jewel in one ear, and his
+tiny beard was peaked _à l'Espagnole_. Probably when he turned he
+expected to see the sergeant, for at sight of me he rose slowly,
+leaving the dice still covered.
+
+"What folly is this?" he cried wrathfully. "Here, Sergeant!
+Sergeant!--without there! What the--! Who are you, Sir?"
+
+"Captain Larolle," I said, uncovering politely, "I believe?"
+
+"Yes, I am Captain Larolle," he retorted. "But who, in the fiend's
+name, are you? You are not the man we are after!"
+
+"I am not M. Cocheforêt," I said coolly. "I am merely a guest in the
+house, M. le Capitaine. I have been enjoying Madame de Cocheforêt's
+hospitality for some time, but by an evil chance I was away when you
+arrived." And with that I walked to the hearth, and, gently pushing
+aside his great boots which stood there drying, kicked the logs into a
+blaze.
+
+"_Mille diables!_" he whispered. And never did I see a man more
+confounded. But I affected to be taken up with his companion, a
+sturdy, white-mustachioed old veteran, who sat back in his chair,
+eyeing me, with swollen cheeks and eyes surcharged with surprise.
+
+"Good evening, M. le Lieutenant," I said, bowing gravely. "It is a
+fine night."
+
+Then the storm burst.
+
+"Fine night!" the captain shrieked, finding his voice again. "_Mille
+diables!_ Are you aware, Sir, that I am in possession of this house,
+and that no one harbours here without my permission? Guest!
+Hospitality! Lieutenant--call the guard! Call the guard!" he continued
+passionately. "Where is that ape of a sergeant?"
+
+The lieutenant rose to obey, but I lifted my hand.
+
+"Gently, gently, Captain," I said. "Not so fast! You seem surprised to
+see me here. Believe me, I am much more surprised to see you."
+
+"_Sacré!_" he cried, recoiling at this fresh impertinence, while the
+lieutenant's eyes almost jumped out of his head.
+
+But nothing moved me.
+
+"Is the door closed?" I said sweetly. "Thank you; it is, I see. Then
+permit me to say again, gentlemen, that I am much more surprised to
+see you than you can be to see me. When Monseigneur the Cardinal
+honoured me by sending me from Paris to conduct this matter, he gave
+me the fullest--the fullest powers, M. le Capitaine--to see the affair
+to an end. I was not led to expect that my plans would be spoiled on
+the eve of success by the intrusion of half the garrison from Auch!"
+
+"O ho!" the captain said softly--in a very different tone and with a
+very different face. "So you are the gentleman I heard of at Auch?"
+
+"Very likely," I said drily. "But I am from Paris, not Auch."
+
+"To be sure," he answered thoughtfully. "Eh, Lieutenant?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Capitaine, no doubt," the inferior replied. And they both
+looked at one another, and then at me, in a way I did not understand.
+
+"I think," said I, to clinch the matter, "that you have made a
+mistake, Captain; or the Commandant has. And it occurs to me that the
+Cardinal will not be best pleased."
+
+"I hold the King's commission," he answered rather stiffly.
+
+"To be sure," I replied. "But you see the Cardinal--"
+
+"Ah, but the Cardinal--" he rejoined quickly; and then he stopped and
+shrugged his shoulders. And they both looked at me.
+
+"Well?" I said.
+
+"The King," he answered slowly.
+
+"Tut-tut!" I exclaimed, spreading out my hands. "The Cardinal. Let us
+stick to him. You were saying?"
+
+"Well, the Cardinal, you see--" And then again, after the same words,
+he stopped--stopped abruptly and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+I began to suspect something. "If you have anything to say against
+Monseigneur," I answered, watching him narrowly, "say it. But take a
+word of advice. Don't let it go beyond the door of this room, my
+friend, and it will do you no harm."
+
+"Neither here nor outside," he retorted, looking for a moment at his
+comrade. "Only I hold the King's commission. That is all. And I think
+enough. For the rest, will you throw a main? Good! Lieutenant, find a
+glass, and the gentleman a seat. And here, for my part, I will give
+you a toast. The Cardinal--whatever betide!"
+
+I drank it, and sat down to play with him; I had not heard the music
+of the dice for a month, and the temptation was irresistible. But I
+was not satisfied. I called the mains and won his crowns,--he was a
+mere baby at the game,--but half my mind was elsewhere. There was
+something here I did not understand; some influence at work on which I
+had not counted; something moving under the surface as unintelligible
+to me as the soldiers' presence. Had the captain repudiated my
+commission altogether, and put me to the door or sent me to the
+guard-house, I could have followed that. But these dubious hints, this
+passive resistance, puzzled me. Had they news from Paris, I wondered.
+Was the King dead? or the Cardinal ill? I asked them. But they said
+no, no, no to all, and gave me guarded answers. And midnight found us
+still playing; and still fencing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                            THE QUESTION.
+
+
+"Sweep the room, Monsieur? And remove this medley? But, M. le
+Capitaine--"
+
+"The captain is at the village," I replied sternly. "And do you move!
+move, man, and the thing will be done while you are talking about it.
+Set the door into the garden open--so!"
+
+"Certainly, it is a fine morning. And the tobacco of M. le
+Lieutenant--But M. le Capitaine did not--"
+
+"Give orders? Well, I give them!" I answered. "First of all, remove
+these beds. And bustle, man, bustle, or I will find something to
+quicken you."
+
+In a moment-- "And M. le Capitaine's riding-boots?"
+
+"Place them in the passage," I replied.
+
+"_Ohé!_ In the passage?" He paused, looking at them in doubt.
+
+"Yes, booby; in the passage."
+
+"And the cloaks, Monsieur?"
+
+"There is a bush handy outside the window. Let them air."
+
+"_Ohé_, the bush? Well, to be sure they are damp. But--yes, yes,
+Monsieur, it is done. And the holsters?"
+
+"There also!" I said harshly. "Throw them out. Faugh! The place reeks
+of leather. Now, a clean hearth. And set the table before the open
+door, so that we may see the garden. So. And tell the cook that we
+shall dine at eleven, and that Madame and Mademoiselle will descend."
+
+"_Ohé!_ But M. le Capitaine ordered the dinner for half past eleven?"
+
+"It must be advanced, then; and, mark you, my friend, if it is not
+ready when Madame comes down, you will suffer, and the cook too."
+
+When he was gone on his errand, I looked round. What else was lacking?
+The sun shone cheerily on the polished floor; the air, freshened by
+the rain which had fallen in the night, entered freely through the
+open doorway. A few bees lingering with the summer hummed outside. The
+fire crackled bravely; an old hound, blind and past work, lay warming
+its hide on the hearth. I could think of nothing more, and I stood and
+watched the man set out the table and spread the cloth. "For how many,
+Monsieur?" he asked, in a scared tone.
+
+"For five," I answered; and I could not help smiling at myself. What
+would Zaton's say could it see Berault turned housewife? There was
+a white glazed cup--an old-fashioned piece of the second Henry's
+time--standing on a shelf. I took it down and put some late flowers in
+it, and set it in the middle of the table, and stood off myself to
+look at it. But a moment later, thinking I heard them coming, I
+hurried it away in a kind of panic, feeling on a sudden ashamed of the
+thing. The alarm proved to be false, however; and then again, taking
+another turn, I set the piece back. I had done nothing so foolish
+for--for more years than I liked to count.
+
+But when Madame and Mademoiselle came, they had eyes neither for the
+flowers nor the room. They had heard that the captain was out beating
+the village and the woods for the fugitive, and where I had looked for
+a comedy I found a tragedy. Madame's face was so red with weeping that
+all her beauty was gone. She started and shook at the slightest sound,
+and, unable to find any words to answer my greeting, could only sink
+into a chair and sit crying silently.
+
+Mademoiselle was in a mood scarcely more cheerful. She did not weep,
+but her manner was hard and fierce. She spoke absently and answered
+fretfully. Her eyes glittered, and she had the air of straining her
+ears continually to catch some dreaded sound. "There is no news,
+Monsieur?" she said, as she took her seat. And she shot a swift look
+at me.
+
+"None, Mademoiselle."
+
+"They are searching the village?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Where is Clon?" This in a lower voice, and with a kind of shrinking
+in her face.
+
+I shook my head. "I believe they have him confined somewhere. And
+Louis, too," I said, "But I have not seen either of them."
+
+"And where are--? I thought these people would be here," she muttered.
+And she glanced askance at the two vacant places. The servant had
+brought in the meal.
+
+"They will be here presently," I said coolly. "Let us make the most of
+the time. A little wine and food will do Madame good."
+
+She smiled rather sadly. "I think we have changed places," she said;
+"and that you have turned host, and we guests."
+
+"Let it be so," I said cheerfully. "I recommend some of this ragoût.
+Come, Mademoiselle; fasting can aid no one. A full meal has saved many
+a man's life."
+
+It was clumsily said perhaps, for she shuddered and looked at me with
+a ghastly smile. But she persuaded her sister to taste something; and
+she took something on her own plate and raised her fork to her lips.
+But in a moment she laid it down again. "I cannot," she murmured. "I
+cannot swallow. Oh, my God, at this moment they may be taking him!"
+
+I thought that she was about to burst into a passion of tears, and I
+repented that I had induced her to descend. But her self-control was
+not yet exhausted. By an effort painful to see, she recovered her
+composure. She took up her fork, and ate a few mouthfuls. Then she
+looked at me with a fierce under-look. "I want to see Clon," she
+whispered feverishly. The man who waited on us had left the room.
+
+"He knows?" I said.
+
+She nodded, her beautiful face strangely disfigured. Her closed teeth
+showed between her lips. Two red spots burned in her white cheeks, and
+she breathed quickly. I felt, as I looked at her, a sudden pain at my
+heart; and a shuddering fear, such as a man awaking to find himself
+falling over a precipice, might feel. How these women loved the man!
+
+For a moment I could not speak. When I found my voice it sounded dry
+and husky. "He is a safe confidant," I muttered. "He can neither speak
+nor write, Mademoiselle."
+
+"No, but--" and then her face became fixed. "They are coming," she
+whispered. "Hush!" She rose stiffly, and stood supporting herself by
+the table. "Have they--have they--found him?" she muttered. The woman
+by her side wept on, unconscious what was impending.
+
+I heard the captain stumble far down the passage, and swear loudly;
+and I touched Mademoiselle's hand. "They have not!" I whispered. "All
+is well, Mademoiselle. Pray, pray calm yourself. Sit down, and meet
+them as if nothing were the matter. And your sister! Madame, Madame,"
+I cried, almost harshly, "compose yourself. Remember that you have a
+part to play."
+
+My appeal did something. Madame stifled her sobs. Mademoiselle drew a
+deep breath and sat down; and though she was still pale and still
+trembled, the worst was past.
+
+And just in time. The door flew open with a crash. The captain
+stumbled into the room, swearing afresh. "_Sacré nom du Diable!_" he
+cried, his face crimson with rage. "What fool placed these things
+here? My boots? My--"
+
+His jaw fell. He stopped on the word, stricken silent by the new
+aspect of the room, by the sight of the little party at the table, by
+all the changes I had worked. "_Saint Siêge!_" I he muttered. "What is
+this?" The lieutenant's grizzled face peering over his shoulder
+completed the picture.
+
+"You are rather late, M. le Capitaine," I said cheerfully. "Madame's
+hour is eleven. But come, here are your seats waiting for you."
+
+"_Mille tonnerres!_" he muttered, advancing into the room, and glaring
+at us.
+
+"I am afraid the ragoût is cold," I continued, peering into the dish
+and affecting to see nothing. "The soup, however, has been kept hot by
+the fire. But I think you do not see Madame."
+
+He opened his mouth to swear, but for the moment thought better of it.
+"Who--who put my boots in the passage?" he asked, his voice thick with
+rage. He did not bow to the ladies, or take any notice of their
+presence.
+
+"One of the men, I suppose," I said indifferently. "Is anything
+missing?"
+
+He glared at me. Then his cloak, spread outside, caught his eye. He
+strode through the door, saw his holsters lying on the grass, and
+other things strewn about. He came back. "Whose monkey game is this?"
+he snarled, and his face was very ugly. "Who is at the bottom of this?
+Speak, Sir, or I--"
+
+"Tut-tut! the ladies!" I said. "You forget yourself, Monsieur."
+
+"Forget myself?" he hissed, and this time he did not check his oath.
+"Don't talk to me of the ladies! Madame? Bah! Do you think, fool, that
+we are put into rebels' houses to bow and smile and take dancing
+lessons?"
+
+"In this case a lesson in politeness were more to the point,
+Monsieur," I said sternly. And I rose.
+
+"Was it by your orders that this was done?" he retorted, his brow
+black with passion. "Answer, will you?"
+
+"It was!" I replied outright.
+
+"Then take that!" he cried, dashing his hat violently in my face. "And
+come outside."
+
+"With pleasure, Monsieur," I answered, bowing. "In one moment. Permit
+me to find my sword. I think it is in the passage."
+
+I went thither to get it. When I returned I found that the two men
+were waiting for me in the garden, while the ladies had risen from the
+table and were standing near it with blanched faces. "You had better
+take your sister upstairs, Mademoiselle," I said gently, pausing a
+moment beside them. "Have no fear. All will be well."
+
+"But what is it?" she answered, looking troubled. "It was so sudden. I
+am--I did not understand. You quarrelled so quickly."
+
+"It is very simple," I answered, smiling. "M. le Capitaine insulted
+you yesterday; he will pay for it to-day. That is all. Or, not quite
+all," I continued, dropping my voice and speaking in a different tone.
+"His removal may help you, Mademoiselle. Do you understand? I think
+that there will be no more searching to-day."
+
+She uttered an exclamation, grasping my arm and peering into my face.
+"You will kill him?" she muttered.
+
+I nodded. "Why not?" I said.
+
+She caught her breath and stood with one hand clasped to her bosom,
+gazing at me with parted lips, the blood mounting to her cheeks.
+Gradually the flush melted into a fierce smile. "Yes, yes, why not?"
+she repeated, between her teeth. "Why not?" She had her hand on my
+arm, and I felt her fingers tighten until I could have winced. "Why
+not? So you planned this--for us, Monsieur?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"But can you?"
+
+"Safely," I said; then, muttering to her to take her sister upstairs,
+I turned towards the garden. My foot was already on the threshold, and
+I was composing my face to meet the enemy, when I heard a movement
+behind me. The next moment her hand was on my arm. "Wait! Wait a
+moment! Come back!" she panted. I turned. The smile and flush had
+vanished; her face was pale. "No!" she said abruptly. "I was wrong! I
+will not have it. I will have no part in it! You planned it last
+night, M. de Barthe. It is murder."
+
+"Mademoiselle!" I exclaimed, wondering. "Murder? Why? It is a duel."
+
+"It is murder," she answered persistently. "You planned it last night.
+You said so."
+
+"But I risk my own life," I replied sharply.
+
+"Nevertheless--I will have no part in it," she answered more faintly.
+"It will bring no good." She was trembling with agitation. Her eyes
+avoided mine.
+
+"On my shoulders be it then!" I replied stoutly. "It is too late,
+Mademoiselle, to go back. They are waiting for me. Only, before I go,
+let me beg of you to retire."
+
+And I turned from her, and went out, wondering and thinking. First,
+that women were strange things. Secondly--_murder?_ Merely because I
+had planned the duel and provoked the quarrel! Never had I heard
+anything so preposterous. Grant it, and dub every man who kept his
+honour with his hands a Cain--and a good many branded faces would be
+seen in some streets. I laughed at the fancy, as I strode down the
+garden walk.
+
+And yet, perhaps, I was going to do a foolish thing. The lieutenant
+would still be here: a hard, bitter man, of stiffer stuff than his
+captain. And the troopers. What if, when I had killed their leader,
+they made the place too hot for me, Monseigneur's commission
+notwithstanding? I should look silly, indeed, if on the eve of success
+I were driven from the place by a parcel of jack-boots.
+
+I liked the thought so little that I hesitated Yet it seemed too late
+to retreat. The captain and the lieutenant were waiting in a little
+open space fifty yards from the house, where a narrower path crossed
+the broad walk, down which I had first seen Mademoiselle and her
+sister pacing. The captain had removed his doublet, and stood in his
+shirt leaning against the sundial, his head bare and his sinewy throat
+uncovered. He had drawn his rapier and stood pricking the ground
+impatiently. I marked his strong and nervous frame and his sanguine
+air: and twenty years earlier the sight might have damped me. But no
+thought of the kind entered my head now, and though I felt with each
+moment greater reluctance to engage, doubt of the issue had no place
+in my calculations.
+
+I made ready slowly, and would gladly, to gain time, have found some
+fault with the place. But the sun was sufficiently high to give no
+advantage to either. The ground was good, the spot well chosen. I
+could find no excuse to put off the man, and I was about to salute him
+and fall to work, when a thought crossed my mind.
+
+"One moment!" I said. "Supposing I kill you, M. le Capitaine, what
+becomes of your errand here?"
+
+"Don't trouble yourself," he answered, with a sneer--he had misread my
+slowness and hesitation. "It will not happen, Monsieur. And in any
+case the thought need not harass you. I have a lieutenant."
+
+"Yes, but what of my mission?" I replied bluntly. "I have no
+lieutenant."
+
+"You should have thought of that before you interfered with my boots,"
+he retorted, with contempt.
+
+"True," I said, overlooking his manner. "But better late than never. I
+am not sure, now I think of it, that my duty to Monseigneur will let
+me fight."
+
+"You will swallow the blow?" he cried, spitting on the ground
+offensively. "_Diable!_" And the lieutenant, standing on one side with
+his hands behind him and his shoulders squared, laughed grimly.
+
+"I have not made up my mind," I answered irresolutely.
+
+"Well, _nom de Dieu!_ make it up," the captain replied, with an ugly
+sneer. He took a swaggering step this way and that, playing his
+weapon. "I am afraid, Lieutenant, there will be no sport to-day," he
+continued, in a loud aside. "Our cock has but a chicken heart."
+
+"Well!" I said coolly, "I do not know what to do. Certainly it is a
+fine day, and a fair piece of ground. And the sun stands well. But I
+have not much to gain by killing you, M. le Capitaine, and it might
+get me into an awkward fix. On the other hand, it would not hurt me to
+let you go."
+
+"Indeed?" he said contemptuously, looking at me as I should look at a
+lacquey.
+
+"No!" I replied. "For if you were to say that you had struck Gil de
+Berault, and left the ground with a whole skin, no one would believe
+you."
+
+"Gil de Berault!" he exclaimed, frowning.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur," I replied suavely. "At your service. You did not know
+my name?"
+
+"I thought your name was De Barthe," he said. His voice sounded
+queerly; and he waited for the answer with parted lips, and a shadow
+in his eyes which I had seen in men's eyes before.
+
+"No," I said. "That was my mother's name, I took it for this occasion
+only."
+
+His florid cheek lost a shade of its colour, and he bit his lips as he
+glanced at the lieutenant, trouble in his eyes. I had seen these signs
+before, and knew them, and I might have cried "Chicken-heart!" in my
+turn; but I had not made a way of escape for him--before I declared
+myself--for nothing, and I held to my purpose. "I think you will allow
+now," I said grimly, "that it will not harm me even if I put up with a
+blow!"
+
+"M. de Berault's courage is known," he muttered.
+
+"And with reason," I said. "That being so, suppose we say this day
+three months, M. le Capitaine? The postponement to be for my
+convenience."
+
+He caught the lieutenant's eye, and looked down sullenly, the conflict
+in his mind as plain as daylight. He had only to insist, and I must
+fight; and if by luck or skill he could master me, his fame as a
+duellist would run, like a ripple over water, through every garrison
+town in France and make him a name even in Paris. On the other side
+were the imminent peril of death, the gleam of cold steel already in
+fancy at his breast, the loss of life and sunshine, and the
+possibility of a retreat with honour, if without glory. I read his
+face, and knew before he spoke what he would do.
+
+"It appears to me that the burden is with you," he said huskily; "but
+for my part, I am satisfied."
+
+"Very well," I said, "I take the burden. Permit me to apologize for
+having caused you to strip unnecessarily. Fortunately the sun is
+shining."
+
+"Yes," he said gloomily. And he took his clothes from the sundial, and
+began to put them on. He had expressed himself satisfied; but I knew
+that he was feeling very ill-satisfied with himself, and I was not
+surprised when he presently said abruptly and almost rudely, "There is
+one thing I think we must settle here."
+
+"What is that?" I asked.
+
+"Our positions," he blurted out. "Or we shall cross one another again
+within the hour."
+
+"Umph! I am not quite sure that I understand," I said.
+
+"That is precisely what I don't do--understand!" he retorted, in a
+tone of surly triumph. "Before I came on this duty, I was told that
+there was a gentleman here, bearing sealed orders from the Cardinal to
+arrest M. de Cocheforêt; and I was instructed to avoid collision with
+him so far as might be possible. At first I took you for the
+gentleman. But the plague take me if I understand the matter now."
+
+"Why not?" I said coldly.
+
+"Because--well, the matter is in a nutshell!" he answered impetuously.
+"Are you here on behalf of Madame de Cocheforêt to shield her husband?
+Or are you here to arrest him? That is what I don't understand, M. de
+Berault."
+
+"If you mean, am I the Cardinal's agent--I am!" I answered sternly.
+
+"To arrest M. de Cocheforêt?"
+
+"To arrest M. de Cocheforêt."
+
+"Well--you surprise me," he said.
+
+Only that; but he spoke so drily that I felt the blood rush to my
+face. "Take care, Monsieur," I said severely. "Do not presume too far
+on the inconvenience to which your death might put me."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "No offence!" he said. "But you do not
+seem, M. de Berault, to comprehend the difficulty. If we do not settle
+things now, we shall be bickering twenty times a day!"
+
+"Well, what do you want?" I asked impatiently.
+
+"Simply to know how you are going to proceed. So that our plans may
+not clash."
+
+"But surely, M. le Capitaine, that is my affair!" I replied.
+
+"The clashing?" he answered bitterly. Then he waved aside my wrath.
+"Pardon," he said, "the point is simply this: How do you propose to
+find him if he is here?"
+
+"That again is my affair," I answered.
+
+He threw up his hands in despair; but in a moment his place was taken
+by an unexpected disputant. The lieutenant, who had stood by all the
+time, listening and tugging at his grey moustache, suddenly spoke.
+"Look here, M. de Berault," he said, confronting me roughly, "I do not
+fight duels. I am from the ranks. I proved my courage at Montauban in
+'21, and my honour is good enough to take care of itself. So I say
+what I like, and I ask you plainly what M. le Capitaine doubtless has
+in his mind but does not ask: Are you running with the hare and
+hunting with the hounds in this matter? In other words, have you
+thrown up Monseigneur's commission in all but name and become Madame's
+ally; or--it is the only other alternative--are you getting at the man
+through the women?"
+
+"You villain!" I cried, glaring at him in such a rage and fury I could
+scarcely get the words out. This was plain speaking with a vengeance!
+"How dare you! How dare you say that I am false to the hand that pays
+me?"
+
+I thought he would blench, but he did not. He stood up stiff as a
+poker. "I do not say; I ask!" he replied, facing me squarely, and
+slapping his fist into his open hand to drive home his words the
+better. "I ask you whether you are playing the traitor to the
+Cardinal? Or to these two women? It is a simple question."
+
+I fairly choked. "You impudent scoundrel," I said.
+
+"Steady, steady!" he replied. "Pitch sticks where it belongs. But that
+is enough. I see which it is, M. le Capitaine; this way a moment, by
+your leave."
+
+And in a very cavalier way he took his officer by the arm, and drew
+him into a side-walk, leaving me to stand in the sun, bursting with
+anger and spleen. The gutter-bred rascal! That such a man should
+insult me, and with impunity! In Paris I might have made him fight,
+but here it was impossible. I was still foaming with rage when they
+returned.
+
+"We have come to a determination," the lieutenant said, tugging his
+grey mustachios and standing like a ramrod. "We shall leave you the
+house and Madame, and you can take your line to find the man. For
+ourselves, we shall draw off our men to the village, and we shall take
+our line. That is all, M. le Capitaine, is it not?"
+
+"I think so," the captain muttered, looking anywhere but at me.
+
+"Then we bid you good-day, Monsieur," the lieutenant added. And in a
+moment he turned his companion round, and the two retired up the walk
+to the house, leaving me to look after them in a black fit of rage and
+incredulity. At the first flush there was something so offensive in
+the manner of their going that anger had the upper hand. I thought of
+the lieutenant's words, and I cursed him to hell with a sickening
+consciousness that I should not forget them in a hurry: "Was I playing
+the traitor to the Cardinal or to these women--which?" _Mon Dieu!_ if
+ever question--but there! some day I would punish him. And the
+captain? I could put an end to his amusement, at any rate; and I
+would. Doubtless among the country bucks of Auch he lorded it as a
+chief provincial bully, but I would cut his comb for him some fine
+morning behind the barracks.
+
+And then, as I grew cooler I began to wonder why they were going, and
+what they were going to do. They might be already on the track, or
+have the information they required under hand; in that case I could
+understand the movement. But if they were still searching vaguely,
+uncertain whether their quarry were in the neighbourhood or not, and
+uncertain how long they might have to stay, it seemed incredible that
+soldiers should move from good quarters to bad without motive.
+
+I wandered down the garden thinking sullenly of this, and pettishly
+cutting off the heads of the flowers with my sheathed sword. After
+all, if they found and arrested the man, what then? I should have to
+make my peace with the Cardinal as I best might. He would have gained
+his point, but not through me, and I should have to look to myself. On
+the other hand, if I anticipated them--and, as a fact, I felt that I
+could lay my hand on the fugitive within a few hours--there would come
+a time when I must face Mademoiselle.
+
+A little while back that had not seemed so difficult a thing. From the
+day of our first meeting--and in a higher degree since that afternoon
+when she had lashed me with her scorn--my views of her, and my
+feelings towards her, had been strangely made up of antagonism and
+sympathy; of repulsion, because in her past and present she was so
+different from me; of yearning, because she was a woman and
+friendless. Then I had duped her and bought her confidence by
+returning the jewels, and in a measure I had sated my vengeance; and
+then, as a consequence, sympathy had again begun to get the better,
+until now I hardly knew my own mind or what I intended. _I did not
+know_, in fact, what I intended. I stood there in the garden with that
+conviction suddenly new-born in my mind; and then, in a moment, I
+heard her step and turned to find her behind me.
+
+Her face was like April, smiles breaking through her tears. As she
+stood with a tall hedge of sunflowers behind her, I started to see how
+beautiful she was. "I am here in search of you, M. de Barthe," she
+said, colouring slightly, perhaps because my eyes betrayed my thought,
+"to thank you. You have not fought, and yet you have conquered. My
+woman has just been with me, and she tells me that they are going!"
+
+"Going?" I said. "Yes, Mademoiselle, they are leaving the house."
+
+She did not understand my reservation. "What magic have you used?" she
+said, almost gaily--it was wonderful how hope had changed her.
+"Moreover, I am curious to learn how you managed to avoid fighting."
+
+"After taking a blow?" I said bitterly.
+
+"Monsieur, I did not mean that," she said reproachfully. But her face
+clouded. I saw that, viewed in this light--in which I suppose she had
+not seen it--the matter perplexed her still more.
+
+I took a sudden resolution. "Have you ever heard, Mademoiselle," I
+said gravely, plucking off while I spoke the dead leaves from a plant
+beside me, "of a gentleman by name De Berault? Known in Paris, so I
+have heard, by the sobriquet of the Black Death?"
+
+"The duellist?" she answered, in wonder. "Yes, I have heard of him. He
+killed a young gentleman of this province at Nancy two years back. It
+was a sad story," she continued, shuddering, "of a dreadful man. God
+keep our friends from such!"
+
+"Amen!" I said quietly. But, in spite of myself, I could not meet her
+eyes.
+
+"Why?" she answered, quickly taking alarm at my silence. "What of him,
+M. de Barthe? Why have you mentioned him?"
+
+"Because he is here, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Here?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," I answered soberly. "I am he."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                                CLON.
+
+
+"You!" she cried, in a voice which pierced me, "You--M. de Berault?
+Impossible!" But, glancing askance at her.--I could not face her,--I
+saw that the blood had left her cheeks.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," I answered, in a low voice. "De Barthe was my
+mother's name. When I came here, a stranger, I took it that I might
+not be known; that I might again speak to a good woman and not see her
+shrink. That--but why trouble you with all this?" I continued proudly,
+rebelling against her silence, her turned shoulder, her averted face.
+"You asked me, Mademoiselle, how I could take a blow and let the
+striker go. I have answered. It is the one privilege M. de Berault
+possesses."
+
+"Then," she replied quickly, but almost in a whisper, "if I were M. de
+Berault, I would use it, and never fight again."
+
+"In that event, Mademoiselle," I answered cynically, "I should lose my
+men friends as well as my women friends. Like Monseigneur, the
+Cardinal, I rule by fear."
+
+She shuddered, either at the name or at the idea my words called up,
+and, for a moment, we stood awkwardly silent. The shadow of the
+sundial fell between us; the garden was still; here and there a leaf
+fluttered slowly down, or a seed fell. With each instant of silence I
+felt the gulf between us growing wider, I felt myself growing harder;
+I mocked at her past, which was so unlike mine; I mocked at mine, and
+called it fate. I was on the point of turning from her with a bow--and
+a furnace in my breast--when she spoke.
+
+"There is a late rose lingering there," she said, a slight tremor in
+her voice. "I cannot reach it. Will you pluck it for me, M. de
+Berault?"
+
+I obeyed her, my hand trembling, my face on fire. She took the rose
+from me, and placed it in the bosom of her dress. And I saw that her
+hand trembled too, and that her cheek was dark with blushes.
+
+She turned at once, and began to walk towards the house. Presently she
+spoke. "Heaven forbid that I should misjudge you a second time!" she
+said, in a low voice. "And, after all, who am I that I should judge
+you at all? An hour ago, I would have killed that man had I possessed
+the power."
+
+"You repented, Mademoiselle," I said huskily. I could scarcely speak.
+
+"Do you never repent?"
+
+"Yes. But too late, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Perhaps it is never too late," she answered softly.
+
+"Alas, when a man is dead--"
+
+"You may rob a man of more than life!" she replied with energy,
+stopping me by a gesture. "If you have never robbed a man--or a
+woman--of honour! If you have never ruined boy or girl, M. de Berault!
+If you have never pushed another into the pit and gone by it yourself!
+If--but for murder? Listen. You may be a Romanist, but I am a
+Huguenot, and have read. 'Thou shalt not kill!' it is written; and
+the penalty, 'By man shall thy blood be shed!' But, 'If you cause
+one of these little ones to offend, it were _better_ for you that a
+mill-stone were hanged about your neck, and that you were cast into
+the depths of the sea."
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are too merciful," I muttered.
+
+"I need mercy myself," she answered, sighing. "And I have had few
+temptations. How do I know what you have suffered?"
+
+"Or done!" I said, almost rudely.
+
+"Where a man has not lied, nor betrayed, nor sold himself or others,"
+she answered firmly, but in a low tone, "I think I can forgive all
+else. I can better put up with force," she added, smiling sadly, "than
+with fraud."
+
+Ah, Dieu! I turned away my face that she might not see how it paled,
+how I winced; that she might not guess how her words, meant in mercy,
+stabbed me to the heart. And yet, then, for the first time, while
+viewing in all its depth and width the gulf which separated us, I was
+not hardened; I was not cast back on myself. Her gentleness, her pity,
+her humility, softened me, while they convicted me. My God! How could
+I do that which I had come to do? How could I stab her in the
+tenderest part, how could I inflict on her that rending pang, how
+could I meet her eyes, and stand before her, a Caliban, a Judas, the
+vilest, lowest, basest thing she could conceive?
+
+I stood, a moment, speechless and disordered; stunned by her words, by
+my thoughts--as I have seen a man stand when he has lost his all, his
+last, at the tables.  Then I turned to her; and for an instant I
+thought that my tale was told already. I thought that she had pierced
+my disguise, for her face was aghast, stricken with sudden fear. Then
+I saw that she was not looking at me, but beyond me, and I turned
+quickly and saw a servant hurrying from the house to us. It was Louis.
+His face, it was, had frightened her. His eyes were staring, his hair
+waved, his cheeks were flabby with dismay. He breathed as if he had
+been running.
+
+"What is it?" Mademoiselle cried, while he was still some way off.
+"Speak, man. My sister? Is she--"
+
+"Clon," he gasped.
+
+The name changed her to stone. "Clon?" she muttered. "What of him?"
+
+"In the village!" Louis panted, his tongue stuttering with terror.
+"They are flogging him! They are killing him, Mademoiselle! To make
+him tell!"
+
+Mademoiselle grasped the sundial and leant against it, her face
+colourless, and, for an instant, I thought that she was fainting.
+"Tell?" I said mechanically. "But he cannot tell. He is dumb, man."
+
+"They will make him guide them," Louis groaned, covering his ears with
+his shaking hands, his face like paper. "And his cries! Oh, Monsieur,
+go!" he continued, suddenly appealing to me, in a thrilling tone.
+"Save him. All through the wood I heard them. It was horrible!
+horrible!"
+
+Mademoiselle uttered a low moan, and I turned to support her, thinking
+each second to see her fall. But with a sudden movement she
+straightened herself, and, slipping by me, with eyes which seemed to
+see nothing, she started swiftly down the walk towards the meadow
+gate.
+
+I ran after her, but, taken by surprise as I was, it was only by a
+great effort I reached the gate before her, and, thrusting myself in
+the road, barred the way. "Let me pass!" she panted fiercely, striving
+to thrust me on one side. "Out of my way, Sir! I am going to the
+village."
+
+"You are not going to the village," I said sternly. "Go back to the
+house, Mademoiselle, and at once."
+
+"My servant!" she wailed. "Let me go! Oh, let me go! Do you
+think I can rest here while they torture him? He cannot speak, and
+they--they--"
+
+"Go back, Mademoiselle," I said, cutting her short, with decision.
+"You would only make matters worse! I will go myself, and what one man
+can do against many, I will! Louis, give your mistress your arm and
+take her to the house. Take her to Madame."
+
+"But you will go?" she cried. Before I could stay her--I swear I would
+have done so if I could--she raised my hand and carried it to her
+trembling lips. "You will go! Go and stop them! Stop them," she
+continued, in a tone which stirred my heart, "and Heaven reward you,
+Monsieur!"
+
+I did not answer; nor did I once look back, as I crossed the meadow;
+but I did not look forward either. Doubtless it was grass I trod;
+doubtless the wood was before me with the sun shining aslant on it,
+and behind me the house with a flame here and there on the windows.
+But I went in a dream, among shadows; with a racing pulse, in a glow
+from head to heel; conscious of nothing but the touch of
+Mademoiselle's warm lips, seeing neither meadows nor house, nor even
+the dark fringe of wood before me, but only Mademoiselle's passionate
+face. For the moment I was drunk: drunk with that to which I had been
+so long a stranger, with that which a man may scorn for years, to find
+it at last beyond his reach--drunk with the touch of a good woman's
+lips.
+
+I passed the bridge in this state; and my feet were among the
+brushwood before the heat and fervour in which I moved found on a
+sudden their direction. Something began to penetrate to my veiled
+senses--a hoarse inarticulate cry, now deep, now shrilling horribly,
+which seemed to fill the wood. It came at intervals of half a minute
+or so, and made the flesh creep, it was so full of dumb pain, of
+impotent wrestling, of unspeakable agony. I am a man and have seen
+things. I saw the Concini beheaded, and Chalais ten years later--they
+gave him thirty-four blows; and when I was a boy I escaped from
+the college and viewed from a great distance Ravaillac torn by
+horses--that was in the year ten. But the horrible cries I now heard
+filled me, perhaps because I was alone and fresh from the sight of
+Mademoiselle, with loathing that was intense. The very wood, though
+the sun wanted an hour of setting, seemed to grow dark. I ran on
+through it, cursing, until the hovels of the village at length came in
+sight. Again the shriek rose, a pulsing horror, and this time I could
+hear the lash fall on the sodden flesh, I could see in fancy the
+strong man, trembling, quivering, straining against his bonds. And
+then, in a moment, I was in the street, and, as the scream once more
+tore the air, I dashed round the corner by the inn, and came upon
+them.
+
+I did not look at _him_. I saw Captain Larolle and the lieutenant, and
+a ring of troopers, and one man, bare-armed, teasing out with his
+fingers the thongs of a whip. The thongs dripped blood, and the sight
+fired the mine. The rage I had suppressed when the lieutenant bearded
+me earlier in the afternoon, the passion with which Mademoiselle's
+distress had filled my breast, at last found vent. I sprang through
+the line of soldiers, and striking the man with the whip a buffet
+between the shoulders, which hurled him breathless to the ground, I
+turned on the leaders. "You devils!" I cried. "Shame on you! The man
+is dumb! I tell you, if I had ten men with me, I would sweep you and
+your scum out of the village with broomsticks. Lay on another lash," I
+continued recklessly, "and I will see if you or the Cardinal be the
+stronger."
+
+The lieutenant glared at me, his grey moustache bristling, his eyes
+almost starting from his head. Some of the troopers laid their hands
+on their swords, but no one moved, and only the captain spoke. "_Mille
+diables!_" he swore. "What is all this about? Are you mad, Sir?"
+
+"Mad or sane!" I cried, still in a fury. "Lay on another lash, and you
+shall repent it."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you!"
+
+For an instant there was a pause of astonishment. Then to my surprise
+the captain laughed--laughed loudly. "Very heroic!" he said. "Quite
+magnificent, M. le Chevalier-errant. But you see, unfortunately, you
+come too late!"
+
+"Too late!" I said incredulously.
+
+"Yes, too late," he replied, with a mocking smile. And the lieutenant
+grinned too. "You see the man has just confessed. We have only been
+giving him an extra touch or two, to impress his memory, and save us
+the trouble of tying him up again."
+
+"I don't believe it," I said bluntly--but I felt the check, and fell
+to earth. "The man cannot speak."
+
+"No, but he has managed to tell us that he will guide us to the place
+we want," the captain answered drily. "The whip, if it cannot find a
+man a tongue, can find him wits. What is more, I think, he will keep
+his word," he continued, with a hideous smile. "For I warn him that if
+he does not, all your heroics shall not save him! He is a rebel dog,
+and known to us of old, and I will flay his back to the bones--ay,
+until we can see his heart beating through his ribs--but I will have
+what I want--in your teeth, too, you d--d meddler."
+
+"Steady, steady!" I said, somewhat sobered. I saw that he was
+telling me the truth. "He is going to take you to M. de Cocheforêt's
+hiding-place, is he?"
+
+"Yes, he is!" the captain retorted offensively. "Have you any
+objection to make to that, Master Spy?"
+
+"None," I replied. "But I shall go with you. And if you live three
+months, I shall kill you for that name--behind the barracks at Auch,
+M. le Capitaine."
+
+He changed colour, but he answered me boldly enough. "I don't know
+that you will go with us. That is as we please," he continued, with a
+snarl.
+
+"I have the Cardinal's orders," I said sternly.
+
+"The Cardinal?" he exclaimed, stung to fury by this repetition of the
+name. "The Cardinal be--"
+
+But the lieutenant laid his hands on his lips, and stopped him.
+"Hush!" he said. Then more quietly, "Your pardon, M. le Capitaine.
+Shall I give orders to the men to fall in?"
+
+The captain nodded sullenly.
+
+"Take him down!" the lieutenant ordered, in his harsh, monotonous
+voice. "Throw his blouse over him, and tie his hands. And do you two,
+Paul and Lebrun, guard him. Michel, bring the whip, or he may forget
+how it tastes. Sergeant, choose four good men and dismiss the rest to
+their quarters."
+
+"Shall we need the horses?" the sergeant asked.
+
+"I don't know," the captain answered peevishly. "What does the rogue
+say?"
+
+The lieutenant stepped up to him. "Listen!" he said grimly. "Nod if
+you mean yes, and shake your head if you mean no. And have a care you
+answer truly. Is it more than a mile to this place? The place you know
+of?"
+
+They had loosened the poor wretch's fastenings, and covered his back.
+He stood leaning against the wall, his mouth still panting, the sweat
+running down his hollow cheeks; his sunken eyes were closed; a quiver
+now and again ran through his frame. The lieutenant repeated his
+question, and, getting no answer, looked round for orders. The captain
+met the look, and crying savagely, "Answer, will you, you mute!"
+struck the half-swooning miserable across the back with his switch.
+The effect was magical. Covered, as his shoulders were, the man sprang
+erect with a shriek of pain, raising his chin, and hollowing his back;
+and in that attitude stood an instant with starting eyes, gasping for
+breath. Then he sank back against the wall, moving his mouth
+spasmodically. His face was the colour of lead.
+
+"_Diable!_ I think we have gone too far with him!" the captain
+muttered.
+
+"Bring some wine!" the lieutenant replied. "Quick with it!"
+
+I looked on, burning with indignation, and wondering besides what
+would come of this. If the man took them to the place, and they
+succeeded in seizing, Cocheforêt, there was an end of the matter as
+far as I was concerned. It was off my shoulders, and I might leave the
+village when I pleased; nor was it likely--since he would have his
+man, though not through me--that the Cardinal would refuse me an
+amnesty. On the whole, I thought that I would prefer that things
+should take that course; and assuming the issue, I began to wonder
+whether in that event it would be necessary that Madame should know
+the truth. I had a kind of a vision of a reformed Berault, dead to
+play and purging himself at a distance from Zaton's, winning, perhaps,
+a name In the Italian war, and finally--but, pshaw! I was a fool.
+
+However, be that as it might, it was essential that I should see the
+arrest made; and I waited patiently while they revived the tortured
+man, and made their dispositions. These took some time; so that the
+sun was down, and it was growing dusk, when we marched out, Clon
+going first, supported by his two guards, the captain and I
+following,--abreast, and eyeing one another suspiciously,--the
+lieutenant, with the sergeant and five troopers, bringing up the rear.
+Clon moved slowly, moaning from time to time, and but for the aid
+given him by the two men with him, must have sunk down again and
+again.
+
+He went out between two houses close to the inn, and struck a narrow
+track, scarcely discernible, which ran behind other houses, and then
+plunged into the thickest part of the wood. A single person,
+traversing the covert, might have made such a track; or pigs, or
+children. But it was the first idea that occurred to us, and it put us
+all on the alert. The captain carried a cocked pistol, I held my sword
+drawn, and kept a watchful eye on him; and the deeper the dusk fell in
+the wood, the more cautiously we went, until at last we came out with
+a sort of jump into a wider and lighter path.
+
+I looked up and down it, and saw before me a wooden bridge, and an
+open meadow, lying cold and grey in the twilight; and I stood in
+astonishment. It was the old path to the Château! I shivered at the
+thought that he was going to take us there, to the house--to
+Mademoiselle!
+
+The captain also recognised the place, and swore aloud. But the dumb
+man went on unheeding, until he reached the wooden bridge. There he
+paused as if in doubt, and looked towards the dark outline of the
+building, which was just visible, one faint light twinkling sadly in
+the west wing. As the captain and I pressed up behind him, he raised
+his hands and seemed to wring them towards the house.
+
+"Have a care!" the captain growled. "Play me no tricks, or--" But he
+did not finish the sentence; for Clon turned back from the bridge,
+and, entering the wood on the left hand, began to ascend the bank of
+the stream. We had not gone a hundred yards before the ground grew
+rough, and the undergrowth thick; and yet through all ran a kind of
+path which enabled us to advance, dark as it was growing. Very soon
+the bank on which we moved began to rise above the water, and grew
+steep and rugged. We turned a shoulder, where the stream swept round a
+curve, and saw we were in the mouth of a small ravine, dark and
+steep-walled. The water brawled along the bottom, over boulders and
+through chasms. In front, the slope on which we stood shaped itself
+into a low cliff; but half-way between its summit and the water, a
+ledge, or narrow terrace, running along the face, was dimly visible.
+
+"Ten to one, a cave!" the captain muttered. "It is a likely place."
+
+"And an ugly one!" I sneered. "Which one to ten might safely hold for
+hours!"
+
+"If the ten had no pistols--yes!" he answered viciously. "But you see
+we have. Is he going that way?"
+
+He was. "Lieutenant," Larolle said, turning and speaking in a low
+voice, though the chafing of the stream below us covered ordinary
+sounds, "shall we light the lanthorns, or press on while there is
+still a glimmering of day?"
+
+"On, I should say, M. le Capitaine," the lieutenant answered. "Prick
+him in the back if he falters. I will warrant he has a tender place or
+two!" the brute added, with a chuckle.
+
+The captain gave the word, and we moved forward; it being very evident
+now that the cliff-path was our destination. It was possible for the
+eye to follow the track all the way to it through rough stones and
+brushwood; and though Clon climbed feebly and with many groans, two
+minutes saw us step on to it. It did not turn out to be the perilous
+place it looked at a distance. The ledge, grassy and terrace-like,
+sloped slightly downwards and outwards, and in parts was slippery; but
+it was as wide as a highway, and the fall to the water did not exceed
+thirty feet. Even in such a dim light as now displayed it to us, and
+by increasing the depth and unseen dangers of the gorge, gave a kind
+of impressiveness to our movements, a nervous woman need not have
+feared to breast it. I wondered how often Mademoiselle had passed
+along it with her milk-pitcher.
+
+"I think we have him now!" Captain Larolle muttered, twisting his
+mustachios, and looking round to make his last dispositions. "Paul and
+Lebrun, see that your man makes no noise. Sergeant, come forward with
+your carbine, but do not fire without orders. Now, silence, all, and
+close up, Lieutenant. Forward!"
+
+We advanced about a hundred paces, keeping the cliff on our left, then
+turned a shoulder, and saw, a few paces in front of us, a black blotch
+standing out from the grey duskiness of the cliff-side. The prisoner
+stopped, and raising his bound hands pointed to it.
+
+"There?" the captain whispered, pressing forward. "Is that the place?"
+
+Clon nodded. The captain's voice shook with excitement. "You two
+remain here with him!" he muttered, in a low tone. "Sergeant, come
+forward with me. Now, are you ready? Forward!"
+
+He and the sergeant passed quickly, one on either side of Clon and his
+guards. The path was narrow here, and the captain passed outside. The
+eyes of all but one were on the black blotch, the hollow in the
+cliff-side, and no one saw exactly what happened. But somehow, as the
+captain passed abreast of him, the prisoner thrust back his guards,
+and springing sideways, flung his unbound arms round Larolle's body,
+and in an instant swept him, shouting, to the verge of the precipice.
+
+It was done in a moment. By the time the lieutenant's startled wits
+and eyes were back, the two were already tottering on the edge,
+looking in the gloom like one dark form. The sergeant, who was the
+first to find his head, levelled his carbine; but as the wrestlers
+twirled and twisted, the captain shrieking out oaths and threats, the
+mute silent as death, it was impossible to see which was which; and
+the sergeant lowered his gun again, while the men held back nervously.
+The ledge sloped steeply there; the edge was vague; already the two
+seemed to be wrestling in mid-air,--and the mute was a man beyond hope
+or fear.
+
+That moment of hesitation was fatal. Clon's long arms were round the
+other's arms, crushing them into his ribs; Clon's skull-like face
+grinned hate into the other's eyes; his long limbs curled round him
+like the folds of a snake. Suddenly Larolle's strength gave way. "Damn
+you all! Why don't you--Mercy! mercy!" came in a last scream from his
+lips; and then, as the lieutenant, taken aback before, sprang forward
+to his aid, the two toppled over the edge, and in a second hurtled out
+of sight.
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" the lieutenant cried, in horror. The answer was a dull
+splash in the depths below.
+
+He flung up his arms. "Water!" he said. "Quick, men, get down! We may
+save him yet! They have fallen into water!"
+
+But there was no path, and night was come, and the men's nerves were
+shaken. The lanthorns had to be lit, and the way to be retraced; and
+by the time we reached the dark pool which lay below, the last bubbles
+were gone from the surface, the last ripples had beaten themselves out
+against the banks. True, the pool still rocked sullenly, and the
+yellow light showed a man's hat floating, and near it a glove three
+parts submerged. But that was all. The mute's dying grip had known no
+loosening, nor his hate any fear. Later, I heard that when they
+dragged the two out next day, his fingers were in the other's
+eye-sockets, his teeth in his throat. If ever man found death sweet,
+it was he.
+
+As we turned slowly from the black water, some shuddering, some
+crossing themselves, the lieutenant looked vengefully at me. "Curse
+you!" he said, in sudden fury. "I believe you are glad!"
+
+"He deserved his fate," I answered coldly. "Why should I pretend to be
+sorry? It was now or in three months. And for the other poor devil's
+sake I am glad."
+
+He glared at me a moment, in speechless anger. At last, "I should like
+to have you tied up!" he said, between his teeth.
+
+"I should have thought that you had had enough of tying up for one
+day!" I retorted. "But there; it comes of making officers out of the
+canaille. Dogs love blood. The teamster must still lash something, if
+he can no longer lash his horses."
+
+We were back, a sombre little procession, at the wooden bridge, when I
+said this. He stopped suddenly. "Very well," he replied, nodding
+viciously, "That decides me. Sergeant, light me this way with a
+lanthorn. The rest of you to the village. Now, Master Spy," he
+continued, glancing at me with gloomy spite, "your road is my road. I
+think I know how to cook your goose."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders in disdain, and together, the sergeant leading
+the way with the light, we crossed the meadow, and passed through the
+gate where Mademoiselle had kissed my hand, and up the ghostly walk
+between the rosebushes. I wondered uneasily what the lieutenant would
+be at, and what he intended; but the lanthorn light which now fell
+on the ground at our feet, and now showed one of us to the other,
+high-lit in a frame of blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled
+face but settled hostility. He wheeled at the end of the walk to go
+to the main door; but as he did so, I saw the flutter of a white
+skirt by the stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way.
+"Mademoiselle," I said softly, "is it you?"
+
+"Clon?" she muttered, her voice quivering. "What of him?"
+
+"He is past pain," I answered gently. "He is dead, but in his own way.
+Take comfort, Mademoiselle." And then before I could say more, the
+lieutenant with his sergeant and light were at my elbow. He saluted
+Mademoiselle roughly. She looked at him with shuddering abhorrence.
+
+"Are you come to flog me, Sir?" she said icily. "Is it not enough that
+you have murdered my servant?"
+
+"On the contrary, it was he killed my captain," the lieutenant
+answered, in another tone than I had expected. "If your servant is
+dead, so is my comrade."
+
+She looked with startled eyes, not at him, but at me. "What! Captain
+Larolle?" she muttered.
+
+I nodded.
+
+"How?" she asked.
+
+"Clon flung the captain and himself into the river-pool," I explained,
+in a low voice. "The pool above the bridge."
+
+She uttered an exclamation of awe, and stood silent. But her lips
+moved; I think she was praying for Clon, though she was a Huguenot.
+Meanwhile I had a fright. The lanthorn, swinging in the sergeant's
+hand, and now throwing its smoky light on the stone seat, now on the
+rough wall above it, showed me something else. On the seat, doubtless
+where Mademoiselle's hand had lain, as she sat in the dark, listening
+and watching, stood a pitcher of food. Beside her, in that place, it
+was damning evidence. I trembled lest the lieutenant's eye should fall
+upon it, lest the sergeant should see it; I thought what I could do to
+hide it; and then in a moment I forgot all about it. The lieutenant
+was speaking, and his voice was like doom. My throat grew dry as I
+listened. My tongue stuck to my mouth; I tried to look at
+Mademoiselle, but I could not.
+
+"It is true, the captain is gone," he said stiffly. "But others are
+alive, and about one of them, a word with you,--by your leave,
+Mademoiselle. I have listened to a good deal of talk from this fine
+gentleman friend of yours. He has spent the last twenty-four hours
+saying, 'You shall!' and 'You shall not!' He came from you, and took a
+very high tone because we laid a little whip-lash about that dumb
+devil of yours. He called us brutes and beasts, and but for him I am
+not sure that my friend would not be alive. But when he said a few
+minutes ago that he was glad,--glad of it, damn him!--then I fixed it
+in my mind that I would be even with him. And I am going to be!"
+
+"What do you mean?" Mademoiselle asked, wearily interrupting him. "If
+you think you can prejudice me against that gentleman--"
+
+"That is precisely what I do think! And I am going to do it. And a
+little more than that!"
+
+"You will be only wasting your breath!" she answered proudly.
+
+"Wait! wait, Mademoiselle, until you have heard!" he said. "If ever a
+black-hearted scoundrel, a dastardly, sneaking spy, trod the earth, it
+is this fellow! This friend of yours! And I am going to expose him.
+Your own eyes and your own ears shall persuade you. Why, I would not
+eat, I would not drink, I would not sit down with him! I would not! I
+would rather be beholden to the meanest trooper in my squadron than to
+him! Ay, I would, so help me Heaven!" And the lieutenant, turning
+squarely on his heels, spat on the ground.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                             THE ARREST.
+
+
+So it had come! And come in such a fashion that I saw no way of
+escape. The sergeant was between us, and I could not strike him. And I
+found no words. A score of times I had thought with shrinking how I
+should reveal my secret to Mademoiselle, what I should say, and how
+she would take it. But in my mind it had always been a voluntary act,
+this disclosure. It had been always I who had unmasked myself, and she
+who listened--alone; and in this voluntariness and this privacy there
+had been something which seemed to take from the shame of
+anticipation. But here--here was no voluntary act on my part, no
+privacy, nothing but shame. I stood mute, convicted, speechless--like
+the thing I was.
+
+Yet if anything could have braced me, it was Mademoiselle's voice,
+when she answered him. "Go on, Monsieur," she said, with the perfect
+calmness of scorn. "You will have done the sooner."
+
+"You do not believe me?" he replied hotly. "Then, I say, look at him!
+Look at him! If ever shame--"
+
+"Monsieur!" she said abruptly--she did not look at me. "I am ashamed
+myself!"
+
+"Why, his very name is not his own!" the lieutenant rejoined jerkily.
+"He is no Barthe at all. He is Berault the gambler, the duellist, the
+bully--"
+
+Again she interrupted him. "I know it," she said coldly. "I know it
+all. And if you have nothing more to tell me, go, Monsieur. Go!" she
+continued, in a tone of infinite scorn. "Enough that you have earned
+my contempt as well as my abhorrence!"
+
+He looked for a moment taken aback. Then, "Ay, but I _have_ more!" he
+cried, his voice stubbornly triumphant. "I forgot that you would think
+little of that! I forgot that a swordsman has always the ladies'
+hearts. But I have more. Do you know, too, that he is in the
+Cardinal's pay? Do you know that he is here on the same errand which
+brings us here,--to arrest M. de Cocheforêt? Do you know that while we
+go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to
+worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame's intimacy, to
+listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your
+lips, to track you--track you until you betray yourselves and
+the man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie,
+Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? His aim,
+blood-money--blood-money? Why, _morbleu!_" the lieutenant continued,
+pointing his finger at me, and so carried away by passion, so lifted
+out of himself by wrath and indignation, that in spite of myself I
+shrank before him,--"you talk, lady, of contempt and abhorrence in the
+same breath with me! But what have you for him? What have you for him,
+the spy, the informer, the hired traitor? And if you doubt, if you
+want evidence, look at him. Only look at him, I say!"
+
+And he might well say it! For I stood silent still; cowering and
+despairing, white with rage and hate. But Mademoiselle did not look.
+She gazed straight at the lieutenant. "Have you done?" she said.
+
+"Done?" he stammered. Her words, her air, brought him to earth again.
+"Done? Yes, if you believe me."
+
+"I do not," she answered proudly. "If that be all, be satisfied,
+Monsieur. I do not believe you."
+
+"Then tell me," he retorted, after a moment of stunned surprise, "why,
+if he was not on our side, do you think we let him remain here? Why
+did we suffer him to stay in a suspected house bullying us, and taking
+your part from hour to hour?"
+
+"He has a sword, Monsieur," she answered, with fine contempt.
+
+"_Mille diables!_" he cried, snapping his fingers in a rage. "That for
+his sword! No. It was because he held the Cardinal's commission;
+because he had equal authority with us; because we had no choice."
+
+"And that being so, Monsieur, why are you now betraying him?" she
+asked keenly.
+
+He swore at that, feeling the stroke go home. "You must be mad," he
+said, glaring at her. "Mad, if you cannot see that the man is what I
+tell you he is. Look at him! Listen to him! Has he a word to say for
+himself?"
+
+Still she did not look. "It is late," she replied, coldly and
+irrelevantly. "And I am not very well. If you have quite done, perhaps
+you will leave me, Monsieur."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed, shrugging his shoulders; "you are mad! I
+have told you the truth, and you will not believe it. Well, on your
+head be it then, Mademoiselle. I have no more to say. But you will
+see."
+
+He looked at her for a moment as if he thought that she might still
+give way; then he saluted her roughly, gave the word to the sergeant,
+turned, and went down the path. The sergeant went after him, the
+lanthorn swaying in his hand. We two were left alone in the gloom. The
+frogs were croaking in the pool; the house, the garden, the wood,--all
+lay quiet under the darkness, as on the night when I first came to the
+Château.
+
+And would to Heaven I had never come! That was the cry in my heart.
+Would to Heaven I had never seen this woman, whose nobility and faith
+and singleness were a continual shame to me; a reproach, branding me
+every hour I stood in her presence, with all vile and hateful names.
+The man just gone, coarse, low-bred, brutal soldier as he was,
+man-flogger, and drilling-block, had yet found heart to feel my
+baseness, and words in which to denounce it. What, then, would she say
+when the truth some day came home to her? What shape should I take in
+her eyes then? How should I be remembered through all the years--then?
+
+Then? But now? What was she thinking, now, as she stood, silent and
+absorbed, by the stone seat, a shadowy figure with face turned from
+me? Was she recalling the man's words, fitting them to the facts and
+the past, adding this and that circumstance? Was she, though she had
+rebuffed him in the body, collating, now he was gone, all he had said,
+and out of these scraps piecing together the damning truth? The
+thought tortured me. I could brook uncertainty no longer. I went
+nearer to her and touched her sleeve. "Mademoiselle," I said, in a
+voice which sounded hoarse and forced even in my own ears, "do you
+believe this of me?"
+
+She started violently and turned. "Pardon, Monsieur," she answered. "I
+had forgotten that you were here. Do I believe--what?"
+
+"What that man said of me," I muttered.
+
+"That!" she exclaimed; and she stood a moment gazing at me in a
+strange fashion. "Do I believe what he said, Monsieur! But come,
+come," she continued, "and I will show you if I believe it. But not
+here."
+
+She led the way on the instant into the house, going in through the
+parlour door, which stood half open. The room inside was pitch dark,
+but she took me fearlessly by the hand, and led me quickly through it,
+and along the passage, until we came to the cheerful lighted hall,
+where a great fire burned on the hearth. All traces of the soldiers'
+occupation had been swept away. But the room was empty.
+
+She led me to the fire, and there, in the full light, no longer a
+shadowy creature, but red-lipped, brilliant, throbbing with life, she
+stood opposite me, her eyes shining, her colour high, her breast
+heaving. "Do I believe it?" she said. "I will tell you. M. de
+Cocheforêt's hiding-place is in the hut behind the fern-stack, two
+furlongs beyond the village, on the road to Auch. You know now what no
+one else knows, he and I and Madame excepted. You hold in your hands
+his life and my honour; and you know also, M. de Berault, whether I
+believed that tale."
+
+"My God!" I cried. And I stood looking at her, until something of the
+horror in my eyes crept into hers, and she shuddered and stepped back.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" she whispered, clasping her hands. And with
+all the colour gone from her cheeks she peered trembling into the
+corners and towards the door. "There is no one here. Is there any
+one--listening?"
+
+I forced myself to speak, though I shook all over, like a man in an
+ague. "No, Mademoiselle, there is no one here," I muttered. And then I
+let my head fall on my breast, and I stood before her, the statue of
+despair. Had she felt a grain of suspicion, a grain of doubt, my
+bearing must have opened her eyes. But her mind was cast in so noble a
+mould, that having once thought ill of me and been converted, she
+could feel no doubt again. It was her nature to trust all in all. So,
+a little recovered from her fright, she stood looking at me in great
+wonder; and at last she had a thought.
+
+"You are not well?" she said suddenly. "It is your old wound,
+Monsieur."
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," I muttered faintly. "It is my old wound."
+
+"I will call Clon!" she cried impetuously. And then, with a sob, "Ah!
+poor Clon! He is gone. But there is Louis. I will call him, and he
+will get you something."
+
+She was gone from the room before I could stop her; and I was left
+leaning against the table, possessor at last of the great secret which
+I had come so far to win. Possessor of that secret, and able in a
+moment to open the door, and go out into the night, and make use of
+it--and yet the most unhappy of men. The sweat stood on my brow, my
+eyes wandered round the room; I even turned towards the door, with
+some mad thought of flight--flight from her, from the house, from
+everything. And God knows if I might not have chosen that course; for
+I still stood doubting, when on the door, that door, there came a
+sudden hurried knocking which jarred every nerve in my body. I
+started. I stood in the middle of the floor, gazing at the door, as at
+a ghost. Then glad of action, glad of anything that might relieve the
+tension of my feelings, I strode to it, and pulled it sharply open.
+
+On the threshold, his flushed face lit up by the light behind me,
+stood one of the knaves I had brought with me to Auch. He had been
+running, and panted heavily, but he had kept his wits. He grasped my
+sleeve instantly. "Ah! Monsieur, the very man!" he cried, tugging at
+me. "Quick! come this instant, and you may yet be first. They have the
+secret. They have found Monsieur."
+
+"Found whom?" I echoed. "M. de Cocheforêt?"
+
+"No; but the place where he lies. It was found by accident. The
+lieutenant was gathering his men to go to it when I came away. If we
+are quick, we may be there first."
+
+"But the place?" I said.
+
+"I could not hear where it was," he answered bluntly. "We can hang on
+their skirts, and at the last moment strike in."
+
+The pair of pistols I had taken from the shock-headed man lay on a
+chest by the door. I snatched them up, and my hat, and joined him
+without another word; and in a moment we were running down the garden.
+I looked back once before we passed the gate, and I saw the light
+streaming out through the door which I had left open; and I fancied
+that for an instant a figure darkened the gap. But the fancy only
+strengthened the one single iron purpose which had taken possession of
+me and all my thoughts. I must be first. I must anticipate the
+lieutenant, and make the arrest myself. I ran on only the faster.
+
+We seemed to be across the meadow and in the wood in a moment. There,
+instead of keeping along the common path, I boldly singled out--my
+senses seemed preternaturally keen--the smaller track by which Clon
+had brought us, and ran unfaltering along it, avoiding logs and
+pitfalls as by instinct, and following all its turns and twists, until
+it brought us to the back of the inn, and we could hear the murmur of
+subdued voices in the village street, the sharp low words of command,
+and even the clink of weapons; and could see, above and between the
+houses, the dull glare of lanthorns and torches.
+
+I grasped my man's arm and crouched down, listening. "Where is your
+mate?" I said, in his ear.
+
+"With them," he muttered.
+
+"Then come," I whispered, rising. "I have seen enough. Let us go."
+
+But he caught me by the arm and detained me. "You don't know the way!"
+he hissed. "Steady, steady, Monsieur. You go too fast. They are just
+moving. Let us join them, and strike in when the time comes. We must
+let them guide us."
+
+"Fool!" I said, shaking off his hand. "I tell you, I know where he is!
+I know where they are going. Come; lose not a moment, and we will
+pluck the fruit while they are on the road to it."
+
+His only answer was an exclamation of surprise; at that moment the
+lights began to move. The lieutenant was starting. The moon was not
+yet up; the sky was grey and cloudy; to advance where we were was to
+step into a wall of blackness. But we had lost too much time already,
+and I did not hesitate. Bidding my companion follow me, and use his
+legs, I sprang through a low fence which rose before us, and stumbling
+blindly over some broken ground in the rear of the houses, came, with
+a fall or two, to a little watercourse with steep sides. Through this
+I plunged recklessly, and up the farther side, and, breathless and
+panting, gained the road just beyond the village, and fifty yards in
+advance of the lieutenant's troop.
+
+They had only two lanthorns burning now, and we were beyond the circle
+of light these cast; while the steady tramp of so many footsteps
+covered the noise we made. We were unnoticed. In a twinkling we turned
+our backs, and as fast as we could ran down the road. Fortunately,
+they were thinking more of secrecy than speed, and in a minute we had
+doubled the distance between us; in two minutes their lights were mere
+sparks shining in the gloom behind us. We lost, at last, even the
+tramp of their feet. Then I began to look out and go more slowly;
+peering into the shadows on either side for the fern-stack.
+
+On one hand the hill rose steeply; on the other it fell away to the
+stream. On neither side was close wood,--or my difficulties had been
+immensely increased,--but scattered oak-trees stood here and there
+among gorse and bracken. This helped me, and in a moment, on the upper
+side, I came upon the dense substance of the stack looming black
+against the lighter hill.
+
+My heart beat fast, but it was no time for thought. Bidding the man in
+a whisper to follow me and be ready to back me up, I climbed the bank
+softly, and with a pistol in my hand, felt my way to the rear of the
+stack; thinking to find a hut there, set against the fern, and M. de
+Cocheforêt in it. But I found no hut. There was none; and all was so
+dark that it came upon me suddenly as I stood between the hill and the
+stack that I had undertaken a very difficult thing. The hut behind the
+fern-stack? But how far behind? How far from it? The dark slope
+stretched above us, infinite, immeasurable, shrouded in night. To
+begin to climb it in search of a tiny hut, probably well-hidden and
+hard to find in daylight, seemed a task as impossible as to meet with
+the needle in the hay! And now, while I stood, chilled and doubting,
+the steps of the troop in the road began to grow audible, began to
+come nearer.
+
+"Well, M. le Capitaine?" the man beside me muttered--in wonder why I
+stood. "Which way? Or they will be before us yet."
+
+I tried to think, to reason it out; to consider where the hut would
+be; while the wind sighed through the oaks, and here and there I could
+hear an acorn fall. But the thing pressed too close on me: my thoughts
+would not be hurried, and at last I said at a venture, "Up the hill!
+Straight from the stack."
+
+He did not demur, and we plunged at the ascent, knee deep in bracken
+and furze, sweating at every pore with our exertions, and hearing the
+troop come every moment nearer on the road below. Doubtless _they_
+knew exactly whither to go! Forced to stop and take breath when we had
+scrambled up fifty yards or so, I saw their lanthorns shining like
+moving glow-worms; and could even hear the clink of steel. For all I
+could tell, the hut might be down there, and we two be moving from it!
+But it was too late to go back now; they were close to the fern-stack:
+and in despair I turned to the hill again. A dozen steps, and I
+stumbled. I rose and plunged on again; again I stumbled. Then I found
+that I was no longer ascending. I was treading level earth. And--was
+it water I saw before me, below me, a little in front of my feet, or
+some mirage of the sky?
+
+Neither; and I gripped my fellow's arm, as he came abreast of me, and
+stopped him sharply. Below us, in the centre of a steep hollow, a pit
+in the hill-side, a light shone out through some aperture and quivered
+on the mist, like the pale lamp of a moorland hobgoblin. It made
+itself visible, displaying nothing else; a wisp of light in the bottom
+of a black bowl.
+
+Yet my spirits rose with a great bound at sight of it, for I knew that
+I had stumbled on the place I sought. In the common run of things I
+should have weighed my next step carefully, and gone about it slowly.
+But here was no place for thought, nor room for delay, and I slid down
+the side of the hollow, and the moment my feet touched the bottom,
+sprang to the door of the little hut whence the light issued. A stone
+turned under my foot in my rush, and I fell on my knees on the
+threshold; but the fall only brought my face to a level with the
+startled eyes of the man who lay inside on a bed of fern. He had been
+reading. At the sound I made he dropped his book, and stretched out
+his hand for a weapon. But the muzzle of my pistol covered him before
+he could reach his; he was not in a posture from which he could
+spring, and at a sharp word from me he dropped his hand. The tigerish
+glare which had flickered for an instant in his eyes, gave place to a
+languid smile; and he shrugged his shoulders. "_Eh, bien?_" he said,
+with marvellous composure. "Taken at last! Well, I was tired of it."
+
+"You are my prisoner, M. de Cocheforêt," I answered.
+
+"It seems so," he said.
+
+"Move a hand, and I kill you," I answered. "But you have still a
+choice."
+
+"Truly?" he said, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"Yes. My orders are to take you to Paris alive or dead. Give me your
+parole that you will make no attempt to escape, and you shall go
+thither at your ease and as a gentleman. Refuse, and I shall disarm
+and bind you, and you will go as a prisoner."
+
+"What force have you?" he asked curtly. He had not moved. He still lay
+on his elbow, his cloak covering him, the little Marot in which he had
+been reading close to his hand. But his quick, black eyes, which
+looked the keener for the pallor and thinness of his face, roved
+ceaselessly over me, probed the darkness behind me, took note of
+everything.
+
+"Enough to compel you, Monsieur," I replied sternly. "But that is not
+all. There are thirty dragoons coming up the hill to secure you, and
+they will make you no such offer. Surrender to me before they come and
+give me your parole, and I will do all for your comfort. Delay, and
+you will fall into their hands. There can be no escape."
+
+"You will take my word," he said slowly.
+
+"Give it, and you may keep your pistols, M. de Cocheforêt," I replied.
+
+"Tell me at least that you are not alone."
+
+"I am not alone."
+
+"Then I give it," he said, with a sigh. "And for Heaven's sake get me
+something to eat and a bed. I am tired of this pig-sty--and this life
+_Arnidieu!_ it is a fortnight since I slept between sheets."
+
+"You shall sleep to-night in your own house if you please," I answered
+hurriedly. "But here they come. Be good enough to stay where you are a
+moment, and I will meet them."
+
+I stepped out into the darkness, in the nick of time. The lieutenant,
+after posting his men round the hollow, had just slid down with a
+couple of sergeants to make the arrest. The place round the open door
+was pitch dark. He had not espied my knave, who had lodged himself in
+the deepest shadow of the hut; and when he saw me come out across the
+light, he took me for Cocheforêt. In a twinkling he thrust a pistol
+into my face, and cried triumphantly, "You are my prisoner!" At the
+same instant one of the sergeants raised a lanthorn and threw its
+light into my eyes.
+
+"What folly is this?" I said savagely.
+
+The lieutenant's jaw fell, and he stood for half a minute, paralyzed
+with astonishment. Less than an hour before he had left me at the
+Château. Thence he had come hither with the briefest delay; and yet he
+found me here before him! He swore fearfully, his face dark, his
+mustachios stiff with rage. "What is this? What is it?" he cried at
+last. "Where is the man?"
+
+"What man?" I said.
+
+"This Cocheforêt!" he roared, carried away by his passion. "Don't lie
+to me! He is here, and I will have him!"
+
+"You will not. You are too late!" I said, watching him heedfully. "M.
+de Cocheforêt is here, but he has already surrendered to me, and he is
+my prisoner."
+
+"Your prisoner?"
+
+"Yes, my prisoner!" I answered facing the man with all the harshness I
+could muster. "I have arrested him by virtue of the Cardinal's special
+commission granted to me. And by virtue of the same I shall keep him!"
+
+He glared at me for a moment in utter rage and perplexity. Then on a
+sudden I saw his face lighten. "It is a d--d ruse!" he shouted,
+brandishing his pistol like a madman. "It is a cheat and a fraud! And
+by G--d you have no commission! I see through it! I see through it
+all! You have come here, and you have hocussed us! You are of their
+side, and this is your last shift to save him!"
+
+"What folly is this?" I exclaimed.
+
+"No folly at all!" he answered, conviction in his tone. "You have
+played upon us! You have fooled us! But I see through it now! An hour
+ago I exposed you to that fine Madame at the house there, and I
+thought it a marvel that she did not believe me. I thought it a marvel
+that she did not see through you, when you stood there before her,
+confounded, tongue-tied, a rogue convicted! But I understand it now.
+She knew you! By----, she knew you! She was in the plot, and you were
+in the plot; and I, who thought I was opening her eyes, was the only
+one fooled! But it is my turn now. You have played a bold part, and a
+clever one, and I congratulate you! But," he continued, a sinister
+light in his little eyes, "it is at an end now, Monsieur! You took us
+in finely with your tale of Monseigneur, and his commission, and your
+commission, and the rest. But I am not to be blinded any longer, or
+bullied! You have arrested him, have you? _You_ have arrested him!
+Well, by G--d, I shall arrest him, and I shall arrest you too!"
+
+"You are mad!" I said, staggered as much by this new view of the
+matter as by his perfect conviction of its truth. "Mad, Lieutenant!"
+
+"I was!" he snarled drily. "But I am sane now. I was mad when you
+imposed upon us; when you persuaded me that you were fooling the women
+to get the secret out of them, while all the time you were sheltering
+them, protecting them, aiding them, and hiding him--then I was mad!
+But not now. However, I ask your pardon, M. de Barthe, or M. de
+Berault, or whatever your name really is. I ask your pardon. I thought
+you the cleverest sneak and the dirtiest hound heaven ever made, or
+hell refused! I find that you were cleverer than I thought, and an
+honest traitor. Your pardon."
+
+One of the men who stood about the rim of the bowl above us laughed. I
+looked at the lieutenant, and could willingly have killed him. "_Mon
+Dieu!_" I said, so furious in my turn that I could scarcely speak. "Do
+you say that I am an impostor--that I do not hold the Cardinal's
+commission?"
+
+"I do say that!" he answered coolly. "And shall abide by it."
+
+"And that I belong to the rebel party?"
+
+"I do," he replied, in the same tone. "In fact," with a grin, "I say
+that you are an honest man on the wrong side, M. de Berault. And you
+say that you are a scoundrel on the right. The advantage, however, is
+with me, and I shall back my opinion by arresting you."
+
+A ripple of coarse laughter ran round the hollow. The sergeant who
+held the lanthorn grinned, and a trooper at a distance called out of
+the darkness, "_A bon chat bon rat!_" This brought a fresh burst of
+laughter, while I stood speechless, confounded by the stubbornness,
+the crassness, the insolence, of the man. "You fool!" I cried at last,
+"you fool!" And then M. de Cocheforêt, who had come out of the hut,
+and taken his stand at my elbow, interrupted me.
+
+"Pardon me one moment," he said airily, looking at the lieutenant,
+with raised eyebrows, and pointing to me with his thumb. "But I am
+puzzled between you. This gentleman's name? Is it de Berault or de
+Barthe?"
+
+"I am M. de Berault," I said brusquely, answering for myself.
+
+"Of Paris?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, of Paris."
+
+"You are not then the gentleman who has been honouring my poor house
+with his presence?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" the lieutenant struck in, grinning. "He is that gentleman,
+too!"
+
+"But I thought--I understood that that was M. de Barthe."
+
+"I am M. de Barthe, also," I retorted impatiently. "What of that,
+Monsieur? It was my mother's name. I took it when I came down here."
+
+"To--er, to arrest me, may I ask?"
+
+"Yes," I answered doggedly. "To arrest you. What of that?"
+
+"Nothing," he replied slowly and with a steady look at me, a look I
+could not meet. "Except that, had I known this before, M. de Berault,
+I should have thought long before I surrendered to you."
+
+The lieutenant laughed, and I felt my cheek burn. But I affected to
+see nothing, and turned to him again. "Now, Monsieur," I said sternly,
+"are you satisfied?"
+
+"No!" he answered point blank. "I am not. You two gentlemen may have
+rehearsed this pretty scene a dozen times. The only word it seems to
+me, is, Quick March, back to Quarters."
+
+I found myself driven to play my last card--much against my will. "Not
+so," I said; "I have my commission."
+
+"Produce it!" he replied brusquely.
+
+"Do you think that I carry it with me?" I said, in scorn. "Do you
+think that when I came here, alone, and not with fifty dragoons at my
+back, I carried the Cardinal's seal in my pocket for the first lackey
+to find? But you shall have it. Where is that knave of mine?"
+
+The words were scarcely out of my mouth before his ready hand thrust a
+paper into my fingers. I opened it slowly, glanced at it, and amid a
+pause of surprise gave it to the lieutenant. He looked for a moment
+confounded. He stared at it, with his jaw fallen. Then with a last
+instinct of suspicion he bade the sergeant hold up the lanthorn, and
+by its light proceeded to spell out the document.
+
+"Umph!" he ejaculated, after a moment's silence; and he cast an ugly
+look at me. "I see." And he read it aloud.
+
+
+"_By these presents I command and empower Gilles de Berault, sieur de
+Berault, to seek for, hold, arrest, and deliver to the Governor of the
+Bastile the body of Henri de Cocheforêt, and to do all such acts and
+things as shall be necessary to effect such arrest and delivery, for
+which these shall be his warrant_.
+
+                    "(_Signed_) _RICHELIEU, Lieut.-Gen_."
+
+
+When he had done,--and he read the signature with a peculiar
+intonation,--some one said softly, "_Vive le roi!_" and there was a
+moment's silence. The sergeant lowered his lanthorn. "Is it enough?" I
+said hoarsely, glaring from face to face.
+
+The lieutenant bowed stiffly. "For me?" he said. "Quite, Monsieur. I
+beg your pardon again. I find that my first impressions were
+the-correct ones. Sergeant, give the gentleman his paper." And turning
+his shoulder rudely, he tossed the commission towards the sergeant,
+who picked it up, and gave it to me, grinning.
+
+I knew that the clown would not fight, and he had his men round him;
+and I had no choice but to swallow the insult. As I put the paper in
+my breast, with as much indifference as I could assume, he gave a
+sharp order. The troopers began to form on the edge above, the men who
+had descended, to climb the bank. As the group behind him began to
+open and melt away, I caught sight of a white robe in the middle of
+it. The next moment, appearing with a suddenness which was like a blow
+on the cheek to me, Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt glided forward, and
+came towards me. She had a hood on her head, drawn low; and for a
+moment I could not see her face. I forgot her brother's presence at my
+elbow; from habit and impulse rather than calculation, I took a step
+forward to meet her---though my tongue cleaved to the roof of my
+mouth, and I was dumb and trembling.
+
+But she recoiled with such a look of white hate, of staring,
+frozen-eyed loathing, that I stepped back as if she had indeed struck
+me. It did not need the words which accompanied the look, the "_Do not
+touch me!_" which she hissed at me as she drew her skirts together, to
+drive me to the farther edge of the hollow; there to stand with
+clenched teeth and nails driven into the flesh while she hung, sobbing
+tearless sobs, on her brother's neck.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                          THE ROAD TO PARIS.
+
+
+I remember hearing Marshal Bassompierre, who, of all men within my
+knowledge, had the widest experience, say that not dangers, but
+discomforts, prove a man, and show what he is; and that the worst
+sores in life are caused by crumpled rose-leaves and not by thorns.
+
+I am inclined to agree with this. For I remember that when I came from
+my room on the morning after the arrest, and found hall and parlour
+and passage empty, and all the common rooms of the house deserted, and
+no meal laid, and when I divined anew from this discovery the feeling
+of the house towards me,--however natural and to be expected,--I felt
+as sharp a pang as when, the night before, I had had to face discovery
+and open rage and scorn. I stood in the silent, empty parlour, and
+looked round me with a sense of desolation; of something lost and
+gone, which I could not replace. The morning was grey and cloudy, the
+air sharp; a shower was falling. The rose-bushes at the window swayed
+in the wind, and where I could remember the hot sunshine lying on
+floor and table, the rain beat in and stained the boards. The main
+door flapped and creaked to and fro. I thought of other days and meals
+I had taken there, and of the scent of flowers, and I fled to the hall
+in despair.
+
+But here, too, was no sign of life or company, no comfort, no
+attendance. The ashes of the logs, by whose blaze Mademoiselle had
+told me the secret, lay on the hearth white and cold; and now and then
+a drop of moisture, sliding down the great chimney, pattered among
+them. The great door stood open as if the house had no longer anything
+to guard. The only living thing to be seen was a hound which roamed
+about restlessly, now gazing at the empty hearth, now lying down with
+pricked ears and watchful eyes. Some leaves which had been blown in
+rustled in a corner.
+
+I went out moodily into the garden, and wandered down one path, and
+up another, looking at the dripping woods and remembering things,
+until I came to the stone seat. On it, against the wall, trickling
+with rain-drops, and with a dead leaf half filling its narrow neck,
+stood the pitcher of food. I thought how much had happened since
+Mademoiselle took her hand off it and the sergeant's lanthorn
+disclosed it to me. And sighing grimly, I went in again through the
+parlour door.
+
+A woman was on her knees, kindling the belated fire. I stood a moment,
+looking at her doubtfully, wondering how she would bear herself, and
+what she would say to me: and then she turned, and I cried out her
+name in horror; for it was Madame!
+
+She was very plainly dressed; her childish face was wan, and piteous
+with weeping. But either the night had worn out her passion and
+drained her tears, or this great exigency gave her temporary calmness;
+for she was perfectly composed. She shivered as her eyes met mine, and
+she blinked as if a light had been suddenly thrust before her. But she
+turned again to her task, without speaking.
+
+"Madame! Madame!" I cried, in a frenzy of distress. "What is this?"
+
+"The servants would not do it," she answered, in a low but steady
+voice. "You are still our guest, Monsieur, and it must be done."
+
+"But--I cannot suffer it!" I cried, in misery. "Madame de Cocheforêt,
+I will--I would rather do it myself!"
+
+She raised her hand, with a strange, patient expression on her face.
+"Hush, please," she said. "Hush! you trouble me."
+
+The fire took light and blazed up as she spoke, and she rose slowly
+from it, and, with a lingering look at it, went out; leaving me to
+stand and stare and listen in the middle of the floor. Presently I
+heard her coming back along the passage, and she entered, bearing a
+tray with wine and meat and bread. She set it down on the table, and
+with the same wan face, trembling always on the verge of tears, she
+began to lay out the things. The glasses clinked pitifully against the
+plates as she handled them; the knives jarred with one another; and I
+stood by, trembling myself, and endured this strange, this awful
+penance.
+
+She signed to me at last to sit down and eat; and she went herself,
+and stood in the garden doorway, with her back to me. I obeyed. I sat
+down; but though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of the day
+before, and a little earlier had had appetite enough, I could not
+swallow. I fumbled with my knife, and munched and drank; and grew hot
+and angry at this farce; and then looked through the window at the
+dripping bushes, and the rain, and the distant sundial, and grew cold
+again.
+
+Suddenly she turned round and came to my side. "You do not eat," she
+said.
+
+I threw down my knife, and sprang up in a frenzy of passion. "_Mon
+Dieu!_ Madame!" I cried. "Do you think I have _no_ heart?"
+
+And then in a moment I knew what I had done. In a moment she was on
+her knees on the floor, clasping my knees, pressing her wet cheeks to
+my rough clothes, crying to me for mercy--for life! life! life! his
+life! Oh, it was horrible! It was horrible to see her fair hair
+falling over my mud-stained boots, to see her slender little form
+convulsed with sobs, to feel that this was a woman, a gentlewoman, who
+thus abased herself at my feet.
+
+"Oh, Madame! Madame!" I cried, in my agony. "I beg you to rise. Rise,
+or I must go! You will drive me out!"
+
+"Grant me his life!" she moaned passionately. "Only his life! What had
+he done to you, that you should hunt him down? What had we done to
+you, that you should slay us? Ah, Sir, have mercy! Let him go, and we
+will pray for you; I and my sister will pray for you every morning and
+night of our lives."
+
+I was in terror lest some one should come and see her lying there, and
+I stooped and tried to raise her. But she would not rise; she only
+sank the lower until her tender hands clasped my spurs, and I dared
+not move. Then I took a sudden resolution. "Listen then, Madame," I
+said, almost sternly, "if you will not rise. When you ask what you do,
+you forget how I stand, and how small my power is! You forget that
+were I to release your husband to-day, he would be seized within the
+hour by those who are still in the village, and who are watching every
+road--who have not ceased to suspect my movements and my intentions.
+You forget, I say, my circumstances--"
+
+She cut me short on that word. She sprang abruptly to her feet and
+faced me. One moment, and I should have said something to the purpose.
+But at that word she was before me, white, breathless, dishevelled,
+struggling for speech. "Oh yes, yes," she panted eagerly, "I know! I
+understand!" And she thrust her hand into her bosom and plucked
+something out and gave it to me--forced it upon me into my hands. "I
+know! I know!" she said again. "Take it, and God reward you, Monsieur!
+We give it freely--freely and thankfully! And may God bless you!"
+
+I stood and looked at her, and looked at it, and slowly froze. She had
+given me the packet--the packet I had restored to Mademoiselle, the
+parcel of jewels. I weighed it in my hands, and my heart grew hard
+again, for I knew that this was Mademoiselle's doing; that it was she
+who, mistrusting the effect of Madame's tears and prayers, had armed
+her with this last weapon--this dirty bribe, I flung it down on the
+table among the plates, all my pity changed to anger. "Madame," I
+cried ruthlessly, "you mistake me altogether. I have heard hard words
+enough in the last twenty-four hours, and I know what you think of me!
+But you have yet to learn that I have never turned traitor to the hand
+that employed me, nor sold my own side! When I do so for a treasure
+ten times the worth of that, may my hand rot off!"
+
+She sank into a seat, with a moan of despair, and at that moment the
+door opened, and M. de Cocheforêt came in. Over his shoulder I had a
+glimpse of Mademoiselle's proud face, a little whiter to-day, with
+dark marks under the eyes, but still firm and cold. "What is this?" he
+said, frowning and stopping short as his eyes lighted on Madame.
+
+"It is--that we start at eleven o'clock, Monsieur," I answered, bowing
+curtly. "Those, I fancy, are your property." And pointing to the
+jewels, I went out by the other door.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+That I might not be present at their parting, I remained in the garden
+until the hour I had appointed was well passed; then without entering
+the house I went to the stable entrance. Here I found all ready, the
+two troopers (whose company I had requisitioned as far as Auch)
+already in the saddle, my own two knaves waiting with my sorrel and M.
+de Cocheforêt's chestnut. Another horse was being led up and down by
+Louis, and, alas, my heart winced at the sight. For it bore a lady's
+saddle, and I saw that we were to have company. Was it Madame who
+meant to come with us? or Mademoiselle? And how far? To Auch? or
+farther?
+
+I suppose that they had set some kind of a watch on me; for, as I
+walked up, M. de Cocheforêt and his sister came out of the house,--he
+looking white, with bright eyes and a twitching in his cheek, though
+through all he affected a jaunty bearing; she wearing a black mask.
+
+"Mademoiselle accompanies us?" I said formally.
+
+"With your permission, Monsieur," he answered, with grim politeness.
+But I saw that he was choking with emotion. I guessed that he had just
+parted from his wife, and I turned away.
+
+When we were all mounted, he looked at me. "Perhaps, as you have my
+parole, you will permit me to ride alone," he said, with a little
+hesitation, "and--"
+
+"Without me!" I rejoined keenly. "Assuredly, so far as is possible." I
+directed the troopers to ride in front and keep out of ear-shot; my
+two men followed the prisoner at a like distance, with their carbines
+on their knees. Last of all I rode myself, with my eyes open and a
+pistol loose in my holster. M. de Cocheforêt, I saw, was inclined to
+sneer at so many precautions, and the mountain made of his request;
+but I had not done so much and come so far, I had not faced scorn and
+insults, to be cheated of my prize at last. Aware that until we were
+beyond Auch there must be hourly and pressing danger of a rescue, I
+was determined that he who would wrest my prisoner from me should pay
+dearly for it. Only pride, and, perhaps, in a degree also, appetite
+for a fight, had prevented me borrowing ten troopers instead of two.
+
+We started, and I looked with a lingering eye and many memories at the
+little bridge, the narrow woodland path, the first roofs of the
+village; all now familiar, all seen for the last time. Up the brook a
+party of soldiers were dragging for the captain's body. A furlong
+farther on, a cottage, burned by some carelessness in the night, lay a
+heap of black ashes. Louis ran beside us, weeping; the last brown
+leaves fluttered down in showers. And between my eyes and all, the
+slow, steady rain fell and fell and fell. And so I left Cocheforêt.
+
+Louis went with us to a point a mile beyond the village, and there
+stood and saw us go, cursing me furiously as I passed. Looking back
+when we had ridden on, I still saw him standing; and after a moment's
+hesitation I rode back to him. "Listen, fool," I said, cutting him
+short in the midst of his mowing and snarling, "and give this message
+to your mistress. Tell her from me that it will be with her husband
+as it was with M. de Regnier, when he fell into the hands of his
+enemy--no better and no worse."
+
+"You want to kill her, too, I suppose?" he answered, glowering at me.
+
+"No, fool! I want to save her!" I retorted wrathfully. "Tell her that,
+just that and no more, and you will see the result."
+
+"I shall not," he said sullenly. "I shall not tell her. A message from
+you, indeed!" And he spat on the ground.
+
+"Then on your head be it!" I answered solemnly. And I turned my
+horse's head and galloped fast after the others. For, in spite of his
+refusal, I felt sure that he would report what I had said--if it were
+only out of curiosity; and it would be strange if Madame did not
+understand the reference.
+
+And so we began our journey; sadly, under dripping trees and a leaden
+sky. The country we had to traverse was the same I had trodden on the
+last day of my march southwards, but the passage of a month had
+changed the face of everything. Green dells, where springs welling out
+of the chalk had made of the leafy bottom a fairies' home, strewn with
+delicate ferns and hung with mosses--these were now swamps into which
+our horses sank to the fetlock. Sunny brows, whence I had viewed the
+champaign and traced my forward path, had become bare, windswept
+ridges. The beech woods, which had glowed with ruddy light, were naked
+now; mere black trunks and rigid arms pointing to heaven. An earthy
+smell filled the air; a hundred paces away a wall of mist closed the
+view. We plodded on sadly, up hill and down hill; now fording brooks
+already stained with flood-water, now crossing barren heaths.
+
+But up hill or down hill, whatever the outlook, I was never permitted
+to forget that I was the jailer, the ogre, the villain; that I, riding
+behind in my loneliness, was the blight on all, the death-spot. True,
+I was behind the others; I escaped their eyes. But there was not a
+line of Mademoiselle's drooping figure that did not speak scorn to me,
+not a turn of her head that did not seem to say, "Oh God, that such a
+thing should breathe!"
+
+I had only speech with her once during the day, and that was on the
+last ridge before we went down into the valley to climb up again to
+Auch. The rain had ceased; the sun, near its setting, shone faintly;
+and for a few moments we stood on the brow and looked southwards while
+we breathed the horses. The mist lay like a pall on all the country we
+had traversed; but beyond it and above it, gleaming pearl-like in the
+level rays, the line of the mountains stood up like a land of
+enchantment, soft, radiant, wonderful, or like one of those castles on
+the Hill of Glass of which the old romances tell us. I forgot, for an
+instant, how we were placed, and I cried to my neighbour that it was
+the fairest pageant I had ever seen.
+
+She--it was Mademoiselle, and she had taken off her mask--cast one
+look at me; only one, but it conveyed disgust and loathing so
+unspeakable that scorn beside them would have been a gift. I reined in
+my horse as if she had struck me, and felt myself go first hot and
+then cold under her eyes. Then she looked another way.
+
+I did not forget the lesson; after that I avoided her more sedulously
+than before. We lay that night at Auch, and I gave M. de Cocheforêt
+the utmost liberty; even permitting him to go out and return at his
+will. In the morning, believing that on the farther side of Auch we
+ran less risk of attack, I dismissed the two dragoons, and an hour
+after sunrise we set out again. The day was dry and cold, the weather
+more promising. I planned to go by way of Lectoure, crossing the
+Garonne at Agen; and I thought with roads continually improving as we
+moved northwards, we should be able to make good progress before
+night. My two men rode first; I came last by myself.
+
+Our way lay for some hours down the valley of the Gers, under poplars
+and by long rows of willows; and presently the sun came out and warmed
+us. Unfortunately, the rain of the day before had swollen the brooks
+which crossed our path, and we more than once had a difficulty in
+fording them. Noon, therefore, found us little more than half-way to
+Lectoure, and I was growing each minute more impatient, when our road,
+which had for a little while left the river bank, dropped down to it
+again, and I saw before us another crossing, half ford, half slough.
+My men tried it gingerly, and gave back, and tried it again in another
+place  and finally, just as Mademoiselle and Monsieur came up to them,
+floundered through and sprang slantwise up the farther bank.
+
+The delay had been long enough to bring me, with no good will of my
+own, close up to the Cocheforêts. Mademoiselle's horse made a little
+business of the place; this delayed them still longer, and in the
+result, we entered the water almost together, and I crossed close on
+her heels. The bank on either side was steep; while crossing we could
+see neither before nor behind. At the moment, however, I thought
+nothing of this, nor of her delay, and I was following her quite at my
+leisure, when the sudden report of a carbine, a second report, and a
+yell of alarm in front, thrilled me through.
+
+On the instant, while the sound was still in my ears, I saw it all.
+Like a hot iron piercing my brain, the truth flashed into my mind. We
+were attacked! We were attacked, and I was here helpless in this pit,
+this trap! The loss of a second while I fumbled here, Mademoiselle's
+horse barring the way, might be fatal.
+
+There was but one way. I turned my horse straight at the steep bank,
+and he breasted it. One moment he hung as if he must fall back. Then,
+with a snort of terror and a desperate bound, he topped it, and gained
+the level, trembling and snorting.
+
+It was as I had guessed. Seventy paces away on the road lay one of my
+men. He had fallen, horse and man, and lay still. Near him, with his
+back against a bank, stood his fellow, on foot, pressed by four
+horsemen, and shouting. As my eye lighted on the scene, he let fly
+with a carbine and dropped one.
+
+I snatched a pistol from my holster, cocked it, and seized my horse by
+the head--I might save the man yet. I shouted to encourage him, and in
+another second should have charged into the fight, when a sudden
+vicious blow, swift and unexpected, struck the pistol from my hand.
+
+I made a snatch at it as it fell, but missed it; and before I could
+recover myself, Mademoiselle thrust her horse furiously against mine,
+and with her riding-whip, lashed the sorrel across the ears. As my
+horse reared madly up, I had a glimpse of her eyes flashing hate
+through her mask; of her hand again uplifted; the next moment, I was
+down in the road, ingloriously unhorsed, the sorrel was galloping
+away, and her horse, scared in its turn, was plunging unmanageably a
+score of paces from me.
+
+I don't doubt that but for that she would have trampled on me. As it
+was, I was free to draw; and in a twinkling I was running towards the
+fighters. All I have described had happened in a few seconds. My man
+was still defending himself; the smoke of the carbine had scarcely
+risen. I sprang with a shout across a fallen tree that intervened; at
+the same moment, two of the men detached themselves, and rode to meet
+me. One, whom I took to be the leader, was masked. He came furiously
+at me, trying to ride me down; but I leaped aside nimbly, and evading
+him, rushed at the other, and scaring his horse, so that he dropped
+his point, cut him across the shoulder before he could guard himself.
+He plunged away, cursing, and trying to hold in his horse, and I
+turned to meet the masked man.
+
+"You double-dyed villain!" he cried, riding al. me again. And this
+time he man[oe]uvred his horse so skilfully that I was hard put to it
+to prevent him knocking me down; and could not with all my efforts
+reach him to hurt him. "Surrender, will you!" he continued, "you
+bloodhound!"
+
+I wounded him slightly in the knee for answer; but before I could do
+more his companion came back, and the two set upon me with a will,
+slashing at my head so furiously and towering above me with so
+great an advantage that it was all I could do to guard myself.
+I was soon glad to fall back against the bank--as my man had done
+before me. In such a conflict my rapier would have been of little
+use, but fortunately I had armed myself before I left Paris with a
+cut-and-thrust sword for the road; and though my mastery of the weapon
+was not on a par with my rapier-play, I was able to fend off their
+cuts, and by an occasional prick keep the horses at a distance. Still
+they swore and cut at me, trying to wear me out; and it was trying
+work. A little delay, the least accident, might enable the other man
+to come to their help, or Mademoiselle, for all I knew, might shoot me
+with my own pistol; and I confess, I was unfeignedly glad when a lucky
+parade sent the masked man's sword flying across the road. He was no
+coward; for unarmed as he was, he pushed his horse at me, spurring it
+recklessly; but the animal, which I had several times touched, reared
+up instead and threw him at the very moment that I wounded his
+companion a second time in the arm, and made him give back.
+
+This quite changed the scene. The man in the mask staggered to his
+feet, and felt stupidly for a pistol. But he could not find one, and
+was, I saw, in no state to use it if he had. He reeled helplessly to
+the bank, and leaned against it. He would give no further trouble. The
+man I had wounded was in scarcely better condition. He retreated
+before me for some paces, but then losing courage, he dropped his
+sword, and, wheeling round, cantered off down the road, clinging to
+his pommel. There remained only the fellow engaged with my man, and I
+turned to see how they were getting on. They were standing to take
+breath, so I ran towards them; but, seeing me coming, this rascal,
+too, whipped round his horse, and disappeared in the wood, and left us
+masters of the field. The first thing I did--and I remember it to this
+day with pleasure--was to plunge my hand into my pocket, take out half
+the money I had in the world, and press it on the man who had fought
+for me so stoutly, and who had certainly saved me from disaster. In my
+joy I could have kissed him! It was not only that I had escaped defeat
+by the skin of my teeth,--and his good sword,--but I knew, and
+thrilled with the knowledge, that the fight had altered the whole
+position. He was wounded in two places, and I had a scratch or two,
+and had lost my horse; and my other poor fellow was dead as a herring.
+But speaking for myself, I would have spent half the blood in my body
+to purchase the feeling with which I turned back to speak to M. de
+Cocheforêt and his sister. _I had fought before them_.
+
+Mademoiselle had dismounted, and with her face averted and her mask
+pushed on one side, was openly weeping. Her brother, who had
+scrupulously kept his place by the ford from the beginning of the
+fight to the end, met me with raised eyebrows and a peculiar
+smile. "Acknowledge my virtue," he said airily. "I am here, M. de
+Berault--which is more than can be said of the two gentlemen who have
+just ridden off."
+
+"Yes," I answered, with a touch of bitterness. "I wish they had not
+shot my poor man before they went."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "They were my friends," he said. "You must
+not expect me to blame them. But that is not all."
+
+"No," I said, wiping my sword. "There is this gentleman in the mask."
+And I turned to go towards him.
+
+"M. de Berault!" There was something abrupt in the way in which
+Cocheforêt called my name after me.
+
+I stood. "Pardon?" I said, turning.
+
+"That gentleman?" he answered, hesitating, and looking at me
+doubtfully. "Have you considered--what will happen to him, if you give
+him up to the authorities?"
+
+"Who is he?" I said sharply.
+
+"That is rather a delicate question," he answered, frowning, and still
+looking at me fixedly.
+
+"Not from me," I replied brutally, "since he is in my power. If he
+will take off his mask, I shall know better what I intend to do with
+him."
+
+The stranger had lost his hat in his fall, and his fair hair, stained
+with dust, hung in curls on his shoulders. He was a tall man, of a
+slender, handsome presence, and though his dress was plain and almost
+rough, I espied a splendid jewel on his hand, and fancied I detected
+other signs of high quality. He still lay against the bank in a
+half-swooning condition, and seemed unconscious of my scrutiny.
+"Should I know him if he unmasked?" I said suddenly, a new idea in my
+head.
+
+"You would," M. de Cocheforêt answered simply.
+
+"And?"
+
+"It would be bad for every one."
+
+"Ho, ho!" I said softly, looking hard, first at my old prisoner, and
+then at my new one. "Then, what do you wish me to do?"
+
+"Leave him here," M. de Cocheforêt answered glibly, his face flushed,
+the pulse in his cheek beating. I had known him for a man of perfect
+honour before, and trusted him. But this evident earnest anxiety on
+behalf of his friend touched me. Besides, I knew that I was treading
+on slippery ground; that it behoved me to be careful. "I will do it,"
+I said, after a moment's reflection. "He will play me no tricks, I
+suppose? A letter of--"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_, no! He will understand," Cocheforêt answered eagerly.
+"You will not repent it, I swear. Let us be going."
+
+"Well,--but my horse?" I said, somewhat taken aback by this extreme
+haste.
+
+"We shall overtake it," he replied urgently. "It will have kept to the
+road. Lectoure is no more than a league from here, and we can give
+orders there to have these two fetched in and buried."
+
+I had nothing to gain by demurring, and so it was arranged. After that
+we did not linger. We picked up what we had dropped, M. de Cocheforêt
+mounted his sister, and within five minutes we were gone. Casting a
+glance back from the skirts of the wood, as we entered it, I fancied
+that I saw the masked man straighten himself and turn to look after
+us; but the leaves were beginning to intervene, the distance was great
+and perhaps cheated me. And yet I was not disinclined to think the
+unknown a little less severely injured and a trifle more observant
+than he seemed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                         AT THE FINGER-POST.
+
+
+Through all, it will have been noticed, Mademoiselle had not spoken to
+me, nor said one word, good or bad. She had played her part grimly;
+had taken her defeat in silence, if with tears; had tried neither
+prayer, nor defence, nor apology. And the fact that the fight was now
+over, the scene left behind, made no difference in her conduct--to my
+surprise and discomfiture. She kept her face averted from me; she rode
+as before; she affected to ignore my presence. I caught my horse
+feeding by the road-side, a furlong forward, and mounted, and fell
+into place behind the two, as in the morning. And just as we had
+plodded on then in silence, we plodded on now, while I wondered at the
+unfathomable ways of women, and knowing that I had borne myself well,
+marvelled that she could take part in such an incident and remain
+unchanged.
+
+Yet it had made a change in her. Though her mask screened her well, it
+could not entirely hide her emotions, and by-and-bye I marked that her
+head drooped, that she rode sadly and listlessly, that the lines of
+her figure were altered. I noticed that she had flung away, or
+furtively dropped, her riding-whip, and I understood that to the old
+hatred of me were now added shame and vexation; shame that she had so
+lowered herself, even to save her brother, vexation that defeat had
+been her only reward.
+
+Of this I saw a sign at Lectoure, where the inn had but one common
+room, and we must all dine in company. I secured for them a table by
+the fire, and leaving them standing by it, retired myself to a smaller
+one, near the door. There were no other guests, and this made the
+separation between us more marked. M. de Cocheforêt seemed to feel
+this. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me with a smile half
+sad, half comical. But Mademoiselle was implacable. She had taken off
+her mask, and her face was like stone. Once, only once, during the
+meal I saw a change come over her. She coloured, I suppose at her
+thoughts, until her face flamed from brow to chin. I watched the blush
+spread and spread, and then she slowly and proudly turned her shoulder
+to me, and looked through the window at the shabby street.
+
+I suppose that she and her brother had both built on this attempt,
+Which must have been arranged at Auch. For when we went on in the
+afternoon, I saw a more marked change. They rode now like people
+resigned to the worst. The grey realities of the brother's position,
+the dreary, hopeless future, began to hang like a mist before their
+eyes; began to tinge the landscape with sadness; robbed even the
+sunset of its colours. With each hour their spirits flagged and their
+speech became less frequent, until presently, when the light was
+nearly gone and the dusk was round us, the brother and sister rode
+hand in hand, silent, gloomy, one at least of them weeping. The cold
+shadow of the Cardinal, of Paris, of the scaffold, was beginning to
+make itself felt; was beginning to chill them. As the mountains which
+they had known all their lives sank and faded behind us, and we
+entered on the wide, low valley of the Garonne, their hopes sank and
+faded also--sank to the dead-level of despair. Surrounded by guards, a
+mark for curious glances, with pride for a companion, M. de Cocheforêt
+could doubtless have borne himself bravely; doubtless he would bear
+himself bravely still when the end came. But almost alone, moving
+forward through the grey evening to a prison, with so many measured
+days before him, and nothing to exhilarate or anger,--in this
+condition it was little wonder if he felt, and betrayed that he felt,
+the blood run slow in his veins; if he thought more of the weeping
+wife and ruined home, which he left behind him, than of the cause in
+which he had spent himself.
+
+But God knows, they had no monopoly of gloom. I felt almost as sad
+myself. Long before sunset the flush of triumph, the heat of the
+battle, which had warmed my heart at noon, were gone; giving place to
+a chill dissatisfaction, a nausea, a despondency, such as I have known
+follow a long night at the tables. Hitherto there had been
+difficulties to be overcome, risks to be run, doubts about the end.
+Now the end was certain, and very near; so near that it filled all the
+prospect. One hour of triumph I might still have; I hugged the thought
+of it as a gambler hugs his last stake. I planned the place and time
+and mode, and tried to occupy myself wholly with it. But the price?
+Alas, that would intrude too, and more as the evening waned; so that
+as I passed this or that thing by the road, which I could recall
+passing on my journey south,--with thoughts so different, with plans
+that now seemed so very, very old,--I asked myself grimly if this were
+really I, if this were Gil de Berault, known as Zaton's _premier
+joueur_; or some Don Quichotte from Castile, tilting at windmills, and
+taking barbers' bowls for gold.
+
+We reached Agen very late in the evening, after groping through a
+by-way near the river, set with holes and willow-stools and
+frog-spawns--a place no better than a slough. After it the great fire
+and the lights at the Blue Maid seemed like a glimpse of a new world,
+and in a twinkling put something of life and spirits into two at least
+of us. There was queer talk round the hearth here of doings in
+Paris,--of a stir against the Cardinal, with the Queen-mother at
+bottom, and of grounded expectations that something might this time
+come of it. But the landlord pooh-poohed the idea, and I more than
+agreed with him. Even M. de Cocheforêt, who was for a moment inclined
+to build on it, gave up hope when he heard that it came only by way of
+Montauban; whence, since its reduction the year before, all sorts of
+_canards_ against the Cardinal were always on the wing.
+
+"They kill him about once a month," our host said, with a grin.
+"Sometimes it is _Monsieur_ who is to prove a match for him, sometimes
+_César Monsieur_--the Duke of Vendôme, you understand,--and sometimes
+the Queen-mother. But since M. de Chalais and the Marshal made a mess
+of it, and paid forfeit, I pin my faith to His Eminence--that is his
+new title, they tell me."
+
+"Things are quiet round here?" I asked.
+
+"Perfectly. Since the Languedoc business came to an end, all goes
+well," he answered.
+
+Mademoiselle had retired on our arrival, so that her brother and I
+were for an hour or two thrown together. I left him at liberty to
+separate himself if he pleased, but he did not use the opportunity. A
+kind of comradeship, rendered piquant by our peculiar relations, had
+begun to spring up between us. He seemed to take pleasure in my
+company, more than once rallied me on my post of jailer, would ask
+humorously if he might do this or that, and once even inquired what I
+should do if he broke his parole.
+
+"Or take it this way," he continued flippantly "Suppose I had stuck
+you in the back this evening, in that cursed swamp by the river, M. de
+Berault? What then? _Pardieu!_ I am astonished at myself that I did
+not do it. I could have been in Montauban within twenty-four hours,
+and found fifty hiding-places, and no one the wiser."
+
+"Except your sister," I said quietly.
+
+He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he said, "I am afraid I
+must have put her out of the way too, to preserve my self-respect. You
+are right." And on that he fell into a reverie which held him for a
+few minutes. Then I found him looking at me with a kind of frank
+perplexity that invited question.
+
+"What is it?" I said.
+
+"You have fought a great many duels?"
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"Did you never strike a foul blow in one of them?"
+
+"Never. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Well,--I wanted to confirm an impression," he said. "To be frank, M.
+de Berault, I seem to see in you two men."
+
+"Two men?"
+
+"Yes, two men," he answered. "One, the man who captured me; the other,
+the man who let my friend go free to-day."
+
+"It surprised you that I let him go? That was prudence, M. de
+Cocheforêt," I replied, "nothing more. I am an old gambler--I know
+when the stakes are too high for me. The man who caught a lion in his
+wolf-pit had no great catch."
+
+"No, that is true," he answered, smiling. "And yet--I find two men in
+your skin."
+
+"I dare say that there are two in most men's skins," I answered, with
+a sigh, "but not always together. Sometimes one is there, and
+sometimes the other."
+
+"How does the one like taking up the other's work?" he asked keenly.
+
+I shrugged my shoulders. "That is as may be," I said. "You do not take
+an estate without the debts."
+
+He did not answer for a moment, and I fancied that his thoughts had
+reverted to his own case. But on a sudden he looked at me again. "Will
+you answer me a question, M. de Berault?" he said, with a winning
+smile.
+
+"Perhaps," I said.
+
+"Then tell me--it is a tale that is, I am sure, worth the telling.
+What was it that, in a very evil hour for me, sent you in search of
+me?"
+
+"The Cardinal," I answered.
+
+"I did not ask who," he replied drily. "I asked, what. You had no
+grudge against me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"No knowledge of me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens, man," he continued
+bluntly, rising and speaking with greater freedom than he had before
+used, "nature never intended you for a tip staff! What was it, then?"
+
+I rose too. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low. "I
+will tell you--tomorrow!" I said. "I shall have something to say to
+you then, of which that will be part."
+
+He looked at me in great astonishment; with a little suspicion, too.
+But I put him off, and called for a light, and by going at once to
+bed, cut short his questions.
+
+Those who know the great south road to Agen, and how the vineyards
+rise in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above
+another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, will
+remember a particular place where the road two leagues from the town
+runs up a long hill. At the top of the hill four ways meet; and there,
+plain to be seen against the sky is a finger-post, indicating which
+way leads to Bordeaux, and which to Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
+
+This hill had impressed me on my journey down; perhaps, because I had
+from it my first view of the Garonne valley, and there felt myself on
+the verge of the south country where my mission lay. It had taken root
+in my memory; I had come to look upon its bare, bleak brow, with the
+finger-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of Paris, as the
+first sign of return to the old life.
+
+Now for two days I had been looking forward to seeing it again. That
+long stretch of road would do admirably for something I had in my
+mind. That sign-post, with the roads pointing north, south, east, and
+west, could there be a better place for meetings and partings?
+
+We came to the bottom of the ascent about an hour before noon--M. de
+Cocheforêt, Mademoiselle, and I. We had reversed the order of
+yesterday, and I rode ahead. They came after me at their leisure. At
+the foot of the hill, however, I stopped and, letting Mademoiselle
+pass on, detained M. de Cocheforêt by a gesture. "Pardon me, one
+moment," I said. "I want to ask a favour."
+
+He looked at me somewhat fretfully, with a gleam of wildness in his
+eyes that betrayed how the iron was eating into his heart. He had
+started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had
+sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb his impatience.
+The _bonhomie_ of last night was quite gone. "Of me?" he said. "What
+is it?"
+
+"I wish to have a few words with Mademoiselle--alone," I explained.
+
+"Alone?" he answered, frowning.
+
+"Yes," I replied, without blenching, though his face grew dark. "For
+the matter of that, you can be within call all the time, if you
+please. But I have a reason for wishing to ride a little way with
+her."
+
+"To tell her something?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you can tell it to me," he retorted suspiciously. "Mademoiselle,
+I will answer for it, has no desire to--"
+
+"See me, or speak to me!" I said, taking him up. "I can understand
+that. Yet I want to speak to her."
+
+"Very well, you can speak to her before me," he answered rudely. "Let
+us ride on and join her." And he made a movement as if to do so.
+
+"That will not do, M. de Cocheforêt," I said firmly, stopping him with
+my hand. "Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I
+ask; but I swear to you, if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will
+repent it all her life."
+
+He looked at me, his face growing darker and darker. "Fine words!" he
+said presently, with a sneer. "Yet I fancy I understand them." Then
+with a passionate oath he broke out in a fresh tone. "But I will not
+have it. I have not been blind, M. de Berault, and I understand. But I
+will not have it! I will have no such Judas bargain made. _Pardieu!_
+do you think I could suffer it and show my face again?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean!" I said, restraining myself with
+difficulty. I could have struck the fool.
+
+"But I know what you mean," he replied, in a tone of repressed rage.
+"You would have her sell herself: sell herself body and soul to you to
+save me! And you would have me stand by and see the thing done! Well,
+my answer is--never! though I go to the wheel! I will die a gentleman,
+if I have lived a fool!"
+
+"I think you will do the one as certainly as you have done the other,"
+I retorted, in my exasperation. And yet I admired him.
+
+"Oh, I am not such a fool," he cried, scowling at me, "as you have
+perhaps thought. I have used my eyes."
+
+"Then be good enough now to favour me with your ears," I answered
+drily. "And listen when I say that no such bargain has ever crossed my
+mind. You were kind enough to think well of me last night, M. de
+Cocheforêt. Why should the mention of Mademoiselle in a moment change
+your opinion? I wish simply to speak to her. I have nothing to ask
+from her; neither favour nor anything else. And what I say she will
+doubtless tell you afterwards. _Ciel_, man!" I continued angrily,
+"what harm can I do to her, in the road, in your sight?"
+
+He looked at me sullenly, his face still flushed, his eyes suspicious.
+"What do you want to say to her?" he asked jealously. He was quite
+unlike himself. His airy nonchalance, his careless gaiety, were gone.
+
+"You know what I do _not_ want to say to her, M. de Cocheforêt," I
+answered. "That should be enough."
+
+He glowered at me for a moment, still ill content. Then, without a
+word, he made me a gesture to go to her.
+
+She had halted a score of paces away, wondering doubtless what was on
+foot. I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I lost the
+expression of her face as I approached, but the manner in which she
+turned her horse's head uncompromisingly towards her brother, and
+looked past me--as if I were merely a log in the road--was full of
+meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her,
+trembling. "Mademoiselle," I said, "will you grant me the privilege of
+your company for a few minutes, as we ride."
+
+"To what purpose, Sir?" she answered, in the coldest voice in which I
+think a woman ever spoke to a man.
+
+"That I may explain to you a great many things you do not understand,"
+I murmured.
+
+"I prefer to be in the dark," she replied. And her manner said more
+than her words.
+
+"But, Mademoiselle," I pleaded,--I would not be discouraged,--"you
+told me one day that you would never judge me hastily again."
+
+"Facts judge you, not I, Sir," she answered icily. "I am not
+sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank
+God."
+
+I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we stood was
+warm. "Still--once before you thought the same!" I exclaimed.
+"Afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may be so again,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+"Impossible," she said.
+
+That stung me. "No!" I said fiercely. "It is not impossible. It is you
+who are impossible! It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have
+done much, very much, in the last three days to make things lighter
+for you. I ask you now to do something for me which can cost you
+nothing."
+
+"Nothing?" she answered slowly; and her scornful voice cut me as if it
+had been a knife. "Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose
+my self-respect, as I do with every word I speak to you? Do you think
+it costs me nothing to be here, where I feel every look you cast on me
+an insult, every breath I take in your presence a contamination.
+Nothing, Monsieur?" She laughed in bitter irony. "Oh, be sure,
+something! But something which I despair of making clear to you."
+
+I sat for a moment in my saddle, shaken and quivering with pain. It
+had been one thing to feel that she hated and scorned me, to know that
+the trust and confidence which she had begun to place in me were
+changed to loathing. It was another to listen to her hard, pitiless
+words, to change colour under the lash of her gibing tongue. For a
+moment I could not find voice to answer her. Then I pointed to M. de
+Cocheforêt. "Do you love him?" I said, hoarsely, roughly. The gibing
+tone had passed from her voice to mine.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Because, if you do," I continued, "you will let me tell my tale. Say
+no but once more, Mademoiselle,--I am only human,--and I go. And you
+will repent it all your life."
+
+I had done better had I taken that tone from the beginning. She
+winced, her head drooped, she seemed to grow smaller. All in a moment,
+as it were, her pride collapsed. "I will hear you," she answered
+feebly.
+
+"Then we will ride on, if you please," I said, keeping the advantage I
+had gained. "You need not fear. Your brother will follow."
+
+I caught hold of her rein and turned her horse, and she suffered it
+without demur. In a moment we were pacing side by side, the long,
+straight road before us. At the end where it topped the hill, I could
+see the finger-post,--two faint black lines against the sky. When we
+reached that, involuntarily I checked my horse and made it move more
+slowly.
+
+"Well, Sir," she said impatiently. And her figure shook as if with
+cold.
+
+"It is a tale I desire to tell you, Mademoiselle," I answered,
+speaking with effort. "Perhaps I may seem to begin a long way off, but
+before I end, I promise to interest you. Two months ago there was
+living in Paris a man, perhaps a bad man, at any rate, by common
+report, a hard man."
+
+She turned to me suddenly, her eyes gleaming through her mask. "Oh,
+Monsieur, spare me this!" she said, quietly scornful. "I will take it
+for granted."
+
+"Very well," I replied steadfastly. "Good or bad, this man, one day,
+in defiance of the Cardinal's edict against duelling, fought with a
+young Englishman behind St. Jacques Church. The Englishman had
+influence, the person of whom I speak had none, and an indifferent
+name; he was arrested, thrown into the Châtelet, cast for death, left
+for days to face death. At the last an offer was made to him. If he
+would seek out and deliver up another man, an outlaw with a price upon
+his head, he should himself go free."
+
+I paused and drew a deep breath. Then I continued, looking not at her,
+but into the distance: "Mademoiselle, it seems easy now to say what
+course he should have chosen. It seems hard now to find excuses for
+him. But there was one thing which I plead for him. The task he was
+asked to undertake was a dangerous one. He risked, he knew he must
+risk, and the event proved him right, his life against the life of
+this unknown man. And--one thing more--there was time before him.
+The outlaw might be taken by another, might be killed, might die,
+might--. But there, Mademoiselle, we know what answer this person
+made. He took the baser course, and on his honour, on his parole, with
+money supplied to him, went free,--free on the condition that he
+delivered up this other man."
+
+I paused again, but I did not dare to look at her, and after a moment
+of silence I resumed. "Some portion of the second half of this story
+you know, Mademoiselle; but not all. Suffice it that this man came
+down to a remote village, and there at a risk, but Heaven knows,
+basely enough, found his way into his victim's home. Once there, his
+heart began to fail him. Had he found the house garrisoned by men, he
+might have pressed on to his end with little remorse. But he found
+there only two helpless, loyal women; and I say again that from the
+first hour of his entrance he sickened of the work he had in hand.
+Still he pursued it. He had given his word, and if there was one
+tradition of his race which this man had never broken, it was that of
+fidelity to his side; to the man that paid him. But he pursued it with
+only half his mind, in great misery sometimes, if you will believe me,
+in agonies of shame. Gradually, however, almost against his will, the
+drama worked itself out before him, until he needed only one thing."
+
+I looked at Mademoiselle. But her head was averted; I could gather
+nothing from the outlines of her form. And I went on. "Do not
+misunderstand me," I said, in a lower voice. "Do not misunderstand
+what I am going to say next. This is no love story, and can have no
+ending such as romancers love to set to their tales. But I am bound to
+mention, Mademoiselle, that this man, who had lived about inns and
+eating-houses, and at the gaming-tables almost all his days, met here
+for the first time for years a good woman; and learned by the light of
+her loyalty and devotion to see what his life had been, and what was
+the real nature of the work he was doing. I think,--nay, I know--that
+it added a hundredfold to his misery, that when he learned at last the
+secret he had come to surprise, he learned it from her lips, and in
+such a way that had he felt no shame, hell could have been no place
+for him. But in one thing she misjudged him. She thought, and had
+reason to think, that the moment he knew her secret he went out, not
+even closing the door, and used it. But the truth was that, while her
+words were still in his ears, news came to him that others had the
+secret; and had he not gone out on the instant, and done what he did,
+and forestalled them, M. de Cocheforêt would have been taken, but by
+others."
+
+Mademoiselle broke her long silence so suddenly that her horse sprang
+forward. "Would to Heaven he had!" she wailed.
+
+"Been taken by others?" I exclaimed, startled out of my false
+composure.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes!" she answered passionately. "Why did you not tell me?
+Why did you not confess to me even then? I--oh, no more! No more!" she
+continued, in a piteous voice. "I have heard enough. You are racking
+my heart, M. de Berault. Some day I will ask God to give me strength
+to forgive you."
+
+"But you have not heard me out," I replied.
+
+"I want to hear no more," she answered, in a voice she vainly strove
+to render steady. "To what end? Can I say more than I have said? Did
+you think I could forgive you now--with him behind us going to his
+death? Oh, no, no!" she continued. "Leave me! I implore you to leave
+me. I am not well."
+
+She drooped over her horse's neck as she spoke and began to weep so
+passionately that the tears ran down her cheeks under her mask, and
+fell and sparkled like dew on the mane before her; while her sobs
+shook her so painfully that I thought she must fall. I stretched out
+my hand instinctively to give her help; but she shrank from me. "No!"
+she gasped, between her sobs. "Do not touch me. There is too much
+between us."
+
+"Yet there must be one thing more between us," I answered firmly. "You
+must listen to me a little longer, whether you will or no,
+Mademoiselle, for the love you bear to your brother. There is one
+course still open to me by which I may redeem my honour; it has been
+in my mind for some time back to take that course. To-day, I am
+thankful to say, I can take it cheerfully, if not without regret; with
+a steadfast heart, if with no light one. Mademoiselle," I continued
+earnestly, feeling none of the triumph, none of the vanity, I had
+foreseen, but only joy in the joy I could give her, "I thank God that
+it is still in my power to undo what I have done; that it is still in
+my power to go back to him who sent me, and telling him that I have
+changed my mind and will bear my own burdens, to pay the penalty."
+
+We were within a hundred paces of the brow of the hill and the
+finger-post now. She cried out wildly that she did not understand.
+"What is it you have just said?" she murmured. "I cannot hear." And
+she began to fumble with the ribbon of her mask.
+
+"Only this, Mademoiselle," I answered gently. "I give back to your
+brother his word and his parole. From this moment he is free to go
+whither he pleases. You shall tell him so from me. Here, where we
+stand, four roads meet. That to the right goes to Montauban, where you
+have doubtless friends, and can lie hid for a time; or that to the
+left leads to Bordeaux, where you can take ship if you please. And in
+a word Mademoiselle," I continued, ending a little feebly, "I hope
+that your troubles are now over."
+
+She turned her face to me--we had both come to a standstill--and
+plucked at the fastenings of her mask. But her trembling fingers had
+knotted the string, and in a moment she dropped her hands with a cry
+of despair. "And you? You?" she said, in a voice so changed I should
+not have known it for hers. "What will you do? I do not understand.
+This mask! I cannot hear."
+
+"There is a third road," I answered. "It leads to Paris. That is my
+road, Mademoiselle. We part here."
+
+"But why? Why?" she cried wildly.
+
+"Because from to-day I would fain begin to be honourable," I answered,
+in a low voice. "Because I dare not be generous at another's cost I
+must go back to the Châtelet."
+
+She tried feverishly to raise her mask with her hand. "I am--not
+well," she stammered. "I cannot breathe."
+
+She swayed so violently in her saddle as she spoke, that I sprang
+down, and running round her horse's head, was just in time to catch
+her as she fell. She was not quite unconscious then, for, as I
+supported her, she murmured, "Leave me! Leave me! I am not worthy that
+you should touch me."
+
+Those words made me happy. I carried her to the bank, my heart on
+fire, and laid her against it just as M. de Cocheforêt rode up. He
+sprang from his horse, his eyes blazing with anger. "What is this?" he
+cried harshly. "What have you been saying to her, man?"
+
+"She will tell you," I answered drily, my composure returning under
+his eye,--"amongst other things, that you are free. From this moment,
+M. de Cocheforêt, I give you back your parole, and I take my own
+honour. Farewell."
+
+He cried out something as I mounted, but I did not stay to hear or
+answer. I dashed the spurs into my horse, and rode away past the
+crossroads, past the finger-post; away with the level upland
+stretching before me, dry, bare, almost treeless--and behind me all I
+loved. Once, when I had gone a hundred yards, I looked back and saw
+him standing upright against the sky, staring after me across her
+body. And again I looked back. This time I saw only the slender wooden
+cross, and below it a dark blurred mass.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                          ST. MARTIN'S EVE.
+
+
+It was late evening on the last day but one of November, when I rode
+into Paris through the Orleans gate. The wind was in the northeast,
+and a great cloud of vapour hung in the eye of an angry sunset. The
+air seemed to be full of wood smoke, the kennels reeked, my gorge rose
+at the city's smell; and with all my heart I envied the man who had
+gone out of it by the same gate nearly two months before, with his
+face to the south, and the prospect of riding day after day across
+heath and moor and pasture. At least he had had some weeks of life
+before him, and freedom, and the open air, and hope and uncertainty,
+while I came back under doom; and in the pall of smoke that hung over
+the huddle of innumerable roofs, saw a gloomy shadowing of my own
+fate.
+
+For make no mistake. A man in middle life does not strip himself of
+the worldly habit with which experience has clothed him, does not run
+counter to all the cynical saws and instances by which he has governed
+his course so long, without shiverings and doubts and horrible
+misgivings and struggles of heart. At least a dozen times between the
+Loire and Paris, I asked myself what honour was; and what good it
+would do me when I lay rotting and forgotten; if I was not a fool
+following a Jack-o'-lanthorn; and whether, of all the men in the
+world, the relentless man to whom I was returning, would not be the
+first to gibe at my folly.
+
+However, shame kept me straight; shame and the memory of
+Mademoiselle's looks and words. I dared not be false to her
+again; I could not, after speaking so loftily, fall so low. And
+therefore--though not without many a secret struggle and quaking--I
+came, on this last evening but one of November, to the Orleans gate,
+and rode slowly and sadly through the streets by the Luxembourg, on my
+way to the Pont au Change.
+
+The struggle had sapped my last strength, however; and with the first
+whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted _gamins_ under my
+horse's hoofs, the first babel of street cries, the first breath, in a
+word, of Paris, there came a new temptation--to go for one last night
+to Zaton's to see the tables again and the faces of surprise; to be,
+for an hour or two, the old Berault. That could be no breach of
+honour; for in any case I could not reach the Cardinal before
+tomorrow. And it could do no harm. It could make no change in
+anything. It would not have been a thing worth struggling about--only
+I had in my inmost heart suspicions that the stoutest resolutions
+might lose their force in that atmosphere; that even such a talisman
+as the memory of a woman's looks and words might lose its virtue
+there.
+
+Still I think I should have succumbed in the end, if I had not
+received at the corner of the Luxembourg a shock which sobered me
+effectually. As I passed the gates, a coach followed by two outriders
+swept out of the palace courtyard; it was going at a great pace, and I
+reined my jaded horse on one side to give it room. As it whirled by
+me, one of the leather curtains flapped back, and I saw for a second,
+by the waning light,--the nearer wheels were no more than two feet
+from my boot,--a face inside.
+
+A face, and no more, and that only for a second! But it froze me. It
+was Richelieu's, the Cardinal's; but not as I had been wont to see it,
+keen, cold, acute, with intellect and indomitable will in every
+feature. This face was distorted with rage and impatience; with the
+fever of haste and the fear of death. The eyes burned under the pale
+brow, the mustachios bristled, the teeth showed through the beard; I
+could fancy the man crying "Faster! Faster!" and gnawing his nails in
+the impatience of passion; and I shrank back as if I had been struck.
+The next moment the galloping outriders splashed me, the coach was a
+hundred paces ahead, and I was left chilled and wondering, foreseeing
+the worst, and no longer in any mood for the gaming-table.
+
+Such a revelation of such a man was enough to appall me. Conscience
+cried out that he must have heard that Cocheforêt had escaped, and
+through me! But I dismissed the idea as soon as formed.
+
+In the vast meshes of the Cardinal's schemes, Cocheforêt could be only
+a small fish; and to account for the face in the coach I needed a
+cataclysm, a catastrophe, a misfortune, as far above ordinary mishaps,
+as this man's intellect rose above the common run of minds.
+
+It was almost dark when I crossed the bridges, and crept despondently
+to the Rue Savonnerie. After stabling my horse, I took my bag and
+holsters, and climbing the stairs to my old landlord's,--the place
+seemed to have grown strangely mean and small and ill-smelling in my
+absence,--I knocked at the door. It was opened by the little tailor
+himself, who threw up his arms at the sight of me. "By St. Genevieve!"
+he said. "If it is not M. de Berault!"
+
+"No other," I said. It touched me a little, after my lonely journey,
+to find him so glad to see me--though I had never done him a greater
+benefit than sometimes to unbend with him and borrow his money. "You
+look surprised, little man!" I continued, as he made way for me to
+enter. "I'll be sworn you have been pawning my goods and letting my
+room, you knave!"
+
+"Never, your excellency!" he answered, beaming on me. "On the
+contrary, I have been expecting you."
+
+"How?" I said. "To-day?"
+
+"To-day or to-morrow," he answered, following me in and closing the
+door. "The first thing I said, when I heard the news this morning,
+was, Now we shall have M. de Berault back again. Your excellency will
+pardon the children," he continued, as I took the old seat on the
+three-legged stool before the hearth. "The night is cold, and there is
+no fire in your room."
+
+While he ran to and fro with my cloak and bags, little Gil, to whom I
+had stood at St. Sulpice's--borrowing ten crowns the same day, I
+remember--came shyly to play with my sword-hilt "So you expected me
+back when you heard the news, Frison, did you?" I said, taking the lad
+on my knee.
+
+"To be sure, your excellency," he answered, peeping into the black pot
+before he lifted it to the hook.
+
+"Very good. Then, now, let us hear what the news was," I said drily.
+
+"Of the Cardinal, M. de Berault."
+
+"Ah? And what?"
+
+He looked at me, holding the heavy pot suspended in his hands. "You
+have not heard?" he exclaimed, his jaw falling.
+
+"Not a tittle. Tell it me, my good fellow."
+
+"You have not heard that His Eminence is disgraced?"
+
+I stared at him. "Not a word," I said.
+
+He set down the pot. "Your excellency must have made a very long
+journey indeed, then," he said, with conviction. "For it has been in
+the air a week or more, and I thought it had brought you back. A week?
+A month, I dare say. They whisper that it is the old Queen's doing. At
+any rate, it is certain that they have cancelled his commissions and
+displaced his officers. There are rumours of immediate peace with
+Spain. His enemies are lifting up their heads, and I hear that he has
+relays of horses set all the way to the coast, that he may fly at any
+moment For what I know he may be gone already."
+
+"But, man," I said--"the King! You forget the King. Let the Cardinal
+once pipe to him, and he will dance. And they will dance, too!" I
+added grimly.
+
+"Yes," Frison answered eagerly. "True, your excellency, but the King
+will not see him. Three times to-day, as I am told, the Cardinal has
+driven to the Luxembourg, and stood like any common man in the
+ante-chamber, so that I hear it was pitiful to see him. But His
+Majesty would not admit him. And when he went away the last time, I am
+told that his face was like death! Well, he was a great man, and we
+may be worse ruled, M. de Berault, saving your presence. If the nobles
+did not like him, he was good to the traders, and the _bourgeoisie_,
+and equal to all."
+
+"Silence, man! Silence, and let me think," I said, much excited. And
+while he bustled to and fro, getting my supper, and the firelight
+played about the snug, sorry little room, and the child toyed with his
+plaything, I fell to digesting this great news, and pondering how I
+stood now and what I ought to do. At first sight, I know, it seemed
+that I had nothing to do but sit still. In a few hours the man who
+held my bond would be powerless, and I should be free. In a few hours
+I might smile at him. To all appearance, the dice had fallen well for
+me. I had done a great thing, run a great risk, won a woman's love,
+and after all was not to pay the penalty!
+
+But a word which fell from Frison as he fluttered round me, pouring
+out the broth, and cutting the bread, dropped into my mind and spoiled
+my satisfaction. "Yes, your excellency," he exclaimed, confirming
+something he had said before, and which I had missed, "and I am told
+that the last time he came into the gallery, there was not a man of
+all the scores who attended his _levée_ last Monday would speak to
+him. They fell off like rats,--just like rats,--until he was left
+standing all alone. And I have seen him!" Frison lifted up his eyes
+and his hands and drew in his breath. "Ah, I have seen the King look
+shabby beside him! And his eye! I would not like to meet it now."
+
+"Pish!" I growled. "Some one has fooled you. Men are wiser than that."
+
+"So? Well, your excellency understands. But--there are no cats on a
+cold hearth."
+
+I told him again that he was a fool. But withal I felt uncomfortable.
+This was a great man if ever a great man lived, and they were all
+leaving him; and I--well, I had no cause to love him. But I had taken
+his money, I had accepted his commission, and I had betrayed him.
+Those three things being so, if he fell before I could--with the best
+will in the world--set myself right with him, so much the better for
+me. That was my gain, the fortune of war. But if I lay hid, and took
+time for my ally, and being here while he stood still,--though
+tottering,--waited until he fell, what of my honour then? What of the
+grand words I had said to Mademoiselle at Agen? I should be like the
+recreant in the old romance, who, lying in the ditch while the battle
+raged, came out afterwards and boasted of his courage. And yet the
+flesh was weak. A day, twenty-four hours, two days, might make the
+difference between life and death. At last I settled what I would do.
+At noon the next day, the time at which I should have presented
+myself, if I had not heard this news, at that time I would still
+present myself. Not earlier; I owed myself the chance. Not later; that
+was due to him.
+
+Having so settled it, I thought to rest in peace. But with the first
+light I was awake; and it was all I could do to keep myself quiet
+until I heard Frison stirring. I called to him then to know if there
+was any news, and lay waiting and listening while he went down to the
+street to learn. It seemed an endless time before he came back; an
+age, after he came back, before he spoke.
+
+"Well, he has not set off?" I cried at last, unable to control my
+eagerness.
+
+Of course he had not. At nine o'clock I sent Frison out again; and at
+ten, and at eleven--always with the same result. I was like a man
+waiting, and looking, and, above all, listening for a reprieve, and as
+sick as any craven. But when he came back at eleven, I gave up hope,
+and dressed myself carefully. I suppose I still had an odd look,
+however; for Frison stopped me at the door and asked me, with evident
+alarm, whither I was going.
+
+I put the little man aside gently. "To the tables," I said. "To make a
+big throw, my friend."
+
+It was a fine morning; sunny, keen, pleasant. Even the streets smelled
+fresh. But I scarcely noticed it. All my thoughts were where I was
+going. It seemed but a step from my threshold to the Hotel Richelieu.
+I was no sooner gone from the one than I found myself at the other. As
+on the memorable evening, when I had crossed the street in a drizzling
+rain, and looked that way with foreboding, there were two or three
+guards in the Cardinal's livery, loitering before the gates. But this
+was not all. Coming nearer, I found the opposite pavement under the
+Louvre thronged with people; not moving about their business, but
+standing all silent, all looking across furtively, all with the air of
+persons who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their
+keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after I had
+turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with their
+eyes.
+
+Certainly they had little else to look at. In the courtyard, where
+some mornings when the court was in Paris I had seen a score of
+coaches waiting and thrice as many servants, were now emptiness and
+sunshine and stillness. The officer, who stood twisting his
+mustachios, on guard, looked at me in wonder as I passed. The lackeys
+lounging in the portico, and all too much taken up with whispering to
+make a pretence of being of service, grinned at my appearance. But
+that which happened when I had mounted the stairs, and come to the
+door of the ante-chamber, outdid all. The man on guard there would
+have opened the door; but when I went to take advantage of the offer,
+and enter, a major-domo, who was standing near, muttering with two or
+three of his kind, hastened forward and stopped me.
+
+"Your business, Monsieur, if you please?" he said inquisitively. And I
+wondered why the others looked at me so strangely.
+
+"I am M. de Berault," I answered sharply. "I have the _entrée_."
+
+He bowed politely enough. "Yes, M. de Berault, I have the honour to
+know your face," he said. "But pardon me. Have you business with His
+Eminence?"
+
+"I have the common business," I answered bluntly, "by which many of us
+live, sirrah!--to wait on him."
+
+"But--by appointment, Monsieur?" he persisted.
+
+"No," I said, astonished. "It is the usual hour. For the matter of
+that, however, I have business with him."
+
+The man looked at me for a moment, in apparent embarrassment. Then he
+stood reluctantly aside, and signed to the door-keeper to open the
+door. I passed in, uncovering, with an assured face, ready to meet all
+eyes. Then in a moment, on the threshold, the mystery was explained.
+
+The room was empty.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                         ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER.
+
+
+Yes, at the great Cardinal's _levée_ I was the only client. I stared
+round the room, a long narrow gallery, through which it was his custom
+to walk every morning, after receiving his more important visitors. I
+stared, I say, round this room, in a state of stupefaction. The seats
+against either wall were empty, the recesses of the windows empty too.
+The hat, sculptured and painted here and there, the staring R, the
+blazoned arms, looked down on a vacant floor. Only, on a little stool
+by the main door, sat a quiet-faced man in black, who read, or
+pretended to read, in a little book, and never looked up. One of those
+men, blind, deaf, secretive, who fatten in the shadow of the great.
+
+At length, while I stood confounded and full of shamed thought,--for I
+had seen the ante-chamber of Richelieu's old hotel so crowded that he
+could not walk through it,--this man closed his book, rose, and came
+noiselessly towards me. "M. de Berault?" he said.
+
+"Yes," I answered.
+
+"His Eminence awaits you. Be good enough to follow me."
+
+I did so, in a deeper stupor than before. For how could the Cardinal
+know that I was here? How could he have known when he gave the order?
+But I had short time to think of these things. We passed through two
+rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing; we stopped at a
+third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher
+knocked, opened, and with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a
+curtain, and signed to me to enter. I did so, and found myself
+standing behind a screen.
+
+"Is that M. de Berault?" asked a thin, high-pitched voice.
+
+"Yes, Monseigneur," I answered, trembling.
+
+"Then come, my friend, and talk to me."
+
+I went round the screen; and I know not how it was, the watching crowd
+outside, the vacant antechamber in which I had stood, the
+stillness,--all seemed concentrated here, and gave to the man I saw
+before me, a dignity which he had never possessed for me when the world
+passed through his doors, and the proudest fawned on him for a smile.
+He sat in a great chair on the farther side of the hearth, a little red
+skull-cap on his head, his fine hands lying motionless in his lap. The
+collar of lawn which fell over his red cape was quite plain, but the
+skirts of his red robe were covered with rich lace, and the order of
+the Holy Ghost shone on his breast. Among the multitudinous papers on
+the great table near him I saw a sword and pistols lying; and some
+tapestry that covered a little table behind him failed to hide a pair
+of spurred riding-boots. But he--in spite of these signs of
+trouble--looked towards me as I advanced, with a face mild and almost
+benign; a face in which I strove in vain to find traces of last
+night's passion. So that it flashed across me that if this man really
+stood--and afterwards I knew he did--on the thin razor-edge between
+life and death, between the supreme of earthly power, lord of France,
+and arbiter of Europe, and the nothingness of the clod, he justified
+his fame. He gave weaker natures no room for triumph.
+
+The thought was no sooner entertained than it was gone. "And so you
+are back at last, M. de Berault?" he said, gently. "I have been
+expecting to see you since nine this morning."
+
+"Your Eminence knew then--" I muttered.
+
+"That you returned to Paris by the Orleans gate last evening, alone?"
+He fitted together the ends of his fingers, and looked at me over them
+with inscrutable eyes. "Yes, I knew all that last night. And now of
+your mission? You have been faithful, and diligent, I am sure. Where
+is he?"
+
+I stared at him, and was dumb. Somehow the strange things I had seen
+since I left my lodging, the surprises I had found awaiting me here,
+had driven my own fortunes, my own peril, out of my head, until this
+moment. Now, at his question, all returned with a rush. My heart
+heaved suddenly in my breast. I strove for a savour of the old
+hardihood; but for the moment I could not find a word.
+
+"Well?" he said lightly, a faint smile lifting his mustache. "You do
+not speak. You left Auch with him on the twenty-fourth, M. de Berault.
+So much I know. And you reached Paris without him last night. He has
+not given you the slip?" with sudden animation.
+
+"No, Monseigneur," I muttered.
+
+"Ha! That is good," he answered, sinking back again in his chair. "For
+the moment--but I knew I could depend on you. And now where is he?" he
+continued. "What have you done with him? He knows much, and the sooner
+I know it, the better. Are your people bringing him, M. de Berault?"
+
+"No, Monseigneur," I stammered, with dry lips. His very good humour,
+his benignity, appalled me. I knew how terrible would be the change,
+how fearful his rage, when I should tell him the truth. And yet that
+I, Gil de Berault, should tremble before any man! I spurred myself, as
+it were, to the task. "No, Your Eminence," I said, with the courage of
+despair. "I have not brought him, because I have set him free."
+
+"Because you have--_what?_" he exclaimed. He leaned forward, his hands
+on the arm of his chair; and his glittering eyes, growing each instant
+smaller, seemed to read my soul.
+
+"Because I have let him go," I repeated.
+
+"And why?" he said, in a voice like the rasping of a file.
+
+"Because I took him unfairly," I answered desperately. "Because,
+Monseigneur, I am a gentleman, and this task should have been given to
+one who was not. I took him, if you must know," I continued
+impatiently,--the fence once crossed, I was growing bolder,--"by
+dogging a woman's steps, and winning her confidence, and betraying it.
+And, whatever I have done ill in my life,--of which you were good
+enough to throw something in my teeth when I was last here,--I have
+never done that, and I will not!"
+
+"And so you set him free?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"After you had brought him to Auch?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And in point of fact saved him from falling into the hands of the
+commandant at Auch?"
+
+"Yes," I answered desperately.
+
+"Then what of the trust I placed in you, sirrah?" he rejoined, in a
+terrible voice; and stooping still farther forward, he probed me with
+his eyes. "You who prate of trust and confidence, who received your
+life on parole, and but for your promise to me would have been carrion
+this month past, answer me that! What of the trust I placed in you?"
+
+"The answer is simple," I said, shrugging my shoulders with a touch of
+my old self. "I am here to pay the penalty."
+
+"And do you think that I do not know why?" he retorted, striking his
+one hand on the arm of the chair with a force which startled me.
+"Because you have heard, Sir, that my power is gone! That I, who was
+yesterday the King's right hand, am to-day dried up, withered, and
+paralyzed! Because--but have a care! Have a care!" he continued not
+loudly, but in a voice like a dog's snarl. "You, and those others!
+Have a care I say, or you may find yourselves mistaken yet!"
+
+"As Heaven shall judge me," I answered solemnly, "that is not true.
+Until I reached Paris last night I knew nothing of this report. I came
+here with a single mind, to redeem my honour by placing again in Your
+Eminence's hands that which you gave me on trust."
+
+For a moment he remained in the same attitude, staring at me fixedly.
+Then his face somewhat relaxed. "Be good enough to ring that bell," he
+said.
+
+It stood on a table near me. I rang it, and a velvet-footed man in
+black came in, and gliding up to the Cardinal placed a paper in his
+hand. The Cardinal looked at it while the man stood with his head
+obsequiously bent; my heart beat furiously. "Very good," the Cardinal
+said, after a pause, which seemed to me to be endless. "Let the doors
+be thrown open."
+
+The man bowed low, and retired behind the screen. I heard a little
+bell ring, somewhere in the silence, and in a moment the Cardinal
+stood up. "Follow me!" he said, with a strange flash of his keen eyes.
+
+Astonished, I stood aside while he passed to the screen; then I
+followed him. Outside the first door, which stood open, we found eight
+or nine persons,--pages, a monk, the major-domo, and several guards
+waiting like mutes. These signed to me to precede them, and fell in
+behind us, and in that order we passed through the first room and the
+second, where the clerks stood with bent heads to receive us. The last
+door, the door of the ante-chamber, flew open as we approached; a
+score of voices cried, "Place! Place for His Eminence!" We passed
+without pause through two lines of bowing lackeys, and entered--an
+empty room!
+
+The ushers did not know how to look at one another. The lackeys
+trembled in their shoes. But the Cardinal walked on, apparently
+unmoved, until he had passed slowly half the length of the chamber.
+Then he turned himself about, looking first to one side; and then to
+another, with a low laugh of derision. "Father," he said, in his thin
+voice, "what does the psalmist say? 'I am become like a pelican in the
+wilderness, and like an owl that is in the desert!'"
+
+The monk mumbled assent.
+
+"And later, in the same psalm is it not written, 'They shall perish,
+but thou shalt endure!'"
+
+"It is so," the father answered. "Amen."
+
+"Doubtless that refers to another life," the Cardinal continued, with
+his slow, wintry smile. "In the meantime we will go back to our book?
+and our prayers, and serve God and the King in small things, if not in
+great. Come, father, this is no longer a place for us. _Vanitas
+vanitatum; omnia vanitas!_ We will retire."
+
+So, as solemnly as we had come, we marched back through the first and
+second and third doors, until we stood again in the silence of the
+Cardinal's chamber; he and I and the velvet-footed man in black. For a
+while Richelieu seemed to forget me. He stood brooding on the hearth,
+with his eye's on the embers. Once I heard him laugh; and twice he
+uttered in a tone of bitter mockery, the words, "Fools! Fools! Fools!"
+
+At last he looked up, saw me, and started. "Ah!" he said. "I had
+forgotten you. Well, you are fortunate, M. de Berault. Yesterday I had
+a hundred clients. To-day I have only one, and I cannot afford to hang
+him. But for your liberty--that is another matter."
+
+I would have said something, but he turned abruptly to the table, and
+sitting down wrote a few lines on a piece of paper. Then he rang his
+bell, while I stood waiting and confounded.
+
+The man in black came from behind the screen. "Take that letter and
+this gentleman to the upper guard-room," His Eminence said sharply. "I
+can hear no more," he continued wearily, raising his hand to forbid
+interruption. "The matter is ended, M. de Berault. Be thankful."
+
+And in a moment I was outside the door, my head in a whirl, my heart
+divided between gratitude and resentment. Along several passages I
+followed my guide; everywhere finding the same silence, the same
+monastic stillness. At length, when I had begun to consider whether
+the Bastile or the Châtelet would be my fate, he stopped at a door,
+gave me the letter, and, lifting the latch, signed to me to enter.
+
+I went in in amazement, and stopped in confusion. Before me, alone,
+just risen from a chair, with her face one moment pale, the next red
+with blushes, stood Mademoiselle de Cocheforêt. I cried out her name.
+
+"M. de Berault!" she said, visibly trembling. "You did not expect to
+see me?"
+
+"I expected to see no one so little, Mademoiselle," I answered,
+striving to recover my composure.
+
+"Yet you might have thought that we should not utterly desert you,"
+she replied, with a reproachful humility which went to my heart. "We
+should have been base indeed, if we had not made some attempt to save
+you. I thank Heaven that it has so far succeeded that that strange man
+has promised me your life. You have seen him?" she continued eagerly,
+and in another tone, while her eyes grew suddenly large with fear.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, I have seen him," I said. "And he has given me my
+life."
+
+"And?"
+
+"And sent me to imprisonment."
+
+"For how long?" she whispered.
+
+"I do not know," I answered. "I expect, during the King's pleasure."
+
+She shuddered. "I may have done more harm than good," she murmured,
+looking at me piteously. "But I did it for the best. I told him all,
+and--yes, perhaps I did harm."
+
+But to hear her accuse herself thus, when she had made this long and
+lonely journey to save me; when she had forced herself into her
+enemy's presence, and had, as I was sure she had, abased herself for
+me, was more than I could bear. "Hush, Mademoiselle, hush!" I said,
+almost roughly. "You hurt me. You have made me happy: and yet I wish
+that you were not here, where I fear you have few friends, but back at
+Cocheforêt. You have done more than I expected, and a hundred times
+more than I deserved. But I was a ruined man before this happened. I
+am no more now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name
+pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. God forbid I should
+say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would soon malign
+you."
+
+She looked at me in a kind of wonder; then with a growing smile, "It
+is too late," she said gently.
+
+"Too late?" I exclaimed. "How, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Because--do you remember, M. de Berault, what you told me of your
+love story, by Agen? That it could have no happy ending? For the same
+reason I was not ashamed to tell mine to the Cardinal. By this time it
+is common property."
+
+I looked at her as she stood facing me. Her eyes shone, but they were
+downcast. Her figure drooped, and yet a smile trembled on her lips.
+"What did you tell him, Mademoiselle?" I whispered, my breath coming
+quickly.
+
+"That I loved," she answered boldly, raising her clear eyes to mine.
+"And therefore that I was not ashamed to beg, even on my knees. Nor
+ashamed to be with my lover, even in prison."
+
+I fell on my knees, and caught her hand before the last word passed
+her lips. For the moment I forgot King and Cardinal, prison and the
+future, all--all except that this woman, so pure and so beautiful, so
+far above me in all things, loved me. For the moment, I say. Then I
+remembered myself. I stood up and thrust her from me, in a sudden
+revulsion of feeling. "You do not know me," I said. "You do not know
+me. You do not know what I have done."
+
+"That is what I do know," she answered, looking at me with a wondrous
+smile.
+
+"Ah, but you do not," I cried. "And besides, there is this--this
+between us." And I picked up the Cardinal's letter. It had fallen on
+the floor.
+
+She turned a shade paler. Then she said, "Open it! Open it! It is not
+sealed, nor closed."
+
+I obeyed mechanically, dreading what I might see. Even when I had it
+open I looked at the finely scrawled characters with eyes askance. But
+at last I made it out. It ran thus:--
+
+
+"The King's pleasure is, that M. de Berault, having mixed himself up
+with affairs of state, retire forthwith to the manor of Cocheforêt,
+and confine himself within its limits, until the King's pleasure be
+further known.
+
+                                         "Richelieu."
+
+
+On the next day we were married. The same evening we left Paris, and I
+retraced, in her company, the road which I had twice traversed alone
+and in heaviness.
+
+A fortnight later we were at Cocheforêt, in the brown woods under the
+southern mountains; and the great Cardinal, once more triumphant over
+his enemies, saw, with cold, smiling eyes, the world pass through his
+chamber. The flood-tide, which then set in, lasted thirteen years; in
+brief, until his death. For the world had learned its lesson, and was
+not to be deceived a second time. To this hour they call that day,
+which saw me stand for all his friends, "The day of Dupes."
+
+
+
+                               THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+                            COUNT HANNIBAL
+
+
+
+
+                                SORORI
+                           SUÂ CAUSSÂ CARAE
+                        PIO ERGA MATREM AMORE
+                            ETIAM CARIORI
+                              HOC FRATER
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+   CHAPTER
+         I. CRIMSON FAVOURS.
+
+        II. HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES.
+
+       III. THE HOUSE NEXT THE GOLDEN MAID.
+
+        IV. THE EVE OF THE FEAST.
+
+         V. A ROUGH WOOING.
+
+        VI. "WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?"
+
+       VII. IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.
+
+      VIII. TWO HENS AND AN EGG.
+
+        IX. UNSTABLE.
+
+         X. MADAME ST. LO.
+
+        XI. A BARGAIN.
+
+       XII. IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE.
+
+      XIII. DIPLOMACY.
+
+       XIV. TOO SHORT A SPOON.
+
+        XV. THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE.
+
+       XVI. AT CLOSE QUARTERS.
+
+      XVII. THE DUEL.
+
+     XVIII. ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT.
+
+       XIX. IN THE ORLÉANNAIS.
+
+        XX. ON THE CASTLE HILL.
+
+       XXI. SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.
+
+      XXII. PLAYING WITH FIRE.
+
+     XXIII. A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.
+
+      XXIV. AT THE KING'S INN.
+
+       XXV. THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART.
+
+      XXVI. TEMPER.
+
+     XXVII. THE BLACK TOWN.
+
+    XXVIII. IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER HOUSE.
+
+      XXIX. THE ESCAPE.
+
+       XXX. SACRILEGE!
+
+      XXXI. THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS.
+
+     XXXII. THE ORDEAL BY STEEL.
+
+    XXXIII. THE AMBUSH.
+
+     XXXIV. "WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?"
+
+      XXXV. AGAINST THE WALL.
+
+     XXXVI. HIS KINGDOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           COUNT HANNIBAL.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                           CRIMSON FAVOURS.
+
+
+M. de Tavannes smiled. Mademoiselle averted her eyes, and shivered;
+as if the air, even of that close summer night, entering by the door
+at her elbow, chilled her. And then came a welcome interruption.
+
+"Tavannes!"
+
+"Sire!"
+
+Count Hannibal rose slowly. The King had called, and he had no choice
+but to obey and go. Yet he hung a last moment over his companion, his
+hateful breath stirring her hair. "Our pleasure is cut short too soon,
+Mademoiselle," he said, in the tone and with the look she loathed.
+"But for a few hours only. We shall meet to-morrow. Or, it may
+be--earlier."
+
+She did not answer, and "Tavannes!" the King repeated with violence.
+"Tavannes! Mordieu!" his Majesty continued, looking round furiously.
+"Will no one fetch him? Sacré nom, am I King, or a dog of a----"
+
+"I come, sire!" Count Hannibal cried in haste. For Charles, King of
+France, Ninth of the name, was none of the most patient; and scarce
+another in the Court would have ventured to keep him waiting so long.
+"I come, sire; I come!" Tavannes repeated, as he moved from her side.
+
+He shouldered his way through the circle of courtiers, who barred the
+road to the presence, and in part hid Mademoiselle from observation.
+He pushed past the table at which Charles and the Comte de
+Rochefoucauld had been playing primero, and at which the latter still
+sat, trifling idly with the cards. Three more paces, and he reached
+the King, who stood in the _ruelle_ with Rambouillet and the Italian
+Marshal. It was the latter who, a moment before, had summoned his
+Majesty from his game.
+
+Mademoiselle, watching him go, saw so much; so much, and the King's
+roving eyes and haggard face, and the four figures, posed apart in the
+fuller light of the upper half of the Chamber. Then the circle of
+courtiers came together before her, and she sat back on her stool. A
+fluttering, long-drawn sigh escaped her. Now, if she could slip out
+and make her escape! Now--she looked round. She was not far from the
+door; to withdraw seemed easy. But a staring, whispering knot of
+gentlemen and pages blocked the way; and the girl, ignorant of the
+etiquette of the Court and with no more than a week's experience of
+Paris, had not the courage to rise and pass alone through the group.
+
+She had come to the Louvre this Saturday evening under the wing of
+Madame d'Yverne, her _fiancé's_ cousin. By ill hap Madame had been
+summoned to the Princess Dowager's closet, and perforce had left her.
+Still, Mademoiselle had her betrothed, and in his charge had sat
+herself down to wait, nothing loth, in the great gallery, where all
+was bustle and gaiety and entertainment. For this, the seventh day of
+the fêtes, held to celebrate the marriage of the King of Navarre and
+Charles's sister--a marriage which was to reconcile the two factions
+of the Huguenots and the Catholics, so long at war--saw the Louvre as
+gay, as full, and as lively as the first of the fête days had found
+it; and in the humours of the throng, in the ceaseless passage of
+masks and maids of honour, guards and bishops, Swiss in the black,
+white and green of Anjou, and Huguenot nobles in more sombre habits,
+the country-bred girl had found recreation and to spare. Until
+gradually the evening had worn away and she had begun to feel nervous;
+and M. de Tignonville, her betrothed, placing her in the embrasure of
+a window, had gone to seek Madame.
+
+She had waited for a time without much misgiving; expecting each
+moment to see him return. He would be back before she could count a
+hundred; he would be back before she could number the leagues that
+separated her from her beloved province, and the home by the Biscay
+Sea, to which even in that brilliant scene her thoughts turned fondly.
+But the minutes had passed, and passed, and he had not returned.
+Worse, in his place Tavannes--not the Marshal, but his brother Count
+Hannibal--had found her; he, whose odious court, at once a menace and
+an insult, had subtly enveloped her for a week past. He had sat down
+beside her, he had taken possession of her, and, profiting by her
+inexperience, had played on her fears and smiled at her dislike.
+Finally, whether she would or no, he had swept her with him into the
+Chamber. The rest had been an obsession, a nightmare, from which only
+the King's voice summoning Tavannes to his side had relieved her.
+
+Her aim now was to escape before he returned, and before another,
+seeing her alone, adopted his _rôle_ and was rude to her. Already the
+courtiers about her were beginning to stare, the pages to turn and
+titter and whisper. Direct her gaze as she might, she met some eye
+watching her, some couple enjoying her confusion. To make matters
+worse, she presently discovered that she was the only woman in the
+Chamber; and she conceived the notion that she had no right to be
+there at that hour. At the thought her cheeks burned, her eyes
+dropped; the room seemed to buzz with her name, with gross words and
+jests, and gibes at her expense.
+
+At last, when the situation had grown nearly unbearable, the group
+before the door parted, and Tignonville appeared. The girl rose with a
+cry of relief, and he came to her. The courtiers glanced at the two
+and smiled.
+
+He did not conceal his astonishment at finding her there. "But,
+Mademoiselle, how is this?" he asked in a low voice. He was as
+conscious of the attention they attracted as she was, and as uncertain
+on the point of her right to be there. "I left you in the gallery. I
+came back, missed you, and----"
+
+She stopped him by a gesture. "Not here!" she muttered, with
+suppressed impatience. "I will tell you outside. Take me--take me out,
+if you please, Monsieur, at once!"
+
+He was as glad to be gone as she was to go. The group by the doorway
+parted; she passed through it, he followed. In a moment the two stood
+in the great gallery, above the Salle des Caryatides. The crowd which
+had paraded here an hour before was gone, and the vast echoing
+apartment, used at that date as a guard-room, was well-nigh empty.
+Only at rare intervals, in the embrasure of a window or the recess of
+a door, a couple talked softly. At the farther end, near the head of
+the staircase which led to the hall below, and the courtyard, a group
+of armed Swiss lounged on guard. Mademoiselle shot a keen glance up
+and down, then she turned to her lover, her face hot with indignation.
+
+"Why did you leave me?" she asked. "Why did you leave me, if you could
+not come back at once? Do you understand, sir," she continued, "that
+it was at your instance I came to Paris, that I came to this Court,
+and that I look to you for protection?"
+
+"Surely," he said. "And----"
+
+"And do you think Carlat and his wife fit guardians for me? Should I
+have come or thought of coming to this wedding, but for your promise,
+and Madame your cousin's? If I had not deemed myself almost your
+wife," she continued warmly, "and secure of your protection, should I
+have come within a hundred miles of this dreadful city? To which, had
+I my will, none of our people should have come."
+
+"Dreadful? Pardieu, not so dreadful," he answered, smiling, and
+striving to give the dispute a playful turn. "You have seen more in a
+week than you would have seen at Vrillac in a lifetime, Mademoiselle."
+
+"And I choke!" she retorted; "I choke! Do you not see how they look at
+us, at us Huguenots, in the street? How they, who live here, point at
+us and curse us? How the very dogs scent us out and snarl at our
+heels, and the babes cross themselves when we go by? Can you see the
+Place des Gastines and not think what stood there? Can you pass the
+Grève at night and not fill the air above the river with screams and
+wailings and horrible cries--the cries of our people murdered on that
+spot?" She paused for breath, recovered herself a little, and in a
+lower tone, "For me," she said, "I think of Philippine de Luns by day
+and by night! The eaves are a threat to me; the tiles would fall on us
+had they their will; the houses nod to--to----"
+
+"To what, Mademoiselle?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders and
+assuming a tone of cynicism.
+
+"To crush us! Yes, Monsieur, to crush us!"
+
+"And all this because I left you for a moment?"
+
+"For an hour--or well-nigh an hour," she answered more soberly.
+
+"But if I could not help it?"
+
+"You should have thought of that--before you brought me to Paris,
+Monsieur. In these troublous times."
+
+He coloured warmly. "You are unjust, Mademoiselle," he said. "There
+are things you forget; in a Court one is not always master of
+oneself."
+
+"I know it," she answered drily, thinking of that through which she
+had gone.
+
+"But you do not know what happened!" he returned with impatience. "You
+do not understand that I am not to blame. Madame d'Yverne, when I
+reached the Princess Dowager's closet, had left to go to the Queen of
+Navarre. I hurried after her, and found a score of gentlemen in the
+King of Navarre's chamber. They were holding a council, and they
+begged, nay, they compelled me to remain."
+
+"And it was that which detained you so long?"
+
+"To be sure, Mademoiselle."
+
+"And not--Madame St. Lo?"
+
+M. de Tignonville's face turned scarlet. The thrust in tierce was
+unexpected. This then was the key to Mademoiselle's spirt of temper.
+"I do not understand you," he stammered.
+
+"How long were you in the King of Navarre's chamber, and how long with
+Madame St. Lo?" she asked with fine irony. "Or no, I will not tempt
+you," she went on quickly, seeing him hesitate. "I heard you talking
+to Madame St. Lo in the gallery while I sat within. And I know how
+long you were with her."
+
+"I met Madame as I returned," he stammered, his face still hot, "and I
+asked her where you were. I did not know, Mademoiselle, that I was,
+not to speak to ladies of my acquaintance."
+
+"I was alone, and I was waiting."
+
+"I could not know that--for certain," he answered, making the best of
+it. "You were not where I left you. I thought, I confess--that you had
+gone. That you had gone home."
+
+"With whom? With whom?" she repeated pitilessly. "Was it likely? With
+whom was I to go? And yet it is true, I might have gone home had I
+pleased--with M. de Tavannes! Yes," she continued, in a tone of keen
+reproach and with the blood mounting to her forehead, "it is to that,
+Monsieur, you expose me! To be pursued, molested, harassed by a man
+whose look terrifies me, and whose touch I--I detest! To be addressed
+wherever I go by a man whose every word proves that he thinks me game
+for the hunter, and you a thing he may neglect. You are a man and you
+do not know, you cannot know what I suffer! What I have suffered this
+week past whenever you have left my side!"
+
+Tignonville looked gloomy. "What has he said to you?" he asked,
+between his teeth.
+
+"Nothing I can tell you," she answered with a shudder. "It was he who
+took me into the Chamber."
+
+"Why did you go?"
+
+"Wait until he bids you do something," she answered. "His manner, his
+smile, his tone, all frighten me. And to-night, in all these there was
+a something worse, a hundred times worse than when I saw him last--on
+Thursday! He seemed to--to gloat on me," the girl stammered, with a
+flush of shame, "as if I were his! Oh, Monsieur, I wish we had not
+left our Poitou! Shall we ever see Vrillac again, and the fishers'
+huts about the port, and the sea beating blue against the long brown
+causeway?"
+
+He had listened darkly, almost sullenly; but at this, seeing the tears
+gather in her eyes, he forced a laugh. "Why, you are as bad as M. de
+Rosny and the Vidame!" he said. "And they are as full of fears as an
+egg is of meat! Since the Admiral was wounded by that scoundrel on
+Friday, they think all Paris is in a league against us."
+
+"And why not!" she asked, her cheek grown pale, her eyes reading his
+eyes.
+
+"Why not? Why, because it is a monstrous thing even to think of!"
+Tignonville answered, with the confidence of one who did not use the
+argument for the first time. "Could they insult the King more deeply
+than by such a suspicion? A Borgia may kill his guests, but it was
+never a practice of the Kings of France! Pardieu, I have no patience
+with them! They may lodge where they please, across the river, or
+without the walls if they choose, the Rue de l'Arbre Sec is good
+enough for me, and the King's name sufficient surety!"
+
+"I know you are not apt to be fearful," she answered, smiling; and she
+looked at him with a woman's pride in her lover. "All the same, you
+will not desert me again, sir, will you?"
+
+He vowed he would not, kissed her hand, looked into her eyes; then
+melting to her, stammering, blundering, he named Madame St. Lo. She
+stopped him.
+
+"There is no need," she said, answering his look with kind eyes, and
+refusing to hear his protestations. "In a fortnight will you not be my
+husband? How should I distrust you? It was only that while she talked,
+I waited--I waited; and--and that Madame St. Lo is Count Hannibal's
+cousin. For a moment I was mad enough to dream that she held you on
+purpose. You do not think it was so?"
+
+"She!" he cried sharply; and he winced, as if the thought hurt him.
+"Absurd! The truth is, Mademoiselle," he continued with a little heat,
+"you are like so many of our people! You think a Catholic capable of
+the worst."
+
+"We have long thought so at Vrillac," she answered gravely.
+
+"That's over now, if people would only understand. This wedding has
+put an end to all that. But I'm harking back," he continued awkwardly;
+and he stopped. "Instead, let me take you home."
+
+"If you please. Carlat and the servants should be below."
+
+He took her left hand in his right after the wont of the day, and with
+his other hand touching his sword-hilt, he led her down the staircase,
+that by a single turn reached the courtyard of the palace. Here a mob
+of armed servants, of lacqueys, and foot-boys, some bearing torches,
+and some carrying their masters' cloaks and _galoshes_, loitered to
+and fro. Had M. de Tignonville been a little more observant, or a
+trifle less occupied with his own importance, he might have noted more
+than one face which looked darkly on him; he might have caught more
+than one overt sneer at his expense. But in the business of summoning
+Carlat--Mademoiselle de Vrillac's steward and major-domo--he lost the
+contemptuous "Christaudins!" that hissed from a footboy's lips, and
+the "Southern dogs!" that died in the moustachios of a bully in the
+livery of the King's brother. He was engaged in finding the steward,
+and in aiding him to cloak his mistress; then with a ruffling air, a
+new acquirement, which he had picked up since he came to Paris, he
+made a way for her through the crowd. A moment, and the three,
+followed by half a dozen armed servants, bearing pikes and torches,
+detached themselves from the throng, and crossing the courtyard, with
+its rows of lighted windows, passed out by the gate between the Tennis
+Courts, and so into the Rue des Fosses de St. Germain.
+
+Before them, against a sky in which the last faint glow of evening
+still contended with the stars, the spire and pointed arches of the
+church of St. Germain rose darkly graceful. It was something after
+nine; the heat of the August day brooded over the crowded city, and
+dulled the faint distant ring of arms and armour that yet would make
+itself heard above the hush; a hush which was not silence so much as a
+subdued hum. As Mademoiselle passed the closed house beside the
+Cloister of St. Germain where only the day before Admiral Coligny, the
+leader of the Huguenots, had been wounded, she pressed her escort's
+hand, and involuntarily drew nearer to him. But he laughed at her.
+
+"It was a private blow," he said, answering her unspoken thought. "It
+is like enough the Guises sped it. But they know now what is the
+King's will, and they have taken the hint and withdrawn themselves. It
+will not happen again, Mademoiselle. For proof, see the guards"--they
+were passing the end of the Rue Bethizy, in the corner house of which,
+abutting on the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, Coligny had his lodgings--"whom
+the King has placed for his security. Fifty pikes under Cosseins."
+
+"Cosseins?" she repeated. "But I thought Cosseins----"
+
+"Was not wont to love us!" Tignonville answered with a confident
+chuckle. "He was not. But the dogs lick where the master wills,
+Mademoiselle. He was not, but he does. This marriage has altered all."
+
+"I hope it may not prove an unlucky one!" she murmured. She felt
+impelled to say it.
+
+"Not it!" he answered confidently. "Why should it?"
+
+They stopped, as he spoke, before the last house, at the corner of the
+Rue St. Honoré opposite the Croix du Tiroir; which rose shadowy in the
+middle of the four ways. He hammered on the door.
+
+"But," she said softly, looking in his face, "the change is sudden, is
+it not? The King was not wont to be so good to us!"
+
+"The King was not King until now," he answered "That is what I am
+trying to persuade our people. Believe me, Mademoiselle, you may sleep
+without fear; and early in the morning I will be with you. Carlat,
+have a care of your mistress until morning, and let Madame lie in her
+chamber. She is nervous to-night. There, sweet, until morning! God
+keep you, and pleasant dreams!"
+
+He uncovered, and bowing over her hand, kissed it; and the door being
+open he would have turned away. But she lingered as if unwilling to
+enter. "There is--do you hear it--a stir in _that_ quarter?" she said,
+pointing across the Rue St. Honoré. "What lies there?"
+
+"Northward? The markets," he answered. "'Tis nothing. They say, you
+know, that Paris never sleeps. Good-night, sweet, and a fair
+awakening!"
+
+She shivered as she had shivered under Tavannes' eye. And still she
+lingered, keeping him. "Are you going to your lodging at once?" she
+asked--for the sake, it seemed, of saying something.
+
+"I?" he answered a little hurriedly. "No, I was thinking of paying
+Rochefoucauld the compliment of seeing him home. He has taken a new
+lodging to be near the Admiral; a horrid bare place in the Rue
+Bethizy, without furniture, but he would go into it to-day. And he has
+a sort of claim on my family, you know."
+
+"Yes," she said simply. "Of course. Then I must not detain you. God
+keep you safe," she continued, with a faint quiver in her tone; and
+her lip trembled. "Good-night, and fair dreams, Monsieur."
+
+He echoed the words gallantly. "Of you, sweet!" he cried; and turning
+away with a gesture of farewell, he set off on his return.
+
+He walked briskly, nor did he look back, though she stood awhile
+gazing after him. She was not aware that she gave thought to this; nor
+that it hurt her. Yet when bolt and bar had shot behind her, and she
+had mounted the cold, bare staircase of that day--when she had heard
+the dull echoing footsteps of her attendants as they withdrew to their
+lairs and sleeping-places, and still more when she had crossed the
+threshold of her chamber, and signed to Madame Carlat and her woman to
+listen--it is certain she felt a lack of something.
+
+Perhaps the chill that possessed her came of that lack, which she
+neither defined nor acknowledged. Or possibly it came of the night
+air, August though it was; or of sheer nervousness, or of the
+remembrance of Count Hannibal's smile. Whatever its origin, she took
+it to bed with her; and long after the house slept round her, long
+after the crowded quarter of the Halles had begun to heave and the
+Sorbonne to vomit a black-frocked band, long after the tall houses in
+the gabled streets, from St. Antoine to Montmartre and from St. Denis
+on the north to St. Jacques on the south, had burst into rows of
+twinkling lights--nay, long after the Quarter of the Louvre alone
+remained dark, girdled by this strange midnight brightness--she lay
+awake. At length she too slept, and dreamed of home and the wide skies
+of Poitou, and her castle of Vrillac washed day and night by the
+Biscay tides.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                HANNIBAL DE SAULX, COMTE DE TAVANNES.
+
+
+"Tavannes!"
+
+"Sire."
+
+Tavannes, we know, had been slow to obey the summons. Emerging from
+the crowd he found that the King, with Retz and Rambouillet, his
+Marshal des Logis, had retired to the farther end of the Chamber;
+apparently Charles had forgotten that he had called. His head a little
+bent--he was tall and had a natural stoop--the King seemed to be
+listening to a low but continuous murmur of voices which proceeded
+from the door of his closet. One voice frequently raised was beyond
+doubt a woman's; a foreign accent, smooth and silky, marked another; a
+third, that from time to time broke in, wilful and impetuous, was the
+voice of Monsieur, the King's brother, Catherine de Médicis' favourite
+son. Tavannes, waiting respectfully two paces behind the King, could
+catch little that was said; but Charles, something more, it seemed,
+for on a sudden he laughed, a violent, mirthless laugh. And he clapped
+Rambouillet on the shoulder.
+
+"There!" he said, with one of his horrible oaths, "'tis settled! 'Tis
+settled! Go, man, and take your orders! And you, M. de Retz," he
+continued, in a tone of savage mockery, "go, my lord, and give them!"
+
+"I, sire?" the Italian Marshal answered in accents of deprecation.
+There were times when the young King would show his impatience of the
+Italian ring, the Retzs and Biragues, the Strozzis and Gondys, with
+whom his mother surrounded him.
+
+"Yes, you!" Charles answered. "You and my lady mother! And in God's
+name answer for it at the day!" he continued vehemently. "You will
+have it! You will not let me rest till you have it! Then have it, only
+see to it, it be done thoroughly! There shall not be one left to cast
+it in the King's teeth and cry, 'Et tu, Carole!' Swim, swim in blood
+if you will," he continued with growing wildness. "Oh, 'twill be a
+merry night! And it's true so far, you may kill fleas all day, but
+burn the coat, and there's an end. So burn it, burn it, and----" He
+broke off with a start as he discovered Tavannes at his elbow. "God's
+death, man!" he cried roughly, "who sent for you?"
+
+"Your Majesty called me," Tavannes answered; while, partly urged by
+the King's hand, and partly anxious to escape, the others slipped into
+the closet and left them together.
+
+"I sent for you? I called your brother, the Marshal!"
+
+"He is within, sire," Tavannes answered, indicating the closet. "A
+moment ago I heard his voice."
+
+Charles passed his shaking hand across his eyes. "Is he?" he muttered.
+"So he is! I heard it too. And--and a man cannot be in two places at
+once!" Then while his haggard gaze, passing by Tavannes, roved round
+the Chamber, he laid his hand on Count Hannibal's breast. "They give
+me no peace, Madame and the Guises," he whispered, his face hectic
+with excitement. "They will have it. They say that Coligny--they say
+that he beards me in my own palace. And--and, _mordieu_," with sudden
+violence, "it's true! It's true enough! It was but to-day he was for
+making terms with me! With me, the King! Making terms! So it shall be,
+by God and Devil, it shall! But not six or seven! No, no. All! All!
+There shall not be one left to say to me, 'You did it!'"
+
+"Softly, sire," Tavannes answered; for Charles had gradually raised
+his voice. "You will be observed."
+
+For the first time the young King--he was but twenty-two years old,
+God pity him!--looked at his companion. "To be sure," he whispered;
+and his eyes grew cunning. "Besides, and after all, there's another
+way, if I choose. Oh, I've thought and thought, I'd have you know."
+And shrugging his shoulders, almost to his ears, he raised and lowered
+his open hands alternately, while his back hid the movement from the
+Chamber. "See-saw! See-saw!" he muttered. "And the King between the
+two, you see. That's Madame's king-craft. She's shown me that a
+hundred times. But look you, it is as easy to lower the one as the
+other," with a cunning glance at Tavannes' face, "or to cut off the
+right as the left. And--and the Admiral's an old man and will pass;
+and for the matter of that I like to hear him talk. He talks well.
+While the others, Guise and his kind, are young, and I've thought,
+oh, yes, I've thought--but there," with a sudden harsh laugh, "my lady
+mother will have it her own way. And for this time she shall, but,
+All! All! Even Foucauld, there! Do you mark him? He's sorting the
+cards. Do you see him--as he will be to-morrow, with the slit in his
+throat and his teeth showing? Why, God!" his voice rising almost to a
+scream, "the candles by him are burning blue!" And with a shaking
+hand, his face convulsed, the young King clutched his companion's arm,
+and pinched it.
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders, but answered nothing.
+
+"D'you think we shall see them afterwards?" Charles resumed, in a
+sharp, eager whisper. "In our dreams, man? Or when the watchman cries,
+and we awake, and the monks are singing lauds at St. Germain, and--and
+the taper is low?"
+
+Tavannes' lip curled. "I don't dream, sire," he answered coldly, "and
+I seldom wake. For the rest, I fear my enemies neither alive nor
+dead."
+
+"Don't you? By G--d, I wish I didn't," the young man exclaimed. His
+brow was wet with sweat. "I wish I didn't. But there, it's settled.
+They've settled it, and I would it were done! What do you think of--of
+it, man? What do you think of it, yourself?"
+
+Count Hannibal's face was inscrutable. "I think nothing, sire," he
+said drily. "It is for your Majesty and your council to think. It is
+enough for me that it is the King's will."
+
+"But you'll not flinch?" Charles muttered, with a quick look of
+suspicion. "But there," with a monstrous oath, "I know you'll not! I
+believe you'd as soon kill a monk--though, thank God," and he crossed
+himself devoutly, "there is no question of that--as a man. And sooner
+than a maiden."
+
+"Much sooner, sire," Tavannes answered grimly. "If you have any orders
+in the monkish direction--no? Then your Majesty must not talk to me
+longer. M. de Rochefoucauld is beginning to wonder what is keeping
+your Majesty from your game. And others are marking you, sire."
+
+"By the Lord!" Charles exclaimed, a ring of wonder mingled with horror
+in his tone, "if they knew what was in our minds they'd mark us more!
+Yet, see Nançay there beside the door? He is unmoved. He looks to-day
+as he looked yesterday. Yet he has charge of the work in the
+palace----"
+
+For the first time Tavannes allowed a movement of surprise to escape
+him. "In the palace?" he muttered. "Is it to be done here, too, sire?"
+
+"Would you let some escape, to return by-and-by and cut our throats?"
+the King retorted with a strange spirt of fury; an incapacity to
+maintain the same attitude of mind for two minutes together was the
+most fatal weakness of his ill-balanced nature. "No. All! All!" he
+repeated with vehemence. "Didn't Noah people the earth with eight? But
+I'll not leave eight! My cousins, for they are blood-royal, shall live
+if they will recant. And my old nurse whether or no. And Paré, for no
+one else understands my complexion. And----"
+
+"And Rochefoucauld, doubtless, sire?"
+
+The King, whose eye had sought his favourite companion, withdrew it.
+He darted a glance at Tavannes. "Foucauld? Who said so?" he muttered
+jealously. "Not I! But we shall see. We shall see! And do you see that
+you spare no one, M. le Comte, without an order. That is your
+business."
+
+"I understand, sire," Tavannes answered coolly. And after a moment's
+silence, seeing that the King had done with him, he bowed low and
+withdrew; watched by the circle, as all about a King were watched in
+the days when a King's breath meant life or death, and his smile made
+the fortunes of men. As he passed Rochefoucauld, the latter looked up
+and nodded.
+
+"What keeps brother Charles?" he muttered. "He's madder than ever
+to-night. Is it a masque or a murder he is planning?"
+
+"The vapours," Tavannes answered with a sneer. "Old tales his old
+nurse has stuffed him withal. He'll come by-and-by, and 'twill be well
+if you can divert him."
+
+"I will if he come," Rochefoucauld answered, shuffling the cards. "If
+not 'tis Chicot's business and he should attend to it. I'm tired and
+shall to bed."
+
+"He will come," Tavannes answered, and moved, as if to go on. Then he
+paused for a last word. "He will come," he muttered, stooping and
+speaking under his breath, his eyes on the other's face. "But play him
+lightly. He is in an ugly mood. Please him, if you can, and it may
+serve."
+
+The eyes of the two met an instant, and those of Foucauld--so the King
+called his Huguenot favourite--betrayed some surprise; for Count
+Hannibal and he were not intimate. But seeing that the other was in
+earnest, he raised his brows in acknowledgment. Tavannes nodded
+carelessly in return, looked an instant at the cards on the table, and
+passed on, pushed his way through the circle, and reached the door. He
+was lifting the curtain to go out, when Nauçay, the Captain of the
+Guard, plucked his sleeve.
+
+"What have you been saying to Foucauld, M. de Tavannes?" he muttered.
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes," with a jealous glance, "you, M. le Comte." Count Hannibal
+looked at him with the sudden ferocity that made the man a proverb at
+Court. "What I chose, M. le Capitaine des Suisses!" he hissed. And his
+hand closed like a vice on the other's wrist. "What I chose, look you!
+And remember, another time, that I am not a Huguenot, and say what I
+please."
+
+"But there is great need of care," Nançay protested, stammering and
+flinching. "And--and I have orders, M. le Comte."
+
+"Your orders are not for me," Tavannes answered, releasing his arm
+with a contemptuous gesture. "And look you, man, do not cross my path
+to-night. You know our motto? Who touches my brother, touches
+Tavannes! Be warned by it."
+
+Nançay scowled. "But the priests say, 'If your hand offend you, cut it
+off!'" he muttered.
+
+Tavannes laughed, a sinister laugh. "If you offend me I'll cut your
+throat," he said; and with no ceremony he went out, and dropped the
+curtain behind him.
+
+Nançay looked after him, his face pale with rage. "Curse him!" he
+whispered, rubbing his wrist. "If he were anyone else I would teach
+him! But he would as soon run you through in the presence as in the
+Pré aux Clercs! And his brother, the Marshal, has the King's ear! And
+Madame Catherine's too, which is worse!"
+
+He was still fuming when an officer in the colours of Monsieur, the
+King's brother, entered hurriedly, and keeping his hand on the
+curtain, looked anxiously round the Chamber. As soon as his eye found
+Nançay, his face cleared. "Have you the reckoning?" he muttered.
+
+"There are seventeen Huguenots in the palace besides their
+Highnesses," Nançay replied, in the same cautious tone. "Not counting
+two or three who are neither the one thing nor the other. In addition,
+there are the two Montmorencies; but they are to go safe for fear of
+their brother, who is not in the trap. He is too like his father, the
+old Bench-burner, to be lightly wronged! And besides, there is Paré,
+who is to go to his Majesty's closet as soon as the gates are shut. If
+the King decides to save anyone else, he will send him to his closet.
+So 'tis all clear and arranged here. If you are as forward outside, it
+will be well! Who deals with the gentleman with the toothpick?"
+
+"The Admiral? Monsieur, Guise, and the Grand Prior; Cosseins and Besme
+have charge. 'Tis to be done first. Then the Provost will raise the
+town. He will have a body of stout fellows ready at three or four
+rendezvous, so that the fire may blaze up everywhere at once. Marcel,
+the ex-provost, has the same commission south of the river. Orders to
+light the town as for a frolic have been given, and the Halles will be
+ready."
+
+Nançay nodded, reflected a moment, and then with an involuntary
+shudder, "God!" he exclaimed, "it will shake the world!"
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Ay, will it not!" His next words showed that he bore Tavannes'
+warning in mind. "For me, my friend, I go in mail to-night," he said.
+"There will be many a score paid before morning, besides his
+Majesty's. And many a left-handed blow will be struck in the _mêlée!_"
+
+The other crossed himself. "Grant none light here!" he said devoutly.
+And with a last look he nodded and went out.
+
+In the doorway he jostled a person who was in the act of entering. It
+was M. de Tignonville, who, seeing Nançay at his elbow, saluted him,
+and stood looking round. The young man's face was flushed, his eyes
+were bright with unwonted excitement. "M. de Rochefoucauld?" he asked
+eagerly. "He has not left yet?"
+
+Nançay caught the thrill in his voice, and marked the young man's
+flushed face, and altered bearing. He noted, too, the crumpled paper
+he carried half-hidden in his hand; and the Captain's countenance grew
+dark. He drew a step nearer and his hand reached softly for his
+dagger. But his voice when he spoke was smooth as the surface of the
+pleasure-loving Court, smooth as the externals of all things in Paris
+that summer evening. "He is here still," he said. "Have you news, M.
+de Tignonville?"
+
+"News?"
+
+"For M. de Rochefoucauld?"
+
+Tignonville laughed. "No," he said. "I am here to see him to his
+lodging, that is all. News, Captain? What made you think so?"
+
+"That which you have in your hand," Nançay answered, his fears
+relieved.
+
+The young man blushed to the roots of his hail "It is not for him," he
+said.
+
+"I can see that, Monsieur," Nançay answered politely. "He has his
+successes, but all the billets-doux do not go one way."
+
+The young man laughed, a conscious, flattered laugh. He was handsome,
+with such a face as women love, but there was a lack of ease in the
+way he wore his Court suit. It was a trifle finer, too, than accorded
+with Huguenot taste; or it looked the finer for the way he wore it,
+even as Teliguy's and Foucauld's velvet capes and stiff brocades lost
+their richness and became but the adjuncts, fitting and graceful, of
+the men. Odder still, as Tignonville laughed, half hiding and half
+revealing the dainty, scented paper in his hand, his clothes seemed
+smarter and he more awkward than usual. "It is from a lady," he
+admitted. "But a bit of badinage, I assure you, nothing more."
+
+"Understood!" M. de Nançay murmured politely. "I congratulate you."
+
+"But----"
+
+"I say I congratulate you!"
+
+"But it is nothing."
+
+"Oh, I understand. And see, the King is about to rise. Go forward,
+Monsieur," he continued benevolently. "A young man should show
+himself. Besides his Majesty likes you well," he added with a leer. He
+had an unpleasant sense of humour, had his Majesty's Captain of the
+Guard; and this evening somewhat more than ordinary on which to
+exercise it.
+
+Tignonville held too good an opinion of himself to suspect the other
+of badinage; and thus encouraged he pushed his way to the front of the
+circle. During his absence with his betrothed, the crowd in the
+Chamber had grown thin, the candles had burned an inch shorter in the
+sconces. But though many who had been there, had left, the more select
+remained, and the King's return to his seat had given the company a
+fillip. An air of feverish gaiety, common in the unhealthy life of the
+Court, prevailed. At a table abreast of the King, Montpensier and
+Marshal Cossé were dicing and disputing, with now a yell of glee,
+and now an oath, that betrayed which way fortune inclined. At the
+back of the King's chair, Chicot, his gentleman-jester, hung over
+Charles's shoulder, now scanning his cards, and now making hideous
+faces that threw the onlookers into fits of laughter. Farther up the
+Chamber, at the end of the alcove, Marshal Tavannes--our Hannibal's
+brother--occupied a low stool, which was set opposite the open door of
+the closet. Through this doorway a slender foot, silk-clad, shot now
+and again into sight; it came, it vanished, it came again, the gallant
+Marshal striving at each appearance to rob it of its slipper, a dainty
+jewelled thing of crimson velvet. He failed thrice, a peal of laughter
+greeting each failure. At the fourth essay, he upset his stool and
+fell to the floor, but held the slipper. And not the slipper only, but
+the foot. Amid a flutter of silken skirts and dainty laces--while the
+hidden beauty shrilly protested--he dragged first the ankle, and then
+a shapely leg into sight. The circle applauded; the lady, feeling
+herself still drawn on, screamed loudly and more loudly. All save the
+King and his opponent turned to look. And then the sport came to a
+sudden end. A sinewy hand appeared, interposed, released; for an
+instant the dark, handsome face of Guise looked through the doorway.
+It was gone as soon as seen; it was there a second only. But more than
+one recognised it, and wondered. For was not the young Duke in evil
+odour with the King by reason of the attack on the Admiral? And had he
+not been chased from Paris only that morning and forbidden to return?
+
+They were still wondering, still gazing, when abruptly--as he did all
+things--Charles thrust back his chair. "Foucauld, you owe me ten
+pieces!" he cried with glee, and he slapped the table. "Pay, my
+friend; pay!"
+
+"To-morrow, little master; to-morrow!" Rochefoucauld answered in the
+same tone. And he rose to his feet.
+
+"To-morrow!" Charles repeated. "To-morrow?" And on the word his jaw
+fell. He looked wildly round. His face was ghastly.
+
+"Well, sire, and why not?" Rochefoucauld answered in astonishment. And
+in his turn he looked round, wondering; and a chill fell on him. "Why
+not?" he repeated.
+
+For a moment no one answered him: the silence in the Chamber was
+intense. Where he looked, wherever he looked, he met solemn, wondering
+eyes, such eyes as gaze on men in their coffins. "What has come to you
+all?" he cried with an effort. "What is the jest, for faith, sire, I
+don't see it?"
+
+The King seemed incapable of speech, and it was Chicot who filled the
+gap. "It is pretty apparent," he said with a rude laugh. "The cock
+will lay and Foucauld will pay--to-morrow!"
+
+The young nobleman's colour rose; between him and the Gascon gentleman
+was no love lost. "There are some debts I pay to-day," he cried
+haughtily. "For the rest, farewell my little master! When one does not
+understand the jest it is time to be gone."
+
+He was half-way to the door, watched by all, when the King spoke.
+"Foucauld!" he cried in an odd, strangled voice. "Foucauld!" And the
+Huguenot favourite turned back, wondering.
+
+"One minute!" the King continued in the same forced voice. "Stay till
+morning--in my closet. It is late now. We'll play away the rest of the
+night!"
+
+"Your Majesty must excuse me," Rochefoucauld answered frankly. "I am
+dead asleep."
+
+"You can sleep in the Garde-Robe," the King persisted.
+
+"Thank you for nothing, sire!" was the gay answer. "I know that bed! I
+shall sleep longer and better in my own."
+
+The King shuddered, but strove to hide the movement under a shrug of
+his shoulders. He turned away. "It is God's will!" he muttered. He was
+white to the lips.
+
+Rochefoucauld did not catch the words. "Good night, sire," he cried.
+"Farewell, little master." And with a nod here and there, he passed to
+the door, followed by Mergey and Chamont, two gentlemen of his suite.
+
+Nançay raised the curtain with an obsequious gesture. "Pardon me, M.
+le Comte," he said, "do you go to his Highness's?"
+
+"For a few minutes, Nançay."
+
+"Permit me to go with you. The guards may be set."
+
+"Do so, my friend," Rochefoucauld answered. "Ah, Tignonville, is it
+you!"
+
+"I am come to attend you to your lodging," the young man said. And he
+ranged up beside the other, as, the curtain fallen behind them, they
+walked along the gallery.
+
+Rochefoucauld stopped and laid his hand on Tignonville's sleeve.
+"Thanks, dear lad," he said, "but I am going to the Princess
+Dowager's. Afterwards to his Highness's. I may be detained an hour or
+more. You will not like to wait so long."
+
+M. de Tignonville's face fell ludicrously. "Well, no," he said. "I--I
+don't think I could wait so long--to-night."
+
+"Then come to-morrow night," Rochefoucauld answered with good nature.
+
+"With pleasure," the other cried heartily, his relief evident.
+"Certainly. With pleasure." And, nodding good-night, they parted.
+While Rochefoucauld, with Nançay at his side and his gentlemen
+attending him, passed along the echoing and now empty gallery, the
+younger man bounded down the stairs to the great hall of the
+Caryatides, his face radiant. He for one was not sleepy.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                  THE HOUSE NEXT THE "GOLDEN MAID."
+
+
+We have it on record that before the Comte de la Rochefoucauld left
+the Louvre that night he received the strongest hints of the peril
+which threatened him; and at least one written warning was handed to
+him by a stranger in black, and by him in turn was communicated to the
+King of Navarre. We are told further that when he took his final
+leave, about the hour of eleven, he found the courtyard brilliantly
+lighted, and the three companies of guards--Swiss, Scotch, and
+French--drawn up in ranked array from the door of the great hall to
+the gate which opened on the street. But, the chronicler adds, neither
+this precaution, sinister as it appeared to some of his suite, nor the
+grave farewell which Rambouillet, from his post at the gate, took of
+one of his gentlemen, shook that chivalrous soul or sapped its
+generous confidence. M. de Tignonville was young and less versed in
+danger than the Governor of Rochelle; with him, had he seen so much,
+it might have been different. But he left the Louvre an hour
+earlier--at a time when the precincts of the palace, gloomy-seeming to
+us in the light cast by coming events, wore their wonted aspect. His
+thoughts, moreover, as he crossed the courtyard, were otherwise
+employed. So much so, indeed, that though he signed to his two
+servants to follow him, he seemed barely conscious what he was doing;
+nor did he shake off his reverie until he reached the corner of the
+Rue Baillet. Here the voices of the Swiss who stood on guard opposite
+Coligny's lodgings, at the end of the Rue Bethizy, could be plainly
+heard. They had kindled a fire in an iron basket set in the middle of
+the road, and knots of them were visible in the distance, moving to
+and fro about their piled arms.
+
+Tignonville paused before he came within the radius of the firelight,
+and turning, bade his servants take their way home. "I shall follow,
+but I have business first," he added curtly.
+
+The elder of the two demurred. "The streets are not too safe," he
+said. "In two hours or less, my lord, it will be midnight. And
+then----"
+
+"Go, booby; do you think I am a child?" his master retorted angrily.
+"I've my sword and can use it. I shall not be long. And do you hear,
+men, keep a still tongue, will you?"
+
+The men, country fellows, obeyed reluctantly, and with a full
+intention of sneaking after him the moment he had turned his back. But
+he suspected them of this, and stood where he was until they had
+passed the fire, and could no longer detect his movements. Then he
+plunged quickly into the Rue Baillet, gained through it the Rue du
+Roule, and traversing that also turned to the right into the Rue
+Ferronerie, the main thoroughfare, east and west, of Paris. Here he
+halted in front of the long, dark outer wall of the Cemetery of the
+Innocents, in which, across the tombstones and among the sepulchres of
+dead Paris, the living Paris of that day, bought and sold, walked,
+gossiped, and made love.
+
+About him things were to be seen that would have seemed stranger to
+him had he been less strange to the city. From the quarter of the
+markets north of him, a quarter which fenced in the cemetery on two
+sides, the same dull murmur proceeded, which Mademoiselle de Vrillac
+had remarked an hour earlier. The sky above the cemetery glowed with
+reflected light, the cause of which was not far to seek, for every
+window of the tall houses that overlooked it, and the huddle of booths
+about it, contributed a share of the illumination. At an hour late
+even for Paris, an hour when honest men should have been sunk in
+slumber, this strange brilliance did for a moment perplex him; but the
+past week had been so full of fêtes, of masques and frolics, often
+devised on the moment and dependent on the King's whim, that he set
+this also down to such a cause, and wondered and no more.
+
+The lights in the houses flung their radiance high, and did not serve
+his purpose; but beside the closed gate of the cemetery, between two
+stalls, was a votive lamp burning before an image of the Mother and
+Child. He crossed to this, and assuring himself by a glance to right
+and left that he stood in no danger from prowlers, he drew a note from
+his breast. It had been slipped into his hand in the gallery before he
+saw Mademoiselle to her lodging; it had been in his possession barely
+an hour. But brief as its contents were, and easily committed to
+memory, he had perused it thrice already.
+
+"At the house next the 'Golden Maid,' Rue Cinq Diamants, an hour
+before midnight, you may find the door open should you desire to talk
+farther with C. St. L."
+
+As he read it for the fourth time the light of the lamp fell athwart
+his face; and even as his fine clothes had never seemed to fit him
+worse than when he faintly denied the imputations of gallantry
+launched at him by Nançay, so his features had never looked less
+handsome than they did now. The glow of vanity which warmed his cheek
+as he read the message, the smile of conceit which wreathed his lips,
+bespoke a nature not of the most noble; or the lamp did him less than
+justice. Presently he kissed the note, and hid it. He waited until the
+clock of St. Jacques struck the hour before midnight; and then moving
+forward he turned to the right by way of the narrow neck leading to
+the Rue Lombard. He walked in the kennel here, his sword in his hand
+and his eyes looking to right and left; for the place was notorious
+for robberies. But though he saw more than one figure lurking in a
+doorway or under the arch that led to a passage, it vanished on his
+nearer approach. In less than a minute he reached the southern end of
+the street that bore the odd title of the Five Diamonds.
+
+Situate in the crowded quarter of the butchers, and almost in the
+shadow of their famous church, this street--which farther north was
+continued in the Rue Quimcampoix--presented in those days a not
+uncommon mingling of poverty and wealth. On one side of the street a
+row of lofty gabled houses built under Francis the First, sheltered
+persons of good condition; on the other, divided from these by the
+width of the road and a reeking kennel, a row of pent-houses, the
+hovels of cobblers and sausage-makers, leaned against shapeless timber
+houses which tottered upwards in a medley of sagging roofs and bulging
+gutters. Tignonville was strange to the place, and nine nights out of
+ten he would have been at a disadvantage. But, thanks to the tapers
+that to-night shone in many windows, he made out enough to see that he
+need search only the one side; and with a beating heart he passed
+along the row of newer houses, looking eagerly for the sign of the
+"Golden Maid."
+
+He found it at last; and then for a moment he stood puzzled. The note
+said, next door to the "Golden Maid," but it did not say on which
+side. He scrutinised the nearer house, but he saw nothing to determine
+him; and he was proceeding to the farther, when he caught sight of two
+men, who, ambushed behind a horse-block on the opposite side of the
+roadway, seemed to be watching his movements. Their presence flurried
+him; but much to his relief his next glance at the houses showed him
+that the door of the farther one was unlatched. It stood slightly
+ajar, permitting a beam of light to escape into the street.
+
+He stepped quickly to it--the sooner he was within the house the
+better--pushed the door open and entered. As soon as he was inside he
+tried to close the entrance behind him, but he found he could not; the
+door would not shut. After a brief trial he abandoned the attempt and
+passed quickly on, through a bare lighted passage which led to the
+foot of a staircase, equally bare. He stood at this point an instant
+and listened, in the hope that Madame's maid would come to him. At
+first he heard nothing save his own breathing; then a gruff voice from
+above startled him, "This way, Monsieur," it said. "You are early, but
+not too soon!"
+
+So Madame trusted her footman! M. de Tignonville shrugged his
+shoulders; but after all, it was no affair of his, and he went up.
+Half-way to the top, however, he stood, an oath on his lips. Two men
+had entered by the open door below--even as he had entered! And as
+quietly!
+
+The imprudence of it! The imprudence of leaving the door so that it
+could not be closed! He turned and descended to meet them, his teeth
+set, his hand on his sword, one conjecture after another whirling in
+his brain. Was he beset? Was it a trap? Was it a rival? Was it chance?
+Two steps he descended; and then the voice he had heard before cried
+again, but more imperatively, "No, Monsieur, this way! Did you not
+hear me? This way and be quick, if you please. By-and-by there will be
+a crowd, and then the more we have dealt with the better!"
+
+He knew now that he had made a mistake, that he had entered the wrong
+house; and naturally his impulse was to continue his descent and
+secure his retreat. But the pause had brought the two men who had
+entered face to face with him, and they showed no signs of giving way.
+On the contrary.
+
+"The room is above, Monsieur," the foremost said, in a matter-of-fact
+tone, and with a slight salutation. "After you, if you please," and he
+signed to him to return.
+
+He was a burly man, grim and truculent in appearance, and his follower
+was like him. Tignonville hesitated, then turned and ascended. But as
+soon as he had reached the landing where they could pass him, he
+turned again.
+
+"I have made a mistake, I think," he said. "I have entered the wrong
+house."
+
+"Are you for the house next the 'Golden Maid,' Monsieur?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Rue Cinq Diamants, Quarter of the Boucherie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No mistake then," the stout man replied firmly. "You are early, that
+is all. You have arms, I see. Maillard!"--to the person whose voice
+Tignonville had heard at the head of the stairs--"A white sleeve, and
+a cross for Monsieur's hat, and his name on the register. Come, make a
+beginning! Make a beginning, man."
+
+"To be sure, Monsieur. All is ready."
+
+"Then lose no time, I say. Here are others, also early in the good
+cause. Gentlemen, welcome! Welcome all who are for the true faith!
+Death to the heretics! 'Kill, and no quarter!' is the word to-night!"
+
+"Death to the heretics!" the last comers cried in chorus. "Kill and no
+quarter! At what hour, M. le Prévot?"
+
+"At day-break," the Provost answered importantly. "But have no fear,
+the tocsin will sound. The King and our good man M. de Guise have all
+in hand. A white sleeve, a white cross, and a sharp knife shall rid
+Paris of the vermin! Gentlemen of the quarter, the word of the night
+is 'Kill, and no quarter! Death to the Huguenots!'"
+
+"Death! Death to the Huguenots! Kill, and no quarter!" A dozen--the
+room was beginning to fill--waved their weapons and echoed the cry.
+
+Tignonville had been fortunate enough to apprehend the position--and
+the peril in which he stood--before Maillard advanced to him bearing a
+white linen sleeve. In the instant of discovery his heart had stood a
+moment, the blood had left his cheeks; but with some faults, he was no
+coward, and he managed to hide his emotion. He held out his left arm,
+and suffered the beadle to pass the sleeve over it and to secure the
+white linen above the elbow. Then at a gesture he gave up his velvet
+cap, and saw it decorated with a white cross of the same material.
+"Now the register, Monsieur," Maillard continued briskly; and waving
+him in the direction of a clerk, who sat at the end of the long table,
+having a book and an ink-horn before him, he turned to the next comer.
+
+Tignonville would fain have avoided the ordeal of the register, but
+the clerk's eye was on him. He had been fortunate so far, but he knew
+that the least breath of suspicion would destroy him, and summoning
+his wits together he gave his name in a steady voice. "Anne
+Desmartins." It was his mother's maiden name, and the first that came
+into his mind.
+
+"Of Paris?"
+
+"Recently; by birth, of the Limousin."
+
+"Good, Monsieur," the clerk answered, writing in the name. And he
+turned to the next. "And you, my friend?"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                        THE EVE OF THE FEAST.
+
+
+IT was Tignonville's salvation that the men who crowded the long
+white-walled room, and exchanged vile boasts under the naked flaring
+lights, were of all classes. There were butchers, natives of the
+surrounding quarter whom the scent of blood had drawn from their
+lairs; and there were priests with hatchet faces, who whispered in the
+butchers' ears. There were gentlemen of the robe, and plain mechanics,
+rich merchants in their gowns, and bare-armed ragpickers, sleek
+choristers, and shabby led-captains; but differ as they might in other
+points, in one thing all were alike. From all, gentle or simple, rose
+the same cry for blood, the same aspiration to be first equipped for
+the fray. In one corner a man of rank stood silent and apart, his hand
+on his sword, the working of his face alone betraying the storm that
+reigned within. In another, a Norman horse-dealer talked in low
+whispers with two thieves. In a third, a gold-wire drawer addressed an
+admiring group from the Sorbonne; and meantime the middle of the floor
+grew into a seething mass of muttering, scowling men, through whom the
+last comers, thrust as they might, had much ado to force their way.
+
+And from all under the low ceiling rose a ceaseless hum, though none
+spoke loud. "Kill! kill! kill!" was the burden; the accompaniment such
+profanities and blasphemies as had long disgraced the Paris pulpits,
+and day by day had fanned the bigotry--already at a white heat--of the
+Parisian populace. Tignonville turned sick as he listened, and would
+fain have closed his ears. But for his life he dared not. And
+presently a cripple in a beggar's garb, a dwarfish, filthy creature
+with matted hair, twitched his sleeve, and offered him a whetstone.
+
+"Are you sharp, noble sir?" he asked with a leer. "Are you sharp? It's
+surprising how the edge goes on the bone. A cut and thrust? Well,
+every man to his taste. But give me a broad butcher's knife and I'll
+ask no help, be it man, woman, or child!"
+
+A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened. "But
+the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?" he said. And he looked
+to Tignonville to join in the jest.
+
+"Ay, give me a white throat for choice!" the cripple answered, with
+horrible zest. "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night!
+Lord, I think I hear them squeal! You don't need it, sir?" he
+continued, again proffering the whetstone. "No? Then I'll give my
+blade another whet, in the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good
+Father Pezelay!"
+
+"Ay, and give me a turn!" the lean man cried, proffering his weapon.
+"May I die if I do not kill one of the accursed for every finger of my
+hands!"
+
+"And toe of my feet!" the cripple answered, not to be outdone. "And
+toe of my feet! A full score!"
+
+"'Tis according to your sins!" the other, who had something of the air
+of a Churchman, answered. "The more heretics killed, the more sins
+forgiven. Remember that, brother, and spare not if your soul be
+burdened! They blaspheme God and call Him paste! In the paste of their
+own blood," he continued ferociously, "I will knead them and roll them
+out, saith the good Father Pezelay, my master!"
+
+The cripple crossed himself. "Whom God keep," he said. "He is a good
+man. But you are looking ill, noble sir?" he continued, peering
+curiously at the young Huguenot.
+
+"'Tis the heat," Tignonville muttered. "The night is stifling, and the
+lights make it worse. I will go nearer the door."
+
+He hoped to escape them; he had some hope even of escaping from the
+room and giving the alarm. But when he had forced his way to the
+threshold, he found it guarded by two pikemen; and glancing back to
+see if his movements were observed--for he knew that his agitation
+might have awakened suspicion--he found that the taller of the two
+whom he had left, the black-garbed man with the hungry face, was
+watching him a-tiptoe, over the shoulders of the crowd.
+
+With that, and the sense of his impotence, the lights began to swim
+before his eyes. The catastrophe that overhung his party, the fate so
+treacherously prepared for all whom he loved and all with whom his
+fortunes were bound up, confused his brain almost to delirium. He
+strove to think, to calculate chances, to imagine some way in which he
+might escape from the room, or from a window might cry the alarm. But
+he could not bring his mind to a point. Instead, in lightning flashes
+he foresaw what must happen: his betrothed in the hands of the
+murderers, the fair face that had smiled on him frozen with terror;
+brave men, the fighters of Montauban, the defenders of Angely, strewn
+dead through the dark lanes of the city. And now a gust of passion,
+and now a shudder of fear, seized him; and in any other assembly his
+agitation must have led to detection. But in that room were many
+twitching faces and trembling hands. Murder, cruel, midnight, and most
+foul, wrung even from the murderers her toll of horror. While some, to
+hide the nervousness they felt, babbled of what they would do, others
+betrayed by the intentness with which they awaited the signal, the
+dreadful anticipations that possessed their souls.
+
+Before he had formed any plan, a movement took place near the door.
+The stairs shook beneath the sudden trampling of feet, a voice
+cried "De par le Roi! De par le Roi!" and the babel of the room died
+down. The throng swayed and fell back on either hand, and Marshal
+Tavannes entered, wearing half armour, with a white sash; he was
+followed by six or eight gentlemen in like guise. Amid cries of
+"Jarnac! Jarnac!"--for to him the credit of that famous fight,
+nominally won by the King's brother, was popularly given--he advanced
+up the room, met the Provost of the merchants, and began to confer
+with him. Apparently he asked the latter to select some men who could
+be trusted on a special mission, for the Provost looked round and
+beckoned to his side one or two of higher rank than the herd, and then
+one or two of the most truculent aspect.
+
+Tignonville trembled lest he should be singled out. He had hidden
+himself as well as he could at the rear of the crowd by the door; but
+his dress, so much above the common, rendered him conspicuous. He
+fancied that the Provost's eye ranged the crowd for him; and to avoid
+it and efface himself he moved a pace to his left.
+
+The step was fatal. It saved him from the Provost, but it brought him
+face to face and eye to eye with Count Hannibal, who stood in the
+first rank at his brother's elbow. Tavannes stared an instant as if he
+doubted his eyesight. Then, as doubt gave slow place to certainty, and
+surprise to amazement, he smiled. And after a moment he looked another
+way.
+
+Tignonville's heart gave a great bump and seemed to stand still. The
+lights whirled before his eyes, there was a roaring in his ears. He
+waited for the word that should denounce him. It did not come. And
+still it did not come; and Marshal Tavannes was turning. Yes, turning,
+and going; the Provost, bowing low, was attending him to the door; his
+suite were opening on either side to let him pass. And Count Hannibal?
+Count Hannibal was following also, as if nothing had occurred. As if
+he had seen nothing!
+
+The young man caught his breath. Was it possible that he had imagined
+the start of recognition, the steady scrutiny, the sinister smile? No;
+for as Tavannes followed the others, he hung an instant on his heel,
+their eyes met again, and once more he smiled. In the next breath he
+was gone through the doorway, his spurs rang on the stairs; and the
+babel of the crowd, unchecked by the great man's presence, broke out
+anew, and louder.
+
+Tignonville shuddered. He was saved as by a miracle, saved he did not
+know how. But the respite, though its strangeness diverted his
+thoughts for a while, brought short relief. The horrors which impended
+over others surged afresh into his mind, and filled him with a
+maddening sense of impotence. To be one hour, only one short half-hour
+without! To run through the sleeping streets, and scream in the dull
+ears which a King's flatteries had stopped as with wool! To go up and
+down and shake into life the guests whose royal lodgings daybreak
+would turn to a shambles reeking with their blood! They slept, the
+gentle Teligny, the brave Pardaillan, the gallant Rochefoucauld, Piles
+the hero of St. Jean, while the cruel city stirred rustling about
+them, and doom crept whispering to the door. They slept, they and a
+thousand others, gentle and simple, young and old; while the half-mad
+Valois shifted between two opinions, and the Italian woman, accursed
+daughter of an accursed race, cried "Hark!" at her window, and looked
+eastwards for the dawn.
+
+And the women? The woman he was to marry? And the others? In an access
+of passion he thrust aside those who stood between, he pushed his way,
+disregarding complaints, disregarding opposition, to the door. But the
+pikes lay across it, and he could not utter a syllable to save his
+life. He would have flung himself on the door-keepers, for he was
+losing control of himself; but as he drew back for the spring, a hand
+clutched his sleeve, and a voice he loathed hummed in his ear.
+
+"No, fair play, noble sir; fair play!" the cripple Jehan muttered,
+forcibly drawing him aside. "All start together, and it's no man's
+loss. But if there is any little business," he continued, lowering his
+tone and peering with a cunning look into the other's face, "of your
+own, noble sir, or your friends', anything or anybody you want
+despatched, count on me. It were better, perhaps, you didn't appear in
+it yourself, and a man you can trust----"
+
+"What do you mean?" the young man cried, recoiling from him.
+
+"No need to look surprised, noble sir," the lean man, who had joined
+them, answered in a soothing tone. "Who kills to-night does God
+service, and who serves God much may serve himself a little. 'Thou
+shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,' says good Father
+Pezelay."
+
+"Hear, hear!" the cripple chimed in eagerly, his impatience such that
+he danced on his toes. "He preaches as well as the good father his
+master! So frankly, noble sir, what is it? What is it? A woman grown
+ugly? A rich man grown old, with perchance a will in his chest? Or a
+young heir that stands in my lord's way? Whichever it be, or whatever
+it be, trust me and our friend here, and my butcher's gully shall cut
+the knot."
+
+Tignonville shook his head.
+
+"But something there is," the lean man persisted obstinately; and he
+cast a suspicious glance at Tignonville's clothes. It was evident that
+the two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there.
+"Have the dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers'
+shops on the bridge to fill your purse again? If so, take my word, it
+were better to go three than one, and we'll enlist."
+
+"Ay, we know shops on the bridge where you can plunge your arm
+elbow-deep in gold," the cripple muttered, his eyes sparkling
+greedily. "There's Baillet's, noble sir! There's a shop for you! And
+there's the man's shop who works for the King. He's lame like me. And
+I know the way to all. Oh, it will be a merry night if they ring
+before the dawn. It must be near daybreak now. And what's that?"
+
+Ay, what was it? A score of voices called for silence; a breathless
+hush fell on the crowd. A moment the fiercest listened, with parted
+lips and starting eyes. Then, "It was the bell!" cried one, "let us
+out!" "It was not!" cried, another. "It was a pistol shot!" "Anyhow
+let us out!" the crowd roared in chorus; "let us out!" And they
+pressed in a furious mass towards the door, as if they would force it,
+signal or no signal.
+
+But the pikemen stood fast, and the throng, checked in their first
+rush, turned on one another, and broke into wrangling and disputing;
+boasting, and calling Heaven and the saints to witness how thoroughly,
+how pitilessly, how remorselessly they would purge Paris of this
+leprosy when the signal did sound. Until again above the babel a man
+cried "Silence!" and again they listened. And this time, dulled by
+walls and distance, but unmistakable by the ears of fear or hate, the
+heavy note of a bell came to them on the hot night-air. It was the
+boom, sullen and menacing, of the death signal.
+
+The door-keepers lowered their pikes, and with a wild rush as of
+wolves swarming on their prey, the band stormed the door, and thrust
+and struggled and battled a way down the narrow staircase, and along
+the narrow passage. "A bas les Huguenots! Mort aux Huguenots!" they
+shouted; and shrieking, sweating, spurning with vile hands viler
+faces, they poured pell-mell into the street, and added their clamour
+to the boom of the tocsin that, as by magic and in a moment, turned
+the streets of Paris into a hell of blood and cruelty. For as it was
+here, so it was in a dozen other quarters.
+
+Quickly as they streamed out--and to have issued more quickly would
+have been impossible--fiercely as they pushed and fought and clove
+their way, Tignonville was of the foremost. And for a moment, seeing
+the street clear before him and almost empty, the Huguenot thought
+that he might do something. He might outstrip the stream of rapine, he
+might carry the alarm; at worst he might reach his betrothed before
+harm befel her. But when he had sped fifty yards, his heart sank.
+True, none passed him; but under the spell of the alarm-bell the
+stones themselves seemed to turn to men. Houses, courts, alleys, the
+very churches vomited men. In a twinkling the street was alive with
+men, roared with them as with a rushing tide, gleamed with their
+lights and weapons, thundered with the volume of their thousand
+voices. He was no longer ahead, men were running before him, behind
+him, on his right hand and on his left. In every side-street, every
+passage, men were running; and not men only, but women, children,
+furious creatures without age or sex. And all the time the bell tolled
+overhead, tolled faster and faster, and louder and louder; and shots
+and screams, and the clash of arms, and the fall of strong doors began
+to swell the maelstrom of sound.
+
+He was in the Rue St. Honoré now, and speeding westward. But the flood
+still rose with him, and roared abreast of him. Nay, it outstripped
+him. When he came, panting, within sight of his goal, and lacked but a
+hundred paces of it, he found his passage barred by a dense mass of
+people moving slowly to meet him. In the heart of the press the light
+of a dozen torches shone on half as many riders mailed and armed;
+whose eyes, as they moved on, and the furious gleaming eyes of the
+rabble about them, never left the gabled roofs on their right. On
+these from time to time a white-clad figure showed itself, and passed
+from chimney-stack to chimney-stack, or, stooping low, ran along the
+parapet. Every time that this happened, the men on horseback pointed
+upwards and the mob foamed with rage.
+
+Tignonville groaned, but he could not help. Unable to go forward, he
+turned, and with others hurrying, shouting, and brandishing weapons,
+he pressed into the Rue du Roule, passed through it, and gained the
+Bethizy. But here, as he might have foreseen, all passage was barred
+at the Hôtel Pouthieu by a horde of savages, who danced and yelled and
+sang songs round the Admiral's body, which lay in the middle of the
+way; while to right and left men were bursting into houses and forcing
+new victims into the street. The worst had happened there, and he
+turned panting, regained the Rue St. Honoré and, crossing it and
+turning left-handed, darted through side streets until he came again
+into the main thoroughfare a little beyond the Croix du Tiroir, that
+marked the corner of Mademoiselle's house.
+
+Here his last hope left him. The street swarmed with bands of men
+hurrying to and fro as in a sacked city. The scum of the Halles, the
+rabble of the quarter poured this way and that, here at random, there
+swayed and directed by a few knots of men-at-arms, whose corselets
+reflected the glare of a hundred torches. At one time and within
+sight, three or four houses were being stormed. On every side rose
+heartrending cries, mingled with brutal laughter, with savage jests,
+with cries of "To the river!" The most cruel of cities had burst its
+bounds and was not to be stayed; nor would be stayed until the Seine
+ran red to the sea, and leagues below, in pleasant Normandy hamlets,
+men, for fear of the pestilence, pushed the corpses from the bridges
+with poles and boat-hooks.
+
+All this Tignonville saw, though his eyes, leaping the turmoil, looked
+only to the door at which he had left Mademoiselle a few hours
+earlier. There a crowd of men pressed and struggled; but from the spot
+where he stood he could see no more. That was enough, however. Rage
+nerved him, and despair; his world was dying round him. If he could
+not save her he would avenge her. Recklessly he plunged into the
+tumult; blade in hand, with vigorous blows he thrust his way through,
+his white sleeve and the white cross in his hat gaining him passage
+until he reached the fringe of the band who beset the door. Here his
+first attempt to pass failed; and he might have remained hampered by
+the crowd if a squad of archers had not ridden up. As they spurred to
+the spot, heedless over whom they rode, he clutched a stirrup, and was
+borne with them into the heart of the crowd. In a twinkling he stood
+on the threshold of the house, face to face and foot to foot with
+Count Hannibal, who stood also on the threshold, but with his back to
+the door, which, unbarred and unbolted, gaped open behind him.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                           A ROUGH WOOING.
+
+
+The young man had caught the delirium that was abroad that night. The
+rage of the trapped beast was in his heart, his hand held a sword. To
+strike blindly, to strike without question the first who withstood him
+was the wild-beast instinct; and if Count Hannibal had not spoken on
+the instant, the Marshal's brother had said his last word in the
+world.
+
+Yet as he stood there, a head above the crowd, he seemed unconscious
+alike of Tignonville and the point that all but pricked his breast.
+Swart and grim-visaged, his harsh features distorted by the glare
+which shone upon him, he looked beyond the Huguenot to the sea of
+tossing arms and raging faces that surged about the saddles of the
+horsemen. It was to these he spoke.
+
+"Begone, dogs!" he cried, in a voice that startled the nearest, "or I
+will whip you away with my stirrup-leathers! Do you hear? Begone! This
+house is not for you! Burn, kill, plunder where you will, but go
+hence!"
+
+"But 'tis on the list!" one of the wretches yelled. "'Tis on the
+list!" And he pushed forward until he stood at Tignonville's elbow.
+
+"And has no cross!" shrieked another, thrusting himself forward in his
+turn. "See you, let us by, whoever you are! In the King's name, kill!
+It has no cross!"
+
+"Then," Tavannes thundered, "will I nail you for a cross to the front
+of it! No cross, say you? I will make one of you, foul crow!"
+
+And as he spoke, his arm shot out; the man recoiled, his fellow
+likewise. But one of the mounted archers took up the matter.
+
+"Nay, but, my lord," he said--he knew Tavannes--"it is the King's will
+there be no favour shown to-night to any, small or great. And this
+house is registered, and is full of heretics."
+
+"And has no cross!" the rabble urged in chorus. And they leapt up and
+down in their impatience, and to see the better. "And has no cross!"
+they persisted. They could understand that. Of what use crosses, if
+they were not to kill where there was no cross? Daylight was not
+plainer.
+
+Tavannes' face grew dark, and he shook his finger at the archer who
+had spoken. "Rogue," he cried, "does the King's will run here only?
+Are there no other houses to sack or men to kill, that you must beard
+me? And favour? You will have little of mine, if you do not budge and
+take your vile tail with you! Off! Or must I cry 'Tavannes!' and bid
+my people sweep you from the streets?"
+
+The foremost rank hesitated, awed by his manner and his name; while
+the rearmost, attracted by the prospect of easier pillage, had gone
+off already. The rest wavered; and another and another broke away. The
+archer who had put himself forward saw which way the wind was blowing,
+and he shrugged his shoulders. "Well, my lord, as you will," he said
+sullenly. "All the same I would advise you to close the door and bolt
+and bar. We shall not be the last to call to-day." And he turned his
+horse in ill-humour, and forced it, snorting and plunging, through the
+crowd.
+
+"Bolt and bar?" Tavannes cried after him in fury. "See you my answer
+to that!" And turning on the threshold, "Within there!" he cried.
+"Open the shutters and set lights, and the table! Light, I say; light!
+And lay on quickly, if you value your lives! And throw open, for I sup
+with your mistress tonight, if it rain blood without! Do you hear me,
+rogues? Set on!"
+
+He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again
+to the street. He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in
+Tignonville's face, he laughed aloud. "Does Monsieur sup with us?" he
+said. "To complete the party? Or will he choose to sup with our
+friends yonder? It is for him to say. I confess, for my part," with an
+awful smile, "their hospitality seems a trifle crude, and boisterous."
+
+Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered. The same horde which had
+so lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the
+street, and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a
+mass of tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of
+which rose the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the
+sounds that Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and
+even the iron heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.
+
+For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip
+curled. "You'll join us, I think?" he said with an undisguised sneer.
+"Then, after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless
+the table is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you,
+Monsieur, if you please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for
+you, in this house"--with a sinister smile--"were at home! Now, we
+have changed places."
+
+Whatever he meant by the gibe--and some smack of an evil jest lurked
+in his tone--he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered
+companion along the passage and into the living-chamber on the left,
+where he had seen from without that his orders to light and lay were
+being executed. A dozen candles shone on the board, and lit up the
+apartment. What the house contained of food and wine had been
+got together and set on the table; from the low, wide window,
+beetle-browed and diamond-paned, which extended the whole length of
+the room and looked on the street at the height of a man's head above
+the roadway, the shutters had been removed--doubtless by trembling and
+reluctant fingers. To such eyes of passers-by as looked in, from the
+inferno of driving crowds and gleaming weapons which prevailed
+outside--and not outside only, but throughout Paris--the brilliant
+room and the laid table must have seemed strange indeed!
+
+To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed
+a dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man
+who dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with
+blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in
+a corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of
+waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.
+
+When he did speak it was to count the servants. "One, two, three,
+four, five," he said. "And two of them women. Mademoiselle is but
+poorly attended. Are there not"--and he turned to her--"some lacking?"
+
+The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued. The third time,
+"Two went out," she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, "and have
+not returned."
+
+"And have not returned?" he answered, raising his eyebrows. "Then I
+fear we must not wait for them. We might wait long!" And turning
+sharply to the panic-stricken servants, "Go you to your places! Do you
+not see that Mademoiselle waits to be served?"
+
+The girl shuddered and spoke.
+
+"Do you wish me," she muttered, in the same strangled tone, "to play
+this farce--to the end?"
+
+"The end may be better, Mademoiselle, than you think," he answered,
+bowing. And then to the miserable servants, who hung back afraid to
+leave the shelter of their mistress's skirts, "To your places!" he
+cried. "Set Mademoiselle's chair. Are you so remiss on other days? If
+so," with a look of terrible meaning, "you will be the less loss! Now,
+Mademoiselle, may I have the honour? And when we are at table we can
+talk."
+
+He extended his hand, and, obedient to his gesture, she moved to the
+place at the head of the table, but without letting her fingers come
+into contact with his. He gave no sign that he noticed this, but he
+strode to the place on her right, and signed to Tignonville to take
+that on her left. "Will you not be seated?" he continued. For she kept
+her feet.
+
+She turned her head stiffly, until for the first time her eyes looked
+into his. A shudder more violent than the last shook her. "Had you not
+better--kill us at once?" she whispered. The blood had forsaken even
+her lips. Her face was the face of a statue--white, beautiful,
+lifeless.
+
+"I think not," he said gravely. "Be seated, and let us hope for the
+best. And you, sir," he continued, turning to Carlat, "serve your
+mistress with wine. She needs it."
+
+The steward filled for her, and then for each of the men, his shaking
+hand spilling as much as it poured. Nor was this strange. Above the
+din and uproar of the street, above the crash of distant doors, above
+the tocsin that still rang from the reeling steeple of St. Germain's,
+the great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its
+note of doom upon the town. A woman crouching at the end of the
+chamber burst into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes'
+terrible eye, was mute again.
+
+Tignonville found voice at last. "Have they--killed the Admiral?" he
+muttered, his eyes on the table.
+
+"M. Coligny! An hour ago."
+
+"And Teligny?"
+
+"Him also."
+
+"M. de Rochefoucauld?"
+
+"They are dealing with M. le Comte now, I believe," Tavannes answered.
+"He had his chance, and cast it away." And he began to eat.
+
+The man at the table shuddered. The woman continued to look before
+her, but her lips moved as if she prayed. Suddenly a rush of feet, a
+roar of voices surged past the window; for a moment the glare of the
+torches which danced ruddily on the walls of the room, showed a
+severed head borne above the multitude on a pike. Mademoiselle, with a
+low cry, made an effort to rise, but Count Hannibal grasped her wrist
+and she sank back half fainting. Then the nearer clamour sank a
+little, and the bells, unchallenged, flung their iron tongues above
+the maddened city. In the east the dawn was growing; soon its grey
+light would fall on cold hearths, on battered doors and shattered
+weapons, on hordes of wretches drunk with greed and hate.
+
+When he could be heard, "What are you going to do with us?" the man
+asked hoarsely.
+
+"That depends," Count Hannibal replied after a moment's thought.
+
+"On what?"
+
+"On Mademoiselle de Vrillac."
+
+The other's eyes gleamed with passion. He leaned forward. "What has
+she to do with it?" he cried. And he stood up and sat down again in a
+breath.
+
+Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with
+his harsh visage. "I will answer that question by another question,"
+he replied. "How many are there in the house, my friend?"
+
+"You can count."
+
+Tavannes counted again. "Seven?" he said.
+
+Tignonville nodded impatiently.
+
+"Seven lives?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, Monsieur, you know the King's will?"
+
+"I can guess it," the other replied furiously. And he cursed the King,
+and the King's mother, calling her Jezebel.
+
+"You can guess it?" Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as
+if that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold
+blood, "Nay, you know it! You heard it from the archer at the door.
+You heard him say, 'No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for
+child. So says the King.' You heard it, but you fence with me.
+Foucauld, with whom his Majesty played to-night, hand to hand and face
+to face--Foucauld is dead! And you think to live? You?" he continued,
+lashing himself into passion. "I know not by what chance you came
+where I saw you an hour gone, nor by what chance you came by that and
+that"--pointing with accusing finger to the badges the Huguenot wore.
+"But this I know! I have but to cry your name from yonder casement,
+nay, Monsieur, I have but to stand aside when the mob go their rounds
+from house to house, as they will go presently, and you will perish as
+certainly as you have hitherto escaped!"
+
+For the second time Mademoiselle turned and looked at him. "Then," she
+whispered, with white lips, "to what end this--mockery?"
+
+"To the end that seven lives may be saved, Mademoiselle," he answered,
+bowing.
+
+"At a price?" she muttered.
+
+"At a price," he answered. "A price which women do not find it hard to
+pay--at Court. 'Tis paid every day for pleasure or a whim, for rank or
+the _entrée_, for robes and gewgaws. Few, Mademoiselle, are privileged
+to buy a life; still fewer, seven!"
+
+She began to tremble. "I would rather die--seven times!" she cried,
+her voice quivering. And she tried to rise, but sat down again.
+
+"And these?" he said, indicating the servants.
+
+"Far, far rather!" she repeated passionately.
+
+"And Monsieur? And Monsieur!" he urged with stern persistence, while
+his eyes passed lightly from her to Tignonville and back to her again,
+their depths inscrutable. "If you love Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and I
+believe you do----"
+
+"I can die with him!" she cried.
+
+"And he with you!"
+
+She writhed in her chair.
+
+"And he with you?" Count Hannibal repeated, with emphasis; and he
+thrust forward his head. "For that is the question. Think, think,
+Mademoiselle. It is in my power to save from death him whom you love;
+to save you; to save this _canaille_, if it so please you. It is in my
+power to save him, to save you, to save all; and I will save all--at a
+price! If, on the other hand, you deny me that price, I will as
+certainly leave all to perish, as perish they will, before the sun
+that is now rising sets to-night!"
+
+Mademoiselle looked straight before her, the flicker of a dreadful
+prescience in her eyes. "And the price?" she muttered. "The price?"
+
+"You, Mademoiselle."
+
+"Yes, you! Nay, why fence with me?" he continued gently. "You knew it,
+you have said it. You have read it in my eyes these seven days."
+
+She did not speak, move, or seem to breathe. As he said, she had
+foreseen, she had known the answer. But Tignonville, it seemed, had
+not. He sprang to his feet. "M. de Tavannes," he cried, "you are a
+villain!"
+
+"Monsieur?"
+
+"You are a villain! But you shall pay for this!" the young man
+continued vehemently. "You shall not leave this room alive! You shall
+pay for this insult!"
+
+"Insult?" Tavannes answered in apparent surprise; and then, as if
+comprehension broke upon him, "Ah! Monsieur mistakes me," he said,
+with a generous sweep of his hand. "And Mademoiselle also, perhaps?
+Oh! be content, she shall have bell, book, and candle; she shall be
+tied as tight as Holy Church can tie her! Or, if she please, and one
+survive, she shall have a priest of her own church--you call it a
+church? She shall have whichever of the two will serve her better.
+'Tis one to me! But for paying me, Monsieur," he continued with irony
+in voice and manner; "when, I pray you? In Eternity! For if you refuse
+my offer, you have done with time. Now? I have but to sound this
+whistle"--he touched a silver whistle which hung at his breast--"and
+there are those within hearing will do your business before you make
+two passes. Dismiss the notion, sir, and understand. You are in my
+power. Paris runs with blood, as noble as yours, as innocent as hers.
+If you would not perish with the rest, decide! And quickly! For what
+you have seen are but the forerunners, what you have heard are but the
+gentle whispers that predict the gale. Do not parley too long; so long
+that even I may no longer save you."
+
+"I would rather die!" Mademoiselle moaned, her face covered. "I would
+rather die!"
+
+"And see him die?" he answered quietly. "And see these die? Think,
+think, child!"
+
+"You will not do it!" she gasped. She shook from head to foot.
+
+"I shall do nothing," he answered firmly. "I shall but leave you to
+your fate, and these to theirs. In the King's teeth I dare save my
+wife and her people; but no others. You must choose--and quickly."
+
+One of the frightened women--it was Mademoiselle's tiring-maid, a girl
+called Javette--made a movement, as if to throw herself at her
+mistress's feet. Tignonville drove her to her place with a word. He
+turned to Count Hannibal. "But, M. le Comte," he said, "you must be
+mad! Mad, to wish to marry her in this way! You do not love her. You
+do not want her. What is she to you more than other women?"
+
+"What is she to you more than other women?" Tavannes retorted in a
+tone so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch
+of colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them,
+the prize of the contest. "What is she more to you than other women?
+Is she more? And yet--you want her!"
+
+"She is more to me," Tignonville answered.
+
+"Is she?" the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. "Is she?
+But we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would
+rise. Enough for you that I _do_ want her. Enough for you that I will
+have her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de
+Tavannes--or I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!"
+
+"Ah, God!" she moaned. "The willing wife!"
+
+"Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife," he answered sternly. "Or no
+man's wife!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                        WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?
+
+
+In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more
+than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward
+into the Rue St. Honoré; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled
+louder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving
+masses the dawn of a new day--Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of
+St. Bartholomew--was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the
+crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic
+courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still
+lay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the
+house-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was
+growing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day would be here, giving
+up the lurking fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and
+stamping with legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.
+
+And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy,
+escape more hard. Already they were killing on the bridge where the
+rich goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river. They were killing
+at the Louvre, in the courtyard under the King's eyes, and below the
+windows of the Médicis. They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denis
+and St. Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelled
+the hand. From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath,
+and foreboding. From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from the
+Boucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretched
+creatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and where
+they listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of the
+armed bands whose business it was to go from street to street, and
+house to house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris the
+high justice of the King.
+
+It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street while
+Tavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerful
+advocate. As the deep "A bas! A bas!" rolled like thunder along the
+fronts of the houses, as the more strident "Tuez! Tuez!" drew nearer
+and nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flicker
+on the shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way.
+Madame Carlat, shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; the
+tiring-maid, Javette, flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle's knees,
+and, writhing herself about them, shrieked to her to save her, only to
+save her! One of the men moved forward on impulse, as if he would
+close the shutters; and only old Carlat remained silent, praying
+mutely with moving lips and a stern, set face.
+
+And Count Hannibal? As the glare of the links in the street grew
+brighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate.
+He stilled the shrieking woman by a glance. "Choose! Mademoiselle, and
+quickly!" he said. "For I can only save my wife and her people! Quick,
+for the pinch is coming, and 'twill be no boy's play."
+
+A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before the
+window seconded his words.
+
+"Quick, Mademoiselle!" he cried. And his breath came a little faster.
+"Quick, before it be too late! Will you save life, or will you kill!"
+
+She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him.
+But he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look. "Monsieur has
+done what he can to save himself," he said with a sneer. "He has
+donned the livery of the King's servants; he has said, 'Whoever
+perishes, I will live!' But--"
+
+"Curse you!" the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore the
+cross from his cap and flung it on the ground. He seized his white
+sleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow. Then, when it hung by the
+string only, he held his hand.
+
+"Curse you!" he cried furiously. "I will not at your bidding! I may
+save her yet! I will save her!"
+
+"Fool!" Tavannes answered--but his words were barely audible above the
+deafening uproar. "Can you fight a thousand? Look! Look!" and seizing
+the other's wrist he pointed to the window. The street glowed like a
+furnace in the red light of torches, raised on poles above a sea of
+heads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces, and tossing arms
+which swept on and on, and on and by. For a while it seemed that the
+torrent would flow past them and would leave them safe. Then came a
+check, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the torches
+reeled to and fro, and finally with a dull roar of "Open! Open!" the
+mob faced about to the house and the lighted window.
+
+For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal's iron nerves shook a
+little. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the
+disordered table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims
+before they tore them to pieces. "Open! Open!" the mob howled: and a
+man dashed in the window with his pike.
+
+In that crisis Mademoiselle's eyes met Tavannes' for the fraction of a
+second. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame
+the words, would they have been audible. But something she must have
+looked, and something of import, though no other than he marked or
+understood it. For in a flash he was at the window and his hand was
+raised for silence.
+
+"Back!" he thundered. "Back, knaves!" And he whistled shrilly. "Do
+what you will," he continued in the same tone, "but not here! Pass on!
+Pass on!--do you hear?"
+
+But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence
+brutal and unquestioning they continued to howl "Open! Open!" while
+the man who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the
+cripple with the hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a
+great piece of it. Then laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out,
+setting one foot against the wall below.
+
+Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed to dilate with the fury
+and violence of his character. "Dogs!" he shouted, "must I call out my
+riders and scatter you? Must I flog you through the streets with
+stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes, beware of me! I have claws and teeth
+and I bite!" he continued, the scorn in his words exceeding even the
+rage of the crowd, at which he flung them. "Kill where you please, rob
+where you please, but not where I am! Or I will hang you by the heels
+on Montfaucon, man by man! I will flay your backs. Go! go! I am
+Tavannes!"
+
+But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his
+arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was
+exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a
+dozen thundered on the door, crying, "In the King's name!" As many
+more tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the
+window, and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan,
+the cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the
+rendezvous, led the way.
+
+Count Hannibal watched them a moment, his harsh face bent down to
+them, his features plain in the glare of the torches. But when the
+cripple, raised on the others' shoulders, and emboldened by his
+adversary's inactivity, began to squeeze himself through the bars,
+Tavannes raised a pistol, which he had held unseen behind him, cocked
+it at leisure, and levelled it at the foul face which leered close to
+his. The dwarf saw the weapon and tried to retreat; but it was too
+late. A flash, a scream, and the wretch, shot through the throat,
+flung up his hands, and fell back into the arms of a lean man in black
+who had lent him his shoulder to ascend.
+
+For a few seconds the smoke of the pistol filled the window and the
+room. There was a cry that the Huguenots were escaping, that the
+Huguenots were resisting, that it was a plot; and some shouted to
+guard the back and some to watch the roof, and some to be gone. But
+when the fumes cleared away, the mob saw, with stupor, that all was as
+it had been. Count Hannibal stood where he had stood before, a grim
+smile on his lips.
+
+"Who comes next!" he cried in a tone of mockery. "I have more
+pistols!" And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" he
+went on. "You scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do you
+think to beard me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I am
+Tavannes, and this is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in
+it, you should not touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, I
+say again, while you may! Seek women and children, and kill them. But
+not here!"
+
+For an instant the mingled scorn and brutality of his words silenced
+them. Then from the rear of the crowd came an answer--the roar of an
+arquebuse. The ball whizzed past Count Hannibal's head, and, splashing
+the plaster from the wall within a pace of Tignonville, dropped to the
+ground.
+
+Tavannes laughed. "Bungler!" he cried. "Were you in my troop I would
+dip your trigger-finger in boiling oil to teach you to shoot! But you
+weary me, dogs. I must teach you a lesson, must I?" And he lifted a
+pistol and levelled it. The crowd did not know whether it was the one
+he had discharged or another, but they gave back with a sharp gasp. "I
+must teach you, must I?" he continued with scorn. "Here Bigot,
+Badelon, drive me these blusterers! Rid the street of them! A
+Tavannes! A Tavannes!"
+
+Not by word or look had he before this betrayed that he had supports.
+But as he cried the name, a dozen men armed to the teeth, who had
+stood motionless under the Croix du Tiroir, fell in a line on the
+right flank of the crowd. The surprise for those nearest them was
+complete. With the flash of the pikes before their eyes, with the cold
+steel in fancy between their ribs, they fled every way, uncertain how
+many pursued, or if any pursuit there was. For a moment the mob, which
+a few minutes before had seemed so formidable that a regiment might
+have quailed before it, bade fair to be routed by a dozen pikes.
+
+And so, had all in the crowd been what he termed them, the rabble and
+sweepings of the streets, it would have been. But in the heart of it,
+and felt rather than seen, were a handful of another kidney; Sorbonne
+students and fierce-eyed priests, with three or four mounted archers,
+the nucleus that, moving through the streets, had drawn together this
+concourse. And these with threats and curses and gleaming eyes stood
+fast, even Tavannes' dare-devils recoiling before the tonsure. The
+check thus caused allowed those who had budged a breathing space. They
+rallied behind the black robes, and began to stone the pikes; who in
+their turn withdrew until they formed two groups, standing on their
+defence, the one before the window the other before the door.
+
+Count Hannibal had watched the attack and the check, as a man watches
+a play; with smiling interest. In the panic, the torches had been
+dropped or extinguished, and now between the house and the sullen
+crowd which hung back, yet grew moment by moment more dangerous, the
+daylight fell cold on the littered street and the cripple's huddled
+form prone in the gutter. A priest raised on the shoulders of the lean
+man in black began to harangue the mob, and the dull roar of assent,
+the brandished arms which greeted his appeal, had their effect on
+Tavannes' men. They looked to the window, and muttered among
+themselves. It was plain that they had no stomach for a fight with the
+Church, and were anxious for the order to withdraw.
+
+But Count Hannibal gave no order, and, much as his people feared the
+cowls, they feared him more. Meanwhile the speaker's eloquence rose
+higher; he pointed with frenzied gestures to the house. The mob
+groaned, and suddenly a volley of stones fell among the pikemen, whose
+corselets rattled under the shower. The priest seized that moment. He
+sprang to the ground, and to the front. He caught up his robe and
+waved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will,
+rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which the
+two handfuls of pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--were
+swept away like straws upon the tide.
+
+But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave
+beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished
+arms and ravening faces. One point alone was vulnerable, the window,
+and there in the gap stood Tavannes. Quick as thought he fired two
+pistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he
+whistled.
+
+Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way
+back--as they were doing to the best of their power--or he had
+resources still unseen, was not to be known. For as the smoke began to
+rise, and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two
+of their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, there
+rose behind them strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs,
+mingled with screams of alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts of
+the crowd came charging helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of
+galloping, shrieking, cursing horsemen, attended by twice as many
+footmen, who clung to their stirrups or to the tails of the horses,
+and yelled and whooped, and struck in unison with the maddened riders.
+
+"On! on!" the foremost shrieked, rolling in his saddle, and foaming at
+the mouth. "Bleed in August, bleed in May! Kill!" And he fired a
+pistol among the rabble, who fled every way to escape his rearing,
+plunging charger.
+
+"Kill! Kill!" cried his followers, cutting the air with their swords,
+and rolling to and fro on their horses in drunken emulation. "Bleed in
+August, bleed in May!"
+
+"On! On!" cried the leader, as the crowd which beset the house fled
+every way before his reckless onset. "Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
+
+The rabble fled, but not so quickly but that one or two were ridden
+down, and this for an instant checked the riders. Before they could
+pass on, "Ohé!" cried Count Hannibal from his window. "Ohé!" with a
+shout of laughter, "ride over them, dear brother! Make me a clean
+street for my wedding!"
+
+Marshal Tavannes--for he, the hero of Jarnac, was the leader of this
+wild orgy--turned that way, and strove to rein in his horse. "What
+ails them?" he cried, as the maddened animal reared upright, its iron
+hoofs striking fire from the slippery pavement.
+
+"They are rearing like thy Bayard!" Count Hannibal answered. "Whip
+them, whip them for me! Tavannes! Tavannes!"
+
+"What? This canaille!"
+
+"Ay, that canaille!"
+
+"Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" the Marshal replied, and
+spurred his horse among the rabble, who had fled to the sides of the
+street and now strove hard to efface themselves against the walls.
+"Begone, dogs; begone!" he cried, still hunting them. And then, "You
+would bite, would you?" And snatching another pistol from his boot, he
+fired it among them, careless whom he hit. "Ha! ha! That stirs you,
+does it!" he continued as the wretches fled headlong. "Who touches my
+brother, touches Tavannes! On! On!"
+
+Suddenly, from a doorway near at hand, a sombre figure darted into the
+roadway, caught the Marshal's rein, and for a second checked his
+course. The priest--for a priest it was, Father Pezelay, the same who
+had addressed the mob--held up a warning hand. "Halt!" he cried, with
+burning eyes. "Halt, my lord! It is written, thou shalt not spare the
+Canaanitish woman. 'Tis not to spare the King has given command and a
+sword, but to kill! 'Tis not to harbour, but to smite! To smite!"
+
+"Then smite I will!" the Marshal retorted, and with the butt of his
+pistol struck the zealot down. Then, with as much indifference as he
+would have treated a Huguenot, he spurred his horse over him, with a
+mad laugh at his jest. "Who touches my brother, touches Tavannes!" he
+yelled. "Touches Tavannes! On! On! Bleed in August, bleed in May!"
+
+"On!" shouted his followers, striking about them in the same desperate
+fashion. They were young nobles who had spent the night feasting at
+the Palace, and, drunk with wine and mad with excitement, had left the
+Louvre at daybreak to rouse the city. "A Jarnac! A Jarnac!" they
+cried, and some saluted Count Hannibal as they passed. And so,
+shouting and spurring and following their leader, they swept away down
+the now empty street, carrying terror and a flame wherever their
+horses bore them that morning.
+
+Tavannes, his hands on the ledge of the shattered window, leaned out
+laughing, and followed them with his eyes. A moment, and the mob was
+gone, the street was empty; and one by one, with sheepish faces, his
+pikemen emerged from the doorways and alleys in which they had taken
+refuge. They gathered about the three huddled forms which lay prone
+and still in the gutter: or, not three--two. For even as they
+approached them, one, the priest, rose slowly and giddily to his feet.
+He turned a face bleeding, lean, and relentless towards the window at
+which Tavannes stood. Solemnly, with the sign of the cross, and with
+uplifted hands, he cursed him in bed and at board, by day and by
+night, in walking, in riding, in standing, in the day of battle, and
+at the hour of death. The pikemen fell back appalled, and hid their
+eyes; and those who were of the north crossed themselves, and those
+who came from the south bent two fingers horse-shoe fashion. But
+Hannibal de Tavannes laughed; laughed in his moustache, his teeth
+showing, and bade them move that carrion to a distance, for it would
+smell when the sun was high. Then he turned his back on the street,
+and looked into the room.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                         IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.
+
+
+The movements of the women had overturned two of the candles; a third
+had guttered out. The three which still burned, contending pallidly
+with the daylight that each moment grew stronger, imparted to the
+scene the air of a debauch too long sustained. The disordered board,
+the wan faces of the servants cowering in their corner, Mademoiselle's
+frozen look of misery, all increased the likeness; which a common
+exhaustion so far strengthened that when Tavannes turned from the
+window, and, flushed with his triumph, met the others' eyes, his
+seemed the only vigour, and he the only man in the company. True,
+beneath the exhaustion, beneath the collapse of his victims, there
+burned passions, hatreds, repulsions, as fierce as the hidden fires of
+the volcano; but for the time they smouldered ash-choked and inert.
+
+He flung the discharged pistols on the table. "If yonder raven speak
+truth," he said, "I am like to pay dearly for my wife, and have short
+time to call her wife. The more need, Mademoiselle, for speed,
+therefore. You know the old saying, 'Short signing, long seisin? Shall
+it be my priest, or your minister?"
+
+M. de Tignonville started forward. "She promised nothing!" he cried.
+And he struck his hand on the table.
+
+Count Hannibal smiled, his lip curling. "That," he replied, "is for
+Mademoiselle to say."
+
+"But if she says it? If she says it, Monsieur? What then?"
+
+Tavannes drew forth a comfit-box, such as it was the fashion of the
+day to carry, as men of a later time carried a snuff-box. He slowly
+chose a prune. "If she says it?" he answered. "Then M. de Tignonville
+has regained his sweetheart. And M. de Tavannes has lost his bride."
+
+"You say so!"
+
+"Yes. But----"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"But she will not say it," Tavannes replied coolly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, why not?" the younger man repeated trembling.
+
+"Because, M. de Tignonville, it is not true."
+
+"But she did not speak!" Tignonville retorted, with passion--the
+futile passion of the bird which beats its wings against a cage. "She
+did not speak. She could not promise, therefore."
+
+Tavannes ate the prune slowly, seemed to give a little thought to its
+flavour, approved it a true Agen plum, and at last spoke. "It is not
+for you to say whether she promised," he returned drily, "nor for me.
+It is for Mademoiselle."
+
+"You leave it to her?"
+
+"I leave it to her to say whether she promised."
+
+"Then she must say No!" Tignonville cried in a tone of triumph and
+relief. "For she did not speak. Mademoiselle, listen!" he continued,
+turning with outstretched hands and appealing to her with passion. "Do
+you hear? Do you understand? You have but to speak to be free! You
+have but to say the word, and Monsieur lets you go! In God's name,
+speak! Speak then, Clotilde! Oh!" with a gesture of despair, as she
+did not answer, but continued to sit stony and hopeless, looking
+straight before her, her hands picking convulsively at the fringe of
+her girdle. "She does not understand! Fright has stunned her! Be
+merciful, Monsieur. Give her time to recover, to know what she does.
+Fright has turned her brain."
+
+Count Hannibal smiled. "I knew her father and her uncle," he said,
+"and in their time the Vrillacs were not wont to be cowards. Monsieur
+forgets, too," he continued with fine irony, "that he speaks of my
+betrothed."
+
+"It is a lie!"
+
+Tavannes raised his eyebrows. "You are in my power," he said. "For the
+rest, if it be a lie, Mademoiselle has but to say so."
+
+"You hear him?" Tignonville cried. "Then speak, Mademoiselle!
+Clotilde, speak! Say you never spoke, you never promised him!"
+
+The young man's voice quivered with indignation, with rage, with pain;
+but most, if the truth be told, with shame--the shame of a position
+strange and unparalleled. For in proportion as the fear of death
+instant and violent was lifted from him, reflection awoke, and the
+situation in which he stood took uglier shape. It was not so much love
+that cried to her, love that suffered, anguished by the prospect of
+love lost; as in the highest natures it might have been. Rather it was
+the man's pride which suffered; the pride of a high spirit which found
+itself helpless between the hammer and the anvil, in a position so
+false that hereafter men might say of the unfortunate that he had
+bartered his mistress for his life. He had not! But he had perforce to
+stand by; he had to be passive under stress of circumstances, and by
+the sacrifice, if she consummated it, he would in fact be saved.
+
+There was the pinch. No wonder that he cried to her in a voice which
+roused even the servants from their lethargy of fear. "Say it!" he
+cried. "Say it, before it be too late. Say you did not promise!"
+
+Slowly she turned her face to him. "I cannot," she whispered; "I
+cannot. Go," she continued, a spasm distorting her features. "Go,
+Monsieur. Leave me. It is over."
+
+"What?" he exclaimed. "You promised him?"
+
+She bowed her head.
+
+"Then," the young man cried, in a transport of resentment, "I will be
+no part of the price. See! There! And there!" He tore the white sleeve
+wholly from his arm, and, rending it in twain, flung it on the floor
+and trampled on it. "It shall never be said that I stood by and let
+you buy my life! I go into the street and I take my chance." And he
+turned to the door.
+
+But Tavannes was before him. "No!" he said; "you will stay here, M. de
+Tignonville!" And he set his back against the door.
+
+The young man looked at him, his face convulsed with passion. "I shall
+stay here?" he cried. "And why, Monsieur? What is it to you if I
+choose to perish?"
+
+"Only this," Tavannes retorted. "I am answerable to Mademoiselle now,
+in an hour I shall be answerable to my wife--for your life. Live,
+then, Monsieur; you have no choice. In a month you will thank me--and
+her."
+
+"I am your prisoner?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And I must stay here--to be tortured?" Tignonville cried.
+
+Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled. Sudden stormy changes, from
+indifference to ferocity, from irony to invective, were characteristic
+of the man. "Tortured!" he repeated grimly. "You talk of torture while
+Piles and Pardaillan, Teligny and Rochefoucauld lie dead in the
+street! While your cause sinks withered in a night, like a gourd!
+While your servants fall butchered, and France rises round you in a
+tide of blood! Bah!"--with a gesture of disdain--"you make me also
+talk, and I have no love for talk, and small time. Mademoiselle, you
+at least act and do not talk. By your leave I return in an hour, and I
+bring with me--shall it be my priest, or your minister?"
+
+She looked at him with the face of one who awakes slowly to the full
+horror, the full dread, of her position. For a moment she did not
+answer. Then, "A minister," she murmured, her voice scarcely audible.
+
+He nodded. "A minister?" he said lightly. "Very well, if I can find
+one." And walking to the shattered, gaping casement--through which the
+cool morning air blew into the room and gently stirred the hair of the
+unhappy girl--he said some words to the man on guard outside. Then he
+turned to the door, but on the threshold he paused, looked with a
+strange expression at the pair, and signed to Carlat and the servants
+to go out before him.
+
+"Up, and lie close above!" he growled. "Open a window or look out,
+and you will pay dearly for it! Do you hear? Up! Up! You, too, old
+crop-ears. What! would you?"--with a sudden glare as Carlat
+hesitated--"that is better! Mademoiselle, until my return."
+
+He saw them all out, followed them, and closed the door on the two;
+who, left together, alone with the gaping window and the disordered
+feast, maintained a strange silence. The girl, gripping one hand in
+the other as if to quell her rising horror, sat looking before her,
+and seemed barely to breathe. The man, leaning against the wall at a
+little distance, bent his eyes not on her, but on the floor, his face
+gloomy and distorted.
+
+His first thought should have been of her and for her; his first
+impulse to console, if he could not save her. His it should have been
+to soften, were that possible, the fate before her; to prove to her by
+words of farewell, the purest and most sacred, that the sacrifice she
+was making, not to save her own life but the lives of others, was
+appreciated by him who paid with her the price.
+
+And all these things, and more, may have been in M. de Tignonville's
+mind; they may even have been uppermost in it, but they found no
+expression. The man remained sunk in a sombre reverie. He had the
+appearance of thinking of himself, not of her; of his own position,
+not of hers. Otherwise he must have looked at her, he must have turned
+to her; he must have owned the subtle attraction of her unspoken
+appeal when she drew a deep breath and slowly turned her eyes on him,
+mute, asking, waiting what he should offer.
+
+Surely he should have! Yet it was long before he responded. He sat
+buried in thought of himself, and his position, the vile, the unworthy
+position in which her act had placed him. At length the constraint of
+her gaze wrought on him, or his thoughts became unbearable, and he
+looked up and met her eyes, and with an oath he sprang to his feet.
+
+"It shall not be!" he cried, in a tone low, but full of fury. "You
+shall not do it! I will kill him first! I will kill him with this
+hand! Or----" a step took him to the window, a step brought him
+back--ay, brought him back exultant, and with a changed face. "Or
+better, we will thwart him yet. See, Mademoiselle, do you see? Heaven
+is merciful! For a moment the cage is open!" His eyes shone with
+excitement, the sweat of sudden hope stood on his brow as he pointed
+to the unguarded casement. "Come! it is our one chance!" And he caught
+her by her arm, and strove to draw her to the window.
+
+But she hung back, staring at him. "Oh, no, no!" she cried.
+
+"Yes, yes! I say!" he responded. "You do not understand. The way is
+open! We can escape, Clotilde, we can escape!"
+
+"I cannot! I cannot!" she wailed, still resisting him.
+
+"You are afraid?"
+
+"Afraid?" she repeated the word in a tone of wonder. "No, but I
+cannot. I promised him. I cannot. And, O God!" she continued, in a
+sudden outburst of grief, as the sense of general loss, of the great
+common tragedy broke on her and whelmed for the moment her private
+misery. "Why should we think of ourselves? They are dead, they are
+dying, who were ours, whom we loved! Why should we think to live? What
+does it matter how it fares with us? We cannot be happy. Happy?" she
+continued wildly. "Are any happy now? Or is the world all changed in a
+night? No, we could not be happy. And at least you will live,
+Tignonville. I have that to console me."
+
+"Live!" he responded vehemently. "I live? I would rather die a
+thousand times. A thousand times rather than live shamed! Than see you
+sacrificed to that devil! Than go out with a brand on my brow, for
+every man to point at me! I would rather die a thousand times!"
+
+"And do you think that I would not?" she answered, shivering. "Better,
+far better die than--than live with him!"
+
+"Then why not die?"
+
+She stared at him, wide-eyed, and a sudden stillness possessed her.
+"How?" she whispered. "What do you mean?"
+
+"That!" he said. As he spoke, he raised his hand and signed to her to
+listen. A sullen murmur, distant as yet, but borne to the ear on the
+fresh morning air, foretold the rising of another storm. The sound
+grew in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she
+misunderstood him. "O God!" she cried, out of the agony of nerves
+overwrought, "will that bell never stop? Will it never stop? Will no
+one stop it?"
+
+"'Tis not the bell!" he cried, seizing her hand as if to focus her
+attention. "It is the mob you hear. They are returning. We have but to
+stand a moment at this open window, we have but to show ourselves to
+them, and we need live no longer! Mademoiselle! Clotilde!--if you mean
+what you say, if you are in earnest, the way is open!"
+
+"And we shall die--together!"
+
+"Yes, together. But have you the courage?"
+
+"The courage!" she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her
+face. "The courage were needed to live. The courage were needed to do
+that. I am ready, quite ready. It can be no sin! To live with that in
+front of me were the sin! Come!" For the moment she had forgotten her
+people, her promise, all! It seemed to her that death would absolve
+her from all. "Come!"
+
+He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at
+the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a
+moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return
+eastward along the Rue St. Honoré, was nearing the house. He stood,
+his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window.
+Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers; their eyes
+met, and he would have kissed her.
+
+She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her
+eyes half shut. "No!" she murmured. "No! While I live I am his. But we
+die together, Tignonville! We die together. It will not last long,
+will it? And afterwards----"
+
+She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and
+over her features came a far-away look; such a look as that which on
+the face of another Huguenot lady, Philippine de Luns--vilely done to
+death in the Place Maubert fourteen years before--silenced the ribald
+jests of the lowest rabble in the world. An hour or two earlier, awed
+by the abruptness of the outburst, Mademoiselle had shrunk from her
+fate; she had known fear. Now that she stood out voluntarily to meet
+it, she, like many a woman before and since, feared no longer. She was
+lifted out of and above herself.
+
+But death was long in coming. Some cause beyond their knowledge stayed
+the onrush of the mob along the street. The din, indeed, persisted,
+deafened, shook them; but the crowd seemed to be at a stand a few
+doors down the Rue St. Honoré. For a half-minute, a long half-minute,
+which appeared an age, it drew no nearer. Would it draw nearer? Would
+it come on? Or would it turn again?
+
+The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of
+the man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer. The sweat
+rose on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the
+girl--as he stood listening and waiting. It is possible that when he
+had said a minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand
+times than live thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark. Or it is
+possible that he had meant his words to the full. But in this case he
+had not pictured what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his
+power of passive endurance. He was as brave as the ordinary man, as
+the ordinary soldier; but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation,
+comes more naturally to women than to men, more hardly to men than to
+women. Yet had the crisis come quickly he might have met it. But he
+had to wait, and to wait with that howling of wild beasts in his ears;
+and for this he was not prepared. A woman might be content to die
+after this fashion; but a man? His colour went and came, his eyes
+began to rove hither and thither. Was it even now too late to escape?
+Too late to avoid the consequences of the girl's silly persistence?
+Too late to----? Her eyes were closed, she hung half lifeless on his
+arm. She would not know, she need not know until afterwards. And
+afterwards she would thank him! Afterwards--meantime the window was
+open, the street was empty, and still the crowd hung back and did not
+come.
+
+He remembered that two doors away was a narrow passage, which leaving
+the Rue St. Honoré turned at right angles under a beetling archway, to
+emerge in the Rue du Roule. If he could gain that passage unseen by
+the mob! He would gain it. With a swift movement, his mind made up, he
+took a step forward. He tightened his grasp of the girl's waist, and,
+seizing with his left hand the end of the bar which the assailants had
+torn from its setting in the window jamb, he turned to lower himself.
+One long step would land him in the street.
+
+At that moment she awoke from the stupor of exaltation. She opened her
+eyes with a startled movement; and her eyes met his.
+
+He was in the act of stepping backwards and downwards, dragging her
+after him. But it was not this betrayed him. It was his face, which in
+an instant told her all, and that he sought not death, but life! She
+struggled upright and strove to free herself. But he had the purchase
+of the bar, and by this time he was furious as well as determined.
+Whether she would or no, he would save her, he would drag her out.
+Then, as consciousness fully returned, she, too, took fire. "No!" she
+cried, "I will not!" and she struggled more violently.
+
+"You shall!" he retorted between his teeth. "You shall not perish
+here."
+
+But she had her hands free, and as he spoke she thrust him from her
+passionately, desperately, with all her strength. He had his one foot
+in the air at the moment, and in a flash it was done. With a cry of
+rage he lost his balance, and, still holding the bar, reeled backwards
+through the window; while Mademoiselle, panting and half fainting,
+recoiled--recoiled into the arms of Hannibal de Tavannes, who, unseen
+by either, had entered the room a long minute before. From the
+threshold, and with a smile, all his own, he had watched the contest
+and the result.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                         TWO HENS AND AN EGG.
+
+
+M. de Tignonville was shaken by the fall, and in the usual course of
+things he would have lain where he was, and groaned. But when a man
+has once turned his back on death he is apt to fancy it at his
+shoulder. He has small stomach for surprises, and is in haste to set
+as great a distance as possible between the ugly thing and himself. So
+it was with the Huguenot. Shot suddenly into the full publicity of the
+street, he knew that at any instant danger might take him by the nape;
+and he was on his legs and glancing up and down before the clatter of
+his fall had travelled the length of three houses.
+
+The rabble were still a hundred paces away, piled up and pressed about
+a house where men were being hunted as men hunt rats. He saw that he
+was unnoted, and apprehension gave place to rage. His thoughts turned
+back hissing hot to the thing that had happened, and in a paroxysm of
+shame he shook his fist at the gaping casement and the sneering face
+of his rival, dimly seen in the background. If a look would have
+killed Tavannes--and her--it had not been wanting.
+
+For it was not only the man M. de Tignonville hated at this moment; he
+hated Mademoiselle also, the unwitting agent of the other's triumph.
+She had thrust him from her; she had refused to be guided by him; she
+had resisted, thwarted, shamed him. Then let her take the
+consequences. She willed to perish: let her perish!
+
+He did not acknowledge even to himself the real cause of offence, the
+proof to which she had put his courage, and the failure of that
+courage to stand the test. Yet it was this, though he had himself
+provoked the trial, which burned up his chivalry, as the smuggler's
+fire burns up the dwarf heath upon the Landes. It was the discovery
+that in an heroic hour he was no hero that gave force to his
+passionate gesture, and next moment sent him storming down the
+beetling passage to the Rue du Roule, his heart a maelstrom of fierce
+vows and fiercer menaces.
+
+He had reached the further end of the alley and was on the point of
+entering the street before he remembered that he had nowhere to go.
+His lodgings were no longer his, since his landlord knew him to be a
+Huguenot, and would doubtless betray him. To approach those of his
+faith whom he had frequented was to expose them to danger; and, beyond
+the religion, he had few acquaintances and those of the newest. Yet
+the streets were impossible. He walked them on the utmost edge of
+peril; he lurked in them under the blade of an impending axe. And,
+whether he walked or lurked, he went at the mercy of the first comers
+bold enough to take his life.
+
+The sweat stood on his brow as he paused under the low arch of the
+alley-end, tasting the bitter forlornness of the dog banned and set
+for death in that sunlit city. In every window of the gable end which
+faced his hiding-place he fancied an eye watching his movements; in
+every distant step he heard the footfall of doom coming that way to
+his discovery. And while he trembled, he had to reflect, to think, to
+form some plan.
+
+In the town was no place for him, and short of the open country no
+safety. And how could he gain the open country? If he succeeded in
+reaching one of the gates--St. Antoine, or St. Denis, in itself a task
+of difficulty--it would only be to find the gate closed, and the guard
+on the alert. At last it flashed on him that he might cross the river;
+and at the notion hope awoke. It was possible that the massacre had
+not extended to the southern suburb; possible, that if it had, the
+Huguenots who lay there--Frontenay, and Montgomery, and Chartres, with
+the men of the North--might be strong enough to check it, and even to
+turn the tables on the Parisians.
+
+His colour returned. He was no coward, as soldiers go; if it came to
+fighting he had courage enough. He could not hope to cross the river
+by the bridge, for there, where the goldsmiths lived, the mob were
+like to be most busy. But if he could reach the bank he might procure
+a boat at some deserted point, or, at the worst, he might swim across.
+
+From the Louvre at his back came the sound of gun-shots; from every
+quarter the murmur of distant crowds, or the faint lamentable cries of
+victims. But the empty street before him promised an easy passage, and
+he ventured into it and passed quickly through it. He met no one, and
+no one molested him; but as he went he had glimpses of pale faces that
+from behind the casements watched him come and turned to watch him go;
+and so heavy on his nerves was the pressure of this silent ominous
+attention, that he blundered at the end of the street. He should have
+taken the southerly turning; instead he held on, found himself in the
+Rue Ferronerie, and a moment later was all but in the arms of a band
+of city guards, who were making a house-to-house visitation.
+
+He owed his safety rather to the condition of the street than to his
+presence of mind. The Rue Ferronerie, narrow in itself, was so choked
+at this date by stalls and bulkheads, that an edict directing the
+removal of those which abutted on the cemetery had been issued a
+little before. Nothing had been done on it, however, and this neck of
+Paris, this main thoroughfare between the east and the west, between
+the fashionable quarter of the Marais and the fashionable quarter of
+the Louvre, was still a devious huddle of sheds and pent-houses.
+Tignonville slid behind one of these, found that it masked the mouth
+of an alley, and, heedless whither the passage led, ran hurriedly
+along it. Every instant he expected to hear the hue and cry behind
+him, and he did not halt or draw breath until he had left the soldiers
+far in the rear, and found himself astray at the junction of four
+noisome lanes, over two of which the projecting gables fairly met.
+Above the two others a scrap of sky appeared, but this was too small
+to indicate in which direction the river lay.
+
+Tignonville hesitated, but not for long; a burst of voices heralded a
+new danger, and he shrank into a doorway. Along one of the lanes a
+troop of children, the biggest not twelve years old, came dancing and
+leaping round something which they dragged by a string. Now one of the
+hindmost would hurl it onward with a kick, now another, amid screams
+of childish laughter, tripped headlong over the cord; now at the
+crossways they stopped to wrangle and question which way they should
+go, or whose turn it was to pull and whose to follow. At last they
+started afresh with a whoop, the leader singing and all plucking the
+string to the cadence of the air. Their plaything leapt and dropped,
+sprang forward, and lingered like a thing of life. But it was no thing
+of life, as Tignonville saw with a shudder when they passed him. The
+object of their sport was the naked body of a child, an infant!
+
+His gorge rose at the sight. Fear such as he had not before
+experienced chilled his marrow. This was hate indeed, a hate before
+which the strong man quailed; the hate of which Mademoiselle had
+spoken when she said that the babes crossed themselves, at her
+passing, and the houses tottered to fall upon her!
+
+He paused a minute to recover himself, so deeply had the sight moved
+him; and as he stood, he wondered if that hate already had its cold
+eye fixed on him. Instinctively his gaze searched the opposite
+wall, but save for two small double-grated windows it was blind;
+time-stained and stone-built, dark with the ordure of the city lane,
+it seemed but the back of a house, which looked another way. The outer
+gates of an arched doorway were open, and a loaded hay-cart, touching
+either side and brushing the arch above, blocked the passage. His
+gaze, leaving the windows, dropped to this, he scanned it a moment;
+and on a sudden he stiffened. Between the hay and the arch a hand
+flickered an instant, then vanished.
+
+Tignonville stared. At first he thought his eyes had tricked him. Then
+the hand appeared again, and this time it conveyed an unmistakable
+invitation. It is not from the unknown or the hidden that the fugitive
+has aught to fear, and Tignonville, after casting a glance down the
+lane--which revealed a single man standing with his face the other
+way--slipped across and pushed between the hay and the wall. He
+coughed.
+
+A voice whispered to him to climb up; a friendly hand clutched him in
+the act, and aided him. In a second he was lying on his face, tight
+squeezed between the hay and the roof of the arch. Beside him lay a
+man whose features his eyes, unaccustomed to the gloom, could not
+discern. But the man knew him and whispered his name.
+
+"You know me?" Tignonville muttered in astonishment.
+
+"I marked you, M. de Tignonville, at the preaching last Sunday," the
+stranger answered placidly.
+
+"You were there?"
+
+"I preached."
+
+"Then you are M. la Tribe!"
+
+"I am," the clergyman answered quietly. "They seized me on my
+threshold, but I left my cloak in their hands and fled. One tore my
+stocking with his point, another my doublet, but not a hair of my head
+was injured. They hunted me to the end of the next street, but I lived
+and still live, and shall live to lift up my voice against this wicked
+city."
+
+The sympathy between the Huguenot by faith and the Huguenot by
+politics was imperfect. Tignonville, like most men of rank of the
+younger generation, was a Huguenot by politics; and he was in a bitter
+humour. He felt, perhaps, that it was men such as this who had driven
+the other side to excesses such as these; and he hardly repressed a
+sneer. "I wish I felt as sure!" he muttered bluntly. "You know that
+all our people are dead?"
+
+"He can save by few or by many," the preacher answered devoutly. "We
+are of the few, blessed be God, and shall see Israel victorious, and
+our people as a flock of sheep!"
+
+"I see small chance of it," Tignonville answered contemptuously.
+
+"I know it as certainly as I knew before you came, M. de Tignonville,
+that you would come!"
+
+"That I should come?"
+
+"That some one would come," La Tribe answered, correcting himself. "I
+knew not who it would be until you appeared and placed yourself in the
+doorway over against me, even as Obadiah in the Holy Book passed
+before the hiding-place of Elijah."
+
+The two lay on their faces side by side, the rafters of the archway
+low on their heads. Tignonville lifted himself a little, and peered
+anew at the other. He fancied that La Tribe's mind, shaken by the
+horrors of the morning and his narrow escape, had given way. "You
+rave, man," he said. "This is no time for visions."
+
+"I said naught of visions," the other answered.
+
+"Then why so sure that we shall escape?"
+
+"I am certified of it," La Tribe replied. "And more than that, I know
+that we shall lie here some days. The time has not been revealed to
+me, but it will be days and a day. Then we shall leave this place
+unharmed, as we entered it, and, whatever betide others, we shall
+live."
+
+Tignonville shrugged his shoulders. "I tell you, you rave, M. la
+Tribe," he said petulantly. "At any moment we may be discovered. Even
+now I hear footsteps."
+
+"They tracked me well-nigh to this place," the minister answered
+placidly.
+
+"The deuce they did!" Tignonville muttered, with irritation. He dared
+not raise his voice. "I would you had told me that before I joined
+you, Monsieur, and I had found some safer hiding-place! When we are
+discovered----"
+
+"Then," the other continued calmly, "you will see."
+
+"In any case we shall be better farther back," Tignonville retorted.
+"Here, we are within an ace of being seen from the lane." And he began
+to wriggle himself backwards.
+
+The minister laid his hand on him. "Have a care!" he muttered. "And do
+not move, but listen. And you will understand. When I reached this
+place--it would be about five o'clock this morning--breathless, and
+expecting each minute to be dragged forth to make my confession before
+men, I despaired as you despair now. Like Elijah under the juniper
+tree, I said 'It is enough, O Lord! Take my soul also, for I am no
+better than my fellows!' All the sky was black before my eyes, and my
+ears were filled with the wailings of the little ones and the
+lamentations of women. 'O Lord, it is enough,' I prayed. 'Take my
+soul, or, if it be Thy will, then, as the angel was sent to take the
+cakes to Elijah, give me also a sign that I shall live.'"
+
+For a moment he paused, struggling with overpowering emotion. Even his
+impatient listener, hitherto incredulous, caught the infection, and in
+a tone of awe murmured, "Yes? And then, M. la Tribe!"
+
+"The sign was given me. The words were scarcely out of my mouth when a
+hen flew up, and, scratching a nest in the hay at my feet, presently
+laid an egg."
+
+Tignonville stared. "It was timely, I admit," he said. "But it is no
+uncommon thing. Probably it has its nest here and lays daily."
+
+"Young man, this is new-mown hay," the minister answered solemnly.
+"This cart was brought here no further back than yesterday. It smells
+of the meadow, and the flowers hold their colour. No, the fowl was
+sent. To-morrow it will return, and the next, and the next, until the
+plague be stayed and I go hence. But that is not all. A while later a
+second hen appeared, and I thought it would lay in the same nest. But
+it made a new one, on the side on which you lie and not far from your
+foot. Then I knew that I was to have a companion, and that God had
+laid also for him a table in the wilderness."
+
+"It did lay, then?"
+
+"It is still on the nest, beside your foot."
+
+Tignonville was about to reply when the preacher grasped his arm and
+by a sign enjoined silence. He did so not a moment too soon.
+Preoccupied by the story, narrator and listener had paid no heed to
+what was passing in the lane, and the voices of men speaking close at
+hand took them by surprise. From the first words which reached them,
+it was clear that the speakers were the same who had chased La Tribe
+as far as the meeting of the four ways, and, losing him there, had
+spent the morning in other business. Now they had returned to hunt him
+down, and but for a wrangle which arose among them and detained them,
+they had stolen on their quarry before their coming was suspected.
+
+"'Twas this way he ran!" "No, 'twas the other!" they contended; and
+their words, winged with vile threats and oaths, grew noisy and hot.
+The two listeners dared scarcely to breathe. The danger was so near,
+it was so certain that if the men came three paces farther, they would
+observe and search the hay-cart, that Tignonville fancied the steel
+already at his throat. He felt the hay rustle under his slightest
+movement, and gripped one hand with the other to restrain the tremor
+of overpowering excitement. Yet when he glanced at the minister he
+found him unmoved, a smile on his face. And M. de Tignonville could
+have cursed him for his folly.
+
+For the men were coming on! An instant, and they perceived the cart,
+and the ruffian who had advised this route pounced on it in triumph.
+"There! Did I not say so?" he cried. "He is curled up in that hay, for
+the Satan's grub he is! That is where he is, see you!"
+
+"Maybe," another answered grudgingly, as they gathered before it. "And
+maybe not, Simon!"
+
+"To hell with your maybe not!" the first replied. And he drove his
+pike deep into the hay and turned it viciously.
+
+The two on the top controlled themselves. Tignonville's face was
+livid; of himself he would have slid down amongst them and taken his
+chance, preferring to die fighting, to die in the open, rather than to
+perish like a rat in a stack. But La Tribe had gripped his arm and
+held him fast.
+
+The man whom the others called Simon thrust again, but too low and
+without result. He was for trying a third time, when one of his
+comrades who had gone to the other side of the lane announced that the
+men were on the top of the hay.
+
+"Can you see them!"
+
+"No, but there's room and to spare."
+
+"Oh, a curse on your room!" Simon retorted.
+
+"Well, you can look."
+
+"If that's all, I'll soon look!" was the answer. And the rogue,
+forcing himself between the hay and the side of the gateway, found the
+wheel of the cart, and began to raise himself on it. Tignonville, who
+lay on that hand, heard, though he could not see his movements. He
+knew what they meant, he knew that in a twinkling he must be
+discovered; and with a last prayer he gathered himself for a spring.
+
+It seemed an age before the intruder's head appeared on a level with
+the hay; and then the alarm came from another quarter. The hen which
+had made its nest at Tignonville's feet, disturbed by the movement or
+by the newcomer's hand, flew out with a rush and flutter as of a great
+firework. Upsetting the startled Simon, who slipped swearing to the
+ground, it swooped scolding and clucking over the heads of the other
+men, and reaching the street in safety scuttled off at speed, its
+outspread wings sweeping the earth in its rage.
+
+They laughed uproariously as Simon emerged, rubbing his elbow.
+"There's for you! There's your preacher!" his opponent jeered.
+
+"D----n her! she gives tongue as fast as any of them!" gibed a second.
+"Will you try again, Simon? You may find another love-letter there!"
+
+"Have done!" a third cried impatiently. "He'll not be where the hen
+is! Let's back! Let's back! I said before that it wasn't this way he
+turned! He's made for the river."
+
+"The plague in his vitals!" Simon replied furiously. "Wherever he is,
+I'll find him!" And reluctant to confess himself wrong, he lingered,
+casting vengeful glances at the hay. But one of the other men cursed
+him for a fool; and presently, forced to accept his defeat or be left
+alone, he rejoined his fellows. Slowly the footsteps and voices
+receded along the lane; slowly, until silence swallowed them, and on
+the quivering strained senses of the two who remained behind,
+descended the gentle influence of twilight and the sweet scent of the
+new-mown hay on which they lay.
+
+La Tribe turned to his companion, his eyes shining. "Our soul is
+escaped," he murmured, "even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler.
+The snare is broken and we are delivered!" His voice shook as he
+whispered the ancient words of triumph.
+
+But when they came to look in the nest at Tignonville's feet there was
+no egg!
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                              UNSTABLE.
+
+
+And that troubled M. la Tribe no little, although he did not impart
+his thoughts to his companion. Instead they talked in whispers of the
+things which had happened; of the Admiral, of Teligny, whom all loved,
+of Rochefoucauld the accomplished, the King's friend; of the princes
+in the Louvre whom they gave up for lost, and of the Huguenot nobles
+on the farther side of the river, of whose safety there seemed some
+hope. Tignonville--he best knew why--said nothing of the fate of his
+betrothed, or of his own adventures in that connection. But each told
+the other how the alarm had reached him, and painted in broken words
+his reluctance to believe in treachery so black. Thence they passed to
+the future of the cause, and of that took views as opposite as light
+and darkness, as Papegot and Huguenot. The one was confident, the
+other in despair. And some time in the afternoon, worn out by the
+awful experiences of the last twelve hours, they fell asleep, their
+heads on their arms, the hay tickling their faces; and, with death
+stalking the lane beside them, slept soundly until after sundown.
+
+When they awoke hunger awoke with them, and urged on La Tribe's mind
+the question of the missing egg. It was not altogether the prick of
+appetite which troubled him, but regarding the hiding-place in which
+they lay as an ark of refuge providentially supplied, protected and
+victualled, he could not refrain from asking reverently what the
+deficiency meant. It was not as if one hen only had appeared; as if no
+farther prospect had been extended. But up to a certain point the
+message was clear. Then when the Hand of Providence had shown itself
+most plainly, and in a manner to melt the heart with awe and
+thankfulness, the message had been blurred. Seriously the Huguenot
+asked himself what it portended.
+
+To Tignonville, if he thought of it at all, the matter was the matter
+of an egg, and stopped there. An egg might alleviate the growing pangs
+of hunger; its non-appearance was a disappointment, but he traced the
+matter no farther. It must be confessed that the hay-cart was to him
+only a hay-cart--and not an ark; and the sooner he was safely away
+from it the better he would be pleased. While La Tribe, lying snug and
+warm beside him, thanked God for a lot so different from that of such
+of his fellows as had escaped--whom he pictured crouching in dank
+cellars, or on roof-trees exposed to the heat by day and the dews by
+night--the young man grew more and more restive.
+
+Hunger pricked him, and the meanness of the part he had played moved
+him to action. About midnight, resisting the dissuasions of his
+companion, he would have sallied out in search of food if the passage
+of a turbulent crowd had not warned him that the work of murder was
+still proceeding. He curbed himself after that and lay until daylight.
+But, ill content with his own conduct, on fire when he thought of his
+betrothed, he was in no temper to bear hardship cheerfully or long;
+and gradually there rose before his mind the picture of Madame St.
+Lo's smiling face, and the fair hair which curled low on the white of
+her neck.
+
+He would, and he would not. Death that had stalked so near him
+preached its solemn sermon. But death and pleasure are never far
+apart; and at no time and nowhere have they jostled one another more
+familiarly than in that age, wherever the influence of Italy and
+Italian art and Italian hopelessness extended. Again, on the one side,
+La Tribe's example went for something with his comrade in misfortune;
+but in the other scale hung relief from discomfort, with the prospect
+of a woman's smiles and a woman's flatteries, of dainty dishes,
+luxury, and passion. If he went now, he went to her from the jaws of
+death, with the glamour of adventure and peril about him; and the very
+going into her presence was a lure. Moreover, if he had been willing
+while his betrothed was still his, why not now when he had lost her?
+
+It was this last reflection--and one other thing which came on a
+sudden into his mind--which turned the scale. About noon he sat up in
+the hay, and, abruptly and sullenly, "I'll lie here no longer," he
+said; and he dropped his legs over the side. "I shall go."
+
+The movement was so unexpected that La Tribe stared at him in silence.
+Then, "You will run a great risk, M. de Tignonville," he said gravely,
+"if you do. You may go as far under cover of night as the river, or
+you may reach one of the gates. But as to crossing the one or passing
+the other, I reckon it a thing impossible."
+
+"I shall not wait until night," Tignonville answered curtly, a ring of
+defiance in his tone. "I shall go now! I'll lie here no longer!"
+
+"Now?"
+
+"Yes, now."
+
+"You will be mad if you do," the other replied. He thought it the
+petulant outcry of youth tired of inaction; a protest, and nothing
+more.
+
+He was speedily undeceived. "Mad or not, I am going!" Tignonville
+retorted. And he slid to the ground, and from the covert of the
+hanging fringe of hay looked warily up and down the lane. "It is
+clear, I think," he said. "Good-bye." And with no more, without one
+upward glance or a gesture of the hand, with no further adieu or word
+of gratitude, he walked out into the lane, turned briskly to the left,
+and vanished.
+
+The minister uttered a cry of astonishment, and made as if he would
+descend also. "Come back, sir!" he called, as loudly as he dared. "M.
+de Tignonville, come back! This is folly or worse!"
+
+But M. de Tignonville was gone.
+
+La Tribe listened a while, unable to believe it, and still expecting
+his return. At last, hearing nothing, he slid, greatly excited, to the
+ground and looked out. It was not until he had peered up and down the
+lane and made sure that it was empty that he could persuade himself
+that the other had gone for good. Then he climbed slowly and seriously
+to his place again, and sighed as he settled himself. "Unstable as
+water thou shalt not excel!" he muttered. "Now I know why there was
+only one egg."
+
+Meanwhile Tignonville, after putting a hundred yards between himself
+and his bedfellow, plunged into the first dark entry which presented
+itself. Hurriedly, and with a frowning face, he cut off his left
+sleeve from shoulder to wrist; and this act, by disclosing his linen,
+put him in possession of the white sleeve which he had once
+involuntarily donned, and once discarded. The white cross on the cap
+he could not assume, for he was bareheaded. But he had little doubt
+that the sleeve would suffice, and with a bold demeanour he made his
+way northward until he reached again the Rue Ferronerie.
+
+Excited groups were wandering up and down the street, and, fearing to
+traverse its crowded narrows, he went by lanes parallel with it as far
+as the Rue St. Denis, which he crossed. Everywhere he saw houses
+gutted and doors burst in, and traces of a cruelty and a fanaticism
+almost incredible. Near the Rue des Lombards he saw a dead child,
+stripped stark and hanged on the hook of a cobbler's shutter. A
+little further on in the same street he stepped over the body of a
+handsome young woman, distinguished by the length and beauty of her
+hair. To obtain her bracelets, her captors had cut off her hands;
+afterwards--but God knows how long afterwards--a passer-by, more
+pitiful than his fellows, had put her out of her misery with a spit,
+which still remained plunged in her body.
+
+M. de Tignonville shuddered at the sight, and at others like it. He
+loathed the symbol he wore, and himself for wearing it; and more than
+once his better nature bade him return and play the nobler part. Once
+he did turn with that intention. But he had set his mind on comfort
+and pleasure, and the value of these things is raised, not lowered, by
+danger and uncertainty. Quickly his stoicism oozed away; he turned
+again. Barely avoiding the rush of a crowd of wretches who were
+bearing a swooning victim to the river, he hurried through the Rue des
+Lombards and reached in safety the house beside the "Golden Maid."
+
+He had no doubt now on which side of the "Maid" Madame St. Lo lived;
+the house was plain before him. He had only to knock. But in
+proportion as he approached his haven, his anxiety grew. To lose all,
+with all in his grasp, to fail upon the threshold, was a thing which
+bore no looking at; and it was with a nervous hand and eyes cast
+fearfully behind him that he plied the heavy iron knocker which
+adorned the door.
+
+He could not turn his gaze from a knot of ruffians, who were gathered
+under one of the tottering gables on the farther side of the street.
+They seemed to be watching him, and he fancied--though the distance
+rendered this impossible--that he could see suspicion growing in their
+eyes. At any moment they might cross the roadway, they might approach,
+they might challenge him. And at the thought he knocked and knocked
+again. Why did not the porter come?
+
+Ay, why? For now a score of contingencies came into the young man's
+mind and tortured him. Had Madame St. Lo withdrawn to safer quarters
+and closed the house? Or, good Catholic as she was, had she given way
+to panic, and determined to open to no one? Or was she ill? Or had she
+perished in the general disorder? Or----
+
+And then, even as the men began to slink towards him, his heart leapt.
+He heard a footstep heavy and slow move through the house. It came
+nearer and nearer. A moment, and an iron-grated Judas-hole in the door
+slid open, and a servant, an elderly man, sleek and respectable,
+looked out at him.
+
+Tignonville could scarcely speak for excitement. "Madame St. Lo?" he
+muttered tremulously. "I come to her from her cousin the Comte de
+Tavannes. Quick! quick! if you please. Open to me!"
+
+"Monsieur is alone?"
+
+"Yes! Yes!"
+
+The man nodded gravely and slid back the bolts. He allowed M. de
+Tignonville to enter, then with care he secured the door, and led the
+way across a small square court, paved with red tiles and enclosed by
+the house, but open above to the sunshine and the blue sky. A gallery
+which ran round the upper floor looked on this court, in which a great
+quiet reigned, broken only by the music of a fountain. A vine climbed
+on the wooden pillars which supported the gallery, and, aspiring
+higher, embraced the wide carved eaves, and even tapestried with green
+the three gables that on each side of the court broke the sky-line.
+The grapes hung nearly ripe, and amid their clusters and the green
+lattice of their foliage Tignonville's gaze sought eagerly but in vain
+the laughing eyes and piquant face of his new mistress. For with the
+closing of the door, and the passing from him of the horrors of the
+streets, he had entered, as by magic, a new and smiling world; a world
+of tennis and roses, of tinkling voices and women's wiles, a world
+which smacked of Florence and the South, and love and life; a world
+which his late experiences had set so far away from him, his memory of
+it seemed a dream. Now, as he drank in its stillness and its
+fragrance, as he felt its safety and its luxury lap him round once
+more, he sighed. And with that breath he rid himself of much.
+
+The servant led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther
+side of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible,
+withdrew. A moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of
+a woman's skirt as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to
+his cheeks. He went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes grew
+bright.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                            MADAME ST. LO.
+
+
+So far excitement had supported Tignonville in his escape. It was only
+when he knew himself safe, when he heard Madame St. Lo's footstep in
+the courtyard and knew that in a moment he would see her, that he knew
+also that he was failing for want of food. The room seemed to go round
+with him; the window to shift, the light to flicker. And then again,
+with equal abruptness, he grew strong and steady and perfectly master
+of himself. Nay, never had he felt a confidence in himself so
+overwhelming or a capacity so complete. The triumph of that which he
+had done, the knowledge that of so many he, almost alone, had escaped,
+filled his brain with a delicious and intoxicating vanity. When the
+door opened, and Madame St. Lo appeared on the threshold, he advanced
+holding out his arms. He expected that she would fall into them.
+
+But Madame only backed and curtseyed, a mischievous light in her eyes.
+"A thousand thanks, Monsieur!" she said, "but you are more ready than
+I!" And she remained by the door.
+
+"I have come to you through all!" he cried, speaking loudly because of
+a humming in his ears. "They are lying in the streets! They are dying,
+are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing! But I have come
+through all to you!"
+
+She curtseyed anew. "So I see, Monsieur!" she answered. "I am
+nattered!" But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he
+was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness. And
+he took offence.
+
+"I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated. "And you do not seem
+pleased!"
+
+She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly. "Oh, yes,"
+she said. "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville. It is what I intended. But
+tell me how you have fared. You are not hurt?"
+
+"Not a hair!" he cried boastfully. And he told her in a dozen windy
+sentences of the adventure of the hay-cart and his narrow escape. He
+wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.
+
+"Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?" she said. And when he
+did not answer, "I understand," she continued, nodding and speaking as
+to a child. And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order. She
+addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville's ear her
+voice seemed to fall to a whisper. Her figure--she was small and
+fairy-like--began to sway before him; and then in a moment, as it
+seemed to him, she was gone, and he was seated at a table, his
+trembling fingers grasping a cup of wine which the elderly servant who
+had admitted him was holding to his lips. On the table before him were
+a spit of partridges and a cake of white bread. When he had swallowed
+a second mouthful of wine--which cleared his eyes as by magic--the man
+urged him to eat. And he fell to with an appetite that grew as he ate.
+
+By and by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame's
+women were peering at him through the open doorway. He looked that way
+and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back
+again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the
+door. It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their
+favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why
+she did not come and serve him herself.
+
+But for a while longer the savour of the roasted game took up the
+major part of his thoughts; and when prudence warned him to desist,
+and he sat back, satisfied after his long fast, he was in no mood
+to be critical. Perhaps--for somewhere in the house he heard a
+lute--Madame was entertaining those whom she could not leave? Or
+deluding some who might betray him if they discovered him?
+
+From that his mind turned back to the streets and the horrors through
+which he had passed; but for a moment and no more. A shudder, an
+emotion of prayerful pity, and he recalled his thoughts. In the quiet
+of the cool room, looking on the sunny, vine-clad court, with the
+tinkle of the lute and the murmurous sound of women's voices in his
+ears, it was hard to believe that the things from which he had emerged
+were real. It was still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on
+them. A day of reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the
+cause would rally, bristling with pikes and snorting with war-horses,
+and the blood spilled in this wicked city would cry aloud for
+vengeance. But the hour was not yet. He had lost his mistress, and for
+that atonement must be exacted. But in the present another mistress
+awaited him, and as a man could only die once, and might die at any
+minute, so he could only live once and in the present. Then _vogue la
+galère!_
+
+As he roused himself from this brief reverie and fell to wondering how
+long he was to be left to himself, a rosebud tossed by an unseen hand
+struck him on the breast and dropped to his knees. To seize it and
+kiss it gallantly, to spring to his feet and look about him were
+instinctive movements. But he could see no one; and, in the hope of
+surprising the giver, he stole to the window. The sound of the lute
+and the distant tinkle of laughter persisted. The court, save for a
+page, who lay asleep on a bench in the gallery, was empty. Tignonville
+scanned the boy suspiciously; a male disguise was often adopted by the
+court ladies, and if Madame would play a prank on him, this was a
+thing to be reckoned with. But a boy it seemed to be, and after a
+while the young man went back to his seat.
+
+Even as he sat down, a second flower struck him more sharply in the
+face, and this time he darted not to the window but to the door. He
+opened it quickly and looked out, but again he was too late.
+
+"I shall catch you presently, _ma reine!_" he murmured tenderly, with
+intent to be heard. And he closed the door. But, wiser this time, he
+waited with his hand on the latch until he heard the rustling of a
+skirt, and saw the line of light at the foot of the door darkened by a
+shadow. That moment he flung the door wide, and, clasping the wearer
+of the skirt in his arms, kissed her lips before she had time to
+resist.
+
+Then he fell back as if he had been shot! For the wearer of the skirt,
+she whom he had kissed, was Madame St. Lo's woman, and behind her
+stood Madame herself, laughing, laughing, laughing with all the gay
+abandonment of her light little heart. "Oh, the gallant gentleman!"
+she cried, and clapped her hands effusively. "Was ever recovery so
+rapid? Or triumph so speedy? Suzanne, my child, you surpass Venus.
+Your charms conquer before they are seen!"
+
+M. de Tignonville had put poor Suzanne from him as if she burned; and
+hot and embarrassed, cursing his haste, he stood looking awkwardly at
+them. "Madame," he stammered at last, "you know quite well that I----"
+
+"Seeing is believing!"
+
+"That I thought it was you!"
+
+"Oh, what I have lost!" she replied. And she looked archly at Suzanne,
+who giggled and tossed her head.
+
+He was growing angry. "But, Madame," he protested, "you know----"
+
+"I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!" Madame
+answered merrily. And she hummed,
+
+
+             "Ce fut le plus grand jour d'este
+              Que m'embrassa la belle Suzanne!
+
+
+"Oh, yes, I know what I know!" she repeated. And she fell again to
+laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her
+hung her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an
+affectation of modesty.
+
+The young man glowered at them between rage and embarrassment. This
+was not the reception, nor this the hero's return to which he had
+looked forward. And a doubt began to take form in his mind. The
+mistress he had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another;
+nor forget in a twinkling the straits through which he had come to
+her, the hell from which he had plucked himself! Possibly the court
+ladies held love as cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, butts
+for their wit, and pegs on which to hang their laughter. But--but he
+began to doubt, and, perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.
+
+"Madame," he said stiffly, "a jest is an excellent thing. But pardon
+me if I say that it is ill played on a fasting man."
+
+Madame desisted from laughter that she might speak. "A fasting man?"
+she cried. "And he has eaten two partridges!"
+
+"Fasting from love, Madame."
+
+Madame St. Lo held up her hands. "And it's not two minutes since he
+took a kiss!"
+
+He winced, was silent a moment, and then seeing that he got nothing by
+the tone he had adopted he cried for quarter. "A little mercy, Madame,
+as you are beautiful," he said, wooing her with his eyes. "Do not
+plague me beyond what a man can bear. Dismiss, I pray you, this good
+creature--whose charms do but set off yours as the star leads the eye
+to the moon--and make me the happiest man in the world by so much of
+your company as you will vouchsafe to give me."
+
+"That may be but a very little," she answered, letting her eyes fall
+coyly, and affecting to handle the tucker of her low ruff. But he saw
+that her lip twitched; and he could have sworn that she mocked him to
+Suzanne, for the girl giggled.
+
+Still by an effort he controlled his feelings. "Why so cruel?" he
+murmured, in a tone meant for her alone, and with a look to match.
+"You were not so hard when I spoke with you in the gallery, two
+evenings ago, Madame."
+
+"Was I not?" she asked. "Did I look like this? And this?" And,
+languishing, she looked at him very sweetly after two fashions.
+
+"Something."
+
+"Oh, then I meant nothing!" she retorted with sudden vivacity. And she
+made a face at him, laughing under his nose. "I do that when I mean
+nothing, Monsieur! Do you see? But you are Gascon, and given, I fear,
+to flatter yourself."
+
+Then he saw clearly that she played with him: and resentment, chagrin,
+pique got the better of his courtesy. "I flatter myself?" he cried,
+his voice choked with rage. "It may be I do now, Madame, but did I
+flatter myself when you wrote me this note?" And he drew it out and
+flourished it in her face. "Did I imagine when I read this? Or is it
+not in your hand? It is a forgery, perhaps," he continued bitterly.
+"Or it means nothing? Nothing, this note bidding me be at Madame St.
+Lo's at an hour before midnight--it means nothing? At an hour before
+midnight, Madame!"
+
+"On Saturday night? The night before last night?"
+
+"On Saturday night, the night before last night! But Madame knows
+nothing of it? Nothing, I suppose?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and smiled cheerfully on him. "Oh, yes, I
+wrote it," she said. "But what of that, M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, what of that? Did you think it was written out of love
+for you?"
+
+He was staggered for the moment by her coolness. "Out of what, then?"
+he cried hoarsely. "Out of what, then, if not out of love?"
+
+"Why, out of pity, my little gentleman!" she answered sharply. "And
+trouble thrown away it seems. Love!" And she laughed so merrily and
+spontaneously it cut him to the heart. "No; but you said a dainty
+thing or two, and smiled a smile; and like a fool, and like a woman, I
+was sorry for the innocent calf that bleated so prettily on its way to
+the butcher's! And I would lock you up and save your life, I thought,
+until the blood-letting was over. Now you have it, M. de Tignonville,
+and I hope you like it."
+
+Like it, when every word she uttered stripped him of the selfish
+illusions in which he had wrapped himself against the blasts of
+ill-fortune? Like it, when the prospect of her charms had bribed him
+from the path of fortitude, when for her sake he had been false to his
+mistress, to his friends, to his faith, to his cause? Like it, when he
+knew as he listened that all was lost, and nothing gained--not even
+this poor, unworthy, shameful compensation? Like it? No wonder that
+words failed him, and he glared at her in rage, in misery, in shame.
+
+"Oh, if you don't like it," she continued, tossing her head after a
+momentary pause, "then you should not have come! It is of no profit to
+glower at me, Monsieur. You do not frighten me."
+
+"I would--I would to God I had not come!" he groaned.
+
+"And, I dare say, that you had never seen me--since you cannot win
+me!"
+
+"That too," he exclaimed.
+
+She was of an extraordinary levity, and at that after staring at him a
+moment she broke into shrill laughter. "A little more, and I'll send
+you to my cousin Hannibal!" she said. "You do not know how anxious he
+is to see you. Have you a mind," with a waggish look, "to play bride's
+man, M. de Tignonville? Or will you give away the bride? It is not too
+late, though soon it will be!"
+
+He winced, and from red grew pale. "What do you mean?" he stammered.
+And, averting his eyes in shame, seeing now all the littleness, all
+the baseness of his position, "Has he--married her?" he continued.
+
+"Ho, ho!" she cried in triumph. "I've hit you now, have I, Monsieur?
+I've hit you!" And mocking him, "Has he--married her?" she lisped.
+"No; but he will marry her, have no fear of that! He will marry her.
+He waits but to get a priest. Would you like to see what he says?" she
+continued, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. "I had a note
+from him yesterday. Would you like to see how welcome you'll be at the
+wedding?" And she flaunted a piece of paper before his eyes.
+
+"Give it me," he said.
+
+She let him seize it the while she shrugged her shoulders. "It's your
+affair, not mine," she said. "See it if you like, and keep it if you
+like. Cousin Hannibal wastes few words."
+
+That was true, for the paper contained but a dozen or fifteen words,
+and an initial by way of signature. "I may need your shoveling
+to-morrow afternoon. Send him, and Tignonville in safeguard if he
+come.--H."
+
+"I can guess what use he has for a priest," she said. "It is not to
+confess him, I warrant. It's long, I fear, since Hannibal told his
+beads."
+
+M. de Tignonville swore. "I would I had the confessing of him!" he
+said between his teeth.
+
+She clapped her hands in glee. "Why should you not?" she cried. "Why
+should you not? 'Tis time yet, since I am to send to-day and have not
+sent. Will you be the shaveling to go confess or marry him?" And she
+laughed recklessly. "Will you, M. de Tignonville? The cowl will mask
+you as well as another, and pass you through the streets better than a
+cut sleeve. He will have both his wishes, lover and clerk in one then.
+And it will be pull monk, pull Hannibal with a vengeance."
+
+Tignonville gazed at her, and as he gazed courage and hope awoke in
+his eyes. What if, after all, he could undo the past? What if, after
+all, he could retrace the false step he had taken, and place himself
+again where he had been--by her side? "If you meant it!" he exclaimed,
+his breath coming fast. "If you only meant what you say, Madame."
+
+"If?" she answered, opening her eyes. "And why should I not mean it?"
+
+"Because," he replied slowly, "cowl or no cowl, when I meet your
+cousin----"
+
+"'Twill go hard with him?" she cried, with a mocking laugh. "And you
+think I fear for him. That is it, is it?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I fear just _so much_ for him!" she retorted with contempt. "Just so
+much!" And coming a step nearer to Tignonville she snapped her small
+white fingers under his nose. "Do you see? No, M. de Tignonville," she
+continued, "you do not know Count Hannibal if you think that he fears,
+or that any fear for him. If you will beard the lion in his den, the
+risk will be yours, not his!"
+
+The young man's face glowed. "I take the risk!" he cried. "And I thank
+you for the chance; that, Madame, whatever betide. But----"
+
+"But what?" she asked, seeing that he hesitated and that his face
+fell.
+
+"If he afterwards learn that you have played him a trick," he said,
+"will he not punish you?"
+
+"Punish me?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+Madame laughed her high disdain. "You do not yet know Hannibal de
+Tavannes," she said. "He does not war with women."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                              A BARGAIN.
+
+
+It is the wont of the sex to snatch at an ell where an inch is
+offered, and to press an advantage in circumstances in which a man,
+acknowledging the claims of generosity, scruples to ask for more. The
+habit, now ingrained, may have sprung from long dependence on the
+male, and is one which a hundred instances, from the time of Judith
+downward, prove to be at its strongest where the need is greatest.
+
+When Mademoiselle de Vrillac came out of the hour-long swoon into
+which her lover's defection had cast her, the expectation of the worst
+was so strong upon her that she could not at once credit the respite
+which Madame Carlat hastened to announce. She could not believe that
+she still lay safe, in her own room above stairs; that she was in the
+care of her own servants, and that the chamber held no presence more
+hateful than that of the good woman who sat weeping beside her.
+
+As was to be expected, she came to herself sighing and shuddering,
+trembling with nervous exhaustion. She looked for _him_, as soon as
+she looked for any; and even when she had seen the door locked and
+double-locked, she doubted--doubted, and shook and hid herself in the
+hangings of the bed. The noise of the riot and rapine which prevailed
+in the city, and which reached the ear even in that locked room--and
+although the window, of paper, with an upper pane of glass, looked
+into a courtyard--was enough to drive the blood from a woman's cheeks.
+But it was fear of the house, not of the street, fear from within, not
+from without, which impelled the girl into the darkest corner and
+shook her wits. She could not believe that even this short respite was
+hers, until she had repeatedly heard the fact confirmed at Madame
+Carlat's mouth.
+
+"You are deceiving me!" she cried more than once. And each time she
+started up in fresh terror. "He never said that he would not return
+until to-morrow!"
+
+"He did, my lamb, he did!" the old woman answered with tears. "Would I
+deceive you?"
+
+"He said he would not return?"
+
+"He said he would not return until to-morrow. You had until to-morrow,
+he said."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"He would come and bring the priest with him," Madame Carlat replied
+sorrowfully.
+
+"The priest? To-morrow!" Mademoiselle cried. "The priest!" and she
+crouched anew with hot eyes behind the hangings of the bed, and,
+shivering, hid her face.
+
+But this for a time only. As soon as she had made certain of the
+respite, and that she had until the morrow, her courage rose, and with
+it the instinct of which mention has been made. Count Hannibal had
+granted a respite; short as it was, and no more than the barest
+humanity required, to grant one at all was not the act of the mere
+butcher who holds the trembling lamb, unresisting, in his hands. It
+was an act--no more, again be it said, than humanity required--and yet
+an act which bespoke an expectation of some return, of some
+correlative advantage. It was not in the part of the mere brigand.
+Something had been granted. Something short of the utmost in the
+captor's power had been exacted. He had shown that there were things
+he would not do.
+
+Then might not something more be won from him? A further delay,
+another point; something, no matter what, which could be turned to
+advantage. With the brigand it is not possible to bargain. But who
+gives a little may give more; who gives a day may give a week; who
+gives a week may give a month. And a month? Her heart leapt up. A
+month seemed a lifetime, an eternity, to her who had but until
+to-morrow!
+
+Yet there was one consideration which might have daunted a spirit
+less brave. To obtain aught from Tavannes it was needful to ask him,
+and to ask him it was needful to see him; and to see him _before_ that
+to-morrow which meant so much to her. It was necessary, in a word, to
+run some risk; but without risk the card could not be played, and she
+did not hesitate. It might turn out that she was wrong, that the man
+was not only pitiless and without bowels of mercy, but lacked also the
+shred of decency for which she gave him credit, and on which she
+counted. In that case, if she sent for him--but she would not consider
+that case.
+
+The position of the window, while it increased the women's safety,
+debarred them from all knowledge of what was going forward, except
+that which their ears afforded them. They had no means of judging
+whether Tavannes remained in the house or had sallied forth to
+play his part in the work of murder. Madame Carlat, indeed, had no
+desire to know anything. In that room above stairs, with the door
+double-locked, lay a hope of safety in the present, and of ultimate
+deliverance; there she had a respite from terror, as long as she kept
+the world outside. To her, therefore, the notion of sending for
+Tavannes, or communicating with him, came as a thunderbolt. Was her
+mistress mad? Did she wish to court her fate? To reach Tavannes they
+must apply to his riders, for Carlat and the men-servants were
+confined above. Those riders were grim, brutal men, who might resort
+to rudeness on their own account. And Madame, clinging in a paroxysm
+of terror to her mistress, suggested all manner of horrors, one on top
+of the other, until she increased her own terror tenfold. And yet, to
+do her justice, nothing that even her frenzied imagination suggested
+exceeded the things which the streets of Paris, fruitful mother of
+horrors, were witnessing at that very hour. As we now know.
+
+For it was noon--or a little more--of Sunday, August the twenty-fourth,
+"a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently find
+leisure to kill and plunder." From the bridges, and particularly
+from the stone bridge of Notre Dame--while they lay safe in that
+locked room, and Tignonville crouched in his haymow--Huguenots less
+fortunate were being cast, bound hand and foot, into the Seine. On the
+river bank Spire Niquet, the bookman, was being burnt over a slow
+fire, fed with his own books. In their houses, Ramus the scholar and
+Goujon the sculptor--than whom Paris has neither seen nor deserved a
+greater--were being butchered like sheep; and in the Valley of Misery,
+now the Quai de la Megisserie, seven hundred persons who had sought
+refuge in the prisons were being beaten to death with bludgeons. Nay,
+at this hour--a little sooner or a little later, what matters it?--M.
+Tignonville's own cousin, Madame d'Yverne, the darling of the Louvre
+the day before, perished in the hands of the mob; and the sister of M.
+de Taverny, equally ill-fated, died in the same fashion, after being
+dragged through the streets.
+
+Madame Carlat, then, went not a whit beyond the mark in her argument.
+But Mademoiselle had made up her mind, and was not to be dissuaded.
+
+"If I am to be Monsieur's wife," she said with quivering nostrils,
+"shall I fear his servants?"
+
+And opening the door herself, for the others would not, she called.
+The man who answered was a Norman; and short of stature, and wrinkled
+and low-browed of feature, with a thatch of hair and a full beard, he
+seemed the embodiment of the women's apprehensions. Moreover, his
+_patois_ of the cider-land was little better than German to them;
+their southern, softer tongue was sheer Italian to him. But he seemed
+not ill-disposed, or Mademoiselle's air overawed him; and presently
+she made him understand, and with a nod he descended to carry her
+message.
+
+Then Mademoiselle's heart began to beat; and beat more quickly when
+she heard _his_ step--alas! she knew it already, knew it from all
+others--on the stairs. The table was set, the card must be played, to
+win or lose. It might be that with the low, opinion he held of women
+he would think her reconciled to her lot; he would think this an
+overture, a step towards kinder treatment, one more proof of the
+inconstancy of the lower and the weaker sex, made to be men's
+playthings. And at that thought her eyes grew hot with rage. But if it
+were so, she must still put up with it. She must still put up with it!
+She had sent for him, and he was coming--he was at the door!
+
+He entered, and she breathed more freely. For once his face lacked the
+sneer, the look of smiling possession, which she had come to know and
+hate. It was grave, expectant, even suspicious; still harsh and dark,
+akin, as she now observed, to the low-browed, furrowed face of the
+rider who had summoned him. But the offensive look was gone, and she
+could breathe.
+
+He closed the door behind him, but he did not advance into the room.
+"At your pleasure, Mademoiselle?" he said simply. "You sent for me, I
+think."
+
+She was on her feet, standing before him with something of the
+submissiveness of Roxana before her conqueror. "I did," she said; and
+stopped at that, her hand to her side as if she could not continue.
+But presently in a low voice, "I have heard," she went on, "what you
+said, Monsieur, after I lost consciousness."
+
+"Yes?" he said; and was silent. Nor did he lose his watchful look.
+
+"I am obliged to you for your thought of me," she continued in a faint
+voice, "and I shall be still further obliged--I speak to you thus
+quickly and thus early--if you will grant me a somewhat longer time."
+
+"Do you mean--if I will postpone our marriage?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur."
+
+"It is impossible!"
+
+"Do not say that," she cried, raising her voice impulsively. "I appeal
+to your generosity. And for a short, a very short, time only."
+
+"It is impossible," he answered quietly. "And for reasons,
+Mademoiselle. In the first place I can more easily protect my wife. In
+the second, I am even now summoned to the Louvre, and should be on my
+way thither. By to-morrow evening, unless I am mistaken in the
+business on which I am required, I shall be on my way to a distant
+province with royal letters. It is essential that our marriage take
+place before I go."
+
+"Why?" she asked stubbornly.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Why?" he repeated. "Can you ask,
+Mademoiselle, after the events of last night? Because, if you please,
+I do not wish to share the fate of M. de Tignonville. Because in these
+days life is uncertain, and death too certain. Because it was our turn
+last night, and it may be the turn of your friends--to-morrow night!"
+
+"Then some have escaped?" she cried.
+
+He smiled. "I am glad to find you so shrewd," he replied. "In an
+honest wife it is an excellent quality. Yes, Mademoiselle; one or
+two."
+
+"Who? Who? I pray you tell me."
+
+"M. de Montgomery, who slept beyond the river, for one; and the
+Vidame, and some with him. M. de Biron, whom I count a Huguenot, and
+who holds the Arsenal in the King's teeth, for another. And a few
+more. Enough, in a word, Mademoiselle, to keep us wakeful. It is
+impossible, therefore, for me to postpone the fulfilment of your
+promise."
+
+"A promise on conditions!" she retorted, in rage that she could win no
+more. And every line of her splendid figure, every tone of her voice
+flamed sudden, hot rebellion. "I do not go for nothing! You gave me
+the lives of all in the house, Monsieur! Of all!" she repeated with
+passion. "And all are not here! Before I marry you, you must show me
+M. de Tignonville alive and safe!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "He has taken himself off," he said. "It is
+naught to me what happens to him now."
+
+"It is all to me!" she retorted.
+
+At that he glared at her, the veins of his forehead swelling suddenly.
+But after a seeming struggle with himself he put the insult by,
+perhaps for future reckoning and account. "I did what I could," he
+said sullenly. "Had I willed it he had died there and then in the room
+below. I gave him his life. If he has risked it anew and lost it, it
+is naught to me."
+
+"It was his life you gave me," she repeated stubbornly. "His life--and
+the others. But that is not all," she continued; "you promised me a
+minister."
+
+He nodded, smiling sourly to himself, as if this confirmed a suspicion
+he had entertained. "Or a priest," he said.
+
+"No, a minister."
+
+"If one could be obtained. If not, a priest."
+
+"No, it was to be at my will; and I will a minister! I will a
+minister!" she cried passionately. "Show me M. Tignonville alive, and
+bring me a minister of my faith, and I will keep my promise, M. de
+Tavannes. Have no fear of that. But otherwise, I will not."
+
+"You will not?" he cried. "You will not?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"You will not marry me?"
+
+"No!"
+
+The moment she had said it fear seized her, and she could have fled
+from him, screaming. The flash of his eyes, the sudden passion of his
+face, burned themselves into her memory. She thought for a second that
+he would spring on her and strike her down. Yet though the women
+behind her held their breath, she faced him, and did not quail; and to
+that, she fancied, she owed it that he controlled himself. "You will
+not?" he repeated, as if he could not understand such resistance to
+his will--as if he could not credit his ears. "You will not?" But
+after that, when he had said it three times, he laughed; a laugh,
+however, with a snarl in it that chilled her blood.
+
+"You bargain, do you?" he said. "You will have the last tittle of the
+price, will you? And have thought of this and that to put me off, and
+to gain time until your lover, who is all to you, come to save you?
+Oh, clever girl! clever! But have you thought where you stand--woman?
+Do you know that if I gave the word to my people they would treat you
+as the commonest baggage that tramps the Froidmantel? Do you know that
+it rests with me to save you, or to throw you to the wolves whose
+ravening you hear?" And he pointed to the window. "Minister? Priest?"
+he continued. "_Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, I stand astonished at my
+moderation. You chatter to me of ministers and priests, and the one or
+the other, when it might be neither! When you are as much and as
+hopelessly in my power to-day as the wench in my kitchen! You! You
+flout me, and make terms with me! You!"
+
+And he came so near her with his dark harsh face, his tone rose so
+menacing on the last word, that her nerves, shattered before, gave
+way, and, unable to control herself, she flinched with a low cry,
+thinking he would strike her.
+
+He did not follow, nor move to follow; but he laughed a low laugh of
+content. And his eyes devoured her. "Ho! ho!" he said. "We are not so
+brave as we pretend to be, it seems. And yet you dared to chaffer with
+me? You thought to thwart me--Tavannes! _Mon Dieu_, Mademoiselle, to
+what did you trust? To what did you trust? Ay, and to what do you
+trust?"
+
+She knew that by the movement, which fear had forced from her, she had
+jeopardised everything. That she stood to lose all and more than all
+which she had thought to win by a bold front. A woman less brave, of a
+spirit less firm, would have given up the contest, and have been glad
+to escape so. But this woman, though her bloodless face showed that
+she knew what cause she had for fear, and though her heart was,
+indeed, sick with sheer terror, held her ground at the point to which
+she had retreated. She played her last card. "To what do I trust?" she
+muttered with trembling lips.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle," he answered, between his teeth. "To what do you
+trust--that you play with Tavannes?"
+
+"To his honour, Monsieur," she answered faintly. "And to your
+promise."
+
+He looked at her with his mocking smile. "And yet," he sneered, "you
+thought a moment ago that I was going to strike you. You thought that
+I should beat you! And now it is my honour and my promise! Oh, clever,
+clever, Mademoiselle! 'Tis so that women make fools of men. I knew
+that something of this kind was on foot when you sent for me, for I
+know women and their ways. But, let me tell you, it is an ill time to
+speak of honour when the streets are red! And of promises when the
+King's word is 'No faith with a heretic!'"
+
+"Yet you will keep yours," she said bravely.
+
+He did not answer at once, and hope which was almost dead in her
+breast began to recover; nay, presently sprang up erect. For the man
+hesitated, it was evident; he brooded with a puckered brow and gloomy
+eyes; an observer might have fancied that he traced pain as well as
+doubt in his face. At last: "There is a thing," he said slowly and
+with a sort of glare at her, "which, it may be, you have not reckoned.
+You press me now, and will stand on your terms and your conditions,
+your _ifs_ and your _unlesses!_ You will have the most from me, and
+the bargain and a little beside the bargain! But I would have you
+think if you are wise. Bethink you how it will be between us when you
+are my wife--if you press me so now, Mademoiselle. How will it sweeten
+things then? How will it soften them? And to what, I pray you, will
+you trust for fair treatment then, if you will be so against me now?"
+
+She shuddered. "To the mercy of my husband," she said in a low voice.
+And her chin sank on her breast.
+
+"You will be content to trust to that?" he answered grimly. And his
+tone and the lifting of his brow promised little clemency. "Bethink
+you! 'Tis your rights now, and your terms, Mademoiselle! And then it
+will be only my mercy--Madame."
+
+"I am content," she muttered faintly.
+
+"And the Lord have mercy on my soul, is what you would add," he
+retorted, "so much trust have you in my mercy! And you are right! You
+are right, since you have played this trick on me. But as you will. If
+you will have it so, have it so! You shall stand on your conditions
+now; you shall have your pennyweight and full advantage, and the
+rigour of the pact. But afterwards--afterwards, Madame de
+Tavannes----"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, for at the first word which granted
+her petition, Mademoiselle had sunk down on the low wooden window-seat
+beside which she stood, and, cowering into its farthest corner, her
+face hidden on her arms, had burst into violent weeping. Her hair,
+hastily knotted up in the hurry of the previous night, hung in a thick
+plait to the curve of her waist; the nape of her neck showed beside it
+milk-white. The man stood awhile contemplating her in silence, his
+gloomy eyes watching the pitiful movement of her shoulders, the
+convulsive heaving of her figure. But he did not offer to touch her,
+and at length he turned about. First one and then the other of her
+women quailed and shrank under his gaze; he seemed about to add
+something. But he did not speak. The sentence he had left unfinished,
+the long look he bent on the weeping girl as he turned from her, spoke
+more eloquently of the future than a score of orations.
+
+"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes!_"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                      IN THE HALL OF THE LOUVRE.
+
+
+It is a strange thing that love--or passion, if the sudden fancy for
+Mademoiselle which had seized Count Hannibal be deemed unworthy of the
+higher name--should so entirely possess the souls of those who harbour
+it that the greatest events and the most astounding catastrophes, even
+measures which set their mark for all time on a nation, are to them of
+importance only so far as they affect the pursuit of the fair one.
+
+As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes,
+beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires
+of his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or
+wonder. He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughterhouse, where for a
+week a masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors
+and the close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn
+garments, broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps. But he saw all with
+eyes which in all and everywhere, among living and dead, sought only
+Tignonville; Tignonville first, and next a heretic minister, with
+enough of life in him to do his office.
+
+Probably it was to this that one man hunted through Paris owed his
+escape that day. He sprang from a narrow passage full in Tavannes'
+view, and, hair on end, his eyes starting from his head, ran
+blindly--as a hare will run when chased--along the street to meet
+Count Hannibal's company. The man's face was wet with the dews of
+death, his lungs seemed cracking, his breath hissed from him as he
+ran. His pursuers were hard on him, and, seeing him headed by Count
+Hannibal's party, yelled in triumph, holding him for dead. And dead he
+would have been within thirty seconds had Tavannes played his part.
+But his thoughts were elsewhere. Either he took the poor wretch for
+Tignonville, or for the minister on whom his mind was running; at any
+rate he suffered him to slip under the belly of his horse; then, to
+make matters worse, he wheeled to follow him in so untimely and clumsy
+a fashion that his horse blocked the way and stopped the pursuers in
+their tracks. The quarry slipped into an alley and vanished. The
+hunters stood and blasphemed, and even for a moment seemed inclined to
+resent the mistake. But Tavannes smiled; a broader smile lightened the
+faces of the six iron-clad men behind him; and for some reason the
+gang of ruffians thought better of it and slunk aside.
+
+There are hard men, who feel scorn of the things which in the breasts
+of others excite pity. Tavannes' lip curled as he rode on through the
+streets, looking this way and that, and seeing what a King twenty-two
+years old had made of his capital. His lip curled most of all when he
+came, passing between the two tennis-courts, to the east gate of the
+Louvre, and found the entrance locked and guarded, and all
+communication between city and palace cut off. Such a proof of
+unkingly panic, in a crisis wrought by the King himself, astonished
+him less a few minutes later, when, the keys having been brought and
+the door opened, he entered the courtyard of the fortress.
+
+Within and about the door of the gatehouse some three-score archers
+and arquebusiers stood to their arms; not in array, but in disorderly
+groups, from which the babble of voices, of feverish laughter, and
+strained jests rose without ceasing. The westering sun, of which the
+beams just topped the farther side of the quadrangle, fell slantwise
+on their armour, and heightened their exaggerated and restless
+movements. To a calm eye they seemed like men acting in a nightmare.
+Their fitful talk and disjointed gestures, their sweating brows and
+damp hair, no less than the sullen, brooding silence of one here and
+there, bespoke the abnormal and the terrible. There were livid faces
+among them, and twitching cheeks, and some who swallowed much; and
+some again who bared their crimson arms and bragged insanely of the
+part they had played. But perhaps the most striking thing was the
+thirst, the desire, the demand for news, and for fresh excitement. In
+the space of time it took him to pass through them, Count Hannibal
+heard a dozen rumours of what was passing in the city; that Montgomery
+and the gentlemen who had slept beyond the river had escaped on
+horseback in their shirts; that Guise had been shot in the pursuit;
+that he had captured the Vidame de Chartres and all the fugitives;
+that he had never left the city; that he was even then entering by the
+Porte de Bucy. Again that Biron had surrendered the Arsenal, that he
+had threatened to fire on the city, that he was dead, that with the
+Huguenots who had escaped he was marching on the Louvre, that----
+
+And then Tavannes passed out of the blinding sunshine, and out of
+earshot of their babble, and had plain in his sight across the
+quadrangle, the new façade, Italian, graceful, of the Renaissance;
+which rose in smiling contrast with the three dark Gothic sides that
+now, the central tower removed, frowned unimpeded at one another. But
+what was this which lay along the foot of the new Italian wall? This,
+round which some stood, gazing curiously, while others strewed fresh
+sand about it, or after long downward-looking glanced up to answer the
+question of a person at a window?
+
+Death; and over death--death in its most cruel aspect--a cloud of
+buzzing, whirling flies, and the smell, never to be forgotten, of much
+spilled blood. From a doorway hard by came shrill bursts of hysterical
+laughter; and with the laughter plumped out, even as Tavannes crossed
+the court, a young girl, thrust forth it seemed by her fellows, for
+she turned about and struggled as she came. Once outside she hung
+back, giggling and protesting, half willing, half unwilling; and
+meeting Tavannes' eye thrust her way in again with a whirl of her
+petticoats, and a shriek. But before he had taken four paces she was
+out again.
+
+He paused to see who she was, and his thoughts involuntarily went back
+to the woman he had left weeping in the upper room. Then he turned
+about again and stood to count the dead. He identified Piles,
+identified Pardaillan, identified Soubise--whose corpse the murderers
+had robbed of the last rag--and Touchet and St. Galais. He made his
+reckoning with an unmoved face, and with the same face stopped and
+stared, and moved from one to another; had he not seen the slaughter
+about "_le petit home_" at Jarnac, and the dead of three pitched
+fields? But when a bystander, smirking obsequiously, passed him a jest
+on Soubise, and with his finger pointed the jest, he had the same hard
+unmoved face for the gibe as for the dead. And the jester shrank away,
+abashed and perplexed by his stare and his reticence.
+
+Half way up the staircase to the great gallery or guardroom above,
+Count Hannibal found his brother, the Marshal, huddled together in
+drunken slumber on a seat in a recess. In the gallery to which he
+passed on without awakening him, a crowd of courtiers and ladies, with
+arquebusiers and captains of the quarters, walked to and fro, talking
+in whispers; or peeped over shoulders towards the inner end of the
+hall, where the querulous voice of the King rose now and again above
+the hum. As Tavannes moved that way, Nançay, in the act of passing
+out, booted and armed for the road, met him and almost jostled him.
+
+"Ah, well met, M. le Comte," he sneered, with as much hostility as he
+dared betray. "The King has asked for you twice."
+
+"I am going to him. And you? Whither in such a hurry, M. Nançay?"
+
+"To Chatillon."
+
+"On pleasant business?"
+
+"Enough that it is on the King's!" Nançay replied with unexpected
+temper. "I hope that you may find yours as pleasant!" he added with a
+grin. And he went on.
+
+The gleam of malice in the man's eye warned Tavannes to pause. He
+looked round for someone who might be in the secret, saw the Provost
+of the Merchants and approached him. "What's amiss, M. le Charron?" he
+asked. "Is not the affair going as it should?"
+
+"'Tis about the Arsenal, M. le Comte," the Provost answered busily.
+"M. de Biron is harbouring the vermin there. He has lowered the
+portcullis and pointed his culverins over the gate and will not yield
+it or listen to reason. The King would bring him to terms, but no one
+will venture himself inside with the message. Rats in a trap, you
+know, bite hard, and care little whom they bite."
+
+"I begin to understand."
+
+"Precisely, M. le Comte. His Majesty would have sent M. de Nançay. But
+he elected to go to Chatillon, to seize the young brood there. The
+Admiral's children, you comprehend."
+
+"Whose teeth are not yet grown! He was wise."
+
+"To be sure, M. de Tavannes, to be sure. But the King was annoyed, and
+on top of that came a priest with complaints, and if I may make so
+bold as to advise you, you will not----"
+
+But Tavannes fancied that he had caught the gist of the difficulty,
+and with a nod he moved on; and so he missed the point of the warning
+which the other had it in his mind to give. A moment and he reached
+the inner circle, and there halted, disconcerted, nay, taken aback.
+For as soon as he showed his face, the King, who was pacing to and fro
+like a caged beast, before a table at which three clerks knelt on
+cushions, espied him and stood still. With a glare of something like
+madness in his eyes, Charles raised his hand with a shaking finger and
+singled him out.
+
+"So, by G--d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy.
+And he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him.
+"You are there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I
+tell you, it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it
+is said everywhere Guise does all and serves God, and we follow
+because we must! It's you, and such as you, are stumbling-blocks to
+our good folk of Paris! Are you traitor, sirrah?" he continued with
+passion, "or are you of our brother Alençon's opinions, that you
+traverse our orders to the damnation of your soul and our discredit?
+Are you traitor? Or are you heretic? Or what are you? God in heaven,
+will you answer me, man, or shall I send you where you will find your
+tongue?"
+
+"I know not of what your Majesty accuses me," Count Hannibal answered,
+with a scarcely perceptible shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"I? 'Tis not I," the King retorted. His hair hung damp on his brow,
+and he dried his hands continually; while his gestures had the
+ill-measured and eccentric violence of an epileptic. "Here, you!
+Speak, father, and confound him!"
+
+Then Tavannes discovered on the farther side of the circle the priest
+whom his brother had ridden down that morning. Father Pezelay's pale
+hatchet-face gleamed paler than ordinary; and a great bandage hid one
+temple and part of his face. But, below the bandage, the flame of his
+eyes was not lessened, nor the venom of his tongue. To the King he had
+come--for no other would deal with his violent opponent; to the King's
+presence! and, as he prepared to blast his adversary, now his chance
+was come, his long lean frame, in its narrow black cassock, seemed to
+grow longer, leaner, more baleful, more snake-like. He stood there a
+fitting representative of the dark fanaticism of Paris, which Charles
+and his successor--the last of a doomed line--alternately used as tool
+or feared as master; and to which the most debased and the most
+immoral of courts paid, in its sober hours, a vile and slavish homage.
+Even in the midst of the drunken, shameless courtiers--who stood, if
+they stood for anything, for that other influence of the day, the
+Renaissance--he was to be reckoned with; and Count Hannibal knew it.
+He knew that in the eyes not of Charles only, but of nine out of ten
+who listened to him, a priest was more sacred than a virgin, and a
+tonsure than all the virtues of spotless innocence.
+
+"Shall the King give with one hand and withdraw with the other?" the
+priest began, in a voice hoarse yet strident, a voice borne high above
+the crowd on the wings of passion. "Shall he spare of the best of the
+men and the maidens whom God hath doomed, whom the Church hath
+devoted, whom the King hath given? Is the King's hand shortened or his
+word annulled that a man does as he forbiddeth and leaves undone what
+he commandeth? Is God mocked? Woe, woe unto you," he continued,
+turning swiftly, arms uplifted, towards Tavannes, "who please yourself
+with the red and white of their maidens and take of the best of the
+spoil, sparing where the King's word is 'Spare not!' Who strike at
+Holy Church with the sword! Who----"
+
+"Answer, sirrah!" Charles cried, spurning the floor in his fury. He
+could not listen long to any man. "Is it so? Is it so? Do you do these
+things?"
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders and was about to answer, when a
+thick, drunken voice rose from the crowd behind him. "Is it what? Eh!
+Is it what?" it droned. And a figure with bloodshot eyes, disordered
+beard, and rich clothes awry, forced its way through the obsequious
+circle. It was Marshal Tavannes. "Eh, what? You'd beard the King,
+would you?" he hiccoughed truculently, his eyes on Father Pezelay, his
+hand on his sword. "Were you a priest ten times--
+
+"Silence!" Charles cried, almost foaming with rage at this fresh
+interruption. "It's not he, fool! 'Tis your pestilent brother."
+
+"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal answered with a
+menacing gesture. He was sober enough, it appeared, to hear what was
+said, but not to comprehend its drift; and this caused a titter, which
+immediately excited his rage. He turned and seized the nearest laugher
+by the ear. "Insolent!" he cried. "I will teach you to laugh when the
+King speaks! Puppy! Who laughs at his Majesty or touches my brother
+has to do with Tavannes!"
+
+The King, in a rage that almost deprived him of speech, stamped the
+floor twice. "Idiot!" he cried. "Imbecile! Let the man go! 'Tis not
+he! 'Tis your heretic brother, I tell you! By all the Saints! By the
+body of----" and he poured forth a flood of oaths. "Will you listen to
+me and be silent! Will you--your brother----"
+
+"If he be not your Majesty's servant, I will kill him with this
+sword!" the irrepressible Marshal struck in. "As I have killed ten
+to-day! Ten!" And, staggering back, he only saved himself from falling
+by clutching Chicot about the neck.
+
+"Steady, my pretty Maréchale!" the jester cried, chucking him under
+the chin with one hand, while with some difficulty he supported him
+with the other--for he, too, was far from sober--
+
+
+             "Pretty Margot, toy with me,
+              Maiden bashful----"
+
+
+"Silence!" Charles cried, darting forth his long arms in a fury of
+impatience. "God, have I killed every man of sense? Are you all gone
+mad? Silence! Do you hear? Silence! And let me hear what he has to
+say," with a movement towards Count Hannibal. "And look you, sirrah,"
+he continued with a curse, "see that it be to the purpose!"
+
+"If it be a question of your Majesty's service," Tavannes answered.
+"And obedience to your Majesty's orders, I am deeper in it than he who
+stands there!" with a sign towards the priest. "I give my word for
+that. And I will prove it."
+
+"How, sir?" Charles cried. "How, how, how? How will you prove it?"
+
+"By doing for you, sire, what he will not do!" Tavannes answered
+scornfully. "Let him stand out, and if he will serve his Church as I
+will serve my King----
+
+"Blaspheme not!" cried the priest.
+
+"Chatter not!" Tavannes retorted hardily, "but do! Better is he," he
+continued, "who takes a city than he who slays women! Nay, sire," he
+went on hurriedly, seeing the King start, "be not angry, but hear me!
+You would send to Biron, to the Arsenal? You seek a messenger, sire?
+Then let the good father be the man. Let him take your Majesty's will
+to Biron, and let him see the Grand Master face to face, and bring him
+to reason. Or, if he will not, I will! Let that be the test!"
+
+"Ay, ay!" cried Marshal de Tavannes, "you say well, brother! Let him!"
+
+"And if he will not, I will!" Tavannes repeated. "Let that be the
+test, sire."
+
+The King wheeled suddenly to Father Pezelay.
+
+"You hear, father?" he said. "What say you!"
+
+The priest's face grew sallow, and more sallow. He knew that the walls
+of the Arsenal sheltered men whose hands no convention and no order of
+Biron's would keep from his throat, were the grim gate and frowning
+culverins once passed; men who had seen their women and children,
+their wives and sisters immolated at his word, and now asked naught
+but to stand face to face and eye to eye with him and tear him limb
+from limb before they died! The challenge, therefore, was one-sided
+and unfair; but for that very reason it shook him. The astuteness of
+the man who, taken by surprise, had conceived this snare filled him
+with dread. He dared not accept, and he scarcely dared to refuse the
+offer. And meantime the eyes of the courtiers, who grinned in their
+beards, were on him. At length he spoke, but it was in a voice which
+had lost its boldness and assurance.
+
+"It is not for me to clear myself," he cried, shrill and violent, "but
+for those who are accused, for those who have belied the King's word,
+and set at naught his Christian orders. For you, Count Hannibal,
+heretic, or no better than heretic, it is easy to say 'I go.' For you
+go but to your own, and your own will receive you!"
+
+"Then you will not go?" with a jeer.
+
+"At your command? No!" the priest shrieked with passion. "His Majesty
+knows whether I serve him."
+
+"I know," Charles cried, stamping his foot in a fury, "that you all
+serve me when it pleases you! That you are all sticks of the same
+faggot, wood of the same bundle, hell-babes in your own business, and
+sluggards in mine! You kill to-day and you'll lay it to me to-morrow!
+Ay, you will! you will!" he repeated frantically, and drove home the
+asseveration with a fearful oath. "The dead are as good servants as
+you! Foucauld was better! Foucauld? Foucauld? Ah, my God!"
+
+And abruptly in presence of them all, with the sacred name, which he
+so often defiled, on his lips, Charles turned, and covering his face
+burst into childish weeping; while a great silence fell on all--on
+Bussy with the blood of his cousin Resnel on his point, on Fervacques,
+the betrayer of his friend, on Chicot, the slayer of his rival, on
+Cocconnas the cruel--on men with hands unwashed from the slaughter,
+and on the shameless women who lined the walls; on all who used this
+sobbing man for their stepping-stone, and, to attain their ends and
+gain their purposes, trampled his dull soul in blood and mire.
+
+One looked at another in consternation. Fear grew in eyes that a
+moment before were bold; cheeks turned pale that a moment before were
+hectic. If he changed as rapidly as this, if so little dependence
+could be placed on his moods or his resolutions, who was safe? Whose
+turn might it not be to-morrow? Or who might not be held accountable
+for the deeds done this day? Many, from whom remorse had seemed far
+distant a while before, shuddered and glanced behind them. It was as
+if the dead who lay stark without the doors, ay, and the countless
+dead of Paris, with whose shrieks the air was laden, had flocked in
+shadowy shape into the hall; and there, standing beside their
+murderers, had whispered with their cold breath in the living ears, "A
+reckoning! A reckoning! As I am, thou shalt be!"
+
+It was Count Hannibal who broke the spell and the silence, and with
+his hand on his brother's shoulder stood forward. "Nay, sire," he
+cried, in a voice which rang defiant in the roof, and seemed to
+challenge alike the living and the dead, "if all deny the deed, yet
+will not I! What we have done we have done! So be it! The dead are
+dead! So be it! For the rest, your Majesty has still one servant who
+will do your will, one soldier whose life is at your disposition! I
+have said I will go, and I go, sire. And you, churchman," he
+continued, turning in bitter scorn to the priest, "do you go too--to
+church! To church, shaveling! Go, watch and pray for us! Fast and flog
+for us! Whip those shoulders, whip them till the blood runs down! For
+it is all, it seems, you will do for your King!"
+
+Charles turned. "Silence, railer!" he said in a broken voice. "Sow no
+more troubles! Already," a shudder shook his tall ungainly form, "I
+see blood, blood, blood everywhere! Blood! Ah, God, shall I from this
+time see anything else? But there is no turning back. There is no
+undoing. So, do you go to Biron. And do you," he went on, sullenly
+addressing Marshal Tavannes, "take him and tell him what it is needful
+he should know."
+
+"'Tis done, sire!" the Marshal cried with a hiccough. "Come, brother!"
+
+But when the two, the courtiers making quick way for them, had passed
+down the hall to the door, the Marshal tapped Hannibal's sleeve. "It
+was touch and go," he muttered; it was plain he had been more sober
+than he seemed. "Mind you, it does not do to thwart our little master
+in his fits! Remember that another time, or worse will come of it,
+brother. As it is, you came out of it finely and tripped that black
+devil's heels to a marvel! But you won't be so mad as to go to Biron?"
+
+"Yes," Count Hannibal answered coldly. "I shall go."
+
+"Better not! Better not!" the Marshal answered. "'Twill be easier to
+go in than to come out--with a whole throat! Have you taken wild cats
+in the hollow of a tree? The young first, and then the she-cat? Well,
+it will be that! Take my advice, brother. Have after Montgomery, if
+you please, ride with Nançay to Chatillon--he is mounting now--go
+where you please out of Paris, but don't go there! Biron hates us,
+hates me. And for the King, if he do not see you for a few days,
+'twill blow over in a week."
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "I shall go."
+
+The Marshal stared a moment. "Morbleu!" he said, "why? 'Tis not to
+please the King, I know. What do you think to find there, brother?"
+
+"A minister," Hannibal answered gently. "I want one with life in him,
+and they are scarce in the open. So I must to covert after him." And,
+twitching his sword-belt a little nearer to his hand, he passed across
+the court to the gate, and to his horses. The Marshal went back
+laughing, and, slapping his thigh as he entered the hall, jostled by
+accident a gentleman who was passing out.
+
+"What is it?" the Gascon cried hotly; for it was Chicot he had
+jostled.
+
+"Who touches my brother touches Tavannes!" the Marshal hiccoughed.
+And, smiting his thigh anew, he went off into another fit of laughter.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                              DIPLOMACY.
+
+
+Where the old wall of Paris, of which no vestige remains, ran down on
+the east to the north bank of the river, the space in the angle
+between the Seine and the ramparts beyond the Rue St. Pol wore at this
+date an aspect typical of the troubles of the time. Along the
+waterside the gloomy old Palace of St. Pol, once the residence of the
+mad King Charles the Sixth--and his wife, the abandoned Isabeau de
+Bavière--sprawled its maze of mouldering courts and ruined galleries,
+a dreary monument of the Gothic days which were passing from France.
+Its spacious curtilage and dark pleasaunces covered all the ground
+between the river and the Rue St. Antoine; and north of this, under
+the shadow of the eight great towers of the Bastille, which looked,
+four outward to check the stranger, four inward to bridle the town, a
+second palace, beginning where St. Pol ended, carried the realm of
+decay to the city wall.
+
+This second palace was the Hôtel des Tournelles, a fantastic medley of
+turrets, spires, and gables, that equally with its neighbour recalled
+the days of the English domination; it had been the abode of the
+Regent Bedford. From his time it had remained for a hundred years the
+town residence of the kings of France; but the death of Henry II.,
+slain in its lists by the lance of the same Montgomery who was this
+day fleeing for his life before Guise, had given his widow a distaste
+for it. Catherine de Médicis, her sons, and the Court had abandoned
+it; already its gardens lay a tangled wilderness, its roofs let in the
+rain, rats played where kings had slept; and in "our palace of the
+Tournelles" reigned only silence and decay. Unless, indeed, as was
+whispered abroad, the grim shade of the eleventh Louis sometimes
+walked in its desolate precincts.
+
+In the innermost angle between the ramparts and the river, shut off
+from the rest of Paris by the decaying courts and enceintes of these
+forsaken palaces, stood the Arsenal. Destroyed in great part by the
+explosion of a powder-mill a few years earlier, it was in the main
+new; and by reason of its river frontage, which terminated at the
+ruined tower of Billy, and its proximity to the Bastille, it was
+esteemed one of the keys of Paris. It was the appanage of the Master
+of the Ordnance, and within its walls M. de Biron, a Huguenot in
+politics, if not in creed, who held the office at this time, had
+secured himself on the first alarm. During the day he had admitted a
+number of refugees, whose courage or good luck had led them to his
+gate; and as night fell--on such a carnage as the hapless city had not
+beheld since the great slaughter of the Armagnacs, one hundred and
+fifty-four years earlier--the glow of his matches through the dusk,
+and the sullen tramp of his watchmen as they paced the walls,
+indicated that there was still one place in Paris where the King's
+will did not run.
+
+In comparison of the disorder which prevailed in the city, a deadly
+quiet reigned here; a stillness so chill that a timid man must have
+stood and hesitated to approach. But a stranger who about nightfall
+rode down the street towards the entrance, a single footman running at
+his stirrup, only nodded a stern approval of the preparations. As he
+drew nearer he cast an attentive eye this way and that; nor stayed
+until a hoarse challenge brought him up when he had come within six
+horses' lengths of the Arsenal gate. He reined up then, and raising
+his voice, asked in clear tones for M. de Biron.
+
+"Go," he continued boldly, "tell the Grand Master that one from the
+King is here, and would speak with him."
+
+"From the King of France?" the officer on the gate asked.
+
+"Surely! Is there more than one King in France?"
+
+A curse and a bitter cry of "King? King Herod!" were followed by a
+muttered discussion that, in the ears of one of the two who waited in
+the gloom below, boded little good. The two could descry figures
+moving to and fro before the faint red light of the smouldering
+matches; and presently a man on the gate kindled a torch, and held it
+so as to fling its light downward. The stranger's attendant cowered
+behind the horse. "Have a care, my lord!" he whispered. "They are
+aiming at us!"
+
+If so the rider's bold front and unmoved demeanour gave them pause.
+Presently, "I will send for the Grand Master" the man who had spoken
+before announced. "In whose name, monsieur?"
+
+"No matter," the stranger answered. "Say, one from the King."
+
+"You are alone?"
+
+"I shall enter alone."
+
+The assurance seemed to be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!"
+and after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the
+portcullis creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch.
+The horseman waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid
+to the ground, threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked
+across. In an instant he left behind him the dark street, the river,
+and the sounds of outrage, which the night breeze bore from the
+farther bank, and found himself within the vaulted gateway, in a
+bright glare of light, the centre of a ring of gleaming eyes and angry
+faces.
+
+The light blinded him for a few seconds; but the guards, on their
+side, were in no better case. For the stranger was masked; and in
+their ignorance who it was looked at them through the slits in the
+black velvet they stared, disconcerted, and at a loss. There were some
+there with naked weapons in their hands who would have struck him
+through had they known who he was; and more who would have stood aside
+while the deed was done. But the uncertainty--that and the masked
+man's tone paralysed them. For they reflected that he might be any
+one. Condé, indeed, stood too small, but Navarre, if he lived, might
+fill that cloak; or Guise, or Anjou, or the King himself. And while
+some would not have scrupled to strike the blood royal, more would
+have been quick to protect and avenge it. And so before the dark
+uncertainty of the mask, before the riddle of the smiling eyes which
+glittered through the slits, they stared irresolute; until a hand, the
+hand of one bolder than his fellows, was raised to pluck away the
+screen.
+
+The unknown dealt the fellow a buffet with his fist. "Down, rascal!"
+he said hoarsely. "And you"--to the officer--"show me instantly to M.
+de Biron!"
+
+But the lieutenant, who stood in fear of his men, looked at him
+doubtfully. "Nay," he said, "not so fast!" And one of the others,
+taking the lead, cried, "No! We may have no need of M. de Biron. Your
+name, monsieur, first."
+
+With a quick movement the stranger gripped the officer's wrist. "Tell
+your master," he said, "that he who clasped his wrist _thus_ on the
+night of Pentecost is here, and would speak with him! And say, mark
+you, that I will come to him, not he to me!"
+
+The sign and the tone imposed upon the boldest. Two-thirds of the
+watch were Huguenots, who burned to avenge the blood of their fellows;
+and these, overriding their officer, had agreed to deal with the
+intruder, if a Papegot, without recourse to the Grand Master, whose
+moderation they dreaded. A knife-thrust in the ribs, and another body
+in the ditch--why not, when such things were done outside? But even
+these doubted now; and M. Peridol, the lieutenant, reading in the eyes
+of his men the suspicions which he had himself conceived, was only
+anxious to obey, if they would let him. So gravely was he impressed,
+indeed, by the bearing of the unknown that he turned when he had
+withdrawn, and came back to assure himself that the men meditated no
+harm in his absence; nor until he had exchanged a whisper with one of
+them would he leave them and go.
+
+While he was gone on his errand the envoy leaned against the wall of
+the gateway, and, with his chin sunk on his breast and his mind fallen
+into reverie, seemed unconscious of the dark glances of which he was
+the target. He remained in this position until the officer came back,
+followed by a man with a lantern. Their coming roused the unknown,
+who, invited to follow Peridol, traversed two courts without remark,
+and in the same silence entered a building in the extreme eastern
+corner of the enceinte abutting on the ruined Tour de Billy. Here, in
+an upper floor, the Governor of the Arsenal had established his
+temporary lodging.
+
+The chamber into which the stranger was introduced betrayed the haste
+in which it had been prepared for its occupant. Two silver lamps which
+hung from the beams of the unceiled roof shed light on a medley of
+arms and inlaid armour, of parchments, books, and steel caskets, which
+encumbered not the tables only, but the stools and chests that, after
+the fashion of that day, stood formally along the arras. In the midst
+of the disorder, on the bare floor, walked the man who, more than any
+other, had been instrumental in drawing the Huguenots to Paris--and to
+their doom. It was not wonderful that the events of the day, the
+surprise and horror still rode his mind; nor that even he who passed
+for a model of stiffness and reticence betrayed for once the
+indignation which filled his breast. Until the officer had withdrawn
+and closed the door he did, indeed, keep silence; standing beside the
+table and eyeing his visitor with a lofty port and a stern glance. But
+the moment he was assured that they were alone he spoke.
+
+"Your Highness may unmask now," he said, making no effort to hide his
+contempt. "Yet were you well advised to take the precaution, since you
+had hardly come at me in safety without it. Had those who keep the
+gate seen you, I would not have answered for your Highness's life! The
+more shame," he continued vehemently, "on the deeds of this day which
+have compelled the brother of a King of France to hide his face in his
+own capital and in his own fortress. For I dare to say, Monsieur, what
+no other will say, now the Admiral is dead. You have brought back the
+days of the Armagnacs. You have brought bloody days and an evil name
+on France, and I pray God that you may not pay in your turn what you
+have exacted. But if you continue to be advised by M. de Guise, this I
+will say, Monsieur"--and his voice fell low and stern. "Burgundy slew
+Orleans, indeed; but he came in his turn to the Bridge of Montereau."
+
+"You take me for Monsieur?" the unknown asked. And it was plain that
+he smiled under his mask.
+
+Biron's face altered. "I take you," he answered sharply, "for him
+whose sign you sent me."
+
+"The wisest are sometimes astray," the other answered with a low
+laugh. And he took off his mask.
+
+The Grand Master started back, his eyes sparkling with anger. "M. de
+Tavannes?" he cried, and for a moment he was silent in sheer
+astonishment. Then, striking his hand on the table, "What means this
+trickery!" he asked.
+
+"It is of the simplest," Tavannes answered coolly. "And yet, as you
+just now said, I had hardly come at you without it. And I had to come
+at you. No, M. de Biron," he added quickly, as Biron in a rage laid
+his hand on a bell which stood beside him on the table, "you cannot
+that way undo what is done."
+
+"I can at least deliver you," the Grand Master answered, in heat, "to
+those who will deal with you as you have dealt with us and ours."
+
+"It will avail you nothing," Count Hannibal replied soberly. "For see
+here, Grand Master, I come from the King. If you are at war with him,
+and hold his fortress in his teeth, I am his ambassador and
+sacrosanct. If you are at peace with him and hold it at his will, I
+am his servant, and safe also."
+
+"At peace and safe?" Biron cried, his voice trembling with
+indignation. "And are those safe or at peace who came here trusting to
+_his_ word, who lay in his palace and slept in his beds? Where are
+they, and how have they fared, that you dare appeal to the law of
+nations, or he to the loyalty of Biron? And for you to beard me, whose
+brother to-day hounded the dogs of this vile city on the noblest in
+France, who have leagued yourself with a crew of foreigners to do a
+deed which will make our country stink in the nostrils of the world
+when we are dust! You, to come here and talk of peace and safety! M.
+de Tavannes"--and he struck his hand on the table--"you are a bold
+man. I know why the King had a will to send you, but I know not why
+you had the will to come."
+
+"That I will tell you later," Count Hannibal answered coolly. "For the
+King, first. My message is brief, M. de Biron. Have you a mind to hold
+the scales in France?"
+
+"Between?" Biron asked contemptuously.
+
+"Between the Lorrainers and the Huguenots."
+
+The Grand Master scowled fiercely. "I have played the go-between once
+too often," he growled.
+
+"It is no question of going between, it is a question of holding
+between," Tavannes answered coolly. "It is a question--but, in a word,
+have you a mind, M. de Biron, to be Governor of Rochelle? The King,
+having dealt the blow that has been struck to-day, looks to follow up
+severity, as a wise ruler should, with indulgence. And to quiet the
+minds of the Rochellois he would set over them a ruler at once
+acceptable to them--or war must come of it--and faithful to his
+Majesty. Such a man, M. de Biron, will in such a post be Master of the
+Kingdom; for he will hold the doors of Janus, and as he bridles his
+sea-dogs, or unchains them, there will be peace or war in France."
+
+"Is all that from the King's mouth?" Biron asked with sarcasm. But his
+passion had died down. He was grown thoughtful, suspicious; he eyed
+the other intently as if he would read his heart.
+
+"The offer is his, and the reflections are mine," Tavannes answered
+drily. "Let me add one more. The Admiral is dead. The King of Navarre
+and the Prince of Condé are prisoners. Who is now to balance the
+Italians and the Guises? The Grand Master--if he be wise and content
+to give the law to France from the citadel of Rochelle."
+
+Biron stared at the speaker in astonishment at his frankness. "You are
+a bold man," he cried at last. "But _timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_,"
+he continued bitterly. "You offer, sir, too much."
+
+"The offer is the King's."
+
+"And the conditions? The price?"
+
+"That you remain quiet, M. de Biron."
+
+"In the Arsenal?"
+
+"In the Arsenal. And do not too openly counteract the King's will.
+That is all."
+
+The Grand Master looked puzzled. "I will give up no one," he said. "No
+one! Let that be understood."
+
+"The King requires no one."
+
+A pause. Then, "Does M. de Guise know of the offer?" Biron inquired;
+and his eye grew bright. He hated the Guises and was hated by them. It
+was _there_ he was a Huguenot.
+
+"He has gone far to-day," Count Hannibal answered drily. "And if no
+worse come of it should be content. Madame Catherine knows of it."
+
+The Grand Master was aware that Marshal Tavannes depended on the
+Queen-mother; and he shrugged his shoulders. "Ay, 'tis like her
+policy," he muttered. "'Tis like her!" And pointing his guest to a
+cushioned chest which stood against the wall, he sat down in a chair
+beside the table and thought awhile, his brow wrinkled, his eyes
+dreaming. By-and-by he laughed sourly. "You have lighted the fire," he
+said, "and would fain I put it out."
+
+"We would have you hinder it spreading."
+
+"You have done the deed and are loth to pay the blood-money. That is
+it, is it?"
+
+"We prefer to pay it to M. de Biron," Count Hannibal answered civilly.
+
+Again the Grand Master was silent awhile. At length he looked up and
+fixed Tavannes with eyes keen as steel. "What is behind?" he growled.
+"Say, man, what is it? What is behind?"
+
+"If there be aught behind, I do not know it," Tavannes answered
+steadfastly.
+
+M. de Biron relaxed the fixity of his gaze. "But you said that you had
+an object?" he returned.
+
+"I had--in being the bearer of the message."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"My object? To learn two things."
+
+"The first, if it please you?" The Grand Master's chin stuck out a
+little, as he spoke.
+
+"Have you in the Arsenal a M. de Tignonville, a gentleman of Poitou?"
+
+"I have not," Biron answered curtly. "The second?"
+
+"Have you here a Huguenot minister?"
+
+"I have not. And if I had I should not give him up," he added firmly.
+
+Tavannes shrugged his shoulders. "I have a use for one," he said
+carelessly. "But it need not harm him."
+
+"For what, then, do you need him?"
+
+"To marry me."
+
+The other stared. "But you are a Catholic," he said.
+
+"But she is a Huguenot," Tavannes answered.
+
+The Grand Master did not attempt to hide his astonishment. "And she
+sticks on that?" he exclaimed. "To-day?"
+
+"She sticks on that. To-day."
+
+"To-day? _Nom de Dieu!_ To-day! Well," brushing the matter aside after
+a pause of bewilderment, "any way, I cannot help her. I have no
+minister here. If there be aught else I can do for her----"
+
+"Nothing, I thank you," Tavannes answered. "Then it only remains for
+me to take your answer to the King?" And he rose politely, and taking
+his mask from the table prepared to assume it.
+
+M. de Biron gazed at him a moment without speaking, as if he pondered
+on the answer he should give. At length he nodded, and rang the bell
+which stood beside him.
+
+"The mask!" he muttered in a low voice as footsteps sounded without.
+And, obedient to the hint, Tavannes disguised himself. A second later
+the officer who had introduced him opened the door and entered.
+
+"Peridol," M. de Biron said--he had risen to his feet--"I have
+received a message which needs confirmation; and to obtain this I must
+leave the Arsenal. I am going to the house--you will remember this--of
+Marshal Tavannes, who will be responsible for my person; in the
+meantime this gentleman will remain under strict guard in the south
+chamber upstairs. You will treat him as a hostage, with all respect,
+and will allow him to preserve his _incognito_. But if I do not return
+by noon to-morrow, you will deliver him to the men below, who will
+know how to deal with him."
+
+Count Hannibal made no attempt to interrupt him, nor did he betray the
+discomfiture which he undoubtedly felt. But as the Grand Master
+paused, "M. de Biron," he said, in a voice harsh and low, "you will
+answer to me for this!" And his eyes glittered through the slits in
+the mask.
+
+"Possibly, but not to-day or to-morrow!" Biron replied, shrugging his
+shoulders contemptuously. "Peridol! see the gentleman bestowed as I
+have ordered, and then return to me. Monsieur," with a bow, half
+courteous, half ironical, "let me commend to you the advantages of
+silence and your mask." And he waved his hand in the direction of the
+door.
+
+A moment Count Hannibal hesitated. He was in the heart of a hostile
+fortress where the resistance of a single man armed to the teeth must
+have been futile; and he was unarmed, save for a poniard.
+Nevertheless, for a moment the impulse to spring on Biron, and with
+the dagger at his throat to make his life the price of a safe passage,
+was strong. Then--for with the warp of a harsh and passionate
+character were interwrought an odd shrewdness and some things little
+suspected--he resigned himself. Bowing gravely, he turned with
+dignity, and in silence followed the officer from the room.
+
+Peridol had two men with lanterns in waiting at the door. From one of
+these the lieutenant took the light, and, with an air at once sullen
+and deferential, led the way up the stone staircase to the floor over
+that in which M. de Biron had his lodging. Tavannes followed; the two
+guards came last, carrying the second lantern. At the head of the
+staircase, whence a bare passage ran north and south, the procession
+turned right-handed, and, passing two doors, halted before the third
+and last, which faced them at the end of the passage. The lieutenant
+unlocked it with a key which he took from a hook beside the doorpost.
+Then, holding up his light, he invited his charge to enter.
+
+The room was not small, but it was low in the roof, and prison-like,
+it had bare walls and smoke-marks on the ceiling. The window, set in a
+deep recess, the floor of which rose a foot above that of the room,
+was unglazed; and through the gloomy orifice the night wind blew in,
+laden even on that August evening with the dank mist of the river
+flats. A table, two stools, and a truckle bed without straw or
+covering made up the furniture; but Peridol, after glancing round,
+ordered one of the men to fetch a truss of straw and the other to
+bring up a pitcher of wine. While they were gone Tavannes and he stood
+silently waiting, until, observing that the captive's eyes sought the
+window, the lieutenant laughed.
+
+"No bars?" he said. "No, monsieur, and no need of them. You will not
+go by that road, bars or no bars."
+
+"What is below?" Count Hannibal asked carelessly. "The river?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur," with a grin, "but not water. Mud, and six feet of it,
+soft as Christmas porridge, but not so sweet. I've known two puppies
+thrown in under this window that did not weigh more than a fat pullet
+apiece. One was gone before you could count fifty, and the other did
+not live thrice as long--nor would have lasted that time, but that it
+fell on the first and clung to it."
+
+Tavannes dismissed the matter with a shrug, and, drawing his cloak
+about him, set a stool against the wall and sat down. The men who
+brought in the wine and the bundle of straw were inquisitive, and
+would have loitered, scanning him stealthily; but Peridol hurried them
+away. The lieutenant himself stayed only to cast a glance round the
+room and to mutter that he would return when his lord returned; then,
+with a "Good night" which said more for his manners than his good
+will, he followed them out. A moment later the grating of the key in
+the lock and the sound of the bolts as they sped home told Tavannes
+that he was a prisoner.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                          TOO SHORT A SPOON.
+
+
+Count Hannibal remained seated, his chin sunk on his breast, until his
+ear assured him that the three men had descended the stairs to the
+floor below. Then he rose, and, taking the lantern from the table, on
+which Peridol had placed it, he went softly to the door, which, like
+the window, stood in a recess--in this case the prolongation of the
+passage. A brief scrutiny satisfied him that escape that way was
+impossible, and he turned, after a cursory glance at the floor and
+ceiling, to the dark, windy aperture which yawned at the end of the
+apartment. Placing the lantern on the table, and covering it with his
+cloak, he mounted the window recess, and, stepping to the unguarded
+edge, looked out.
+
+He knew, rather than saw, that Peridol had told the truth. The smell
+of the aguish flats which fringed that part of Paris rose strong in
+his nostrils. He guessed that the sluggish arm of the Seine which
+divided the Arsenal from the Île des Louviers crawled below; but the
+night was dark, and it was impossible to discern land from water. He
+fancied that he could trace the outline of the island--an uninhabited
+place, given up to wood piles; but the lights of the college quarter
+beyond it, which rose feebly twinkling, to the crown of St. Geneviève,
+confused his sight and rendered the nearer gloom more opaque. From
+that direction and from the Cité to his right came sounds which told
+of a city still heaving in its blood-stained sleep, and even in its
+dreams planning further excesses. Now a distant shot, and now a faint
+murmur on one of the bridges, or a far-off cry, raucous, sudden,
+curdled the blood. But even of what was passing under cover of the
+darkness, he could learn little; and after standing awhile with a hand
+on either side of the window he found the night air chill. He stepped
+back, and, descending to the floor, uncovered the lantern and set it
+on the table. His thoughts travelled back to the preparations he had
+made the night before with a view to securing Mademoiselle's person,
+and he considered, with a grim smile, how little he had foreseen that
+within twenty-four hours he would himself be a prisoner. Presently,
+finding his mask oppressive, he removed it, and, laying it on the
+table before him, sat scowling at the light.
+
+Biron had jockeyed him cleverly. Well, the worse for Armand de Gontaut
+de Biron if after this adventure the luck went against him! But in the
+meantime? In the meantime his fate was sealed if harm befell Biron.
+And what the King's real mind in Biron's case was, and what the
+Queen-Mother's, he could not say; just as it was impossible to predict
+how far, when they had the Grand Master at their mercy, they would
+resist the temptation to add him to the victims. If Biron placed
+himself at once in Marshal Tavannes' hands, all might be well. But if
+he ventured within the long arm of the Guises, or went directly to the
+Louvre, the fact that with the Grand Master's fate Count Hannibal's
+was bound up, would not weigh a straw. In such crises the great
+sacrificed the less great, the less great the small, without a
+scruple. And the Guises did not love Count Hannibal; he was not loved
+by many. Even the strength of his brother the Marshal stood rather in
+the favour of the King's heir, for whom he had won the battle of
+Jarnac, than intrinsically; and, durable in ordinary times, might snap
+in the clash of forces and interests which the desperate madness of
+this day had let loose on Paris.
+
+It was not the peril in which he stood, however--though, with the cold
+clear eye of the man who had often faced peril, he appreciated it to a
+nicety--that Count Hannibal found least bearable, but his enforced
+inactivity. He had thought to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm,
+and out of the danger of others to compact his own success. Instead he
+lay here, not only powerless to guide his destiny, which hung on the
+discretion of another, but unable to stretch forth a finger to further
+his plans.
+
+As he sat looking darkly at the lantern, his mind followed Biron and
+his riders through the midnight streets: along St. Antoine and La
+Verrerie, through the gloomy narrows of the Rue la Ferronerie, and so
+past the house in the Rue St. Honoré where Mademoiselle sat awaiting
+the morrow--sat awaiting Tignonville, the minister, the marriage!
+Doubtless there were still bands of plunderers roaming to and fro; at
+the barriers troops of archers stopping the suspected; at the windows
+pale faces gazing down; at the gates of the Temple, and of the walled
+enclosures which largely made up the city, strong guards set to
+prevent invasion. Biron would go with sufficient to secure himself;
+and unless he encountered with the bodyguard of Guise his passage
+would quiet the town. But was it so certain that _she_ was safe? He
+knew his men, and while he had been free he had not hesitated to leave
+her in their care. But now that he could not go, now that he could not
+raise a hand to help, the confidence which had not failed him in
+straits more dangerous grew weak. He pictured the things which might
+happen, at which, in his normal frame of mind, he would have laughed.
+Now they troubled him so that he started at a shadow, so that he
+quailed at a thought. He, who last night, when free to act, had timed
+his coming and her rescue to a minute! Who had rejoiced in the peril,
+since with the glamour of such things foolish women were taken! Who
+had not flinched when the crowd roared most fiercely for her blood!
+
+Why had he suffered himself to be trapped! Why indeed? And thrice in
+passion he paced the room. Long ago the famous Nostradamus had told
+him that he would live to be a king, but of the smallest kingdom in
+the world. "Every man is a king in his coffin," he had answered. "The
+grave is cold and your kingdom shall be warm," the wizard had
+rejoined. On which the courtiers had laughed, promising him a Moorish
+island and a black queen. And he had gibed with the rest, but secretly
+had taken note of the sovereign counties of France, their rulers and
+their heirs. Now he held the thought in horror, foreseeing no county,
+but the cage under the stifling tiles at Loches, in which Cardinal
+Balue and many another had worn out their hearts.
+
+He came to that thought not by way of his own peril, but of
+Mademoiselle's; which affected him in so novel a fashion that he
+wondered at his folly. At last, tired of watching the shadows which
+the draught set dancing on the wall, he drew his cloak about him and
+lay down on the straw. He had kept vigil the previous night, and in a
+few minutes, with a campaigner's ease, he was asleep.
+
+Midnight had struck. About two the light in the lantern burned low in
+the socket, and with a soft sputtering went out. For an hour after
+that the room lay still, silent, dark; then slowly the grey dawn, the
+greyer for the river mist which wrapped the neighbourhood in a clammy
+shroud, began to creep into the room and discover the vague shapes of
+things. Again an hour passed, and the sun was rising above Montreuil,
+and here and there the river began to shimmer through the fog. But in
+the room it was barely daylight when the sleeper awoke, and sat up,
+his face expectant. Something had roused him. He listened.
+
+His ear, and the habit of vigilance which a life of danger instils,
+had not deceived him. There were men moving in the passage; men who
+shuffled their feet impatiently. Had Biron returned! Or had aught
+happened to him, and were these men come to avenge him? Count Hannibal
+rose and stole across the boards to the door, and, setting his ear to
+it, listened.
+
+He listened while a man might count a hundred and fifty, counting
+slowly. Then, for the third part of a second, he turned his head, and
+his eyes travelled the room. He stooped again and listened more
+closely, scarcely breathing. There were voices as well as feet to be
+heard now; one voice--he thought it was Peridol's--which held on long,
+now low, now rising into violence. Others were audible at intervals,
+but only in a growl or a bitter exclamation, that told of minds made
+up and hands which would not be restrained. He caught his own name,
+Tavannes--the mask was useless then! And once a noisy movement which
+came to nothing, foiled, he fancied, by Peridol.
+
+He knew enough. He rose to his full height, and his eyes seemed a
+little closer together; an ugly smile curved his lips. His gaze
+travelled over the objects in the room, the bare stools and table, the
+lantern, the wine pitcher; beyond these, in a corner, the cloak and
+straw on the low bed. The light, cold and grey, fell cheerlessly on
+the dull chamber, and showed it in harmony with the ominous whisper
+which grew in the gallery; with the stern-faced listener who stood,
+his one hand on the door. He looked, but he found nothing to his
+purpose, nothing to serve his end, whatever his end was; and with a
+quick light step he left the door, mounted the window recess, and,
+poised on the very edge, looked down.
+
+If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to
+the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told
+the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime,
+here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a
+tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow
+stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall
+below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or
+fastenings. But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of
+the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his
+position.
+
+He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with
+guarded movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent
+room, and at any moment the rush might be made, the door burst in--he
+set the lantern and wine pitcher on the floor, and took up the table
+in his arms. He began to carry it to the window, but, halfway thither,
+his eye told him that it would not pass through the opening, and he
+set it down again and glided to the bed. Again he was thwarted; the
+bed was screwed to the floor. Another might have despaired at that,
+but he rose with no sign of dismay, and listening, always listening,
+he spread his cloak on the floor, and deftly, with as little noise and
+rustling as might be, he piled the straw in it, compressed the bundle,
+and, cutting the bed-cords with his dagger, bound all together with
+them. In three steps he was in the embrasure of the window, and, even
+as the men in the passage thrust the lieutenant aside and with a
+sudden uproar came down to the door, he flung the bundle lightly and
+carefully to the right--so lightly and carefully, and with so nice and
+deliberate a calculation, that it seemed odd it fell beyond the reach
+of an ordinary leap.
+
+An instant and he was on the floor again. The men had to unlock, to
+draw back the bolts, to draw back the door which opened outwards;
+their numbers, as well as their savage haste, impeded them. When they
+burst in at last, with a roar of "To the river! To the river!"--burst
+in a rush of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him
+standing, a solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his
+arms folded. And the sight of the passive figure for a moment stayed
+them.
+
+"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his
+weapon. "We give you one minute!"
+
+"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in. "Be ready!"
+
+"You would murder me?" he said with dignity. And when they shouted
+assent, "Good!" he answered. "It is between you and M. de Biron, whose
+guest I am. But"--with a glance which passed round the ring of glaring
+eyes and working features--"I would leave a last word for some one. Is
+there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King? 'Tis for
+two men coming and going for a fortnight." And he held up a slip of
+paper.
+
+The leader cried "To hell with his safe-conduct! Say your prayers!"
+
+But all were not of his mind; on one or two of the crimson savage
+faces--the faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their
+wrongs--flashed an avaricious gleam. A safe-conduct? To avenge, to
+slay, to kill--and to go safe! For some minds such a thing has an
+invincible fascination. A man thrust himself forward. "Ay, I'll have
+it!" he cried. "Give it here!"
+
+"It is yours," Count Hannibal answered, "if you will carry ten words
+to Marshal Tavannes--when I am gone."
+
+The man's neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "And
+Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely," he said.
+
+But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand. "If I take
+the message!" he muttered in a grim aside. "Do you think me mad?" And
+then aloud he cried, "Ay, I'll take your message! Give me the paper."
+
+"You swear you will take it?"
+
+The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and
+went forward. The others would have pressed round too, half in envy,
+half in scorn; but Tavannes by a gesture stayed them. "Gentlemen, I
+ask a minute only," he said. "A minute for a dying man is not much.
+Your friends had as much." And the fellows, acknowledging the claim
+and assured that their victim could not escape, let Maudron go round
+the table to him.
+
+The man was in haste and ill at ease, conscious of his evil intentions
+and the fraud he was practising; and at once greedy to have, yet
+ashamed of the bargain he was making. His attention was divided
+between the slip of paper, on which his eyes fixed themselves, and the
+attitude of his comrades; he paid little heed to Count Hannibal, whom
+he knew to be unarmed. Only when Tavannes seemed to ponder on his
+message, and to be fain to delay, "Go on," he muttered with brutal
+frankness; "your time is up!"
+
+Tavannes started, the paper slipped from his fingers. Maudron saw a
+chance of getting it without committing himself, and quick as the
+thought leapt up in his mind he stooped, and grasped the paper, and
+would have leapt back with it! But quick as he, and quicker, Tavannes
+too stooped, gripped him by the waist, and with a prodigious effort,
+and a yell in which all the man's stormy nature, restrained to a part
+during the last few minutes, broke forth, he flung the ill-fated
+wretch head first through the window.
+
+The movement carried Tavannes himself--even while his victim's scream
+rang through the chamber--into the embrasure. An instant he hung on
+the verge; then, as the men, a moment thunderstruck, sprang forward to
+avenge their comrade, he leapt out, jumping for the struggling body
+that had struck the mud, and now lay in it face downwards.
+
+He alighted on it, and drove it deep into the quaking slime; but he
+himself bounded off right-handed. The peril was appalling, the
+possibility untried, the chance one which only a doomed man would have
+taken. But he reached the straw-bale, and it gave him a momentary, a
+precarious footing. He could not regain his balance, he could not even
+for an instant stand upright on it. But from its support he leapt on
+convulsively, and as a pike, flung from above, wounded him in the
+shoulder, he fell his length in the slough--but forward, with his
+outstretched hands resting on soil of a harder nature. They sank, it
+is true, to the elbow, but he dragged his body forward on them, and
+forward, and freeing one by a last effort of strength--he could not
+free both, and, as it was, half his face was submerged--he reached out
+another yard, and gripped a balk of wood, which projected from the
+corner of the building for the purpose of fending off the stream in
+flood-time.
+
+The men at the window shrieked with rage as he slowly drew himself
+from the slough, and stood from head to foot a pillar of mud. Shout as
+they might, they had no firearms, and, crowded together in the narrow
+embrasure, they could take no aim with their pikes. They could only
+look on in furious impotence, flinging curses at him until he passed
+from their view, behind the angle of the building.
+
+Here for a score of yards a strip of hard foreshore ran between mud
+and wall. He struggled along it until he reached the end of the wall;
+then with a shuddering glance at the black heaving pit from which he
+had escaped, and which yet gurgled above the body of the hapless
+Maudron--a tribute to horror which even his fierce nature could not
+withhold--he turned and painfully climbed the river-bank. The
+pike-wound in his shoulder was slight, but the effort had been
+supreme; the sweat poured from his brow, his visage was grey and
+drawn. Nevertheless, when he had put fifty paces between himself and
+the buildings of the Arsenal he paused, and turned. He saw that the
+men had run to other windows which looked that way; and his face
+lightened and his form dilated with triumph.
+
+He shook his fist at them. "Ho, fools!" he cried, "you kill not
+Tavannes so! Till our next meeting at Montfaucon, fare you well!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                     THE BROTHER OF ST. MAGLOIRE.
+
+
+As the exertion of power is for the most part pleasing, so the
+exercise of that which a woman possesses over a man is especially
+pleasant. When in addition a risk of no ordinary kind has been run,
+and the happy issue has been barely expected--above all when the
+momentary gain seems an augury of final victory--it is impossible that
+a feeling akin to exultation should not arise in the mind, however
+black the horizon, and however distant the fair haven.
+
+The situation in which Count Hannibal left Mademoiselle de Vrillac
+will be remembered. She had prevailed on him; but in return he had
+bowed her to the earth, partly by subtle threats, and partly by sheer
+savagery. He had left her weeping, with the words "Madame de Tavannes"
+ringing doom in her ears, and the dark phantom of his will pointing
+onward to an inevitable future. Had she abandoned hope, it would have
+been natural.
+
+But the girl was of a spirit not long nor easily cowed; and Tavannes
+had not left her half an hour before the reflection, that so far the
+honours of the day were hers, rose up to console her. In spite of his
+power and her impotence, she had imposed her will upon his; she had
+established an influence over him, she had discovered a scruple which
+stayed him, and a limit beyond which he would not pass. In the result
+she might escape; for the conditions which he had accepted with an ill
+grace, might prove beyond his fulfilling. She might escape! True, many
+in her place would have feared a worse fate and harsher handling. But
+there lay half the merit of her victory. It had left her not only in a
+better position, but with a new confidence in her power over her
+adversary. He would insist on the bargain struck between them; within
+its four corners she could look for no indulgence. But if the
+conditions proved to be beyond his power, she believed that he would
+spare her: with an ill grace, indeed, with such ferocity and coarse
+reviling as her woman's pride might scarcely support. But he would
+spare her.
+
+And if the worst befell her? She would still have the consolation of
+knowing that from the cataclysm which had overwhelmed her friends she
+had ransomed those most dear to her. Owing to the position of her
+chamber, she saw nothing of the excesses to which Paris gave itself up
+during the remainder of that day, and to which it returned with
+unabated zest on the following morning. But the Carlats and her women
+learned from the guards below what was passing; and quaking and
+cowering in their corners fixed frightened eyes on her, who was their
+stay and hope. How could she prove false to them? How doom them to
+perish, had there been no question of her lover?
+
+Of him she sat thinking by the hour together. She recalled with solemn
+tenderness the moment in which he had devoted himself to the death
+which came but halfway to seize them; nor was she slow to forgive his
+subsequent withdrawal, and his attempt to rescue her in spite of
+herself. She found the impulse to die glorious; the withdrawal--for
+the actor was her lover--a thing done for her, which he would not have
+done for himself, and which she quickly forgave him. The revulsion of
+feeling which had conquered her at the time, and led her to tear
+herself from him, no longer moved her much; while all in his action
+that might have seemed in other eyes less than heroic, all in his
+conduct--in a crisis demanding the highest--that smacked of common or
+mean, vanished, for she still clung to him. Clung to him, not so much
+with the passion of the mature woman, as with the maiden and
+sentimental affection of one who has now no hope of possessing, and
+for whom love no longer spells life but sacrifice.
+
+She had leisure for these musings, for she was left to herself all
+that day, and until late on the following day. Her own servants waited
+on her, and it was known that below stairs Count Hannibal's riders
+kept sullen ward behind barred doors and shuttered windows, refusing
+admission to all who came. Now and again echoes of the riot which
+filled the streets with bloodshed reached her ears: or word of the
+more striking occurrences was brought to her by Madame Carlat. And
+early on this second day, Monday, it was whispered that M. de Tavannes
+had not returned, and that the men below were growing uneasy.
+
+At last, when the suspense below and above was growing tense, it was
+broken. Footsteps and voices were heard ascending the stairs, the
+trampling and hubbub were followed by a heavy knock; perforce the door
+was opened. While Mademoiselle, who had risen, awaited with a beating
+heart she knew not what, a cowled father, in the dress of the monks of
+St. Magloire, stood on the threshold, and, crossing himself, muttered
+the words of benediction. He entered slowly.
+
+No sight could have been more dreadful to Mademoiselle; for it set at
+naught the conditions which she had so hardly exacted. What if Count
+Hannibal were behind, were even now mounting the stairs, prepared to
+force her to a marriage before this shaveling? Or ready to proceed, if
+she refused, to the last extremity? Sudden terror taking her by the
+throat choked her; her colour fled, her hand flew to her breast. Yet,
+before the door had closed on Bigot, she had recovered herself.
+
+"This intrusion is not by M. de Tavannes' orders!" she cried, stepping
+forward haughtily. "This person has no business here. How dare you
+admit him?"
+
+The Norman showed his bearded visage a moment at the door. "My lord's
+orders," he muttered sullenly. And he closed the door on them.
+
+She had a Huguenot's hatred of a cowl; and, in this crisis, her
+reasons for fearing it. Her eyes blazed with indignation. "Enough!"
+she cried, pointing with a gesture of dismissal to the door. "Go back
+to him who sent you! If he will insult me, let him do it to my face!
+If he will perjure himself, let him forswear himself in person. Or, if
+you come on your own account," she continued, flinging prudence to the
+winds, "as your brethren came to Philippa de Luns, to offer me the
+choice you offered her, I give you her answer! If I had thought of
+myself only, I had not lived so long! And rather than bear your
+presence or hear your arguments----"
+
+She came to a sudden, odd, quavering pause on the word; her lips
+remained parted, she swayed an instant on her feet. The next moment
+Madame Carlat, to whom the visitor had turned his shoulder, doubted
+her eyes, for Mademoiselle was in the monk's arms!
+
+"Clotilde! Clotilde!" he cried, and held her to him.
+
+For the monk was M. de Tignonville! Under the cowl was the lover with
+whom Mademoiselle's thoughts had been engaged. In this disguise, and
+armed with Tavannes' note to Madame St. Lo--which the guards below
+knew for Count Hannibal's hand, though they were unable to decipher
+the contents--he had found no difficulty in making his way to her.
+
+He had learned before he entered that Tavannes was abroad, and was
+aware therefore that he ran little risk. His betrothed, on the other
+hand, who knew nothing of his adventures in the interval, saw in him
+one who came to her at the greatest risk, across unnumbered perils,
+through streets swimming with blood. And though she had never embraced
+him save in the crisis of the massacre, though she had never called
+him by his Christian name, in the joy of this meeting she abandoned
+herself to him, she clung to him weeping, she forgot for the time his
+defection, and thought only of him who had returned to her so
+gallantly, who brought into the room a breath of Poitou, and the sea,
+and the old days, and the old life; and at the sight of whom the
+horrors of the last two days fell from her--for the moment.
+
+And Madame Carlat wept also, and in the room was a sound of weeping.
+The least moved was, for a certainty, M. de Tignonville himself, who,
+as we know, had gone through much that day. But even his heart
+swelled, partly with pride, partly with thankfulness that he had
+returned to one who loved him so well. Fate had been kinder to him
+than he deserved; but he need not confess that now. When he had
+brought off the _coup_ which he had in his mind, he would hasten to
+forget that he had entertained other ideas.
+
+Mademoiselle had been the first to be carried away; she was also the
+first to recover herself. "I had forgotten," she cried suddenly. "I
+had forgotten," and she wrested herself from his embrace with
+violence, and stood panting, her face white, her eyes affrighted. "I
+must not! And you--I had forgotten that too! To be here, monsieur, is
+the worst office you can do me. You must go! Go, monsieur, in mercy I
+beg of you, while it is possible. Every moment you are here, every
+moment you spend in this house, I shudder."
+
+"You need not fear for me," he said, in a tone of bravado. He did not
+understand.
+
+"I fear for myself!" she answered. And then, wringing her hands,
+divided between her love for him and her fear for herself, "Oh,
+forgive me!" she said. "You do not know that he has promised to spare
+me, if he cannot produce you, and--and--a minister! He has granted me
+that; but I thought when you entered that he had gone back on his
+word, and sent a priest, and it maddened me! I could not bear to think
+that I had gained nothing. Now you understand, and you will pardon me,
+monsieur? If he cannot produce you I am saved. Go then, leave me, I
+beg, without a moment's delay."
+
+He laughed derisively as he turned back his cowl and squared his
+shoulders. "All that is over!" he said, "over and done with, sweet! M.
+de Tavannes is at this moment a prisoner in the Arsenal. On my way
+hither I fell in with M. de Biron, and he told me. The Grand Master,
+who would have had me join his company, had been all night at Marshal
+Tavannes' hotel, where he had been detained longer than he expected.
+He stood pledged to release Count Hannibal on his return, but at my
+request he consented to hold him one hour, and to do also a little
+thing for me."
+
+The glow of hope which had transfigured her face faded slowly. "It
+will not help," she said, "if he find you here."
+
+"He will not! Nor you!"
+
+"How, monsieur?"
+
+"In a few minutes," he explained--he could not hide his exultation, "a
+message will come from the Arsenal in the name of Tavannes, bidding
+the monk he sent to you bring you to him. A spoken message,
+corroborated by my presence, should suffice: '_Bid the monk who is now
+with Mademoiselle_,' it will run, '_bring her to me at the Arsenal,
+and let four pikes guard them hither_.' When I begged M. de Biron to
+do this, he laughed. 'I can do better,' he said. 'They shall bring one
+of Count Hannibal's gloves, which he left on my table. Always
+supposing my rascals have done him no harm, which God forbid, for I am
+answerable.'"
+
+Tignonville, delighted with the stratagem which the meeting with Biron
+had suggested, could see no flaw in it. She could, and though she
+heard him to the end, no second glow of hope softened the lines of her
+features. With a gesture full of dignity, which took in not only
+Madame Carlat and the waiting-woman who stood at the door but the
+absent servants, "And what of these?" she said. "What of these? You
+forgot them, monsieur. You do not think, you cannot have thought, that
+I would abandon them? That I would leave them to such mercy as he,
+defeated, might extend to them? No, you forgot them."
+
+He did not know what to answer, for the jealous eyes of the frightened
+waiting-woman, fierce with the fierceness of a hunted animal, were on
+him. The Carlat and she had heard, could hear. At last, "Better one
+than none!" he muttered, in a voice so low that if the servants caught
+his meaning it was but indistinctly. "I have to think of you."
+
+"And I of them," she answered firmly. "Nor is that all. Were they not
+here, it could not be. My word is passed--though a moment ago,
+monsieur, in the joy of seeing you I forgot it. And how," she
+continued, "if I keep not my word, can I expect him to keep his? Or
+how, if I am ready to break the bond, on this happening which I never
+expected, can I hold him to conditions which he loves as little--as
+little as I love him?"
+
+Her voice dropped piteously on the last words; her eyes, craving her
+lover's pardon, sought his. But rage, not pity or admiration, was the
+feeling roused in Tignonville's breast. He stood staring at her,
+struck dumb by folly so immense. At last, "You cannot mean this," he
+blurted out. "You cannot mean, Mademoiselle, that you intend to stand
+on that! To keep a promise wrung from you by force, by treachery, in
+the midst of such horrors as he and his have brought upon us! It is
+inconceivable!"
+
+She shook her head. "I promised," she said.
+
+"You were forced to it."
+
+"But the promise saved our lives."
+
+"From murderers! From assassins!" he protested.
+
+She shook her head. "I cannot go back," she said firmly; "I cannot."
+
+"Then you are willing to marry him," he cried in ignoble anger. "That
+is it! Nay, you must wish to marry him! For, as for his conditions,
+Mademoiselle," the young man continued, with an insulting laugh, "you
+cannot think seriously of them. _He_ keep conditions and you in his
+power! He, Count Hannibal! But for the matter of that, and were he in
+the mind to keep them, what are they? There are plenty of ministers. I
+left one only this morning. I could lay my hand on one in five
+minutes. He has only to find one therefore--and to find me!"
+
+"Yes, monsieur," she cried, trembling with wounded pride, "it is for
+that reason I implore you to go. The sooner you leave me, the sooner
+you place yourself in a position of security, the happier for me!
+Every moment that you spend here, you endanger both yourself and me!"
+
+"If you will not be persuaded----"
+
+"I shall not be persuaded," she answered firmly, "and you do
+but"--alas! her pride began to break down, her voice to quiver, she
+looked piteously at him--"by staying here make it harder for me
+to--to----"
+
+"Hush!" cried Madame Carlat, "Hush!" And as they started and turned
+towards her--she was at the end of the chamber by the door, almost out
+of earshot--she raised a warning hand. "Listen!" she muttered, "some
+one has entered the house."
+
+"'Tis my messenger from Biron," Tignonville answered sullenly. And he
+drew his cowl over his face, and, hiding his hands in his sleeves,
+moved towards the door. But on the threshold he turned and held out
+his arms. He could not go thus. "Mademoiselle! Clotilde!" he cried
+with passion, "for the last time, listen to me, come with me. Be
+persuaded!"
+
+"Hush!" Madame Carlat interposed again, and turned a scared face on
+them. "It is no messenger! It is Tavannes himself: I know his voice."
+And she wrung her hands. "_Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu_, what are we to
+do?" she continued, panic-stricken. And she looked all ways about the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                          AT CLOSE QUARTERS.
+
+
+Fear leapt into Mademoiselle's eyes, but she commanded herself. She
+signed to Madame Carlat to be silent, and they listened, gazing at one
+another, hoping against hope that the woman was mistaken. A long
+moment they waited, and some were beginning to breathe again, when the
+strident tones of Count Hannibal's voice rolled up the staircase, and
+put an end to doubt. Mademoiselle grasped the table and stood
+supporting herself by it. "What are we to do?" she muttered. "What are
+we to do?" and she turned distractedly towards the women. The courage
+which had supported her in her lover's absence had abandoned her now.
+"If he finds him here I am lost! I am lost!"
+
+"He will not know me," Tignonville muttered. But he spoke uncertainly;
+and his gaze, shifting hither and thither, belied the boldness of his
+words.
+
+Madame Carlat's eyes flew round the room; on her for once the burden
+seemed to rest. Alas! the room had no second door, and the windows
+looked on a courtyard guarded by Tavannes' people. And even now Count
+Hannibal's step rang on the stair! his hand was almost on the latch.
+The woman wrung her hands; then, a thought striking her, she darted to
+a corner where Mademoiselle's robes hung on pegs against the wall.
+
+"Here!" she cried, raising them. "Behind these! He may not be seen
+here! Quick, monsieur, quick! Hide yourself!"
+
+It was a forlorn hope--the suggestion of one who had not thought out
+the position; and, whatever its promise, Mademoiselle's pride revolted
+against it.
+
+"No," she cried. "Not there!" while Tignonville, who knew that the
+step was useless, since Count Hannibal must have learned that a monk
+had entered, held his ground.
+
+"You could not deny yourself!" he muttered hurriedly.
+
+"And a priest with me?" she answered; and she shook her head.
+
+There was no time for more, and even as Mademoiselle spoke Count
+Hannibal's knuckles tapped the door. She cast a last look at her
+lover. He had turned his back on the window; the light no longer fell
+on his face. It was possible that he might pass unrecognised, if
+Tavannes' stay was brief; at any rate the risk must be run. In a
+half-stifled voice she bade her woman, Javette, open the door.
+
+Count Hannibal bowed low as he entered; and he deceived the others.
+But he did not deceive her. He had not crossed the threshold before
+she repented that she had not acted on Tignonville's suggestion, and
+denied herself. For what could escape those hard keen eyes, which
+swept the room, saw all, and seemed to see nothing--those eyes in
+which there dwelt even now a glint of cruel humour? He might deceive
+others, but she who panted within his grasp, as the wild bird
+palpitates in the hand of the fowler, was not deceived! He saw, he
+knew! although, as he bowed, and smiling, stood upright, he looked
+only at her.
+
+"I expected to be with you before this," he said courteously, "but I
+have been detained. First, Mademoiselle, by some of your friends, who
+were reluctant to part with me; then by some of your enemies, who,
+finding me in no handsome case, took me for a Huguenot escaped from
+the river, and drove me to shifts to get clear of them. However, now I
+am come, I have news."
+
+"News?" she muttered with dry lips. It could hardly be good news.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, of M. de Tignonville," he answered. "I have little
+doubt that I shall be able to produce him this evening, and so to
+satisfy one of your scruples. And as I trust that this good father,"
+he went on, turning to the ecclesiastic, and speaking with the sneer
+from which he seldom refrained, Catholic as he was, when he mentioned
+a priest, "has by this time succeeded in removing the other, and
+persuading you to accept his ministrations----"
+
+"No!" she cried impulsively.
+
+"No?" with a dubious smile, and a glance from one to the other. "Oh, I
+had hoped better things. But he still may? He still may. I am sure he
+may. In which case, Mademoiselle, your modesty must pardon me if I
+plead urgency, and fix the hour after supper this evening for the
+fulfilment of your promise."
+
+She turned white to the lips. "After supper?" she gasped.
+
+"Yes, Mademoiselle, this evening. Shall I say--at eight o'clock?"
+
+In horror of the thing which menaced her, of the thing from which only
+two hours separated her, she could find no words but those which she
+had already used. The worst was upon her; worse than the worst could
+not befall her. "But he has not persuaded me!" she cried, clenching
+her hands in passion. "He has not persuaded me!"
+
+"Still he may, Mademoiselle."
+
+"He will not!" she cried wildly. "He will not!"
+
+The room was going round with her. The precipice yawned at her feet;
+its naked terrors turned her brain. She had been pushed nearer, and
+nearer, and nearer; struggle as she might she was on the verge. A mist
+rose before her eyes, and though they thought she listened she
+understood nothing of what was passing. When she came to herself after
+the lapse of a minute, Count Hannibal was speaking.
+
+"Permit him another trial," he was saying in a tone of bland irony. "A
+short time longer, Mademoiselle! One more assault, father! The weapons
+of the Church could not be better directed or to a more worthy object;
+and, successful, shall not fail of due recognition and an earthly
+reward."
+
+And while she listened, half fainting, with a humming in her ears, he
+was gone. The door closed on him, and the three--Mademoiselle's woman
+had withdrawn when she opened to him--looked at one another. The girl
+parted her lips to speak, but she only smiled piteously; and it was M.
+de Tignonville who broke the silence, in a tone which betrayed rather
+relief than any other feeling.
+
+"Come, all is not lost yet," he said briskly. "If I can escape from
+the house----"
+
+"He knows you," she answered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"He knows you," Mademoiselle repeated in a tone almost apathetic. "I
+read it in his eyes. He knew you at once: and knew, too," she added
+bitterly, "that he had here under his hand one of the two things he
+required."
+
+"Then why did he hide his knowledge?" the young man retorted sharply.
+
+"Why?" she answered. "To induce me to waive the other condition in the
+hope of saving you. Oh!" she continued in a tone of bitter raillery,
+"he has the cunning of hell, of the priests! You are no match for him,
+monsieur. Nor I; nor any of us. And"--with a gesture of despair--"he
+will be my master! He will break me to his will and to his hand! I
+shall be his! His, body and soul, body and soul!" she continued
+drearily, as she sank into a chair and, rocking herself to and fro,
+covered her face. "I shall be his! His till I die!"
+
+The man's eyes burned, and the pulse in his temples beat wildly. "But
+you shall not," he exclaimed. "I may be no match for him in cunning,
+you say well. But I can kill him. And I will!" He paced up and down.
+"I will!"
+
+"You should have done it when he was here," she answered, half in
+scorn, half in earnest.
+
+"It is not too late," he cried; and then he stopped, silenced by the
+opening door. It was Javette who entered.
+
+They looked at her, and before she spoke were on their feet. Her face,
+white and eager, marking something besides fear, announced that she
+brought news. She closed the door behind her, and in a moment it was
+told.
+
+"Monsieur can escape, if he is quick," she cried in a low tone; and
+they saw that she trembled with excitement. "They are at supper. But
+he must be quick! He must be quick!"
+
+"Is not the door guarded!"
+
+"It is, but----"
+
+"And he knows! Your mistress says that he knows that I am here."
+
+For a moment Javette looked startled. "It is possible," she muttered.
+"But he has gone out."
+
+Madame Carlat clapped her hands. "I heard the door close," she said,
+"three minutes ago."
+
+"And if monsieur can reach the room in which he supped last night, the
+window that was broken is only blocked"--she swallowed once or twice
+in her excitement--"with something he can move. And then monsieur is
+in the street, where his cowl will protect him."
+
+"But Count Hannibal's men?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"They are eating in the lodge by the door."
+
+"Ha! And they cannot see the other room from there?"
+
+Javette nodded. Her tale told, she seemed to be unable to add a word.
+Mademoiselle, who knew her for a craven, wondered that she had found
+courage either to note what she had or to bring the news. But as
+Providence had been so good to them as to put it into this woman's
+head to act as she had, it behoved them to use the opportunity--the
+last, the very last opportunity they might have.
+
+She turned to Tignonville. "Oh, go!" she cried feverishly. "Go, I beg!
+Go now, monsieur! The greatest kindness you can do me is to place
+yourself as quickly as possible beyond his reach." A faint colour, the
+flush of hope, had returned to her cheeks. Her eyes glittered.
+
+"Right, Mademoiselle!" he cried, obedient for once. "I go! And do you
+be of good courage." He held her hand an instant, then, moving to the
+door, he opened it and listened. They all pressed behind him to hear.
+A murmur of voices, low and distant, mounted the staircase and bore
+out the girl's tale; apart from this the house was silent. Tignonville
+cast a last look at Mademoiselle, and, with a gesture of farewell,
+glided a-tiptoe to the stairs and began to descend, his face hidden in
+his cowl. They watched him reach the angle of the staircase, they
+watched him vanish beyond it; and still they listened, looking at one
+another when a board creaked or the voices below were hushed for a
+moment.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                              THE DUEL.
+
+
+At the foot of the staircase Tignonville paused. The droning Norman
+voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before
+him on the left. He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which
+attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew
+that at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him.
+Fortunately the door of the room with the shattered window was almost
+within reach of his hand on the right side of the passage, and he
+stepped softly to it. He stood an instant hesitating, his hand on the
+latch; then, alarmed by a movement in the guard-room, as if some were
+rising, he pushed the door in a panic, slid into the room, and shut
+the door behind him. He was safe, and he had made no noise; but at the
+table, at supper, with his back to him and his face to the partly
+closed window, sat Count Hannibal!
+
+The young man's heart stood still. For a long minute he gazed at the
+Count's back, spellbound and unable to stir. Then, as Tavannes ate on
+without looking round, he began to take courage. Possibly he had
+entered so quietly that he had not been heard, or possibly his
+entrance was taken for that of a servant. In either case, there was a
+chance that he might retire after the same fashion; and he had
+actually raised the latch, and was drawing the door to him with
+infinite precaution, when Tavannes' voice struck him, as it were, in
+the face.
+
+"Pray do not admit the draught, M. de Tignonville," he said, without
+looking round. "In your cowl you do not feel it, but it is otherwise
+with me."
+
+The unfortunate Tignonville stood transfixed, glaring at the back of
+the other's head. For an instant he could not find his voice. At last
+"Curse you!" he hissed in a transport of rage. "Curse you! You did
+know, then? And she was right."
+
+"If you mean that I expected you, to be sure, monsieur," Count
+Hannibal answered. "See, your place is laid. You will not feel the air
+from without there. The very becoming dress which you have adopted
+secures you from cold. But--do you not find it somewhat oppressive
+this summer weather?"
+
+"Curse you!" the young man cried, trembling.
+
+Tavannes turned and looked at him with a dark smile. "The curse may
+fall," he said, "but I fancy it will not be in consequence of your
+petitions, monsieur. And now, were it not better you played the man?"
+
+"If I were armed," the other cried passionately, "you would not insult
+me!"
+
+"Sit down, sir, sit down," Count Hannibal answered sternly. "We will
+talk of that presently. In the meantime I have something to say to
+you. Will you not eat?"
+
+But Tignonville would not.
+
+"Very well," Count Hannibal answered; and he went on with his supper,
+"I am indifferent whether you eat or not. It is enough for me that you
+are one of the two things I lacked an hour ago; and that I have you,
+M. de Tignonville. And through you I look to obtain the other."
+
+"What other?" Tignonville cried.
+
+"A minister," Tavannes answered, smiling. "A minister. There are not
+many left in Paris--of your faith. But you met one this morning, I
+know!"
+
+"I? I met one?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, you! And can lay your hand on him in five minutes, you
+know."
+
+M. de Tignonville gasped. His face turned a shade paler. "You have a
+spy," he cried. "You have a spy upstairs!"
+
+Tavannes raised his cup to his lips, and drank. When he had set it
+down, "It may be," he said, and he shrugged his shoulders. "I know, it
+boots not how I know. It is my business to make the most of my
+knowledge--and of yours!"
+
+M. de Tignonville laughed rudely. "Make the most of your own," he
+said; "you will have none of mine."
+
+"That remains to be seen," Count Hannibal answered. "Carry your mind
+back two days, M. de Tignonville. Had I gone to Mademoiselle de
+Vrillac last Saturday and said to her 'Marry me, or promise to marry
+me,' what answer would she have given?"
+
+"She would have called you an insolent!" the young man replied hotly.
+"And I----"
+
+"No matter what you would have done!" Tavannes said. "Suffice it that
+she would have answered as you suggest. Yet to-day she has given me
+her promise."
+
+"Yes," the young man retorted, "in circumstances in which no man of
+honour----"
+
+"Let us say in peculiar circumstances."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Which still exist! Mark me, M. de Tignonville," Count Hannibal
+continued, leaning forward and eyeing the young man with meaning,
+"_which still exist!_ And may have the same effect on another's will
+as on hers! Listen! Do you hear?" And rising from his seat with a
+darkening face, he pointed to the partly shuttered window, through
+which the measured tramp of a body of men came heavily to the ear. "Do
+you hear, monsieur? Do you understand? As it was yesterday it is
+to-day! They killed the President La Place this morning! And they are
+searching! They are still searching! The river is not yet full, nor
+the gibbet glutted! I have but to open that window and denounce you,
+and your life would hang by no stronger thread than the life of a mad
+dog which they chase through the streets!"
+
+The younger man had risen also. He stood confronting Tavannes, the
+cowl fallen back from his face, his eyes dilated. "You think to
+frighten me!" he cried. "You think that I am craven enough to
+sacrifice her to save myself. You----"
+
+"You were craven enough to draw back yesterday, when you stood at this
+window and waited for death!" Count Hannibal answered brutally. "You
+flinched then, and may flinch again!"
+
+"Try me!" Tignonville retorted, trembling with passion. "Try me!" And
+then, as the other stared at him and made no movement, "But you dare
+not!" he cried. "You dare not!"
+
+"No?"
+
+"No! For if I die you lose her!" Tignonville replied in a voice of
+triumph. "Ha, ha! I touch you there!" he continued. "You dare not, for
+my safety is part of the price, and is more to you than it is to
+myself! You may threaten, M. de Tavannes, you may bluster, and shout
+and point to the window"--and he mocked, with a disdainful mimicry,
+the other's gesture--"but my safety is more to you than to me! And
+'twill end there!"
+
+"You believe that?"
+
+"I know it!"
+
+In two strides Count Hannibal was at the window. He seized a great
+piece of the boarding which closed one half of the opening; he
+wrenched it away. A flood of evening light burst in through the
+aperture, and fell on and heightened the flushed passion of his
+features, as he turned again to his opponent. "Then if you know it,"
+he cried vehemently, "in God's name act upon it!" And he pointed to
+the window.
+
+"Act upon it?"
+
+"Ay, act upon it!" Tavannes repeated, with a glance of flame. "The
+road is open! If you would save your mistress, behold the way! If you
+would save her from the embrace she abhors, from the eyes under which
+she trembles, from the hand of a master, there lies the way! And it is
+not her glove only you will save, but herself, her soul, her body!
+So," he continued with a certain wildness and in a tone wherein
+contempt and bitterness were mingled, "to the lions, brave lover! Will
+you your life for her honour? Will you death that she may live a maid?
+Will you your head to save her finger? Then, leap down! leap down! The
+lists are open, the sand is strewed! Out of your own mouth I have it
+that if you perish she is saved! Then out, monsieur! Cry 'I am a
+Huguenot!' And God's will be done!"
+
+Tignonville was livid. "Rather, your will!" he panted. "Your will, you
+devil! Nevertheless----"
+
+"You will go! Ha! ha! You will go!"
+
+For an instant it seemed that he would go. Stung by the challenge,
+wrought on by the contempt in which Tavannes held him, he shot a look
+of hate at the tempter; he caught his breath, and laid his hand on the
+edge of the shuttering as if he would leap out.
+
+But it goes hard with him who has once turned back from the foe. The
+evening light, glancing cold on the burnished pike-points of a group
+of archers who stood near, caught his eye and went chill to his heart.
+Death, not in the arena, not in the sight of shouting thousands, but
+in this darkening street, with an enemy laughing from the window,
+death with no revenge to follow, with no certainty that after all she
+would be safe, such a death could be compassed only by pure love--the
+love of a child for a parent, of a parent for a child, of a man for
+the one woman in the world!
+
+He recoiled. "You would not spare her!" he cried, his face damp with
+sweat--for he knew now that he would not go. "You want to be rid of
+me! You would fool me, and then----"
+
+"Out of your own mouth you are convict!" Count Hannibal retorted
+gravely. "It was you who said it! But still I swear it! Shall I swear
+it to you?"
+
+But Tignonville recoiled another step and was silent.
+
+"No? O _preux chevalier_, O gallant knight! I knew it! Do you think
+that I did not know with whom I had to deal?" And Count Hannibal burst
+into harsh laughter, turning his back on the other, as if he no longer
+counted. "You will neither die with her nor for her! You were better
+in her petticoats and she in your breeches! Or no, you are best as you
+are, good father! Take my advice, M. de Tignonville, have done with
+arms; and with a string of beads, and soft words, and talk of Holy
+Mother Church, you will fool the women as surely as the best of them!
+They are not all like my cousin, a flouting, gibing, jeering
+woman--you had poor fortune there, I fear?"
+
+"If I had a sword!" Tignonville hissed, his face livid with rage. "You
+call me coward, because I will not die to please you. But give me a
+sword, and I will show you if I am a coward!"
+
+Tavannes stood still. "You are there, are you?" he said in an altered
+tone. "I----"
+
+"Give me a sword," Tignonville repeated, holding out his open
+trembling hands. "A sword! A sword! 'Tis easy taunting an unarmed man,
+but----"
+
+"You wish to fight?"
+
+"I ask no more! No more! Give me a sword," he urged, his voice
+quivering with eagerness. "It is you who are the coward!"
+
+Count Hannibal stared at him. "And what am I to get by fighting you?"
+he reasoned slowly. "You are in my power. I can do with you as I
+please. I can call from this window and denounce you, or I can summon
+my men----"
+
+"Coward! Coward!"
+
+"Ay? Well, I will tell you what I will do," with a subtle smile. "I
+will give you a sword, M. de Tignonville, and I will meet you foot to
+foot here, in this room, on a condition."
+
+"What is it? What is it?" the young man cried with incredible
+eagerness. "Name your condition!"
+
+"That if I get the better of you, you find me a minister."
+
+"I find you a----"
+
+"A minister. Yes, that is it. Or tell me where I can find one."
+
+The young man recoiled. "Never!" he said.
+
+"You know where to find one."
+
+"Never! Never!"
+
+"You can lay your hand on one in five minutes, you know."
+
+"I will not."
+
+"Then I shall not fight you!" Count Hannibal answered coolly; and he
+turned from him, and back again. "You will pardon me if I say, M. de
+Tignonville, that you are in as many minds about fighting as about
+dying! I do not think that you would have made your fortune at Court.
+Moreover, there is a thing which I fancy you have not considered. If
+we fight you may kill me, in which case the condition will not help me
+much. Or I--which is more likely--" he added with a harsh smile, "may
+kill you, and again I am no better placed."
+
+The young man's, pallid features betrayed the conflict in his breast.
+To do him justice, his hand itched for the sword-hilt--he was brave
+enough for that; he hated, and only so could he avenge himself. But
+the penalty if he had the worse! And yet what of it? He was in hell
+now, in a hell of humiliation, shame, defeat, tormented by this fiend!
+'Twas only to risk a lower hell.
+
+At last, "I will do it!" he cried hoarsely. "Give me a sword and look
+to yourself."
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I promise!"
+
+"Good," Count Hannibal answered suavely; "but we cannot fight so, we
+must have more light," and striding to the door he opened it, and
+calling the Norman bade him move the table and bring caudles--a dozen
+candles; for in the narrow streets the light was waning, and in the
+half-shuttered room it was growing dusk. Tignonville, listening with a
+throbbing brain, wondered that the attendant expressed no surprise and
+said no word--until Tavannes added to his orders one for a pair of
+swords.
+
+Then, "Monsieur's sword is here," Bigot answered in his
+half-intelligible patois. "He left it here yester morning."
+
+"You are a good fellow, Bigot," Tavannes answered, with a gaiety and
+good-humour which astonished Tignonville. "And one of these days you
+shall marry Suzanne."
+
+The Norman smiled sourly and went in search of the weapon.
+
+"You have a poniard?" Count Hannibal continued in the same tone of
+unusual good temper, which had already struck Tignonville. "Excellent!
+Will you strip, then, or--as we are? Very good, monsieur; in the
+unlikely event of fortune declaring for you, you will be in a better
+condition to take care of yourself. A man running through the streets
+in his shirt is exposed to inconveniences!" And he laughed gaily.
+
+While he laughed the other listened; and his rage began to give place
+to wonder. A man who regarded as a pastime a sword and dagger conflict
+between four walls, who, having his adversary in his power, was ready
+to discard the advantage, to descend into the lists, and to risk life
+for a whim, a fancy--such a man was outside his experience, though in
+Poitou in those days of war were men reckoned brave. For what, he
+asked himself as he waited, had Tavannes to gain by fighting? The
+possession of Mademoiselle? But Mademoiselle, if his passion for
+her overwhelmed him, was in his power; and if his promise were
+a barrier--which seemed inconceivable in the light of his
+reputation--he had only to wait, and to-morrow, or the next day, or
+the next, a minister would be found, and without risk he could gain
+that for which he was now risking all.
+
+Tignonville did not know that it was in the other's nature to find
+pleasure in such utmost ventures. Nevertheless the recklessness to
+which Tavannes' action bore witness had its effect upon him. By the
+time the young man's sword arrived something of his passion for the
+conflict had evaporated; and though the touch of the hilt restored his
+determination, the locked door, the confined space, and the
+unaccustomed light went a certain distance towards substituting
+despair for courage.
+
+The use of the dagger in the duels of that day, however, rendered
+despair itself formidable. And Tignonville, when he took his place,
+appeared anything but a mean antagonist. He had removed his robe and
+cowl, and lithe and active as a cat he stood as it were on springs,
+throwing his weight now on this foot and now on that, and was
+continually in motion. The table bearing the candles had been pushed
+against the window, the boarding of which had been replaced by Bigot
+before he left the room. Tignonville had this, and consequently the
+lights, on his dagger hand; and he plumed himself on the advantage,
+considering his point the more difficult to follow.
+
+Count Hannibal did not seem to notice this, however. "Are you ready?"
+he asked. And then,
+
+"On guard!" he cried, and he stamped the echo to the word. But, that
+done, instead of bearing the other down with a headlong rush
+characteristic of the man--as Tignonville feared--he held off warily,
+stooping low; and when his slow opening was met by one as cautious, he
+began to taunt his antagonist.
+
+"Come!" he cried, and feinted half-heartedly. "Come, monsieur, are we
+going to fight, or play at fighting?"
+
+"Fight yourself, then!" Tignonville answered, his breath quickened by
+excitement and growing hope. "'Tis not I hold back!" And he lunged,
+but was put aside.
+
+"Ça! ça!" Tavannes retorted; and he lunged and parried in his turn,
+but loosely and at a distance. After which the two moved nearer the
+door, their eyes glittering as they watched one another, their knees
+bent, the sinews of their backs straining for the leap. Suddenly
+Tavannes thrust, and leapt away, and as his antagonist thrust in
+return the Count swept the blade aside with a strong parry, and for a
+moment seemed to be on the point of falling on Tignonville with the
+poniard. But Tignonville retired his right foot nimbly, which brought
+them front to front again. And the younger man laughed.
+
+"Try again, M. le Comte!" he said. And, with the word, he dashed in
+himself quick as light; for a second the blades ground on one another,
+the daggers hovered, the two suffused faces glared into one another;
+then the pair disengaged again. The blood trickled from a scratch on
+Count Hannibal's neck; half an inch to the right and the point had
+found his throat. And Tignonville, elated, laughed anew, and swaying
+from side to side on his hips, watched with growing confidence for a
+second chance. Lithe as one of the leopards Charles kept at the
+Louvre, he stooped lower and lower, and more and more with each moment
+took the attitude of the assailant, watching for an opening; while
+Count Hannibal, his face dark and his eyes vigilant, stood
+increasingly on the defence. The light was waning a little, the wicks
+of the caudles were burning long; but neither noticed it or dared to
+remove his eyes from the other's. Their laboured breathing found an
+echo on the farther side of the door, but this again neither observed.
+
+"Well?" Count Hannibal said at last. "Are you coming?"
+
+"When I please," Tignonville answered; and he feinted but drew back.
+The other did the same, and again they watched one another, their
+eyes seeming to grow smaller and smaller. Gradually a smile had
+birth on Tignonville's lips. He thrust! It was parried! He thrust
+again--parried! Tavannes, grown still more cautious, gave a yard.
+Tignonville pushed on, but did not allow confidence to master caution.
+He began, indeed, to taunt his adversary; to flout and jeer him. But
+it was with a motive.
+
+For suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he repeated the peculiar
+thrust which had been successful before. This time, however, Tavannes
+was ready. He put aside the blade with a quick parade, and instead of
+making a riposte sprang within the other's guard. The two came face to
+face and breast to shoulder, and struck furiously with their daggers.
+Count Hannibal was outside his opponent's sword and had the advantage.
+Tignonville's dagger fell, but glanced off the metalwork of the
+other's hilt; Tavannes' fell swift and hard between the young man's
+eyes. The Huguenot flung up his hands and staggered back, falling his
+length on the floor.
+
+In an instant Count Hannibal was on his breast, and had knocked away
+his dagger. Then, "You own yourself vanquished?" he cried.
+
+The young man, blinded by the blood which trickled down his face, made
+a sign with his hands. Count Hannibal rose to his feet again, and
+stood a moment looking at his foe without speaking. Presently he
+seemed to be satisfied. He nodded, and going to the table dipped a
+napkin in water. He brought it, and carefully supporting Tignonville's
+head, laved his brow. "It is as I thought," he said, when he had
+stanched the blood. "You are not hurt, man. You are stunned. It is no
+more than a bruise."
+
+The young man was coming to himself. "But I thought----" he muttered,
+and broke off to pass his hand over his face. Then he got up slowly,
+reeling a little, "I thought it was the point," he muttered.
+
+"No, it was the pommel," Tavannes answered drily. "It would not have
+served me to kill you. I could have done that ten times."
+
+Tignonville groaned, and, sitting down at the table, held the napkin
+to his aching head. One of the candles had been overturned in the
+struggle and lay on the floor, flaring in a little pool of grease.
+Tavannes set his heel upon it; then, striding to the farther end of
+the room, he picked up Tignonville's dagger and placed it beside his
+sword on the table. He looked about to see if aught else remained to
+do, and, finding nothing, he returned to Tignonville's side.
+
+"Now, monsieur," he said in a voice hard and constrained, "I must ask
+you to perform your part of the bargain."
+
+A groan of anguish broke from the unhappy man. And yet he had set his
+life on the cast; what more could he have done? "You will not harm
+him?" he muttered.
+
+"He shall go safe," Count Hannibal replied gravely.
+
+"And----" he fought a moment with his pride, then blurted out the
+words, "you will not tell her--that it was through me--you found him?"
+
+"I will not," Tavannes answered in the same tone. He stooped and
+picked up the other's robe and cowl, which had fallen from a chair--so
+that as he spoke his eyes were averted. "She shall never know through
+me," he said.
+
+And Tignonville, his face hidden in his hands, told him.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                   ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT.
+
+
+Little by little--while they fought below--the gloom had thickened,
+and night had fallen in the room above. But Mademoiselle would not
+have candles brought. Seated in the darkness, on the uppermost step of
+the stairs, her hands clasped about her knees, she listened and
+listened, as if by that action she could avert misfortune; or as if,
+by going so far forward to meet it, she could turn aside the worst.
+The women shivering in the darkness about her would fain have struck a
+light and drawn her back into the room, for they felt safer there. But
+she was not to be moved. The laughter and chatter of the men in the
+guard-room, the coming and going of Bigot as he passed, below but out
+of sight, had no terrors for her; nay, she breathed more freely on the
+bare open landing of the staircase than in the close confines of a
+room which her fears made hateful to her. Here at least she could
+listen, her face unseen; and listening she bore the suspense more
+easily.
+
+A turn in the staircase, with the noise which proceeded from the
+guard-room, rendered it difficult to hear what happened in the closed
+room below. But she thought that if an alarm were raised there she
+must hear it; and as the moments passed and nothing happened, she
+began to feel confident that her lover had made good his escape by the
+window.
+
+Presently she got a fright. Three or four men came from the guard-room
+and went, as it seemed to her, to the door of the room with the
+shattered casement. She told herself that she had rejoiced too soon,
+and her heart stood still. She waited for a rush of feet, a cry, a
+struggle. But except an uncertain muffled sound which lasted for some
+minutes, and was followed by a dull shock, she heard nothing more. And
+presently the men went back whispering, the noise in the guard-room
+which had been partially hushed broke forth anew, and perplexed but
+relieved she breathed again. Surely he had escaped by this time.
+Surely by this time he was far away, in the Arsenal, or in some place
+of refuge! And she might take courage, and feel that for this day the
+peril was overpast.
+
+"Mademoiselle will have the lights now?" one of the women ventured.
+
+"No! no!" she answered feverishly, and she continued to crouch where
+she was on the stairs, bathing herself and her burning face in the
+darkness and coolness of the stairway. The air entered freely through
+a window at her elbow and the place was fresher, were that all, than
+the room she had left. Javette began to whimper, but she paid no heed
+to her; a man came and went along the passage below, and she heard the
+outer door unbarred, and the jarring tread of three or four men who
+passed through it. But all without disturbance; and afterwards the
+house was quiet again. And as on this Monday evening the prime
+virulence of the massacre had begun to abate--though it held after a
+fashion to the end of the week--Paris without was quiet also. The
+sounds which had chilled her heart at intervals during two days were
+no longer heard. A feeling almost of peace, almost of comfort--a
+drowsy feeling, that was three parts a reaction from excitement--took
+possession of her. In the darkness her head sank lower and lower on
+her knees. And half an hour passed, while Javette whimpered, and
+Madame Carlat slumbered, her broad back propped against the wall.
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle opened her eyes, and saw, three steps below her,
+a strange man whose upward way she barred. Behind him came Carlat, and
+behind him Bigot, lighting both; and in the confusion of her thoughts
+as she rose to her feet the three, all staring at her in a common
+amazement, seemed a company. The air entering through the open window
+beside her blew the flame of the candle this way and that, and added
+to the nightmare character of the scene; for by the shifting light the
+men seemed to laugh one moment and scowl the next, and their shadows
+were now high and now low on the wall. In truth they were as much
+amazed at coming on her in that place as she at their appearance; but
+they were awake, and she newly roused from sleep; and the advantage
+was with them.
+
+"What is it?" she cried in a panic. "What is it?"
+
+"If Mademoiselle will return to her room?" one of the men said
+courteously.
+
+"But--what is it?" She was frightened.
+
+"If Mademoiselle----"
+
+Then she turned without more and went back into the room, and the
+three followed, and her woman and Madame Carlat. She stood resting one
+hand on the table while Javette with shaking fingers lighted the
+candles. Then, "Now, monsieur," she said in a hard voice, "if you will
+tell me your business?"
+
+"You do not know me?" The stranger's eyes dwelt kindly and pitifully
+on her.
+
+She looked at him steadily, crushing down the fears which knocked at
+her heart. "No," she said. "And yet I think I have seen you."
+
+"You saw me a week last Sunday," the stranger answered sorrowfully.
+"My name is La Tribe. I preached that day, Mademoiselle, before the
+King of Navarre. I believe that you were there."
+
+For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted. Then she
+laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge. "Oh, he is clever!" she
+cried. "He has the wit of the priests! Or the devil! But you come too
+late, monsieur! You come too late! The bird has flown."
+
+"Mademoiselle----"
+
+"I tell you the bird has flown!" she repeated vehemently. And her
+laugh of joyless triumph rang through the room. "He is clever, but I
+have outwitted him! I have----"
+
+She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck,
+too, by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were
+turned on her. And her lip began to quiver. "What?" she muttered. "Why
+do you look at me so? He has not"--she turned from one to another--"he
+has not been taken?"
+
+"M. Tignonville?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"He is below."
+
+"Ah!" she said.
+
+They expected to see her break down, perhaps to see her fall. But she
+only groped blindly for a chair and sat. And for a moment there was
+silence in the room. It was the Huguenot minister who broke it in a
+tone formal and solemn.
+
+"Listen, all present!" he said slowly. "The ways of God are past
+finding out. For two days in the midst of great perils I have been
+preserved by His hand and fed by His bounty, and I am told that I
+shall live if, in this matter, I do the will of those who hold me in
+their power. But be assured--and hearken all," he continued, lowering
+his voice to a sterner note. "Rather than marry this woman to this man
+against her will--if indeed in His sight such marriage can be--rather
+than save my life by such base compliance, I will die not once but ten
+times! See. I am ready! I will make no defence!" And he opened his
+arms as if to welcome the stroke. "If there be trickery here, if there
+has been practising below, where they told me this and that, it shall
+not avail! Until I hear from Mademoiselle's own lips that she is
+willing, I will not say over her so much as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay!"
+
+"She is willing!"
+
+La Tribe turned sharply, and beheld the speaker. It was Count
+Hannibal, who had entered a few seconds earlier, and had taken his
+stand within the door.
+
+"She is willing!" Tavannes repeated quietly. And if, in this moment of
+the fruition of his schemes, he felt his triumph, he masked it under a
+face of sombre purpose. "Do you doubt me, man?"
+
+"From her own lips!" the other replied, undaunted--and few could say
+as much--by that harsh presence. "From no other's!"
+
+"Sirrah, you----"
+
+"I can die. And you can no more, my lord!" the minister answered
+bravely. "You have no threat can move me."
+
+"I am not sure of that," Tavannes answered, more blandly. "But had you
+listened to me and been less anxious to be brave, M. La Tribe, where
+no danger is, you had learned that here is no call for heroics!
+Mademoiselle is willing, and will tell you so."
+
+"With her own lips?"
+
+Count Hannibal raised his eyebrows. "With her own lips, if you will,"
+he said. And then, advancing a step and addressing her, with unusual
+gravity, "Mademoiselle de Vrillac," he said, "you hear what this
+gentleman requires. Will you be pleased to confirm what I have said?"
+
+She did not answer, and in the intense silence which held the room in
+its freezing grasp a woman choked, another broke into weeping. The
+colour ebbed from the cheeks of more than one; the men fidgeted on
+their feet.
+
+Count Hannibal looked round, his head high. "There is no call for
+tears," he said; and whether he spoke in irony or in a strange
+obtuseness was known only to himself. "Mademoiselle is in no
+hurry--and rightly--to answer a question so momentous. Under the
+pressure of utmost peril, she passed her word; the more reason that,
+now the time has come to redeem it, she should do so at leisure and
+after thought. Since she gave her promise, monsieur, she has had more
+than one opportunity of evading its fulfilment. But she is a Vrillac,
+and I know that nothing is farther from her thoughts."
+
+He was silent a moment; and then "Mademoiselle," he said, "I would not
+hurry you."
+
+Her eyes were closed, but at that her lips moved.
+
+"I am--willing," she whispered. And a fluttering sigh, of relief, of
+pity, of God knows what, filled the room.
+
+"You are satisfied, M. La Tribe?"
+
+"I do not----"
+
+"Man!" With a growl as of a tiger, Count Hannibal dropped the mask. In
+two strides he was at the minister's side, his hand gripped his
+shoulder; his face, flushed with passion, glared into his. "Will you
+play with lives!" he hissed. "If you do not value your own, have you
+no thought of others? Of these? Look and count! Have you no bowels? If
+she will save them, will not you?"
+
+"My own I do not value."
+
+"Curse your own!" Tavannes cried in furious scorn. And he shook the
+other to and fro. "Who thought of your life? Will you doom these? Will
+you give them to the butcher?"
+
+"My lord," La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, "if she be
+willing----"
+
+"She is willing."
+
+"I have nought to say. But I caught her words indistinctly. And
+without her consent----
+
+"She shall speak more plainly. Mademoiselle----"
+
+She anticipated him. She had risen, and stood looking straight before
+her, seeing nothing. "I am willing," she muttered with a strange
+gesture, "if it must be."
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"If it must be," she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh. And her
+chin dropped on her breast. Then, abruptly, suddenly--it was a strange
+thing to see--she looked up. A change as complete as the change which
+had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her. She sprang
+to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes.
+"You are not deceiving me?" she cried. "You have Tignonville below?
+You--oh, no, no!" And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her
+voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, "You have not! You are
+deceiving me! He has escaped, and you have lied to me!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you have lied to me!" It was the last fierce flicker of hope
+when hope seemed dead: the last clutch of the drowning at the straw
+that floated before the eyes.
+
+He laughed harshly. "You will be my wife in five minutes," he said,
+"and you give me the lie? A week, and you will know me better! A
+month, and--but we will talk of that another time. For the present,"
+he continued, turning to La Tribe, "do you, sir, tell her that the
+gentleman is below. Perhaps she will believe you. For you know him."
+
+La Tribe looked at her sorrowfully; his heart bled for her. "I have
+seen M. de Tignonville," he said. "And M. le Comte says truly. He is
+in the same case with ourselves, a prisoner."
+
+"You have seen him?" she wailed.
+
+"I left him in the room below, when I mounted the stairs."
+
+Count Hannibal laughed, the grim mocking laugh which seemed to revel
+in the pain it inflicted. "Will you have him for a witness?" he cried.
+"There could not be a better, for he will not forget. Shall I fetch
+him?"
+
+She bowed her head, shivering. "Spare me that," she said. And she
+pressed her hands to her eyes while an uncontrollable shudder passed
+over her frame. Then she stepped forward: "I am ready," she whispered.
+"Do with me as you will!"
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+When they had all gone out and closed the door behind them, and the
+two whom the minister had joined were left together, Count Hannibal
+continued for a time to pace the room, his hands clasped at his back,
+and his head sunk somewhat on his chest. His thoughts appeared to run
+in a new channel, and one, strange to say, widely diverted from his
+bride and from that which he had just done. For he did not look her
+way, or, for a time, speak to her. He stood once to snuff a candle,
+doing it with an absent face; and once to look, but still absently, as
+if he read no word of it, at the marriage writing which lay, the ink
+still wet, upon the table. After each of these interruptions he
+resumed his steady pacing to and fro, to and fro, nor did his eye
+wander once in the direction of her chair.
+
+And she waited. The conflict of emotions, the strife between hope and
+fear, the final defeat had stunned her; had left her exhausted, almost
+apathetic. Yet not quite, nor wholly. For when in his walk he came a
+little nearer to her, a chill perspiration broke out on her brow, and
+shudderings crept over her; and when he passed farther from her--and
+then only, it seemed--she breathed again. But the change lay beneath
+the surface, and cheated the eye. Into her attitude, as she sat, her
+hands clasped on her lap, her eyes fixed, came no apparent change or
+shadow of movement.
+
+Suddenly, with a dull shock, she became aware that he was speaking.
+
+"There was need of haste," he said, his tone strangely low and free
+from emotion, "for I am under bond to leave Paris to-morrow for
+Angers, whither I bear letters from the King. And as matters stood,
+there was no one with whom I could leave you. I trust Bigot; he is
+faithful, and you may trust him, Madame, fair or foul! But he is not
+quick-witted. Badelon also you may trust. Bear it in mind. Your woman
+Javette is not faithful; but as her life is guaranteed she must stay
+with us until she can be securely placed. Indeed, I must take all with
+me--with one exception--for the priests and monks rule Paris, and they
+do not love me, nor would spare aught at my word."
+
+He was silent a few moments. Then he resumed in the same tone, "You
+ought to know how we, Tavannes, stand. It is by Monsieur and the
+Queen-Mother; and _contra_ the Guises. We have all been in this
+matter; but the latter push and we are pushed, and the old crack will
+reopen. As it is, I cannot answer for much beyond the reach of my arm.
+Therefore, we take all with us except M. Tignonville, who desires to
+be conducted to the Arsenal."
+
+She had begun to listen with averted eyes. But as he continued
+to speak surprise awoke in her, and something stronger than
+surprise--amazement, stupefaction. Slowly her eyes came to him, and
+when he ceased to speak, "Why do you tell me these things!" she
+muttered, her dry lips framing the words with difficulty.
+
+"Because it behoves you to know them," he answered, thoughtfully
+tapping the table. "I have no one, save my brother, whom I can trust."
+
+She would not ask him why he trusted her, nor why he thought he could
+trust her. For a moment or two she watched him, while he, with his
+eyes lowered, stood in deep thought. At last he looked up and his eyes
+met hers. "Come!" he said abruptly and in a different tone, "we must
+end this! Is it to be a kiss or a blow between us?"
+
+She rose, though her knees shook under her; and they stood face to
+face, her face white as paper. "What--do you mean?" she whispered.
+
+"Is it to be a kiss or a blow?" he repeated. "A husband must be a
+lover, Madame, or a master, or both! I am content to be the one or the
+other, or both, as it shall please you. But the one I will be."
+
+"Then, a thousand times, a blow," she cried, her eyes flaming, "from
+you!"
+
+He wondered at her courage, but he hid his wonder. "So be it!" he
+answered. And before she knew what he would be at, he struck her
+sharply across the cheek with the glove which he held in his hand. She
+recoiled with a low cry, and her cheek blazed scarlet where he had
+struck it. "So be it!" he continued sombrely. "The choice shall be
+yours, but you will come to me daily for the one or the other. If I
+cannot be lover, Madame, I will be master. And by this sign I will
+have you know it, daily, and daily remember it."
+
+She stared at him, her bosom rising and falling, in an astonishment
+too deep for words. But he did not heed her. He did not look at her
+again. He had already turned to the door, and while she looked he
+passed through it, he closed it behind him. And she was alone.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                          IN THE ORLÉANNAIS.
+
+
+"But you fear him?"
+
+"Fear him?" Madame St. Lo answered; and, to the surprise of the
+Countess, she made a little face of contempt. "No; why should I fear
+him? I fear him no more than the puppy leaping at old Sancho's bridle
+fears his tall playfellow! Or than the cloud you see above us fears
+the wind before which it flies!" She pointed to a white patch, the
+size of a man's hand, which hung above the hill on their left hand and
+formed the only speck in the blue summer sky. "Fear him! Not I!" And,
+laughing gaily, she put her horse at a narrow rivulet which crossed
+the grassy track on which they rode.
+
+"But he is hard!" the Countess murmured in a low voice, as she
+regained her companion's side.
+
+"Hard!" Madame St. Lo rejoined with a gesture of pride. "Ay, hard as
+the stones in my jewelled ring! Hard as flint, or the nether
+millstone--to his enemies! But to women! Bah! Who ever heard that he
+hurt a woman!"
+
+"Why then is he so feared!" the Countess asked, her eyes on the
+subject of their discussion; a solitary figure, riding some fifty
+paces in front of them.
+
+"Because he counts no cost!" her companion answered. "Because he
+killed Savillon in the court of the Louvre, though he knew his life
+the forfeit. He would have paid the forfeit too, or lost his right
+hand, if Monsieur, for his brother the Marshal's sake, had not
+intervened. But Savillon had whipped his dog, you see. Then he killed
+the Chevalier de Millaud, but 'twas in fair fight, in the snow, in
+their shirts. For that, Millaud's son lay in wait for him with two, in
+the passage under the Châtelet; but Hannibal wounded one, and the
+others saved themselves. Undoubtedly he is feared!" she added with the
+same note of pride in her voice.
+
+The two, who talked, rode at the rear of the little company
+which had left Paris at daybreak two days before, by the Porte St.
+Jacques. Moving steadily south-westward by the lesser roads and
+bridle-tracks--for Count Hannibal seemed averse from the great
+road--they had lain the second night in a village three leagues from
+Bonneval. A journey of two days on fresh horses is apt to change
+scenery and eye alike; but seldom has an alteration--in themselves and
+all about them--as great as that which blessed this little company,
+been wrought in so short a time. From the stifling wynds and
+evil-smelling lanes of Paris, they had passed to the green uplands,
+the breezy woods and babbling streams of the upper Orléannais; from
+sights and sounds the most appalling, to the solitude of the sandy
+heath, haunt of the great bustard, or the sunshine of the hillside,
+vibrating with the songs of larks; from an atmosphere of terror and
+gloom to the freedom of God's earth and sky. Numerous enough--they
+numbered a score of armed men--to defy the lawless bands which had
+their lairs in the huge forest of Orleans, they halted where they
+pleased: at mid-day under a grove of chestnut-trees, or among the
+willows beside a brook; at night, if they willed it, under God's
+heaven. Far, not only from Paris, but from the great road, with its
+gibbets and pillories--the great road which at that date ran through a
+waste, no peasant living willingly within sight of it--they rode in
+the morning and in the evening, resting in the heat of the day. And
+though they had left Paris with much talk of haste, they rode more at
+leisure with every league.
+
+For whatever Tavannes' motive, it was plain that he was in no hurry to
+reach his destination. Nor for that matter were any of his company.
+Madame St. Lo, who had seized the opportunity of escaping from the
+capital under her cousin's escort, was in an ill-humour with cities,
+and declaimed much on the joys of a cell in the woods. For the time
+the coarsest nature and the dullest rider had had enough of alarums
+and conflicts.
+
+The whole company, indeed, though it moved in some fashion of array
+with an avant and a rearguard, the ladies riding together, and Count
+Hannibal proceeding solitary in the midst, formed as peaceful a band,
+and one as innocently diverted, as if no man of them had ever grasped
+pike or blown a match. There was an old rider among them who had seen
+the sack of Rome, and the dead face of the great Constable, the idol
+of the Free Companies. But he had a taste for simples and much skill
+in them; and when Madame had once seen Badelon on his knees in the
+grass searching for plants, she lost her fear of him. Bigot, with his
+low brow and matted hair, was the abject slave of Suzanne, Madame St.
+Lo's woman, who twitted him mercilessly on his Norman _patois_, and
+poured the vials of her scorn on him a dozen times a day. In all, with
+La Tribe and the Carlats, Madame St. Lo's servants, and the Countess's
+following, they numbered not far short of two score; and when they
+halted at noon, and under the shadow of some leafy tree, ate their
+mid-day meal, or drowsed to the tinkle of Madame St. Lo's lute, it was
+difficult to believe that Paris existed, or that these same people had
+so lately left its blood-stained pavements.
+
+They halted this morning a little earlier than usual. Madame St. Lo
+had barely answered her companion's question before the subject of
+their discussion swung himself from old Sancho's back, and stood
+waiting to assist them to dismount. Behind him, where the green valley
+through which the road passed narrowed to a rocky gate, an old mill
+stood among willows at the foot of a mound. On the mound behind it a
+ruined castle which had stood siege in the Hundred Years' War raised
+its grey walls; and beyond this the stream which turned the mill
+poured over rocks with a cool rushing sound that proved irresistible.
+The men, their horses watered and hobbled, went off, shouting like
+boys, to bathe below the falls; and after a moment's hesitation Count
+Hannibal rose from the grass on which he had flung himself.
+
+"Guard that for me, Madame," he said. And he dropped a packet, bravely
+sealed and tied with a silk thread, into the Countess's lap. "'Twill
+be safer than leaving it in my clothes. Ohe!" And he turned to Madame
+St. Lo. "Would you fancy a life that was all gipsying, cousin?" And if
+there was irony in his voice, there was desire in his eyes.
+
+"There is only one happy man in the world," she answered, with
+conviction.
+
+"By name?"
+
+"The hermit of Compiégne."
+
+"And in a week you would be wild for a masque!" he said cynically. And
+turning on his heel he followed the men.
+
+Madame St. Lo sighed complacently. "Heigho!" she said. "He's right! We
+are never content, _ma mie!_ When I am trifling in the Gallery my
+heart is in the greenwood. And when I have eaten black bread and drunk
+spring water for a fortnight I do nothing but dream of Zamet's, and
+white mulberry tarts! And you are in the same case. You have saved
+your round white neck, or it has been saved for you, by not so much as
+the thickness of Zamet's pie-crust--I declare my mouth is beginning to
+water for it!--and instead of being thankful and making the best of
+things, you are thinking of poor Madame d'Yverne, or dreaming of your
+calf-love!"
+
+The girl's face--for a girl she was, though they called her
+Madame--began to work. She struggled a moment with her emotion, and
+then broke down, and fell to weeping silently. For two days she had
+sat in public and not given way. But the reference to her lover was
+too much for her strength.
+
+Madame St. Lo looked at her with eyes which were not unkindly. "Sits
+the wind in that quarter!" she murmured. "I thought so! But there, my
+dear, if you don't put that packet in your gown you'll wash out the
+address! Moreover, if you ask me, I don't think the young man is worth
+it. It is only that which we have not got--we want!"
+
+But the young Countess had borne to the limit of her powers. With an
+incoherent word she rose to her feet, and walked hurriedly away. The
+thought of what was and of what might have been, the thought of the
+lover who still--though he no longer seemed, even to her, the perfect
+hero--held a place in her heart, filled her breast to overflowing. She
+longed for some spot where she could weep unseen, where the sunshine
+and the blue sky would not mock her grief; and seeing in front of her
+a little clump of alders, which grew beside the stream, in a bend that
+in winter was marshy, she hastened towards it.
+
+Madame St. Lo saw her figure blend with the shadow of the
+trees--"Quite _à la_ Ronsard, I give my word!" she murmured. "And now
+she is out of sight! _La, la!_ I could play at the game myself, and
+carve sweet sorrow on the barks of trees, if it were not so lonesome!
+And if I had a man!"
+
+And gazing pensively at the stream and the willows, my lady tried to
+work herself into a proper frame of mind; now murmuring the name of
+one gallant, and now, finding it unsuited, the name of another. But
+the soft inflection would break into a giggle, and finally into a
+yawn; and, tired of the attempt, she began to pluck grass and throw it
+from her. By-and-by she discovered that Madame Carlat and the women,
+who had their place a little apart, had disappeared; and affrighted by
+the solitude and silence--for neither of which she was made--she
+sprang up and stared about her, hoping to discern them. Right and
+left, however, the sweep of hillside curved upward to the skyline,
+lonely and untenanted; behind her the castled rock frowned down on the
+rugged gorge and filled it with dispiriting shadow. Madame St. Lo
+stamped her foot on the turf.
+
+"The little fool!" she murmured, pettishly. "Does she think that I am
+to be murdered that she may fatten on sighs? Oh, come up, Madame, you
+must be dragged out of this!" And she started briskly towards the
+alders, intent on gaining company as quickly as possible.
+
+She had gone about fifty yards, and had as many more to traverse when
+she halted. A man, bent double, was moving stealthily along the
+farther side of the brook a little in front of him. Now she saw him,
+now she lost him; now she caught a glimpse of him again, through a
+screen of willow branches. He moved with the utmost caution, as a man
+moves who is pursued or in danger; and for a moment she deemed him a
+peasant whom the bathers had disturbed and who was bent on escaping.
+But when he came opposite to the alder-bed she saw that that was his
+point, for he crouched down, sheltered by a willow, and gazed eagerly
+among the trees, always with his back to her; and then he waved his
+hand to someone in the wood.
+
+Madame St. Lo drew in her breath. As if he had heard the sound--which
+was impossible--the man dropped down where he stood, crawled a yard or
+two on his face, and disappeared.
+
+Madame stared a moment, expecting to see him or hear him. Then, as
+nothing happened, she screamed. She was a woman of quick impulses,
+essentially feminine; and she screamed three or four times, standing
+where she was, her eyes on the edge of the wood. "If that does not
+bring her out, nothing will!" she thought.
+
+It brought her. An instant, and the Countess appeared, and hurried in
+dismay to her side. "What is it?" the younger woman asked, glancing
+over her shoulder; for all the valley, all the hills were peaceful,
+and behind Madame St. Lo--but the lady had not discovered it--the
+servants who had returned were laying the meal. "What is it?" she
+repeated anxiously.
+
+"Who was it?" Madame St. Lo asked curtly. She was quite calm now.
+
+"Who was--who?"
+
+"The man in the wood?"
+
+The Countess stared a moment, then laughed. "Only the old soldier they
+call Badelon, gathering simples. Did you think that he would harm me?"
+
+"It was not old Badelon whom I saw!" Madame St. Lo retorted. "It was a
+younger man, who crept along the other side of the brook, keeping
+under cover. When I first saw him he was there," she continued,
+pointing to the place. "And he crept on and on until he came opposite
+to you. Then he waved his hand."
+
+"To me!"
+
+Madame nodded.
+
+"But if you saw him, who was he?" the Countess asked.
+
+"I did not see his face," Madame St. Lo answered. "But he waved to
+you. That I saw."
+
+The Countess had a thought which slowly flooded her face with crimson.
+Madame St. Lo saw the change, saw the tender light which on a sudden
+softened the other's eyes; and the same thought occurred to her. And
+having a mind to punish her companion for her reticence--for she did
+not doubt that the girl knew more than she acknowledged--she proposed
+that they should return and find Badelon, and learn if he had seen the
+man.
+
+"Why?" Madame Tavannes asked. And she stood stubbornly, her head high.
+"Why should we?"
+
+"To clear it up," the elder woman answered mischievously. "But
+perhaps, it were better to tell your husband and let his men search
+the coppice."
+
+The colour left the Countess's face as quickly as it had come. For a
+moment she was tongue-tied. Then, "Have we not had enough of seeking
+and being sought?" she cried; more bitterly than befitted the
+occasion. "Why should we hunt him? I am not timid, and he did me no
+harm. I beg, Madame, that you will do me the favour of being silent on
+the matter."
+
+"Oh, if you insist? But what a pother--"
+
+"I did not see him, and he did not see me," Madame de Tavannes
+answered vehemently. "I fail, therefore, to understand why we should
+harass him, whoever he be. Besides, M. de Tavannes is waiting for us."
+
+"And M. de Tignonville--is following us!" Madame St. Lo
+muttered--under her breath. And she made a face at the other's back.
+
+She was silent, however; they returned to the others; and nothing of
+import, it would seem, had happened. The soft summer air played on the
+meal laid under the willows as it had played on the meal of yesterday
+laid under the chestnut-trees. The horses grazed within sight, moving
+now and again, with a jingle of trappings or a jealous neigh; the
+women's chatter vied with the unceasing sound of the mill-stream.
+After dinner, Madame St. Lo touched the lute, and Badelon--Badelon who
+had seen the sack of the Colonna's Palace, and been served by
+cardinals on the knee--fed a water-rat, which had its home in one of
+the willow-stumps, with carrot-parings. One by one the men laid
+themselves to sleep with their faces on their arms; and to the eyes
+all was as all had been yesterday in this camp of armed men living
+peacefully.
+
+But not to the Countess! She had accepted her life, she had resigned
+herself, she had marvelled that it was no worse. After the horrors of
+Paris the calm of the last two days had fallen on her as balm on a
+wound. Worn out in body and mind, she had rested, and only rested;
+without thought, almost without emotion, save for the feeling, half
+fear, half curiosity, which stirred her in regard to the strange man,
+her husband. Who on his side left her alone.
+
+But the last hour had wrought a change. Her eyes were grown restless,
+her colour came and went. The past stirred in its shallow--ah, so
+shallow--grave; and dead hopes and dead forebodings, strive as she
+might, thrust out hands to plague and torment her. If the man who
+sought to speak with her by stealth, who dogged her footsteps and hung
+on the skirts of her party, were Tignonville--her lover, who at his
+own request had been escorted to the Arsenal before their departure
+from Paris--then her plight was a sorry one. For what woman, wedded as
+she had been wedded, could think otherwise than indulgently of his
+persistence? And yet, lover and husband! What peril, what shame the
+words had often spelled! At the thought only she trembled and her
+colour ebbed. She saw, as one who stands on the brink of a precipice,
+the depth which yawned before her. She asked herself, shivering, if
+she would ever sink to that.
+
+All the loyalty of a strong nature, all the virtue of a good woman
+revolted against the thought. True, her husband--husband she must call
+him--had not deserved her love; but his bizarre magnanimity, the
+gloomy, disdainful kindness with which he had crowned possession, even
+the unity of their interests, which he had impressed upon her in so
+strange a fashion, claimed a return in honour.
+
+To be paid--how? how? That was the crux which perplexed, which
+frightened, which harassed her. For, if she told her suspicions, she
+exposed her lover to capture by one who had no longer a reason to be
+merciful. And if she sought occasion to see Tignonville and so to
+dissuade him, she did it at deadly risk to herself. Yet what other
+course lay open to her if she would not stand by? If she would not
+play the traitor? If she----
+
+"Madame,"--it was her husband, and he spoke to her suddenly,--"are you
+not well?" And, looking up guiltily, she found his eyes fixed
+curiously on hers.
+
+Her face turned red and white and red again, and she faltered
+something and looked from him, but only to meet Madame St. Lo's eyes.
+My lady laughed softly in sheer mischief.
+
+"What is it?" Count Hannibal asked sharply.
+
+But Madame St. Lo's answer was a line of Ronsard.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                         ON THE CASTLE HILL.
+
+
+Thrice she hummed it, bland and smiling. Then from the neighbouring
+group came an interruption. The wine he had drunk had put it into
+Bigot's head to snatch a kiss from Suzanne; and Suzanne's modesty,
+which was very nice in company, obliged her to squeal. The uproar
+which ensued, the men backing the man and the women the woman, brought
+Tavannes to his feet. He did not speak, but a glance from his eyes was
+enough. There was not one who failed to see that something was amiss
+with him, and a sudden silence fell on the party.
+
+He turned to the Countess. "You wished to see the castle?" he said.
+"You had better go now, but not alone." He cast his eyes over the
+company, and summoned La Tribe, who was seated with the Carlats. "Go
+with Madame," he said curtly. "She has a mind to climb the hill. Bear
+in mind, we start at three, and do not venture out of hearing."
+
+"I understand, M. le Comte," the minister answered. He spoke quietly,
+but there was a strange light in his face as he turned to go with her.
+
+None the less he was silent until Madame's lagging feet--for all her
+interest in the expedition was gone--had borne her a hundred paces
+from the company. Then, "Who knoweth our thoughts and forerunneth all
+our desires," he murmured. And when she turned to him, astonished,
+"Madame," he continued, "I have prayed, ah, how I have prayed, for
+this opportunity of speaking to you! And it has come. I would it had
+come this morning, but it has come. Do not start or look round; many
+eyes are on us, and alas! I have that to say to you which it will move
+you to hear, and that to ask of you which it must task your courage to
+perform."
+
+She began to tremble, and stood, looking up the green slope to the
+broken grey wall which crowned its summit. "What is it?" she
+whispered, commanding herself with an effort. "What is it? If it have
+aught to do with M. Tignonville----"
+
+"It has not!"
+
+In her surprise--for although she had put the question she had felt no
+doubt of the answer--she started and turned to him. "It has not?" she
+exclaimed almost incredulously.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what is it, monsieur?" she replied, a little haughtily. "What
+can there be that should move me so?"
+
+"Life or death, Madame," he answered solemnly. "Nay, more; for since
+Providence has given me this chance of speaking to you, a thing of
+which, I despaired, I know that the burden is laid on us, and that it
+is guilt or it is innocence, according as we refuse the burden or bear
+it."
+
+"What is it then?" she cried impatiently. "What is it?"
+
+"I tried to speak to you this morning."
+
+"Was it you then, whom Madame St. Lo saw stalking me before dinner?"
+
+"It was."
+
+She clasped her hands and heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God,
+monsieur!" she replied. "You have lifted a weight from me. I fear
+nothing in comparison of that. Nothing!"
+
+"Alas," he answered sombrely, "there is much to fear, for others if
+not for ourselves! Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears
+always in his belt? What it is he carries with such care? What it was
+he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?"
+
+"Letters from the King."
+
+"Yes, but the import of those letters?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And yet should they be written in letters of blood!" the minister
+exclaimed, his face kindling. "They should scorch the hands that hold
+them and blister the eyes that read them. They are the fire and the
+sword! They are the King's order to do at Angers as they have done in
+Paris. To slay all of the religion who are found there--and they are
+many! To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the
+unborn child! See yonder hawk!" he continued, pointing with a shaking
+hand to a falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the
+movement of its wings invisible. "How it disports itself in the face
+of the sun! How easy its way, how smooth its flight! But see, it drops
+upon its prey in the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its
+beauty is slaughter! So is it with yonder company!" His finger sank
+until it indicated the little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow
+four hundred feet below them, with every man and horse, and the very
+camp-kettle, clear-cut and visible, though diminished by distance to
+fairy-like proportions. "So it is with yonder company!" he repeated
+sternly. "They play and are merry, and one fishes and another sleeps!
+But at the end of the journey is death. Death for their victims, and
+for them the judgment!"
+
+She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled grass-plot
+behind her and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders,
+and the little camp. The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the
+stillness of an August afternoon. But his words went home so truly
+that the sunlit landscape before the eyes added one more horror to the
+picture he called up before the mind.
+
+The Countess turned white and sick. "Are you sure?" she whispered at
+last.
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Ah, God!" she cried, "are we never to have peace?" And turning from
+the valley, she walked some distance into the grass court, and stood.
+After a time, she turned to him; he had followed her doggedly, pace
+for pace. "What do you want me to do?" she cried, despair in her
+voice. "What can I do?"
+
+"Were the letters he bears destroyed----"
+
+"The letters?"
+
+"Yes, were the letters destroyed," La Tribe answered relentlessly, "he
+could do nothing! Nothing! Without that authority the magistrates of
+Angers would not move. He could do nothing. And men and women and
+children--men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry
+for vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved
+them--will live! Will live!" he repeated with a softening eye. And
+with an all-embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open
+heavens, the sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them round.
+"Will live!"
+
+She drew a deep breath. "And you have brought me here," she said, "to
+ask me to do this?"
+
+"I was sent here to ask you to do this."
+
+"Why me? Why me!" she wailed, and she held out her open hands to him,
+her face wan and colourless. "You come to me, a woman! Why to me?"
+
+"You are his wife!"
+
+"And he is my husband!"
+
+"Therefore he trusts you," was the unyielding, the pitiless answer.
+"You, and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this."
+
+She gazed at him in astonishment. "And it is you who say that?" she
+faltered, after a pause. "You who made us one, who now bid me betray
+him, whom I have sworn to love? To ruin him whom I have sworn to
+honour?"
+
+"I do!" he answered solemnly. "On my head be the guilt, and on yours
+the merit."
+
+"Nay, but--" she cried quickly, and her eyes glittered with
+passion--"do you take both guilt and merit! You are a man," she
+continued, her words coming quickly in her excitement, "he is but a
+man! Why do you not call him aside, trick him apart on some pretence
+or other, and when there are but you two, man to man, wrench the
+warrant from him? Staking your life against his, with all those lives
+for prize? And save them or perish? Why I, even I, a woman, could find
+it in my heart to do that, were he not my husband! Surely you, you who
+are a man, and young----"
+
+"Am no match for him in strength or arms," the minister answered
+sadly. "Else would I do it."
+
+"Else would I stake my life, Heaven knows, as gladly to save their
+lives as I sit down to meat! But I should fail, and if I failed all
+were lost. Moreover," he continued solemnly, "I am certified that this
+task has been set for you. It was not for nothing, Madame, nor to save
+one poor household that you were joined to this man; but to ransom all
+these lives and this great city. To be the Judith of our faith, the
+saviour of Angers, the----"
+
+"Fool! Fool!" she cried. "Will you be silent?" And she stamped the
+turf passionately, while her eyes blazed in her white face. "I am no
+Judith, and no madwoman as you are fain to make me. Mad?" she
+continued, overwhelmed with agitation. "My God, I would I were, and I
+should be free from this!" And, turning, she walked a little way from
+him with the gesture of one under a crushing burden.
+
+He waited a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and still she did not
+return. At length she came back, her bearing more composed; she looked
+at him and her eyes seized his and seemed as if they would read his
+soul. "Are you sure," she said, "of what you have told me? Will you
+swear that the contents of these letters are as you say?"
+
+"As I live," he answered gravely. "As God lives."
+
+"And you know--of no other way, monsieur? Of no other way?" she
+repeated slowly and piteously.
+
+"Of none, Madame, of none, I swear."
+
+She sighed deeply, and stood sunk in thought. Then, "When do we reach
+Angers?" she asked heavily.
+
+"The day after to-morrow."
+
+"I have--until the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes. To-night we lie near Vendôme."
+
+"And to-morrow night?"
+
+"Near a place called La Flèche. It is possible," he went on with
+hesitation--for he did not understand her--"that he may bathe
+to-morrow, and may hand the packet to you, as he did to-day when I
+vainly sought speech with you. If he does that----"
+
+"Yes?" she said, her eyes on his face.
+
+"The taking will be easy. But when he finds you have it not--" he
+faltered anew--"it may go hard with you."
+
+She did not speak.
+
+"And there, I think, I can help you. If you will stray from the party,
+I will meet you and destroy the letter. That done--and would God it
+were done already--I will take to flight as best I can, and you will
+raise the alarm and say that I robbed you of it! And if you tear your
+dress----"
+
+"No," she said.
+
+He looked a question.
+
+"No!" she repeated in a low voice. "If I betray him I will not lie to
+him! And no other shall pay the price! If I ruin him it shall be
+between him and me, and no other shall have part in it!"
+
+He shook his head. "I do not know," he murmured, "what he may do to
+you!"
+
+"Nor I," she said proudly. "That will be for him."
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+Curious eyes had watched the two as they climbed the hill. For the
+path ran up the slope to the gap which served for gate, much as the
+path leads up to the Castle Beautiful in old prints of the Pilgrim's
+journey; and Madame St. Lo had marked the first halt and the second,
+and, noting every gesture, had lost nothing of the interview save the
+words. But until the two, after pausing a moment, passed out of sight
+she made no sign. Then she laughed. And as Count Hannibal, at whom the
+laugh was aimed, did not heed her, she laughed again. And she hummed
+the line of Ronsard.
+
+Still he would not be roused, and, piqued, she had recourse to words.
+"I wonder what you would do," she said, "if the old lover followed us,
+and she went off with him!"
+
+"She would not go," he answered coldly, and without looking up.
+
+"But if he rode off with her?"
+
+"She would come back on her feet!"
+
+Madame St. Lo's prudence was not proof against that. She had the
+woman's inclination to hide a woman's secret; and she had not
+intended, when she laughed, to do more than play with the formidable
+man with whom so few dared to play. Now, stung by his tone and his
+assurance, she must needs show him that his trustfulness had no base.
+And, as so often happens in the circumstances, she went a little
+farther than the facts bore her. "Any way, he has followed us so far!"
+she cried viciously.
+
+"M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"Yes. I saw him this morning while you were bathing. She left me and
+went into the little coppice. He came down the other side of the
+brook, stooping and running, and went to join her."
+
+"How did he cross the brook?"
+
+Madame St. Lo blushed. "Old Badelon was there, gathering simples," she
+said. "He scared him. And he crawled away."
+
+"Then he did not cross?"
+
+"No. I did not say he did!"
+
+"Nor speak to her?"
+
+"No. But if you think it will pass so next time--you do not know much
+of women!"
+
+"Of women generally, not much," he answered, grimly polite. "Of this
+woman a great deal!"
+
+"You looked in her big eyes, I suppose!" Madame St. Lo cried with
+heat. "And straightway fell down and worshipped her!" She liked rather
+than disliked the Countess; but she was of the lightest, and the least
+opposition drove her out of her course. "And you think you know her!
+And she, if she could save you from death by opening an eye, would go
+with a patch on it till her dying day! Take my word for it, monsieur,
+between her and her lover you will come to harm."
+
+Count Hannibal's swarthy face darkened a tone, and his eyes grew a
+very little smaller. "I fancy that he runs the greater risk," he
+muttered.
+
+"You may deal with him, but, for her----"
+
+"I can deal with her. You deal with some women with a whip"
+
+"You would whip me, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. "It would do you good, Madame. And with other
+women otherwise. There are women who, if they are well frightened,
+will not deceive you. And there are others who will not deceive you
+though they are frightened. Madame de Tavannes is of the latter kind."
+
+"Wait! Wait and see!" Madame cried in scorn.
+
+"I am waiting."
+
+"Yes! And whereas if you had come to me I could have told her that
+about M. Tignonville which would have surprised her, you will go on
+waiting and waiting and waiting until one fine day you'll wake up and
+find Madame gone, and----"
+
+"Then I'll take a wife I can whip!" he answered, with a look which
+apprised her how far she had carried it. "But it will not be you,
+sweet cousin. For I have no whip heavy enough for your case."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                      SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.
+
+
+We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as
+a stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting
+almost to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings
+with a retiring foe. But there are concessions which touch even a good
+woman's conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of a
+blow, and with that exception treated from hour to hour with rugged
+courtesy, shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.
+
+To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when a
+movement on her part might save men, women, and children from death,
+and a whole city from massacre--this was a line of conduct so craven,
+so selfish that from the first she knew herself incapable of it. But
+to take the only other course open to her, to betray her husband and
+rob him of that, the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not
+courage only, not devotion only, but a hardness proof against
+reproaches as well as against punishment. And the Countess was no
+fanatic. No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, or
+dressed it in colours other than its own. Even while she acknowledged
+the necessity of the act and its ultimate righteousness, even while
+she owned the obligation which lay upon her to perform it, she saw it
+as he would see it, and saw herself as he would see her.
+
+True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of some
+might pass for punishment. But he had saved her life where many had
+perished; and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic
+generosity. In return for which she was to ruin him! It was not hard
+to imagine what he would say of her, and of the reward with which she
+had requited him.
+
+She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the westering sun
+in their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart
+the bracken which fringed the track. Across breezy heaths and over
+downs, through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human
+creature fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes;
+riding in a world of their own, so remote, so different from the real
+world--from which they came and to which they must return--that she
+could have wept in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man
+which lay so heavy on creation. The gaunt troopers riding at ease with
+swinging legs and swaying stirrups--and singing now a refrain from
+Ronsard, and now one of those verses of Marot's psalms which all the
+world had sung three decades before--wore their most lamblike aspect.
+Behind them Madame St. Lo chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which
+had not been brought, or planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently
+in the mode could be found at Angers. And the other women talked and
+giggled, screamed when they came to fords, and made much of steep
+places, where the men must help them. In time of war death's shadow
+covers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is out of mind. Of all the
+troop whom the sinking sun left within sight of the lofty towers and
+vine-clad hills of Vendôme, three only wore faces attuned to the cruel
+August week just ending; three only, like dark beads strung far apart
+on a gay nun's rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in their places. The
+Countess was one; the others were the two men whose thoughts she
+filled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe's with
+sombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal's fraught with a gloomy
+speculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.
+
+He, moreover, as he rode, had other thoughts; dark ones, which did not
+touch her. And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of her
+young lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out of
+the darkness which had suddenly whelmed her. So that of the three only
+La Tribe was single-minded.
+
+This day they rode a long league after sunset, through a scattered
+oak-wood, where the rabbits sprang up under their horses' heads and
+the squirrels made angry faces at them from the lower branches. Night
+was hard upon them when they reached the southern edge of the forest,
+and looked across the dusky open slopes to a distant light or two
+which marked where Vendôme stood. "Another league," Count Hannibal
+muttered; and he bade the men light fires where they were, and unload
+the packhorses. "'Tis pure and dry here," he said. "Set a watch,
+Bigot, and let two men go down for water. I hear frogs below. You do
+not fear to be moonstruck, Madame!"
+
+"I prefer this," she answered in a low voice.
+
+"Houses are for monks and nuns!" he rejoined heartily. "Give me God's
+heaven."
+
+"The earth is His, but we deface it," she murmured, reverting to her
+thoughts, and unconscious that it was to him she spoke.
+
+He looked at her sharply, but the fire was not yet kindled; and in the
+gloaming her face was a pale blot undecipherable. He stood a moment,
+but she did not speak again; and Madame St. Lo bustling up, he moved
+away to give an order. By-and-by the fires burned up, and showed the
+pillared aisle in which, they sat, small groups dotted here and there
+on the floor of Nature's cathedral. Through the shadowy Gothic
+vaulting, the groining of many boughs which met overhead, a rare star
+twinkled, as through some clerestory window; and from the dell below
+rose in the night, now the monotonous chanting of the frogs, and now,
+as some great bull-frog took the note, a diapason worthy of a Brescian
+organ. The darkness walled all in; the night was still; a falling
+caterpillar sounded. Even the rude men at the farthest fire stilled
+their voices at times; awed, they knew not why, by the silence and
+vastness of the night.
+
+The Countess long remembered that vigil--for she lay late awake; the
+cool gloom, the faint wood-rustlings, the distant cry of fox or wolf,
+the soft glow of the expiring fires that at last left the world to
+darkness and the stars; above all, the silent wheeling of the planets,
+which spoke indeed of a supreme Ruler, but crushed the heart under a
+sense of its insignificance, and of the insignificance of all human
+revolutions. "Yet, I believe!" she cried, wrestling upwards, wrestling
+with herself. "Though I have seen what I have seen, yet I believe!"
+
+And though she had to bear what she had to bear, and do that from
+which her soul shrank! The woman, indeed, within her continued to cry
+out against this tragedy ever renewed in her path, against this
+necessity for choosing evil or good, ease for herself or life for
+others. But the moving heavens, pointing onward to a time when good
+and evil alike should be past, strengthened a nature essentially
+noble; and before she slept no shame and no suffering seemed--for the
+moment at least--too great a price to pay for the lives of little
+children. Love had been taken from her life; the pride which would
+fain answer generosity with generosity--that must go, too!
+
+She felt no otherwise when the day came, and the bustle of the start
+and the common round of the journey put to flight the ideals of the
+night. But things fell out in a manner she had not pictured. They
+halted before noon on the north bank of the Loir, in a level meadow
+with lines of poplars running this way and that, and filling all the
+place with the soft shimmer of leaves. Blue succory, tiny mirrors of
+the summer sky, flecked the long grass, and the women picked bunches
+of them, or, Italian fashion, twined the blossoms in their hair. A
+road ran across the meadow to a ferry, but the ferryman, alarmed by
+the aspect of the party, had conveyed his boat to the other side and
+hidden himself.
+
+Presently Madame St. Lo espied the boat, clapped her hands and must
+have it. The poplars threw no shade, the flies teased her, the life of
+a hermit--in a meadow--was no longer to her taste. "Let us go on the
+water!" she cried. "Presently you will go to bathe, monsieur, and
+leave us to grill!"
+
+"Two livres to the man who will fetch the boat!" Count Hannibal cried.
+In less than half a minute three men had thrown off their boots, and
+were swimming across, amid the laughter and shouts of their fellows.
+In five minutes the boat was brought.
+
+It was not large and would hold no more than four. Tavannes' eye fell
+on Carlat. "You understand a boat," he said. "Go with Madame St. Lo.
+And you, M. La Tribe."
+
+"But you are coming?" Madame St. Lo cried, turning to the Countess.
+"Oh, Madame," with a curtsey, "you are not? You----"
+
+"Yes, I will come," the Countess answered.
+
+"I shall bathe a short distance up the stream," Count Hannibal said.
+He took from his belt the packet of letters, and as Carlat held the
+boat for Madame St. Lo to enter, he gave it to the Countess, as he had
+given it to her yesterday. "Have a care of it, Madame," he said in a
+low voice, "and do not let it pass out of your hands. To lose it may
+be to lose my head."
+
+The colour ebbed from her cheeks. In spite of herself her shaking hand
+put back the packet. "Had you not better then--give it to Bigot?" she
+faltered.
+
+"He is bathing."
+
+"Let him bathe afterwards."
+
+"No," he answered almost harshly; he found a species of pleasure in
+showing her that, strange as their relations were, he trusted her.
+"No; take it, Madame. Only have a care of it."
+
+She took it then, hid it in her dress, and he turned away; and she
+turned towards the boat. La Tribe stood beside the stern, holding it
+for her to enter, and as her fingers rested an instant on his arm
+their eyes met. His were alight, his arm even quivered; and she
+shuddered.
+
+She avoided looking at him a second time, and this was easy, since he
+took his seat in the bows beyond Carlat, who handled the oars.
+Silently the boat glided out on the surface of the stream, and floated
+downwards, Carlat now and again touching an oar, and Madame St. Lo
+chattering gaily in a voice which carried far on the water. Now it was
+a flowering rush she must have, now a green bough to shield her face
+from the sun's reflection; and now they must lie in some cool, shadowy
+pool under fern-clad banks, where the fish rose heavily, and the
+trickle of a rivulet fell down over stones.
+
+It was idyllic. But not to the Countess. Her face burned, her temples
+throbbed, her fingers gripped the side of the boat in the vain attempt
+to steady her pulses. The packet within her dress scorched her. The
+great city and its danger, Tavannes and his faith in her, the need of
+action, the irrevocableness of action hurried through her brain. The
+knowledge that she must act now--or never--pressed upon her with
+distracting force. Her hand felt the packet, and fell again nerveless.
+
+"The sun has caught you, _ma mie_," Madame St. Lo said. "You should
+ride in a mask as I do."
+
+"I have not one with me," she muttered, her eyes on the water.
+
+"And I but an old one. But at Angers----"
+
+The Countess heard no more; on that word she caught La Tribe's eye. He
+was beckoning to her behind Carlat's back, pointing imperiously to the
+water, making signs to her to drop the packet over the side. When she
+did not obey--she felt sick and faint--she saw through a mist his brow
+grow dark. He menaced her secretly. And still the packet scorched her;
+and twice her hand went to it, and dropped again empty.
+
+On a sudden Madame St. Lo cried out. The bank on one side of the
+stream was beginning to rise more boldly above the water, and at the
+head of the steep thus formed she had espied a late rose-bush in
+bloom; nothing would now serve but she must land at once and plunder
+it. The boat was put in therefore, she jumped ashore, and began to
+scale the bank.
+
+"Go with Madame!" La Tribe cried, roughly nudging Carlat in the back.
+"Do you not see that she cannot climb the bank! Up, man, up!"
+
+The Countess opened her mouth to cry "No!" but the word died
+half-born on her lips; and when the steward looked at her, uncertain
+what she had said, she nodded. "Yes, go!" she muttered. She was pale.
+
+"Yes, man, go!" cried the minister, his eyes burning. And he almost
+pushed the other out of the boat.
+
+The next second the craft floated from the bank, and began to drift
+downwards. La Tribe waited until a tree interposed and hid them from
+the two whom they had left; then he leaned forward. "Now, Madame!" he
+cried imperiously. "In God's name, now!"
+
+"Oh!" she cried. "Wait! Wait! I want to think."
+
+"To think?"
+
+"He trusted me!" she wailed. "He trusted me! How can I do it?"
+Nevertheless, and even while she spoke, she drew forth the packet.
+
+"Heaven has given you the opportunity!"
+
+"If I could have stolen it!" she answered.
+
+"Fool!" he returned rocking himself to and fro and fairly beside
+himself with impatience. "Why steal it? It is in your hands! You have
+it! It is Heaven's own opportunity, it is God's opportunity given to
+you!"
+
+For he could not read her mind nor comprehend the scruple which held
+her hand. He was single-minded. He had but one aim, one object. He saw
+the haggard faces of brave men hopeless; he heard the dying cries of
+women and children. Such an opportunity of saving God's elect, of
+redeeming the innocent, was in his eyes a gift from Heaven. And having
+these thoughts and seeing her hesitate--hesitate when every movement
+caused him agony, so imperative was haste, so precious the
+opportunity--he could bear the suspense no longer. When she did not
+answer he stooped forward, until his knees touched the thwart on which
+Carlat had sat; then without a word he flung himself forward, and,
+with one hand far extended, grasped the packet.
+
+Had he not moved, she would have done his will; almost certainly she
+would have done it. But, thus attacked, she resisted instinctively;
+she clung to the letters. "No!" she cried. "No! Let go, monsieur!" And
+she tried to drag the packet from him.
+
+"Give it me!"
+
+"Let go, monsieur! Do you hear!" she repeated. And with a vigorous
+jerk she forced it from him--he had caught it by the edge only--and
+held it behind her. "Go back, and----"
+
+"Give it me!" he panted.
+
+"I will not!"
+
+"Then throw it overboard!"
+
+"I will not!" she cried again, though his face, dark with passion,
+glared into hers, and it was clear that the man, possessed by one idea
+only, was no longer master of himself. "Go back to your place!"
+
+"Give it me," he gasped, "or I will upset the boat!" And seizing her
+by the shoulder he reached over her, striving to take hold of the
+packet which she held behind her. The boat rocked; and as much in rage
+as fear she screamed.
+
+A cry uttered wholly in rage answered hers; it came from Carlat. La
+Tribe, however, whose whole mind was fixed on the packet, did not
+heed, nor would have heeded, the steward. But the next moment a second
+cry, fierce as that of a wild beast, clove the air from the lower and
+farther bank; and the Huguenot, recognising Count Hannibal's voice,
+involuntarily desisted and stood erect. A moment the boat rocked
+perilously under him; then--for unheeded it had been drifting that
+way--it softly touched the bank on which Carlat stood staring and
+aghast.
+
+La Tribe's chance was gone; he saw that the steward must reach him
+before he could succeed in a second attempt. On the other hand, the
+undergrowth on the bank was thick, he could touch it with his hand,
+and if he fled at once he might escape.
+
+He hung an instant irresolute; then, with a look which went to the
+Countess's heart, he sprang ashore, plunged among the alders, and in a
+moment was gone.
+
+"After him! After him!" thundered Count Hannibal. "After him, man!"
+and Carlat, stumbling down the steep slope and through the rough
+briars, did his best to obey. But in vain. Before he reached the
+water's edge, the noise of the fugitive's retreat had grown faint. A
+few seconds and it died away.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                          PLAYING WITH FIRE.
+
+
+The impulse of La Tribe's foot as he landed had driven the boat into
+the stream. It drifted slowly downward, and if naught intervened would
+take the ground on Count Hannibal's side, a hundred and fifty yards
+below him. He saw this, and walked along the bank, keeping pace with
+it, while the Countess sat motionless, crouching in the stern of the
+craft, her fingers strained about the fatal packet. The slow glide of
+the boat, as almost imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the
+stillness of the mirror-like surface on which it moved, leaving only
+the faintest ripple behind it; the silence--for under the influence of
+emotion Count Hannibal too was mute--all were in tremendous contrast
+with the storm which raged in her breast.
+
+Should she--should she even now, with his eyes on her, drop the
+letters over the side? It needed but a movement. She had only to
+extend her hand, to relax the tension of her fingers, and the deed was
+done. It needed only that; but the golden sands of opportunity were
+running out--were running out fast. Slowly and more slowly, silently
+and more silently, the boat slid in towards the bank on which he
+stood, and still she hesitated. The stillness, and the waiting figure,
+and the watching eyes now but a few feet distant, weighed on her and
+seemed to paralyse her will. A foot, another foot! A moment and it
+would be too late, the last of the sands would have run out. The bow
+of the boat rustled softly through the rushes; it kissed the bank. And
+her hand still held the letters.
+
+"You are not hurt?" he asked curtly.
+
+"No."
+
+"The scoundrel might have drowned you. Was he mad?"
+
+She was silent. He held out his hand, and she gave him the packet. "I
+owe you much," he said, a ring of gaiety, almost of triumph, in his
+tone. "More than you guess, Madame. God made you for a soldier's wife,
+and a mother of soldiers. What? You are not well, I am afraid?"
+
+"If I could sit down a minute," she faltered. She was swaying on her
+feet.
+
+He supported her across the belt of meadow which fringed the bank, and
+made her recline against a tree. Then as his men began to come up--for
+the alarm had reached them--he would have sent two of them in the boat
+to fetch Madame St. Lo to her. But she would not let him. "Your maid,
+then?" he said.
+
+"No, monsieur, I need only to be alone a little! Only to be alone,"
+she repeated, her face averted; and believing this he sent the men
+away, and, taking the boat himself, he crossed over, took in Madame
+St. Lo and Carlat, and rowed them to the ferry. Here the wildest
+rumours were current. One held that the Huguenot had gone out of his
+senses; another, that he had watched for this opportunity of avenging
+his brethren; a third, that his intention had been to carry off the
+Countess and hold her to ransom. Only Tavannes himself, from his
+position on the farther bank, had seen the packet of letters, and the
+hand which withheld them; and he said nothing. Nay, when some of the
+men would have crossed to search for the fugitive, he forbade them, he
+scarcely knew why, save that it might please her; and when the women
+would have hurried to join her and hear the tale from her lips he
+forbade them also.
+
+"She wishes to be alone," he said curtly.
+
+"Alone?" Madame St. Lo cried, in a fever of curiosity. "You'll find
+her dead, or worse! What? Leave a woman alone after such a fright as
+that!"
+
+"She wishes it."
+
+Madame laughed cynically; and the laugh brought a tinge of colour to
+his brow. "Oh, does she?" she sneered. "Then I understand! Have a
+care, have a care, or one of these days, monsieur, when you leave her
+alone, you'll find them together!"
+
+"Be silent!"
+
+"With pleasure," she returned. "Only when it happens don't say that
+you were not warned. You think that she does not hear from him----"
+
+"How can she hear?" The words were wrung from him.
+
+Madame St. Lo's contempt passed all limits. "How can she!" she
+retorted. "You trail a woman across France, and let her sit by
+herself, and lie by herself, and all but drown by herself, and you ask
+how she hears from her lover? You leave her old servants about her,
+and you ask how she communicates with him?"
+
+"You know nothing!" he snarled.
+
+"I know this," she retorted. "I saw her sitting this morning, and
+smiling and weeping at the same time! Was she thinking of you,
+monsieur? Or of him? She was looking at the hills through tears; a
+blue mist hung over them, and I'll wager she saw some one's eyes
+gazing and some one's hand beckoning out of the blue!"
+
+"Curse you!" he cried, tormented in spite of himself. "You love to
+make mischief!"
+
+"No!" she answered swiftly. "For 'twas not I made the match. But go
+your way, go your way, monsieur, and see what kind of a welcome you'll
+get!"
+
+"I will," Count Hannibal growled. And he started along the bank to
+rejoin his wife.
+
+The light in his eyes had died down. Yet would they have been more
+sombre, and his face more harsh, had he known the mind of the woman to
+whom he was hastening. The Countess had begged to be left alone;
+alone, she found the solitude she had craved a cruel gift. She had
+saved the packet. She had fulfilled her trust. But only to experience,
+the moment it was too late, the full poignancy of remorse. Before the
+act, while the choice had lain with her, the betrayal of her husband
+had loomed large; now she saw that to treat him as she had treated him
+was the true betrayal, and that even for his own sake, and to save him
+from a fearful sin, it had become her to destroy the letters.
+
+Now, it was no longer her duty to him which loomed large, but her duty
+to the innocent, to the victims of the massacre which she might have
+stayed, to the people of her faith whom she had abandoned, to the
+women and children whose death-warrant she had preserved. Now, she
+perceived that a part more divine had never fallen to woman, nor a
+responsibility so heavy been laid upon woman. Nor guilt more dread!
+
+She writhed in misery, thinking of it. What had she done? She could
+hear afar off the sounds of the camp; an occasional outcry, a snatch
+of laughter. And the cry and the laughter rang in her ears, a bitter
+mockery. This summer camp, to what was it the prelude? This
+forbearance on her husband's part, in what would it end? Were not the
+one and the other cruel make-believes? Two days, and the men who
+laughed beside the water would slay and torture with equal zest. A
+little, and the husband who now chose to be generous would show
+himself in his true colours. And it was for the sake of such as these
+that she had played the coward. That she had laid up for herself
+endless remorse. That henceforth the cries of the innocent would haunt
+her dreams.
+
+Racked by such thoughts she did not hear his step, and it was his
+shadow falling across her feet which first warned her of his presence.
+She looked up, saw him, and involuntarily recoiled. Then, seeing the
+change in his face, "Oh! monsieur," she stammered affrighted, her hand
+pressed to her side, "I ask your pardon! You startled me!"
+
+"So it seems," he answered. And he stood over her regarding her drily.
+
+"I am not quite--myself yet," she murmured. His look told her that her
+start had betrayed her feelings.
+
+Alas, the plan of taking a woman by force has drawbacks, and among
+others this one: that he must be a sanguine husband who deems her
+heart his, and a husband without jealousy, whose suspicions are not
+aroused by the faintest flush or the lightest word. He knows that she
+is his unwillingly, a victim, not a mistress; and behind every bush
+beside the road and behind every mask in the crowd be espies a rival.
+
+Moreover, where women are in question, who is always strong? Or who
+can say how long he will pursue this plan or that? A man of sternest
+temper, Count Hannibal had set out on a path of conduct carefully and
+deliberately chosen; knowing--and he still knew--that if he abandoned
+it he had little to hope, if the less to fear. But the proof of
+fidelity which the Countess had just given him had blown to a white
+heat the smouldering flame in his heart, and Madame St. Lo's gibes,
+which should have fallen as cold water alike on his hopes and his
+passion, had but fed the desire to know the best. For all that, he
+might not have spoken now, if he had not caught her look of affright;
+strange as it sounds, that look, which of all things should have
+silenced him and warned him that the time was not yet, stung him out
+of patience. Suddenly the man in him carried him away.
+
+"You still fear me, then!" he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural.
+"Is it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me,
+Madame? Tell me, I beg, for----"
+
+"For neither!" she said, trembling. His eyes, hot and passionate, were
+on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow. "For neither! I do not
+hate you, monsieur!"
+
+"You fear me then! I am right in that."
+
+"I fear--that which you carry with you," she stammered, speaking on
+impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.
+
+He started, and his expression changed. "So?" he exclaimed. "So? You
+know what I carry, do you? And from whom? From whom?" he continued in
+a tone of menace, "if you please, did you get that knowledge?"
+
+"From M. La Tribe," she muttered. She had not meant to tell him. Why
+had she told him?
+
+He nodded. "I might have known it," he said. "I more than suspected
+it. Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the
+letters. But"--he paused and laughed harshly--"it was out of no love
+for me you saved them. That, too, I know."
+
+She did not answer or protest; and when he had waited a moment in vain
+expectation of her protest, a cruel look crept into his eyes.
+"Madame," he said slowly, "do you never reflect that you may push the
+part you play too far? That the patience, even of the worst of men,
+does not endure for ever?"
+
+"I have your word!" she answered.
+
+"And you do not fear?"
+
+"I have your word," she repeated. And now she looked him bravely in
+the face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.
+
+The lines of his mouth hardened as he met her look. "And what have I
+of yours?" he said in a low voice. "What have I of yours?"
+
+Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered. "My
+gratitude," she murmured, with an upward look that craved for pity.
+"God knows, monsieur, you have that!"
+
+"God knows I do not want it!" he answered. And he laughed derisively.
+"Your gratitude!" And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely. "Your
+gratitude?" Then for a minute--for so long a time that she began to
+wonder and to quake--he was silent. At last, "A fig for your
+gratitude," he said. "I want your love! I suppose--cold as you are,
+and a Huguenot--you can love like other women!"
+
+It was the first, the very first time he had used the word to her; and
+though it fell from his lips like a threat, though he used it as a man
+presents a pistol, she flushed anew from throat to brow. But she did
+not quail. "It is not mine to give," she said.
+
+"It is his!"
+
+"Yes, monsieur," she answered, wondering at her courage, at her
+audacity, her madness. "It is his."
+
+"And it cannot be mine--at any time?"
+
+She shook her head, trembling.
+
+"Never?" And, suddenly reaching forward, he gripped her wrist in an
+iron grasp. There was passion in his tone. His eyes burned her.
+
+Whether it was that set her on another track, or pure despair, or the
+cry in her ears of little children and of helpless women, something in
+a moment inspired her, flashed in her eyes and altered her voice. She
+raised her head and looked him firmly in the face. "What," she said,
+"do you mean by love?"
+
+"You!" he answered brutally.
+
+"Then--it may be, monsieur," she returned. "There is a way if you
+will."
+
+"Away!"
+
+"If you will!" As she spoke she rose slowly to her feet; for in his
+surprise he had released her wrist. He rose with her, and they stood
+confronting one another on the strip of grass between the river and
+the poplars.
+
+"If I will?" His form seemed to dilate, his eyes devoured her. "If I
+will?"
+
+"Yes," she replied. "If you will give me the letters that are in your
+belt, the packet which I saved to-day--that I may destroy them--I will
+be yours freely and willingly."
+
+He drew a deep breath, still devouring her with his eyes. "You mean
+it?" he said at last.
+
+"I do." She looked him in the face as she spoke, and her cheeks were
+white, not red. "Only--the letters! Give me the letters."
+
+"And for them you will give me your love?"
+
+Her eyes flickered, and involuntarily she shivered. A faint blush rose
+and dyed her cheeks. "Only God can give love," she said, her tone
+lower.
+
+"And yours is given?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To another?"
+
+"I have said it."
+
+"It is his. And yet for these letters----"
+
+"For these lives!" she cried proudly.
+
+"You will give yourself?"
+
+"I swear it," she answered, "if you will give them to me! If you will
+give them to me," she repeated. And she held out her hands; her face,
+full of passion, was bright with a strange light. A close observer
+might have thought her distraught; still excited by the struggle in
+the boat, and barely mistress of herself.
+
+But the man whom she tempted, the man who held her price at his belt,
+after one searching look at her turned from her; perhaps because he
+could not trust himself to gaze on her. Count Hannibal walked a dozen
+paces from her and returned, and again a dozen paces and returned; and
+again a third time, with something fierce and passionate in his gait.
+At last he stopped before her.
+
+"You have nothing to offer for them," he said, in a cold, hard tone.
+"Nothing that is not mine already, nothing that is not my right,
+nothing that I cannot take at my will. My word?" he continued, seeing
+her about to interrupt him. "True, Madame, you have it, you had it.
+But why need I keep my word to you, who tempt me to break my word to
+the King?"
+
+She made a weak gesture with her hands. Her head had sunk on her
+breast--she seemed dazed by the shock of his contempt, dazed by his
+reception of her offer.
+
+"You saved the letters?" he continued, interpreting her action. "True,
+but the letters are mine, and that which you offer for them is mine
+also. You have nothing to offer. For the rest, Madame," he went on,
+eyeing her cynically, "you surprise me! You, whose modesty and virtue
+are so great, would corrupt your husband, would sell yourself, would
+dishonour the love of which you boast so loudly, the love that only
+God gives!" He laughed derisively as he quoted her words. "Ay, and,
+after showing at how low a price you hold yourself, you still look, I
+doubt not, to me to respect you, and to keep my word. Madame!" in a
+terrible voice, "do not play with fire! You saved my letters, it is
+true! And for that, for this time, you shall go free, if God will help
+me to let you go! But tempt me not! Tempt me not!" he repeated,
+turning from her and turning back again with a gesture of despair, as
+if he mistrusted the strength of the restraint which he put upon
+himself. "I am no more than other men! Perhaps I am less. And you--you
+who prate of love, and know not what love is--could love! could love!"
+
+He stopped on that word as if the word choked him--stopped, struggling
+with his passion. At last, with a half-stifled oath, he flung away
+from her, halted and hung a moment, then, with a swing of rage, went
+off again violently. His feet as he strode along the river-bank
+trampled the flowers, and slew the pale water forget-me-not, which
+grew among the grasses.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                       A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.
+
+
+La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal
+hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood
+tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and
+blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked
+himself up groaning. But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the
+briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself
+into covert. And for the time he was naught but a hunted beast. With
+elbows pinned to his sides, or with hands extended to ward off the
+boughs, with bursting lungs and crimson face, he plunged through the
+tangle, now slipping downwards, now leaping upwards, now all but
+prostrate, now breasting a mass of thorns. On and on he ran, until he
+came to the verge of the wood, saw before him an open meadow devoid of
+shelter or hiding-place, and with a groan of despair cast himself
+flat. He listened. How far were they behind him?
+
+He heard nothing. Nothing, save the common noises of the wood, the
+angry chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or
+the harsh notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow.
+The hum of bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his
+sweating brow, for he had lost his cap. But behind him--nothing.
+Already the stillness of the wood had closed upon his track.
+
+He was not the less panic-stricken. He supposed that Tavannes' people
+were getting to horse, and calculated that if they surrounded and beat
+the wood, he must be taken. At the thought, though he had barely got
+his breath, he rose, and keeping within the coppice crawled down the
+slope towards the river. Gently, when he reached it, he slipped into
+the water, and stooping below the level of the bank, his head and
+shoulders hidden by the bushes, he waded down stream until he had put
+another hundred and fifty yards between himself and pursuit. Then he
+paused and listened. Still he heard nothing, and he waded on again,
+until the water grew deep. At this point he marked a little below
+him a clump of trees on the farther side; and reflecting that that
+side--if he could reach it unseen--would be less suspect, he swam
+across, aiming for a thorn bush which grew low to the water. Under its
+shelter he crawled out, and, worming himself like a snake across the
+few yards of grass which intervened, he stood at length within the
+shadow of the trees. A moment he paused to shake himself, and then,
+remembering that he was still within a mile of the camp, he set off,
+now walking, and now running in the direction of the hills which his
+party had crossed that morning.
+
+For a time he hurried on, thinking only of escape. But when he had
+covered a mile or two, and escape seemed probable, there began to
+mingle with his thankfulness a bitter--a something which grew more
+bitter with each moment. Why had he fled and left the work undone? Why
+had he given way to unworthy fear, when the letters were within his
+grasp? True, if he had lingered a few seconds longer, he would have
+failed to make good his escape; but what of that if in those seconds
+he had destroyed the letters, he had saved Angers, he had saved his
+brethren? Alas! he had played the coward. The terror of Tavannes'
+voice had unmanned him. He had saved himself and left the flock to
+perish; he, whom God had set apart by many and great signs for this
+work!
+
+He had commonly courage enough. He could have died at the stake for
+his convictions. But he had not the presence of mind which is proof
+against a shock, nor the cool judgment which, in the face of death,
+sees to the end of two roads. He was no coward, but now he deemed
+himself one, and in an agony of remorse he flung himself on his face
+in the long grass. He had known trials and temptations, but hitherto
+he had held himself erect; now, like Peter, he had betrayed his Lord.
+
+He lay an hour groaning in the misery of his heart, and then he fell
+on the text "Thou art Peter, and on this rock----" and he sat up. Peter
+had betrayed his trust through cowardice--as he had. But Peter had not
+been held unworthy. Might it not be so with him? He rose to his feet,
+a new light in his eyes. He would return! He would return, and at all
+costs, even at the cost of surrendering himself, he would obtain
+access to the letters. And then--not the fear of Count Hannibal, not
+the fear of instant death, should turn him from his duty.
+
+He had cast himself down in a woodland glade which lay near the path
+along which he had ridden that morning. But the mental conflict from
+which he rose had shaken him so violently that he could not recall the
+side on which he had entered the clearing, and he turned himself
+about, endeavouring to remember. At that moment the light jingle of a
+bridle struck his ear; he caught through the green bushes the flash
+and sparkle of harness. They had tracked him then, they were here! So
+had he clear proof that this second chance was to be his. In a happy
+fervour he stood forward where the pursuers could not fail to see him.
+
+Or so he thought. Yet the first horseman, riding carelessly with his
+face averted and his feet dangling, would have gone by and seen
+nothing if his horse, more watchful, had not shied. The man turned
+then; and for a moment the two stared at one another between the
+pricked ears of the horse. At last,
+
+"M. de Tignonville!" the minister ejaculated.
+
+"La Tribe!"
+
+"It is truly you?"
+
+"Well--I think so," the young man answered.
+
+The minister lifted up his eyes and seemed to call the trees and the
+clouds and the birds to witness. "Now," he cried, "I know that I am
+chosen! And that we were instruments to do this thing from the day
+when the hen saved us in the hay-cart in Paris! Now I know that all is
+forgiven and all is ordained, and that the faithful of Angers shall
+to-morrow live and not die!" And with a face radiant, yet solemn, he
+walked to the young man's stirrup.
+
+An instant Tignonville looked sharply before him. "How far ahead are
+they?" he asked. His tone, hard and matter-of-fact, was little in
+harmony with the other's enthusiasm.
+
+"They are resting a league before you, at the ferry. You are in
+pursuit of them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not alone?"
+
+"No." The young man's look as he spoke was grim. "I have five behind
+me--of your kidney, M. La Tribe. They are from the Arsenal. They have
+lost one his wife, and one his son. The three others----"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Sweethearts," Tignonville answered drily. And he cast a singular look
+at the minister.
+
+But La Tribe's mind was so full of one matter, he could think only of
+that. "How did you hear of the letters?" he asked.
+
+"The letters?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I do not know what you mean."
+
+La Tribe stared. "Then why are you following him?" he asked.
+
+"Why?" Tignonville echoed, a look of hate darkening his face. "Do you
+ask why we follow----" But on the name he seemed to choke and was
+silent.
+
+By this time his men had come up, and one answered for him. "Why are
+we following Hannibal de Tavannes?" he said sternly. "To do to him as
+he has done to us! To rob him as he has robbed us--of more than gold!
+To kill him as he has killed ours, foully and by surprise! In his bed
+if we can! In the arms of his wife if God wills it!"
+
+The speaker's face was haggard from brooding and lack of sleep, but
+his eyes glowed and burned, as his fellows growled assent.
+
+"'Tis simple why we follow," a second put in. "Is there a man of our
+faith who will not, when he hears the tale, rise up and stab the
+nearest of this black brood--though it be his brother? If so, God's
+curse on him!"
+
+"Amen! Amen!"
+
+"So, and so only," cried the first, "shall there be faith in our land!
+And our children, our little maids, shall lie safe in their beds!"
+
+"Amen! Amen!"
+
+The speaker's chin sank on his breast, and with his last word the
+light died out of his eyes. La Tribe looked at him curiously, then at
+the others. Last of all at Tignonville, on whose face he fancied that
+he surprised a faint smile. Yet Tignonville's tone when he spoke was
+grave enough. "You have heard," he said. "Do you blame us?"
+
+"I cannot," the minister answered, shivering. "I can not." He had been
+for a while beyond the range of these feelings; and in the greenwood,
+under God's heaven, with the sunshine about him, they jarred on him.
+Yet he could not blame men who had suffered as these had suffered; who
+were maddened, as these were maddened, by the gravest wrongs which it
+is possible for one man to inflict on another. "I dare not," he
+continued sorrowfully. "But in God's name I offer you a higher and a
+nobler errand."
+
+"We need none," Tignonville muttered impatiently.
+
+"Yet may others need you," La Tribe answered in a tone of rebuke. "You
+are not aware that the man you follow bears a packet from the King for
+the hands of the magistrates of Angers?"
+
+"Ha! Does he?"
+
+"Bidding them do at Angers as his Majesty has done in Paris?"
+
+The men broke into cries of execration. "But he shall not see Angers!"
+they swore. "The blood that he has shed shall choke him by the way!
+And as he would do to others it shall be done to him."
+
+La Tribe shuddered as he listened, as he looked. Try as he would, the
+thirst of these men for vengeance appalled him. "How?" he said. "He
+has a score and more with him: and you are only six."
+
+"Seven now," Tignonville answered with a smile.
+
+"True, but----"
+
+"And he lies to-night at La Flèche? That is so!"
+
+"It was his intention this morning."
+
+"At the old King's Inn at the meeting of the great roads?"
+
+"It was mentioned," La Tribe admitted, with a reluctance he did not
+comprehend. "But if the night be fair he is as like as not to lie in
+the fields."
+
+One of the men pointed to the sky. A dark bank of cloud fresh risen
+from the ocean, and big with tempest, hung low in the west. "See! God
+will deliver him into our hands!" he cried.
+
+Tignonville nodded. "If he lie there," he said, "He will." And then to
+one of his followers, as he dismounted, "Do you ride on," he said,
+"and stand guard that we be not surprised. And do you, Perrot, tell
+monsieur. Perrot here, as God wills it," he added with a faint smile
+which did not escape the minister's eye, "married his wife from the
+great inn at La Flèche, and he knows the place."
+
+"None better," the man growled. He was a sullen, brooding knave, whose
+eyes when he looked up surprised by their savage fire.
+
+La Tribe shook his head. "I know it, too," he said. "'Tis strong as a
+fortress, with a walled court, and all the windows look inwards. The
+gates are closed an hour after sunset, no matter who is without. If
+you think, M. de Tignonville, to take him there----"
+
+"Patience, monsieur, you have not heard me," Perrot interposed. "I
+know it after another fashion. Do you remember a rill of water which
+runs through the great yard and the stables?"
+
+La Tribe nodded.
+
+"Grated with iron at either end, and no passage for so much as a dog?
+You do? Well, monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water
+passes under the wall is a culvert, a man's height in length. In it is
+a stone, one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a
+strong man can remove--and the man is in!"
+
+"Ay, in! But where!" La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
+
+"Well said, monsieur, where?" Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph.
+"There lies the point. In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and
+a snorer on every truss? No, but in a fairway between two stables
+where the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a
+channel deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers
+above with a rope and a bucket. The rooms above are the best in the
+house, four in one row, opening all on the gallery; which was
+uncovered, in the common fashion, until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing
+that way to Nantes, two years back, found the chambers draughty; and
+that end of the gallery was closed in against her return. Now,
+monsieur, he and his madame will lie there; and he will feel safe, for
+there is but one way to those four rooms---through the door which
+shuts off the covered gallery from the open part. But----" he glanced
+up an instant and La Tribe caught the smouldering fire in his
+eyes--"we shall not go in by the door."
+
+"The bucket rises through a trap?"
+
+"In the gallery? To be sure, monsieur. In the corner beyond the fourth
+door. There shall he fall into the pit which he dug for others, and
+the evil that he planned rebound on his own head!"
+
+La Tribe was silent. "What think you of it?" Tignonville asked.
+
+"That it is cleverly planned," the minister answered.
+
+"No more than that!"
+
+"No more until I have eaten."
+
+"Get him something!" Tignonville replied in a surly tone. "And we may
+as well eat, ourselves. Lead the horses into the wood. And do you,
+Perrot, call Tuez-les-Moines, who is forward. Two hours' riding should
+bring us to La Flèche. We need not leave here, therefore, until the
+sun is low. To dinner! To dinner!"
+
+Probably he did not feel the indifference he affected, for his face as
+he ate grew darker, and from time to time he shot a glance, barbed
+with suspicion, at the minister. La Tribe on his side remained silent,
+although the men ate apart. He was in doubt, indeed, as to his own
+feelings. His instinct and his reason were at odds. Through all,
+however, a single purpose, the rescue of Angers, held good, and
+gradually other things fell into their places. When the meal was at an
+end, and Tignonville challenged him, he was ready.
+
+"Your enthusiasm seems to have waned," the younger man said with a
+sneer, "since we met, monsieur! May I ask now if you find any fault
+with the plan?"
+
+"With the plan, none."
+
+"If it was Providence brought us together, was it not Providence
+furnished me with Perrot who knows La Flèche? If it was Providence
+brought the danger of the faithful in Angers to your knowledge, was it
+not Providence set us on the road--without whom you had been
+powerless?"
+
+"I believe it!"
+
+"Then, in His name, what is the matter?" Tignonville rejoined with a
+passion of which the other's manner seemed an inadequate cause. "What
+will you? What is it?"
+
+"I would take your place," La Tribe answered quietly.
+
+"My place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What, are we too many?"
+
+"We are enough without you, M. Tignonville," the minister answered.
+"These men, who have wrongs to avenge, God will justify them."
+
+Tignonville's eyes sparkled with anger. "And have I no wrongs to
+avenge?" he cried. "Is it nothing to lose my mistress, to be robbed of
+my wife, to see the woman I love dragged off to be a slave and a toy?
+Are these no wrongs?"
+
+"He spared your life, if he did not save it," the minister said
+solemnly. "And hers. And her servants."
+
+"To suit himself."
+
+La Tribe spread out his hands.
+
+"To suit himself! And for that you wish him to go free?" Tignonville
+cried in a voice half-choked with rage. "Do you know that this man,
+and this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and
+when even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people? After
+that is he to go free?"
+
+"At your hands," La Tribe answered quietly. "You alone of our people
+must not pursue him." He would have added more, but Tignonville would
+not listen.
+
+Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let
+hatred eat away his more generous instincts. Vain and conceited, he
+fancied that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the
+wound in his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the
+downfall of his enemy. Instant pursuit, instant vengeance--only these,
+he fancied, could restore him in his fellows' eyes.
+
+In his heart he knew what would become him better. But vanity is a
+potent motive: and his conscience, even when supported by La Tribe,
+struggled but weakly. From neither would he hear more. "You have
+travelled with him, until you side with him!" he cried violently.
+"Have a care, monsieur, have a care lest we think you papist!" And
+walking over to the men he bade them saddle; adding a sour word which
+turned their eyes, in no friendly gaze, on the minister.
+
+After that La Tribe said no more. Of what use would it have been?
+
+But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm
+which the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste
+for the business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to
+play across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream,
+between which and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his
+companions; and these in their turn shed a grisly light on the bloody
+enterprise towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the
+minister's mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise; the stealthy
+entrance through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the
+surprise, the slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he
+had lived for days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the
+arguments he had addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.
+
+In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the
+man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution
+in his eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a
+faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered
+that it was St. Agnes 's Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried
+with the best Catholic of them all, "Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!"
+Nay, some such words did pass his lips.
+
+For the man before him turned half-way in his saddle. "What?" he
+asked.
+
+But the Huguenot did not explain.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                          AT THE KING'S INN.
+
+
+The Countess sat up in the darkness of the chamber. She had writhed
+since noon under the stings of remorse; she could bear them no longer.
+The slow declension of the day, the evening light, the signs of coming
+tempest which had driven her company to the shelter of the inn at the
+cross-roads, all had racked her, by reminding her that the hours were
+flying, and that soon the fault she had committed would be
+irreparable. One impulsive attempt to redeem it she had made, we know;
+but it had failed, and, by rendering her suspect, had made reparation
+more difficult. Still, by daylight it had seemed possible to rest
+content with the trial made; not so now, when night had fallen, and
+the cries of little children and the haggard eyes of mothers peopled
+the darkness of her chamber. She sat up, and listened with throbbing
+temples.
+
+To shut out the lightning which played at intervals across the
+heavens, Madame St. Lo, who shared the room, had covered the window
+with a cloak; and the place was dark. To exclude the dull roll of the
+thunder was less easy, for the night was oppressively hot, and behind
+the cloak the casement was open. Gradually, too, another sound, the
+hissing fall of heavy rain, began to make itself heard, and to mingle
+with the regular breathing which proved that Madame St. Lo slept.
+
+Assured of this fact, the Countess presently heaved a sigh, and
+slipped from the bed. She groped in the darkness for her cloak, found
+it, and donned it over her night-gear. Then, taking her bearings by
+her bed, which stood with its head to the window and its foot to the
+entrance, she felt her way across the floor to the door, and after
+passing her hands a dozen times over every part of it, she found the
+latch, and raised it. The door creaked, as she pulled it open, and she
+stood arrested; but the sound went no farther, for the roofed gallery
+outside, which looked by two windows on the courtyard, was full of
+outdoor noises, the rushing of rain and the running of spouts and
+eaves. One of the windows stood wide, admitting the rain and wind, and
+as she paused, holding the door open, the draught blew the cloak from
+her. She stepped out quickly and shut the door behind her. On her left
+was the blind end of the passage; she turned to the right. She took
+one step into the darkness and stood motionless. Beside her, within a
+few feet of her, some one had moved, with a dull sound as of a boot on
+wood; a sound so near her that she held her breath, and pressed
+herself against the wall.
+
+She listened. Perhaps some of the servants--it was a common usage--had
+made their beds on the floor. Perhaps one of the women had stirred in
+the room against the wall of which she crouched. Perhaps--but, even
+while she reassured herself, the sound rose anew at her feet.
+
+Fortunately at the same instant the glare of the lightning flooded
+all, and showed the passage, and showed it empty. It lit up the row of
+doors on her right and the small windows on her left; and discovered
+facing her, the door which shut off the rest of the house. She could
+have thanked--nay, she did thank God for that light. If the sound she
+had heard recurred she did not hear it; for, as the thunder which
+followed hard on the flash, crashed overhead and rolled heavily
+eastwards, she felt her way boldly along the passage, touching first
+one door, and then a second, and then a third.
+
+She groped for the latch of the last, and found it, but, with her hand
+on it, paused. In order to summon up her courage, she strove to hear
+again the cries of misery and to see again the haggard eyes which had
+driven her hither. And if she did not wholly succeed, other
+reflections came to her aid. This storm, which covered all smaller
+noises, and opened, now and again, God's lantern for her use, did it
+not prove that He was on her side, and that she might count on His
+protection? The thought at least was timely, and with a better heart
+she gathered her wits. Waiting until the thunder burst over her head,
+she opened the door, slid within it, and closed it. She would fain
+have left it ajar, that in case of need she might escape the more
+easily. But the wind, which beat into the passage through the open
+window, rendered the precaution too perilous.
+
+She went forward two paces into the room, and as the roll of the
+thunder died away she stooped forward and listened with painful
+intensity for the sound of Count Hannibal's breathing. But the window
+was open, and the hiss of the rain persisted; she could hear nothing
+through it, and fearfully she took another step forward. The window
+should be before her; the bed in the corner to the left. But nothing
+of either could she make out. She must wait for the lightning.
+
+It came, and for a second or more the room shone. The window, the low
+truckle-bed, the sleeper, she saw all with dazzling clearness, and
+before the flash had well passed she was crouching low, with the hood
+of her cloak dragged about her face. For the glare had revealed Count
+Hannibal; but not asleep! He lay on his side, his face towards her;
+lay with open eyes, staring at her.
+
+Or had the light tricked her? The light must have tricked her, for in
+the interval between the flash and the thunder, while she crouched
+quaking, he did not move or call. The light must have deceived her.
+She felt so certain of it that she found courage to remain where she
+was until another flash came and showed him sleeping with closed eyes.
+
+She drew a breath of relief at that, and rose slowly to her feet. But
+she dared not go forward until a third flash had confirmed the second.
+Then, while the thunder burst overhead and rolled away, she crept on
+until she stood beside the pillow, and stooping, could hear the
+sleeper's breathing.
+
+Alas! the worst remained to be done. The packet, she was sure of it,
+lay under his pillow. How was she to find it, how remove it without
+rousing him? A touch might awaken him. And yet, if she would not
+return empty-handed, if she would not go back to the harrowing
+thoughts which had tortured her through the long hours of the day, it
+must be done, and done now.
+
+She knew this, yet she hung irresolute a while, blenching before the
+manual act, listening to the persistent rush and downpour of the rain.
+Then a second time she drew courage from the storm. How timely had it
+broken! How signally had it aided her! How slight had been her chance
+without it! And so at last, resolutely but with a deft touch, she slid
+her fingers between the pillow and the bed, slightly pressing down the
+latter with her other hand. For an instant she fancied that the
+sleeper's breathing stopped, and her heart gave a great bound. But the
+breathing went on the next instant--if it had stopped--and dreading
+the return of the lightning, shrinking from being revealed so near
+him, and in that act--for which the darkness seemed more fitting--she
+groped farther, and touched something. And then, as her fingers closed
+upon it and grasped it, and his breath rose hot to her burning cheek,
+she knew that the real danger lay in the withdrawal.
+
+At the first attempt he uttered a kind of grunt and moved, throwing
+out his hand. She thought that he was going to awake, and had hard
+work to keep herself where she was; but he did not move, and she began
+again with so infinite a precaution that the perspiration ran down her
+face and her hair within the hood hung dank on her neck. Slowly, oh so
+slowly, she drew back the hand, and with it the packet; so slowly, and
+yet so resolutely, being put to it, that when the dreaded flash
+surprised her, and she saw his harsh swarthy face, steeped in the
+mysterious aloofness of sleep, within a hand's breadth of hers, not a
+muscle of her arm moved, nor did her hand quiver.
+
+It was done--at last! With a burst of gratitude, of triumph, of
+exultation, she stood erect. She realised that it was done, and that
+here in her hand she held the packet. A deep gasp of relief, of joy,
+of thankfulness, and she glided towards the door.
+
+She groped for the latch, and in the act fancied his breathing was
+changed. She paused and bent her head to listen. But the patter of the
+rain, drowning all sounds save those of the nearest origin, persuaded
+her that she was mistaken, and, finding the latch, she raised it,
+slipped like a shadow into the passage, and closed the door behind
+her.
+
+That done she stood arrested, all the blood in her body running to her
+heart. She must be dreaming! The passage in which she stood--the
+passage which she had left in black darkness--was alight; was so far
+lighted, at least, that to eyes fresh from the night, the figures of
+three men, grouped at the farther end, stood out against the glow of
+the lantern which they appeared to be trimming--for the two nearest
+were stooping over it. These two had their backs to her, the third his
+face; and it was the sight of this third man which had driven the
+blood to her heart. He ended at the waist! It was only after a few
+seconds, it was only when she had gazed at him awhile in speechless
+horror, that he rose another foot from the floor, and she saw that he
+had paused in the act of ascending through a trapdoor. What the scene
+meant, who these men were, or what their entrance portended, with
+these questions her brain refused at the moment to grapple. It was
+much that--still remembering who might hear her, and what she
+held--she did not shriek aloud.
+
+Instead, she stood in the gloom at her end of the passage, gazing with
+all her eyes until she had seen the third man step clear of the trap.
+She could see him; but the light intervened and blurred his view of
+her. He stooped, almost as soon as he had cleared himself, to help up
+a fourth man, who rose with a naked knife between his teeth. She saw
+then that all were armed, and something stealthy in their bearing,
+something cruel in their eyes as the light of the lantern fell now on
+one dark face and now on another, went to her heart and chilled it.
+Who were they, and why were they here? What was their purpose? As her
+reason awoke, as she asked herself these questions, the fourth man
+stooped in his turn, and gave his hand to a fifth. And on that she
+lost her self-control and cried out. For the last man to ascend was La
+Tribe! La Tribe, from whom she had parted that morning!
+
+The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the
+two whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked.
+He who held the lantern raised it, and the five glared at her and she
+at them. Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst
+from her lips. The nearest man, he who held the lantern high that he
+might view her, was Tignonville, was her lover!
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"
+
+Then, not till then, did he know her. Until then the light of the
+lantern had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy
+phantom which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious
+terror. But they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream,
+Tignonville came forward.
+
+The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct
+rather than upon reason. The girl never knew why she acted as she did;
+why she asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no
+remonstrances. Why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she
+put the packet into his hands.
+
+He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the
+hand which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his
+eyes set hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her there,
+guarding the door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his
+worst passions.
+
+But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way. With her hand raised
+she pointed to the trapdoor. "Go now!" she whispered, her tone stern
+and low, "you have what you want! Go!"
+
+"No!" And he tried to pass her.
+
+"Go!" she repeated in the same tone. "You have what you need." And
+still she held her hand extended; still without faltering she faced
+the five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly
+eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping
+eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush.
+Gradually her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and
+nobler aim subdued his weaker parts. For she understood now; and he
+saw that she did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and
+said no word in his defence.
+
+But one of the men, savage and out of patience, thrust himself between
+them. "Where is he?" he muttered. "What is the use of this? Where is
+he?" And his bloodshot eyes--it was Tuez-les-Moines--questioned the
+doors, while his hand, trembling and shaking on the haft of his knife,
+bespoke his eagerness. "Where is he? Where is he, woman? Quick,
+or----"
+
+"I shall not tell you," she answered.
+
+"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog. "You will tell us! Or we
+will kill you, too! Where is he? Where is he?"
+
+"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the
+fearlessness of scorn. "Another step and I rouse the house! M. de
+Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not
+retire----"
+
+"He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer. "In which? In
+which?"
+
+"Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its
+contempt. "Try them. Rouse my women, alarm the house! And when you
+have his people at your throats--five as they will be to one of
+you--thank your own mad folly!"
+
+Tuez-les-Moines' eyes glittered. "You will not tell us?" he cried.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then----"
+
+But as the fanatic sprang on her, La Tribe flung his arms round him
+and dragged him back. "It would be madness," he cried. "Are you mad,
+fool? Have done!" he panted, struggling with him. "If madame gives the
+alarm--and he may be in any one of these four rooms, you cannot be
+sure which--we are undone." He looked for support to Tignonville,
+whose movement to protect the girl he had anticipated, and who had
+since listened sullenly. "We have obtained what we need. Will you
+requite madame, who has gained it for us at her own risk----"
+
+"It is monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.
+
+"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately. He and
+Tuez were still gripping one another. "I tell you, to go on is to risk
+what we have got! And I for one----"
+
+"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered. "Madame--" he seemed to
+choke on the word. "Will you swear that he is not here?"
+
+"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she
+hissed--all their words were sunk to that stealthy note. "Go! if you
+have not stayed too long already. Go! Or see!" And she pointed to the
+trapdoor, from which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment
+risen--the face dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told
+her at once that something was amiss. "See what has come of your delay
+already!"
+
+"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly. "In God's name
+come, whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again. It
+is within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."
+
+"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper.
+"And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter
+afterwards?" And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.
+
+But the minister held him desperately. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he
+answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can.
+Let us be gone! Come."
+
+"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side
+hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he
+turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop
+through the trap he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight.
+Another made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville
+holding the lantern, and La Tribe, who feared to release
+Tuez-les-Moines, remained with the fanatic.
+
+The Countess's eyes met her old lover's, and whether old memories
+overcame her, or, now that the danger was nearly past, she began to
+give way, she swayed a little on her feet. But he did not notice it.
+He was sunk in black rage: rage against her, rage against himself.
+"Take the light," she muttered unsteadily. "And--and he must follow!"
+
+"And you?"
+
+But she could bear it no longer. "Oh, go," she wailed. "Go! Will you
+never go? If you love me, if you ever loved me, I implore you to go."
+
+He had betrayed little of a lover's feeling. But he could not resist
+that appeal, and he turned silently. Seizing Tuez-les-Moines by the
+other arm, he drew him by force to the trap. "Quiet, fool," he
+muttered savagely when the man would have resisted, "and go down! If
+we stay to kill him, we shall have no way of escape, and his life will
+be dearly bought. Down, man, down!" And between them, in a struggling
+silence, with now and then an audible rap, or a ring of metal, the two
+forced the desperado to descend.
+
+La Tribe followed hastily. Tignonville was the last to go. In the act
+of disappearing he raised his lantern for a last glimpse of the
+Countess. To his astonishment the passage was empty; she was gone.
+Hard by him a door stood an inch or two ajar, and he guessed that it
+was hers, and swore under his breath, hating her at that moment. But
+he did not guess how nicely she had calculated her strength; how
+nearly exhaustion had overcome her; or that even while he paused--a
+fatal pause had he known it--eyeing the dark opening of the door, she
+lay as one dead, on the bed within. She had fallen in a swoon, from
+which she did not recover until the sun had risen, and marched across
+one quarter of the heavens.
+
+Nor did he see another thing, or he might have hastened his steps.
+Before the yellow light of his lantern faded from the ceiling of the
+passage, the door of the room farthest from the trap slid open. A man,
+whose eyes, until darkness swallowed him, shone strangely in a face
+extraordinarily softened, came out on tip-toe. This man stood awhile,
+listening. At length, hearing those below utter a cry of dismay, he
+awoke to sudden activity. He opened with a turn of the key the door
+which stood at his elbow, the door which led to the other part of the
+house. He vanished through it. A second later a sharp whistle pierced
+the darkness of the courtyard and brought a dozen sleepers to their
+senses and their feet. A moment, and the courtyard hummed with voices,
+above which one voice rang clear and insistent. With a startled cry
+the inn awoke.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                  THE COMPANY OF THE BLEEDING HEART.
+
+
+"But why," Madame. St. Lo asked, sticking her arms akimbo, "why stay
+in this forsaken place a day and a night, when six hours in the saddle
+would set us in Angers?"
+
+"Because," Tavannes replied coldly--he and his cousin were walking
+before the gateway of the inn--"the Countess is not well, and will be
+the better, I think, for staying a day."
+
+"She slept soundly enough! I'll answer for that!"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She never raised her head this morning, though my women were
+shrieking 'Murder!' next door, and----Name of Heaven!" madame resumed,
+after breaking off abruptly, and shading her eyes with her hand, "what
+comes here? Is it a funeral? Or a pilgrimage? If all the priests about
+here are as black, no wonder M. Rabelais fell out with them!"
+
+The inn stood without the walls for the convenience of those who
+wished to take the road early: a little also, perhaps, because food
+and forage were cheaper, and the wine paid no town-dues. Four great
+roads met before the house, along the most easterly of which the
+sombre company which had caught Madame St. Lo's attention could be
+seen approaching. At first Count Hannibal supposed with his companion
+that the travellers were conveying to the grave the corpse of some
+person of distinction; for the _cortége_ consisted mainly of priests
+and the like mounted on mules, and clothed for the most part in black.
+Black also was the small banner which waved above them, and bore in
+place of arms the emblem of the Bleeding Heart. But a second glance
+failed to discover either litter or bier; and a nearer approach showed
+that the travellers, whether they wore the tonsure or not, bore
+weapons of one kind or another about them.
+
+Suddenly Madame St. Lo clapped her hands, and proclaimed in great
+astonishment that she knew them. "Why, there is Father Boucher, the
+Curé of St.-Benoist!" she said, "and Father Pezelay of St. Magloire.
+And there is another I know, though I cannot remember his name! They
+are preachers from Paris! That is who they are! But what can they be
+doing here? Is it a pilgrimage, think you?"
+
+"Ay, a pilgrimage of Blood!" Count Hannibal answered between his
+teeth. And, turning to him to learn what moved him, she saw the look
+in his eyes which portended a storm. Before she could ask a question,
+however, the gloomy company, which had first appeared in the distance,
+moving, an inky blot, through the hot sunshine of the summer morning,
+had drawn near and was almost abreast of them. Stepping from her side,
+he raised his hand and arrested the march.
+
+"Who is master here?" he asked haughtily.
+
+"I am the leader," answered a stout pompous Churchman, whose small
+malevolent eyes belied the sallow fatuity of his face. "I, M. de
+Tavannes, by your leave."
+
+"And you, by your leave," Tavannes sneered, "are----"
+
+"Archdeacon and Vicar of the Bishop of Angers and Prior of the Lesser
+Brethren of St. Germain, M. le Comte. Visitor also of the Diocese of
+Angers," the dignitary continued, puffing out his cheeks, "and
+Chaplain to the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, whose unworthy brother
+I am."
+
+"A handsome glove, and well embroidered!" Tavannes retorted in a tone
+of disdain. "The hand I see yonder!" He pointed to the lean parchment
+mask of Father Pezelay, who coloured ever so faintly, but held his
+peace under the sneer. "You are bound for Angers!" Count Hannibal
+continued. "For what purpose, Sir Prior!"
+
+"His Grace the Bishop is absent, and in his absence----"
+
+"You go to fill his city with strife! I know you! Not you!" he
+continued, contemptuously turning from the Prior, and regarding the
+third of the principal figures of the party. "But you! You were the
+Curé who got the mob together last All Souls'."
+
+"I speak the words of Him Who sent me!" answered the third Churchman,
+whose brooding face and dull curtained eyes gave no promise of the
+fits of frenzied eloquence which had made his pulpit famous in Paris.
+
+"Then Kill and Burn are His alphabet!" Tavannes retorted, and heedless
+of the start of horror which a saying so near blasphemy excited among
+the Churchmen, he turned to Father Pezelay. "And you! You, too, I
+know!" he continued. "And you know me! And take this from me. Turn,
+father! Turn! Or worse than a broken head--you bear the scar I
+see--will befall you. These good persons, whom you have moved, unless
+I am in error, to take this journey, may not know me; but you do, and
+can tell them. If they will to Angers, they must to Angers. But if I
+find trouble in Angers when I come, I will hang some one high. Don't
+scowl at me, man!"--in truth, the look of hate in Father Pezelay's
+eyes was enough to provoke the exclamation. "Some one, and it shall
+not be a bare patch on the crown will save his windpipe from
+squeezing!"
+
+A murmur of indignation broke from the preachers' attendants; one or
+two made a show of drawing their weapons. But Count Hannibal paid no
+heed to them, and had already turned on his heel when Father Pezelay
+spurred his mule a pace or two forward. Snatching a heavy brass cross
+from one of the acolytes, he raised it aloft, and in the voice which
+had often thrilled the heated congregation of St. Magloire, he called
+on Tavannes to pause.
+
+"Stand, my lord!" he cried. "And take warning! Stand, reckless and
+profane, whose face is set hard as a stone, and his heart as a flint,
+against High Heaven and Holy Church! Stand and hear! Behold the word
+of the Lord is gone out against this city, even against Angers, for
+the unbelief thereof! Her place shall be left unto her desolate, and
+her children shall be dashed against the stones! Woe unto you,
+therefore, if you gainsay it, or fall short of that which is
+commanded! You shall perish as Achan, the son of Charmi, and as Saul!
+The curse that has gone out against you shall not tarry, nor your days
+continue! For the Canaanitish woman that is in your house, and for the
+thought that is in your heart, the place that was yours is given to
+another! Yea, the sword is even now drawn that shall pierce your
+side!"
+
+"You are more like to split my ears!" Count Hannibal answered sternly.
+"And now mark me! Preach as you please here. But a word in Angers, and
+though you be shaven twice over, I will have you silenced after a
+fashion which will not please you! If you value your tongue therefore,
+father----oh, you shake off the dust, do you? Well, pass on! 'Tis
+wise, perhaps."
+
+And undismayed by the scowling brows, and the cross ostentatiously
+lifted to heaven, he gazed after the procession as it moved on under
+its swaying banner, now one and now another of the acolytes looking
+back and raising his hands to invoke the bolt of Heaven on the
+blasphemer. As the _cortége_ passed the huge watering-troughs, and the
+open gateway of the inn, the knot of persons congregated there fell on
+their knees. In answer the Churchmen raised their banner higher, and
+began to sing the _Eripe me, Domine!_ and to its strains, now
+vengeful, now despairing, now rising on a wave of menace, they passed
+slowly into the distance, slowly towards Angers and the Loire.
+
+Suddenly Madame St. Lo twitched his sleeve. "Enough for me!" she cried
+passionately. "I go no farther with you!"
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"No farther!" she repeated. She was pale, she shivered. "Many thanks,
+my cousin, but we part company here. I do not go to Angers. I have
+seen horrors enough. I will take my people, and go to my aunt by Tours
+and the east road. For you, I foresee what will happen. You will
+perish between the hammer and the anvil."
+
+"Ah?"
+
+"You play too fine a game," she continued, her face quivering. "Give
+over the girl to her lover, and send away her people with her. And
+wash your hands of her and hers. Or you will see her fall, and fall
+beside her! Give her to him, I say--give her to him!"
+
+"My wife?"
+
+"Wife?" she echoed, for, fickle, and at all times swept away by the
+emotions of the moment, she was in earnest now. "Is there a tie," and
+she pointed after the vanishing procession, "that they cannot unloose?
+That they will not unloose? Is there a life which escapes if they doom
+it? Did the Admiral escape? Or Rochefoucauld? Or Madame de Luns in old
+days? I tell you they go to rouse Angers against you, and I see
+beforehand what will happen. She will perish, and you with her. Wife?
+A pretty wife, at whose door you took her lover last night."
+
+"And at your door!" he answered quietly, unmoved by the gibe.
+
+But she did not heed. "I warned you of that!" she cried. "And you
+would not believe me. I told you he was following. And I warn you of
+this. You are between the hammer and the anvil, M. le Comte! If
+Tignonville does not murder you in your bed----"
+
+"'Tis not likely while I hold him in my power."
+
+"Then Holy Church will fall on you and crush you. For me, I have seen
+enough and more than enough. I go to Tours by the east road."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," he said.
+
+She flung away in disgust with him. She could not understand a man who
+played fast and loose at such a time. The game was too fine for her,
+its danger too apparent, the gain too small. She had, too, a woman's
+dread of the Church, a woman's belief in the power of the dead hand to
+punish. And in half an hour her orders were given. In two hours her
+people were gathered, and she departed by the eastward road, three of
+Tavannes' riders reinforcing her servants for a part of the way. Count
+Hannibal stood to watch them start, and noticed Bigot riding by the
+side of Suzanne's mule. He smiled; and presently, as he turned away,
+he did a thing rare with him--he laughed outright.
+
+A laugh which reflected a mood rare as itself. Few had seen Count
+Hannibal's eye sparkle as it sparkled now; few had seen him laugh as
+he laughed, walking to and fro in the sunshine before the inn. His men
+watched him, and wondered, and liked it little, for one or two who had
+overheard his altercation with the Churchmen had reported it, and
+there was shaking of heads over it. The man who had singed the Pope's
+beard and chucked Cardinals under the chin was growing old, and the
+most daring of the others had no mind to fight with foes whose weapons
+were not of this world.
+
+Count Hannibal's gaiety, however, was well grounded, had they known
+it. He was gay, not because he foresaw peril, and it was his nature to
+love peril; nor--in the main, though a little, perhaps--because he
+knew that the woman whose heart he desired to win had that night stood
+between him and death; nor, though again a little, perhaps, because
+she had confirmed his choice by conduct which a small man might have
+deprecated, but which a great man loved; but chiefly, because the
+events of the night had placed in his grasp two weapons by the aid of
+which he looked to recover all the ground he had lost--lost by his
+impulsive departure from the path of conduct on which he had started.
+
+Those weapons were Tignonville, taken like a rat in a trap by the
+rising of the water; and the knowledge that the Countess had stolen
+the precious packet from his pillow. The knowledge--for he had lain
+and felt her breath upon his cheek, he had lain and felt her hand
+beneath his pillow, he had lain while the impulse to fling his arms
+about her had been almost more than he could tame! He had lain and
+suffered her to go, to pass out safely as she had passed in. And then
+he had received his reward in the knowledge that, if she robbed him,
+she robbed him not for herself; and that where it was a question of
+his life she did not fear to risk her own.
+
+When he came, indeed, to that point, he trembled. How narrowly had he
+been saved from misjudging her! Had he not lain and waited, had he not
+possessed himself in patience, he might have been led to think her in
+collusion with the old lover whom he found at her door, and with those
+who came to slay him. Either he might have perished unwarned; or
+escaping that danger, he might have detected her with Tignonville and
+lost for all time the ideal of a noble woman.
+
+He had escaped that peril. More, he had gained the weapons we have
+indicated; and the sense of power, in regard to her, almost
+intoxicated him. Surely if he wielded those weapons to the best
+advantage, if he strained generosity to the uttermost, the citadel of
+her heart must yield at last.
+
+He had the defect of his courage and his nature, a tendency to do
+things after a flamboyant fashion. He knew that her act would plunge
+him in perils which he had not foreseen. If the preachers roused the
+Papists of Angers, if he arrived to find men's swords whetted for the
+massacre and the men themselves awaiting the signal, then if he did
+not give that signal there would be trouble. There would be trouble of
+the kind in which the soul of Hannibal de Tavannes revelled, trouble
+about the ancient cathedral and under the black walls of the Angevin
+castle, trouble amid which the hearts of common men would be as water.
+
+Then, when things seemed at their worst, he would reveal his
+knowledge. Then, when forgiveness must seem impossible, he would
+forgive. With the flood of peril which she had unloosed rising round
+them, he would say, "Go!" to the man who had aimed at his life; he
+would say to her, "I know, and I forgive!" That, that only, would
+fitly crown the policy on which he had decided from the first, though
+he had not hoped to conduct it on lines so splendid as those which now
+dazzled him.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                               TEMPER.
+
+
+It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing,
+which on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying
+the Countess. She could not doubt that he had missed the packet on
+which so much hung and of which he had indicated the importance. But
+if he had missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak? Why did
+he not cry the alarm, search and question and pursue? Why did he not
+give her the opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage
+failed, her resolution died within her?
+
+Above all, what was the secret of his strange merriment? Of the
+snatches of song which broke from him, only to be hushed by her look
+of astonishment? Of the parades which his horse, catching the
+infection, made under him, as he tossed his riding-cane high in the
+air and caught it?
+
+Ay, what? Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been
+robbed of that of which he must give account--why did he cast off his
+melancholy and ride like the youngest? She wondered what the men
+thought, and looking, saw them stare, saw that they watched him
+stealthily, saw that they laid their heads together. What were they
+thinking of it? She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more
+insistent than any to which the extremity of violence would have
+reduced her, began to grip her heart.
+
+Twenty hours of rest had lifted her from the state of collapse into
+which the events of the night had cast her; still her limbs at
+starting had shaken under her. But the cool freshness of the early
+summer morning, and the sight of the green landscape and the winding
+Loir, beside which their road ran, had not failed to revive her
+spirits; and if he had shown himself merely gloomy, merely sunk in
+revengeful thoughts, or darting hither and thither the glance of
+suspicion, she felt that she could have faced him, and on the first
+opportunity could have told him the truth.
+
+But this strange mood veiled she knew not what. It seemed, if she
+comprehended it at all, the herald of some bizarre, some dreadful
+vengeance, in harmony with his fierce and mocking spirit. Before it
+her heart became as water. Even her colour little by little left her
+cheeks. She knew that he had only to look at her now to read the
+truth; that it was written in her face, in her shrinking figure, in
+the eyes which now guiltily sought and now avoided his. And feeling
+sure that he did read it and know it, she fancied that he licked his
+lips, as the cat which plays with the mouse; she fancied that he
+gloated on her terror and her perplexity.
+
+This, though the day and the road were warrants for all cheerful
+thoughts. On one side vineyards clothed the warm red slopes, and rose
+in steps from the river to the white buildings of a convent. On the
+other the stream wound through green flats where the black cattle
+stood knee-deep in grass, watched by wild-eyed and half-naked youths.
+Again the travellers lost sight of the Loir, and crossing a shoulder,
+rode through the dim aisles of a beech-forest, through deep rustling
+drifts of last year's leaves. And out again and down again they
+passed, and turning aside from the gateway, trailed along beneath the
+brown machicolated wall of an old town, from the crumbling battlements
+of which faces half-sleepy, half-suspicious, watched them as they
+moved below through the glare and heat. Down to the river-level again,
+where a squalid anchorite, seated at the mouth of a cave dug in the
+bank, begged of them, and the bell of a monastery on the farther bank
+tolled slumberously the hour of Nones.
+
+And still he said nothing, and she, cowed by his mysterious gaiety,
+yet spurning herself for her cowardice, was silent also. He hoped to
+arrive at Angers before nightfall. What, she wondered, shivering,
+would happen there? What was he planning to do to her? How would he
+punish her? Brave as she was, she was a woman, with a woman's nerves;
+and fear and anticipation got upon them; and his silence--his silence
+which must mean a thing worse than words!
+
+And then on a sudden, piercing all, a new thought. Was it possible
+that he had other letters? If his bearing were consistent with
+anything, it was consistent with that. Had he other genuine letters,
+or had he duplicate letters, so that he had lost nothing, but instead
+had gained the right to rack and torture her, to taunt and despise
+her?
+
+That thought stung her into sudden self-betrayal. They were riding
+along a broad dusty track which bordered a stone causey raised above
+the level of winter floods; impulsively she turned to him. "You
+have other letters!" she cried. "You have other letters!" And freed
+for the moment from her terror, she fixed her eyes on his and strove
+to read his face.
+
+He looked at her, his mouth grown hard. "What do you mean, madame?" he
+asked.
+
+"You have other letters?"
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"From the King, for Angers!"
+
+He saw that she was going to confess, that she was going to derange
+his cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had
+been more than willing to forgive a real injury. "Will you explain?"
+he said between his teeth. And his eyes glittered unpleasantly. "What
+do you mean?"
+
+"You have other letters," she persisted, "besides those which I
+stole."
+
+"Which you stole?" He repeated the words without passion. Enraged by
+this unexpected turn, he hardly knew how to take it.
+
+"Yes, I!" she cried. "I! I took them from under your pillow!"
+
+He was silent a minute. Then he laughed and shook his head. "It will
+not do, madame," he said, his lip curling. "You are clever, but you do
+not deceive me."
+
+"Deceive you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You do not believe that I took the letters?" she cried in great
+amazement.
+
+"No," he answered; "and for a good reason." He had hardened his heart
+now. He had chosen his line, and he would not spare her.
+
+"Why, then?" she cried. "Why?"
+
+"For the best of all reasons," he answered. "Because the person who
+stole the letters was seized in the act of making his escape, and is
+now in my power."
+
+"The person--who stole the letters?" she faltered.
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+"Do you mean M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"You have said it."
+
+She turned white to the lips, and trembling could with difficulty sit
+her horse. With an effort she pulled it up, and he stopped also. Their
+attendants were some way ahead. "And you have the letters?" she
+whispered, her eyes meeting his. "You have the letters?"
+
+"No, but I have the thief!" Count Hannibal answered with sinister
+meaning. "As I think you knew, madame," he continued ironically, "a
+while back before you spoke."
+
+"I? Oh, no, no!" and she swayed in her saddle. "What--what are
+you--going to do?" she muttered after a moment's stricken silence.
+
+"To him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The magistrates will decide, at Angers."
+
+"But he did not do it! I swear he did not."
+
+Count Hannibal shook his head coldly.
+
+"I swear, monsieur, I took the letters!" she repeated piteously.
+"Punish me!" Her figure, bowed like an old woman's over the neck of
+her horse, seemed to crave his mercy.
+
+Count Hannibal smiled.
+
+"You do not believe me?"
+
+"No," he said. And then, in a tone which chilled her, "If I did
+believe you," he continued, "I should still punish him!" She was
+broken; but he would see if he could not break her further. He would
+try if there were no weak spot in her armour. He would rack her now,
+since in the end she must go free. "Understand, madame," he continued
+in his harshest tone, "I have had enough of your lover. He has crossed
+my path too often. You are my wife, I am your husband. In a day or two
+there shall be an end of this farce and of him."
+
+"He did not take them!" she wailed, her face sinking lower on her
+breast. "He did not take them! Have mercy!"
+
+"Any way, madame, they are gone!" Tavannes answered. "You have taken
+them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will
+pay the price."
+
+If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband's hands
+had not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal's tone must have done
+so. The shoot of new life which had raised its head after those
+dreadful days in Paris, and--for she was young--had supported her
+under the weight which the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders,
+died, bruised under the heel of his brutality. The pride which had
+supported her, which had won Tavannes' admiration and exacted his
+respect, sank, as she sank herself, bowed to her horse's neck, weeping
+bitter tears before him. She abandoned herself to her misery, as she
+had once abandoned herself in the upper room in Paris.
+
+And he looked at her. He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and
+he was not satisfied. He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity
+would now have its full effect, would shine as the sun into a dark
+world; and yet he was not happy. He could look forward to the morrow,
+and say, "She will understand me, she will know me!" and lo, the
+thought that she wept for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew;
+and he thought, "Rather would she death from him, than life from me!
+Though I give her creation, it will not alter her! Though I strike the
+stars with my head, it is he who fills her world."
+
+The thought spurred him to farther cruelty, impelled him to try if,
+prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her? "You don't
+ask after him?" he scoffed. "He may be before or behind? Or wounded or
+well? Would you not know, madame? And what message he sent you? And
+what he fears, and what hope he has? And his last wishes? And--for
+while there is life there is hope--would you not learn where the key
+of his prison lies to-night? How much for the key to-night, madame?"
+
+Each question fell on her like the lash of a whip; but as one who has
+been flogged into insensibility, she did not wince. That drove him on:
+he felt a mad desire to hear her prayers, to force her lower, to bring
+her to her knees. And he sought about for a keener taunt. Their
+attendants were almost out of sight before them; the sun, declining
+apace, was in their eyes. "In two hours we shall be in Angers," he
+said. "Mon Dieu, madame, it was a pity, when you two were taking
+letters, you did not go a step farther. You were surprised, or I doubt
+if I should be alive to-day!"
+
+Then she did look up. She raised her head and met his gaze with such
+wonder in her eyes, such reproach in her tear-stained face, that his
+voice sank on the last word. "You mean--that I would have murdered
+you?" she said. "I would have cut off my hand first. What I did"--and
+now her voice was as firm as it was low--"what I did, I did to save my
+people. And if it were to be done again, I would do it again!"
+
+"You dare to tell me that to my face?" he cried, hiding feelings which
+almost choked him. "You would do it again, would you? Mon Dieu,
+madame, you need to be taught a lesson!"
+
+And by chance, meaning only to make the horses move on again, he
+raised his whip. She thought that he was going to strike her, and she
+flinched at last. The whip fell smartly on her horse's quarters, and
+it sprang forward. Count Hannibal swore between his teeth.
+
+He had turned pale, she red as fire. "Get on! Get on!" he cried
+harshly. "We are falling behind!" And riding at her heels, flipping
+her horse now and then, he forced her to trot on until they overtook
+the servants.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                           THE BLACK TOWN.
+
+
+It was late evening when, riding wearily on jaded horses, they came to
+the outskirts of Angers, and saw before them the term of their
+journey. The glow of sunset had faded, but the sky was still warm with
+the last hues of day; and against its opal light the huge mass of the
+Angevin castle, which even in sunshine rises dark and forbidding above
+the Mayenne, stood up black and sharply defined. Below it, on both
+banks of the river, the towers and spires of the city soared up from a
+sombre huddle of ridge-roofs, broken here by a round-headed gateway,
+crumbling and pigeon-haunted, that dated from St. Louis, and there by
+the gaunt arms of a windmill.
+
+The city lay dark under a light sky, keeping well its secrets.
+Thousands were out of doors enjoying the evening coolness in alley and
+court, yet it betrayed the life which pulsed in its arteries only by
+the low murmur which rose from it. Nevertheless, the Countess at sight
+of its roofs tasted the first moment of happiness which had been hers
+that day. She might suffer, but she had saved. Those roofs would thank
+her! In that murmur were the voices of women and children she had
+redeemed! At the sight and at the thought a wave of love and
+tenderness swept all bitterness from her breast. A profound humility,
+a boundless thankfulness took possession of her. Her head sank lower
+above her horse's mane; but it sank in reverence, not in shame.
+
+Could she have known what was passing beneath those roofs which night
+was blending in a common gloom--could she have read the thoughts which
+at that moment paled the cheeks of many a stout burgher, whose gabled
+house looked on the great square, she had been still more thankful.
+For in attics and back rooms women were on their knees at that hour,
+praying with feverish eyes; and in the streets men--on whom their
+fellows, seeing the winding-sheet already at the chin, gazed
+askance--smiled, and showed brave looks abroad, while their hearts
+were sick with fear.
+
+For darkly, no man knew how, the news had come to Angers. It had been
+known, more or less, for three days. Men had read it in other men's
+eyes. The tongue of a scold, the sneer of an injured woman had spread
+it, the birds of the air had carried it. From garret window to garret
+window across the narrow lanes of the old town it had been whispered
+at dead of night; at convent grilles, and in the timber-yards beside
+the river. Ten thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, it was
+rumoured, had perished in Paris. In Orleans, all. In Tours this man's
+sister; at Saumur that man's son. Through France the word had gone
+forth that the Huguenots must die; and in the busy town the same
+roof-tree sheltered fear and hate, rage and cupidity. On one side of
+the party-wall murder lurked fierce-eyed; on the other, the victim lay
+watching the latch, and shaking at a step. Strong men tasted the
+bitterness of death, and women clasping their babes to their breasts
+smiled sickly into children's eyes.
+
+The signal only was lacking. It would come, said some, from Saumur,
+where Montsoreau, the Duke of Anjou's Lieutenant-Governor and a
+Papist, had his quarters. From Paris, said others, directly from the
+King. It might come at any hour now, in the day or in the night; the
+magistrates, it was whispered, were in continuous session, awaiting
+its coming. No wonder that from, lofty gable windows, and from dormers
+set high above the tiles, haggard faces looked northward and eastward,
+and ears sharpened by fear imagined above the noises of the city the
+ring of the iron shoes that carried doom.
+
+Doubtless the majority desired--as the majority in France have always
+desired--peace. But in the purlieus about the cathedral and in the
+lanes where the sacristans lived, in convent parlours and college
+courts, among all whose livelihood the new faith threatened, was a
+stir as of a hive deranged. Here was grumbling against the
+magistrates--why wait? There, stealthy plannings and arrangements;
+everywhere a grinding of weapons and casting of slugs. Old grudges,
+new rivalries, a scholar's venom, a priest's dislike, here was final
+vent for all. None need leave this feast unsated!
+
+It was a man of this class, sent out for the purpose, who first espied
+Count Hannibal's company approaching. He bore the news into the town,
+and by the time the travellers reached the city gate, the dusky street
+within, on which lights were beginning to twinkle from booths and
+casements, was alive with figures running to meet them and crying the
+news as they ran. The travellers, weary and road-stained, had no
+sooner passed under the arch than they found themselves the core of a
+great crowd which moved with them and pressed about them; now
+unbonneting, and now calling out questions, and now shouting "Vive le
+Roi! Vive le Roi!" Above the press, windows burst into light; and over
+all, the quaint leaning gables of the old timbered houses looked down
+on the hurry and tumult.
+
+They passed along a narrow street in which the rabble, hurrying at
+Count Hannibal's bridle, and often looking back to read his face, had
+much ado to escape harm; along this street and before the yawning
+doors of a great church, whence a hot breath heavy with incense and
+burning wax issued to meet them. A portion of the congregation had
+heard the tumult and struggled out, and now stood close-packed on the
+steps under the double vault of the portal. Among them the Countess's
+eyes, as she rode by, a sturdy man-at-arms on either hand, caught and
+held one face. It was the face of a tall, lean man in dusty black; and
+though she did not know him she seemed to have an equal attraction for
+him; for as their eyes met he seized the shoulder of the man next him
+and pointed her out. And something in the energy of the gesture, or in
+the thin lips and malevolent eyes of the man who pointed, chilled the
+Countess's blood and shook her, she knew not why.
+
+Until then, she had known no fear save of her husband. But at that a
+sense of the force and pressure of the crowd--as well as of the fierce
+passions, straining about her, which a word might unloose--broke upon
+her; and looking to the stern men on either side she fancied that she
+read anxiety in their faces.
+
+She glanced behind. Bridle to bridle the Count's men came on, pressing
+round her women and shielding them from the exuberance of the throng.
+In their faces too she thought that she traced uneasiness.
+
+What wonder if the scenes through which she had passed in Paris began
+to recur to her mind, and shook nerves already overwrought?
+
+She began to tremble. "Is there--danger?" she muttered, speaking in a
+low voice to Bigot, who rode on her right hand. "Will they do
+anything?"
+
+The Norman snorted. "Not while he is in the saddle," he said, nodding
+towards his master, who rode a pace in front of them, his reins loose.
+"There be some here know him!" Bigot continued, in his drawling tone.
+"And more will know him if they break line. Have no fear, madame, he
+will bring you safe to the inn. Down with the Huguenots?" he
+continued, turning from her and addressing a rogue who, holding his
+stirrup, was shouting the cry till he was crimson. "Then why not away,
+and----"
+
+"The King! The King's word and leave!" the man answered.
+
+"Ay, tell us!" shrieked another, looking upward, while he waved his
+cap; "have we the King's leave?"
+
+"You'll bide _his_ leave!" the Norman retorted, indicating the Count
+with his thumb. "Or 'twill be up with you--on the three-legged horse!"
+
+"But he comes from the King!" the man panted.
+
+"To be sure. To be sure!"
+
+"Then----"
+
+"You'll bide his time! That's all!" Bigot answered, rather it seemed
+for his own satisfaction than the other's enlightenment. "You'll all
+bide it, you dogs!" he continued in his beard, as he cast his eye over
+the weltering crowd. "Ha! so we are here, are we? And not too soon,
+either."
+
+He fell silent as they entered an open space, overlooked on one side
+by the dark façade of the cathedral, on the other three sides by
+houses more or less illumined. The rabble swept into this open space
+with them and before them, filled much of it in an instant, and for a
+while eddied and swirled this way and that, thrust onward by the
+worshippers who had issued from the church and backwards by those who
+had been first in the square, and had no mind to be hustled out of
+hearing. A stranger, confused by the sea of excited faces, and
+deafened by the clamour of "Vive le Roi!" "Vive Anjou!" mingled with
+cries against the Huguenots, might have fancied that the whole city
+was arrayed before him. But he would have been wide of the mark. The
+scum, indeed--and a dangerous scum--frothed and foamed and spat under
+Tavannes' bridle-hand; and here and there among them, but not of them,
+the dark-robed figure of a priest moved to and fro; or a Benedictine,
+or some smooth-faced acolyte egged on to the work he dared not do. But
+the decent burghers were not there. They lay bolted in their houses;
+while the magistrates, with little heart to do aught except bow to the
+mob--or other their masters for the time being--shook in their council
+chamber.
+
+There is not a city of France which has not seen it; which has not
+known the moment when the mass impended, and it lay with one man to
+start it or stay its course. Angers within its houses heard the
+clamour, and from the child, clinging to its mother's skirt, and
+wondering why she wept, to the Provost, trembled, believing that the
+hour had come. The Countess heard it too, and understood it. She
+caught the savage note in the voice of the mob--that note which means
+danger--and her heart beating wildly she looked to her husband. Then,
+fortunately for her, fortunately for Angers, it was given to all to
+see that in Count Hannibal's saddle sat a man.
+
+He raised his hand for silence, and in a minute or two--not at once,
+for the square was dusky--it was obtained. He rose in his stirrups,
+and bared his head.
+
+"I am from the King!" he cried, throwing his voice to all parts of the
+crowd. "And this is his Majesty's pleasure and good will! That every
+man hold his hand until to-morrow on pain of death, or worse! And at
+noon his further pleasure will be known! Vive le Roi!"
+
+And he covered his head again.
+
+"Vive le Roi!" cried a number of the foremost. But their shouts were
+feeble and half-hearted, and were quickly drowned in a rising murmur
+of discontent and ill-humour, which, mingled with cries of "Is that
+all? Is there no more? Down with the Huguenots!" rose from all parts.
+Presently these cries became merged in a persistent call, which had
+its origin, as far as could be discovered, in the darkest corner of
+the square. A call for "Montsoreau! Montsoreau! Give us Montsoreau!"
+
+With another man, or had Tavannes turned or withdrawn, or betrayed the
+least anxiety, words had become actions, disorder a riot; and that in
+the twinkling of an eye. But Count Hannibal, sitting his horse, with
+his handful of riders behind him, watched the crowd, as little moved
+by it as the Armed Knight of Notre Dame. Only once did he say a word.
+Then, raising his hand as before to gain a hearing, "You ask for
+Montsoreau?" he thundered. "You will have Montfaucon if you do not
+quickly go to your homes!"
+
+At which, and at the glare of his eye, the more timid took fright.
+Feeling his gaze upon them, seeing that he had no intention of
+withdrawing, they began to sneak away by ones and twos. Soon others
+missed them and took the alarm, and followed. A moment and scores were
+streaming away through lanes and alleys and along the main street. At
+last the bolder and more turbulent found themselves a remnant. They
+glanced uneasily at one another and at Tavannes, took fright in their
+turn, and plunging into the current hastened away, raising now and
+then as they passed through the streets a cry of "Vive Montsoreau!
+Montsoreau!"--which was not without its menace for the morrow.
+
+Count Hannibal waited motionless until no more than half a dozen
+groups remained in the open. Then he gave the word to dismount; so
+far, even the Countess and her women had kept their saddles, lest the
+movement which their retreat into the inn must have caused should be
+misread by the mob. Last of all he dismounted himself, and with lights
+going before him and behind, and preceded by Bigot, bearing his cloak
+and pistols, he escorted the Countess into the house. Not many minutes
+had elapsed since he called for silence; but long before he reached
+the chamber looking over the square from the first floor, in which
+supper was being set for them, the news had flown through the length
+and breadth of Angers that for this night the danger was past. The
+hawk had come to Angers, and lo! it was a dove.
+
+Count Hannibal strode to one of the open windows and looked out. In
+the room, which was well lighted, were people of the house, going to
+and fro, setting out the table; to Madame, standing beside the
+hearth--which held its summer dressing of green boughs--while her
+woman held water for her to wash, the scene recalled with painful
+vividness the meal at which she had been present on the morning of the
+St. Bartholomew--the meal which had ushered in her troubles. Naturally
+her eyes went to her husband, her mind to the horror in which she had
+held him then; and with a kind of shock, perhaps because the last few
+minutes had shown him in a new light, she compared her old opinion of
+him with that which, much as she feared him, she now entertained.
+
+This afternoon, if ever, within the last few hours, if at all, he had
+acted in a way to justify that horror and that opinion. He had treated
+her--brutally; he had insulted and threatened her, had almost struck
+her. And yet--and yet Madame felt that she had moved so far from the
+point which she had once occupied that the old attitude was hard to
+understand. Hardly could she believe that it was on this man, much as
+she still dreaded him, that she had looked with those feelings of
+repulsion.
+
+She was still gazing at him with eyes which strove to see two men in
+one, when he turned from the window. Absorbed in thought she had
+forgotten her occupation, and stood, the towel suspended in her
+half-dried hands. Before she knew what he was doing he was at her
+side; he bade the woman hold the bowl, and he rinsed his hands. Then
+he turned, and without looking at the Countess, he dried his hands on
+the farther end of the towel which she was still using.
+
+She blushed faintly. A something in the act, more intimate and more
+familiar than had ever marked their intercourse, set her blood
+running strangely. When he turned away and bade Bigot unbuckle his
+spur-leathers, she stepped forward.
+
+"I will do it!" she murmured, acting on a sudden and unaccountable
+impulse. And as she knelt, she shook her hair about her face to hide
+its colour.
+
+"Nay, madame, but you will soil your fingers!" he said coldly.
+
+"Permit me," she muttered half coherently. And though her fingers
+shook, she pursued and performed her task.
+
+When she rose he thanked her; and then the devil in the man, or the
+Nemesis he had provoked when he took her by force from another--the
+Nemesis of jealousy, drove him to spoil all. "And for whose sake,
+madame?" he added with a jeer--"mine or M. de Tignonville's?" And with
+a glance between jest and earnest, he tried to read her thoughts.
+
+She winced as if he had indeed struck her, and the hot colour fled her
+cheeks. "For his sake!" she said, with a shiver of pain. "That his
+life may be spared!" And she stood back humbly, like a beaten dog.
+Though, indeed, it was for the sake of Angers, in thankfulness for the
+past rather than in any desperate hope of propitiating her husband,
+that she had done it!
+
+Perhaps he would have withdrawn his words. But before he could answer,
+the host, bowing to the floor, came to announce that all was ready,
+and that the Provost of the City, for whom M. le Comte had sent, was
+in waiting below. "Let him come up!" Tavannes answered, grave and
+frowning. "And see you, close the room, sirrah! My people will wait on
+us. Ah!" as the Provost, a burly man with a face framed for jollity,
+but now pale and long, entered and approached him with many
+salutations. "How comes it, M. le Prévôt--you are the Prévôt, are you
+not?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Comte."
+
+"How comes it that so great a crowd is permitted to meet in the
+streets? And that at my entrance, though I come unannounced, I find
+half of the city gathered together?"
+
+The Provost stared. "Respect, M. le Comte," he said, "for His
+Majesty's letters, of which you are the bearer, no doubt induced some
+to come together----"
+
+"Who said I brought letters?"
+
+"Who----"
+
+"Who said I brought letters?" Count Hannibal repeated in a strenuous
+voice. And he ground his chair half about and faced the astonished
+magistrate. "Who said I brought letters?"
+
+"Why, my lord," the Provost stammered, "it was everywhere
+yesterday----"
+
+"Yesterday?"
+
+"Last night, at latest--that letters were coming from the King."
+
+"By my hand?"
+
+"By your lordship's hand--whose name is so well known here," the
+magistrate added, in the hope of clearing the great man's brow.
+
+Count Hannibal laughed darkly. "My hand will be better known
+by-and-by," he said. "See you, sirrah, there is some practice here.
+What is this cry of Montsoreau that I hear?"
+
+"Your lordship knows that he is His Grace's Lieutenant-Governor in
+Saumur."
+
+"I know that, man. But is he here?"
+
+"He was at Saumur yesterday, and 'twas rumoured three days back that
+he was coming here to extirpate the Huguenots. Then word came of your
+lordship and of His Majesty's letters, and 'twas thought that M. de
+Montsoreau would not come, his authority being superseded."
+
+"I see. And now your rabble think that they would prefer M.
+Montsoreau. That is it, is it?"
+
+The magistrate shrugged his shoulders and opened his hands. "Pigs!" he
+said. And having spat on the floor he looked apologetically at the
+lady. "True pigs!"
+
+"What connections has he here?" Tavannes asked.
+
+"He is a brother of my lord the Bishop's Vicar, who arrived
+yesterday."
+
+"With a rout of shaven heads who have been preaching and stirring up
+the town!" Count Hannibal cried, his face growing red. "Speak, man, is
+it so? But I'll be sworn it is!"
+
+"There has been preaching," the Provost answered reluctantly.
+
+"Montsoreau may count his brother, then, for one. He is a fool, but
+with a knave behind him, and a knave who has no cause to love us! And
+the Castle? 'Tis held by one of M. de Montsoreau's creatures, I take
+it?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"With what force?"
+
+The magistrate shrugged his shoulders, and looked doubtfully at
+Badelon, who was keeping the door.
+
+Tavannes followed the glance with his usual impatience. "Mon Dieu, you
+need not look at him!" he cried. "He has sacked St. Peter's and singed
+the Pope's beard with a holy candle! He has been served on the knee by
+Cardinals; and is Turk or Jew, or monk or Huguenot as I please. And
+madame"--for the Provost's astonished eyes, after resting awhile on
+the old soldier's iron visage, had passed to her--"is Huguenot, so you
+need have no fear of her! There, speak, man," with impatience, "and
+cease to think of your own skin!"
+
+The Provost drew a deep breath, and fixed his small eyes on Count
+Hannibal.
+
+"If I knew, my lord, what you--why, my own sister's son"--he paused,
+his face began to work, his voice shook--"is a Huguenot! Ay, my lord,
+a Huguenot! And they know it!" he continued, a flush of rage
+augmenting the emotion which his countenance betrayed. "Ay, they know
+it! And they push me on at the Council, and grin behind my back;
+Lescot, who was Provost two years back and would match his son with my
+daughter; and Thuriot who prints for the University! They nudge one
+another, and egg me on, till half the city thinks it is I who would
+kill the Huguenots! I!" Again his voice broke. "And my own sister's
+son a Huguenot! And my girl at home white-faced for--for his sake."
+
+Tavannes scanned the man shrewdly. "Perhaps she is of the same way of
+thinking?" he said.
+
+The Provost started, and lost one-half of his colour. "God forbid!" he
+cried, "saving madame's presence! Who says so, my lord, lies!"
+
+"Ay, lies not far from the truth."
+
+"My lord!"
+
+"Pish, man, Lescot has said it and will act on it. And Thuriot, who
+prints for the University! Would you 'scape them? You would? Then
+listen to me. I want but two things. First, how many men has
+Montsoreau's fellow in the Castle? Few, I know, for he is a niggard,
+and if he spends, he spends the Duke's pay."
+
+"Twelve. But five can hold it."
+
+"Ay, but twelve dare not leave it! Let them stew in their own broth!
+And now for the other matter. See, man, that before daybreak three
+gibbets, with a ladder and two ropes apiece, are set up in the square.
+And let one be before this door. You understand? Then let it be done!
+The rest," he added with a ferocious smile, "you may leave to me."
+
+The magistrate nodded rather feebly. "Doubtless," he said, his eye
+wandering here and there, "there are rogues in Angers. And for rogues
+the gibbet! But saving your presence, my lord, it is a question
+whether----"
+
+But M. de Tavannes' patience was exhausted. "Will you do it?" he
+roared. "That is the question. And the only question."
+
+The Provost jumped, he was so startled. "Certainly, my lord,
+certainly!" he muttered humbly. "Certainly, I will!" And bowing
+frequently, but saying no more, he backed himself out of the room.
+
+Count Hannibal laughed grimly after his fashion, and doubtless thought
+that he had seen the last of the magistrate for that night. Great was
+his wrath therefore, when, less than a minute later--and before Bigot
+had carved for him--the door opened and the Provost appeared again. He
+slid in, and without giving the courage he had gained on the stairs
+time to cool, plunged into his trouble.
+
+"It stands this way, M. le Comte," he bleated. "If I put up the
+gibbets and a man is hanged, and you have letters from the King, 'tis
+a rogue the less and no harm done. But if you have no letters from His
+Majesty, then it is on my shoulders they will put it, and 'twill be
+odd if they do not find a way to hang me to right him."
+
+Count Hannibal smiled grimly. "And your sister's son?" he sneered.
+"And your girl who is white-faced for his sake, and may burn on the
+same bonfire with him? And----"
+
+"Mercy! Mercy!" the wretched Provost cried. And he wrung his hands.
+"Lescot and Thuriot----"
+
+"Perhaps we may hang Lescot and Thuriot----"
+
+"But I see no way out," the Provost babbled. "No way! No way!"
+
+"I am going to show you one," Tavannes retorted. "If the gibbets are
+not in place by sunrise, I shall hang you from this window. That is
+one way out; and you'll be wise to take the other! For the rest and
+for your comfort, if I have no letters, it is not always to paper that
+the King commits his inmost heart."
+
+The magistrate bowed. He quaked, he doubted, but he had no choice. "My
+lord," he said, "I put myself in your hands. It shall be done,
+certainly it shall be done. But, but----" and shaking his head in
+foreboding he turned to the door.
+
+At the last moment, when he was within a pace of it, the Countess rose
+impulsively to her feet. She called to him. "M. le Prévôt, a minute,
+if you please," she said. "There may be trouble to morrow; your
+daughter may be in some peril. You will do well to send her to me.
+My lord"--and on the word her voice, timid before, grew full and
+steady--"will see that I am safe. And she will be safe with me."
+
+The Provost saw before him only a gracious lady, moved by a
+thoughtfulness unusual in persons of her rank. He was at no pains to
+explain the flame in her cheek, or the soft light which glowed in her
+eyes, as she looked at him, across her formidable husband. He was only
+profoundly grateful--moved even to tears. Humbly thanking her he
+accepted her offer for his child, and withdrew wiping his eyes.
+
+When he was gone, and the door had closed behind him, Tavannes turned
+to the Countess, who still kept her feet. "You are very confident this
+evening," he sneered. "Gibbets do not frighten you, it seems, madame.
+Perhaps if you knew for whom the one before the door is intended?"
+
+She met his look with a searching gaze, and spoke with a ring of
+defiance in her tone. "I do not believe it!" she said. "I do not
+believe it! You who save Angers will not destroy him!" And then her
+woman's mood changing, with courage and colour ebbing together, "Oh,
+no, you will not! You will not!" she wailed. And she dropped on her
+knees before him, and holding up her clasped hands, "God will put it
+in your heart to spare him--and me!"
+
+He rose with a stifled oath, took two steps from her, and in a tone
+hoarse and constrained, "Go!" he said. "Go, or sit! Do you hear,
+madame? You try my patience too far!"
+
+But when she had gone his face was radiant. He had brought her, he had
+brought all, to the point at which he aimed. To-morrow his triumph
+awaited him. To-morrow he who had cast her down would raise her up.
+
+He did not foresee what a day would bring forth.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                     IN THE LITTLE CHAPTER-HOUSE.
+
+
+The sun was an hour high, and in Angers the shops and booths, after
+the early fashion of the day, were open or opening. Through all the
+gates country folk were pressing into the gloomy streets of the Black
+Town with milk and fruit; and at doors and windows housewives
+cheapened fish, or chaffered over the fowl for the pot. For men must
+eat, though there be gibbets in the Place Ste.-Croix: gaunt gibbets,
+high and black and twofold, each, with its dangling ropes, like a
+double note of interrogation.
+
+But gibbets must eat also; and between ground and noose was so small a
+space in those days that a man dangled almost before he knew it. The
+sooner, then, the paniers were empty, and the clown, who pays for all,
+was beyond the gates, the better he, for one, would be pleased. In the
+market, therefore, was hurrying. Men cried their wares in lowered
+voices, and tarried but a little for the oldest customer. The bargain
+struck, the more timid among the buyers hastened to shut themselves
+into their houses again; the bolder, who ventured to the Place to
+confirm the rumour with their eyes, talked in corners and in lanes,
+avoided the open, and eyed the sinister preparations from afar. The
+shadow of the things which stood before the cathedral affronting the
+sunlight with their gaunt black shapes lay across the length and
+breadth of Angers. Even in the corners where men whispered, even in
+the cloisters where men bit their nails in impotent auger, the
+stillness of fear ruled all. Whatever Count Hannibal had it in his
+mind to tell the city, it seemed unlikely--and hour by hour it seemed
+less likely--that any would contradict him.
+
+He knew this as he walked in the sunlight before the inn, his spurs
+ringing on the stones as he made each turn, his movements watched by a
+hundred peering eyes. After all, it was not hard to rule, nor to have
+one's way in this world. But then, he went on to remember, not
+everyone had his self-control, or that contempt for the weak and
+unsuccessful which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers
+safe, curbed by his gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have
+trouble; but the trouble would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and
+what it was the Lieutenant-Governor valued above profitless bloodshed.
+
+He might have felt less confident had he known what was passing at
+that moment in a room off the small cloister of the Abbey of St.
+Aubin, a room known at Angers as the Little Chapter-House. It was a
+long chamber with a groined roof and stone walls, panelled as high as
+a tall man might reach with dark chestnut wood. Gloomily lighted by
+three grated windows, which looked on a small inner green, the last
+resting-place of the Benedictines, the room itself seemed at first
+sight no more than the last resting-place of worn-out odds and ends.
+Piles of thin sheepskin folios, dog's-eared and dirty, the rejected of
+the choir, stood against the walls; here and there among them lay a
+large brass-bound tome on which the chains that had fettered it to
+desk or lectern still rusted. A broken altar cumbered one corner: a
+stand bearing a curious--and rotting--map filled another. In the other
+two corners a medley of faded scutcheons and banners, which had seen
+their last Toussaint procession, mouldered slowly into dust--into much
+dust. The air of the room was full of it.
+
+In spite of which the long oak table that filled the middle of the
+chamber shone with use: so did the great metal standish which it bore.
+And though the seven men who sat about the table seemed, at a first
+glance and in that gloomy light, as rusty and faded as the rubbish
+behind them, it needed but a second look at their lean jaws and hungry
+eyes to be sure of their vitality.
+
+He who sat in the great chair at the end of the table was indeed
+rather plump than thin. His white hands, gay with rings, were well
+cared for; his peevish chin rested on a falling-collar of lace worthy
+of a Cardinal. But though the Bishop's Vicar was heard with deference,
+it was noticeable that when he had ceased to speak his hearers looked
+to the priest on his left, to Father Pezelay, and waited to hear his
+opinion before they gave their own. The Father's energy, indeed, had
+dominated the Angevins, clerks and townsfolk alike, as it had
+dominated the Parisian _dévotes_ who knew him well. The vigour which
+hate inspires passes often for solid strength; and he who had seen
+with his own eyes the things done in Paris spoke with an authority to
+which the more timid quickly and easily succumbed.
+
+Yet gibbets are ugly things; and Thuriot, the printer, whose pride had
+been tickled by a summons to the conclave, began to wonder if he had
+done wisely in coming. Lescot, too, who presently ventured a word.
+"But if M. de Tavannes' order be to do nothing," he began doubtfully,
+"you would not, reverend Father, have us resist His Majesty's will?"
+
+"God forbid, my friend!" Father Pezelay answered with unction. "But
+His Majesty's will is to do--to do for the glory of God and the saints
+and His Holy Church! How? Is that which was lawful at Saumur unlawful
+here? Is that which was lawful at Tours unlawful here? Is that which
+the King did in Paris--to the utter extermination of the unbelieving
+and the purging of that Sacred City--against his will here? Nay, his
+will is to do--to do as they have done in Paris and in Tours and in
+Saumur! But his Minister is unfaithful! The woman whom he has taken to
+his bosom has bewildered him with her charms and her sorceries, and
+put it in his mind to deny the mission he bears."
+
+"You are sure, beyond chance of error, that he bears letters to that
+effect, good Father?" the printer ventured.
+
+"Ask my lord's Vicar! He knows the letters and the import of them!"
+
+"They are to that effect," the Archdeacon answered, drumming on the
+table with his fingers and speaking somewhat sullenly. "I was in the
+Chancellery and I saw them. They are duplicates of those sent to
+Bordeaux."
+
+"Then the preparations he has made must be against the Huguenots,"
+Lescot, the ex-Provost, said with a sigh of relief. And Thuriot's face
+lightened also. "He must intend to hang one or two of the ringleaders,
+before he deals with the herd."
+
+"Think it not!" Father Pezelay cried in his high shrill voice. "I tell
+you the woman has bewitched him, and he will deny his letters!"
+
+For a moment there was silence. Then, "But dare he do that, reverend
+Father?" Lescot asked slowly and incredulously. "What? Suppress the
+King's letters?"
+
+"There is nothing he will not dare! There is nothing he has not
+dared!" the priest answered vehemently; the recollection of the scene
+in the great guard-room of the Louvre, when Tavannes had so skilfully
+turned the tables on him, instilling venom into his tone. "She who
+lives with him is the devil's. She has bewitched him with her spells
+and her Sabbaths! She bears the mark of the Beast on her bosom, and
+for her the fire is even now kindling!"
+
+The laymen who were present shuddered. The two canons who faced them
+crossed themselves, muttering "Avaunt, Satan!"
+
+"It is for you to decide," the priest continued, gazing on them
+passionately, "whether you will side with him or with the Angel of
+God! For I tell you it was none other executed the divine judgments at
+Paris! It was none other but the Angel of God held the sword at Tours!
+It is none other holds the sword here! Are you for him or against him?
+Are you for him, or for the woman with the mark of the Beast? Are you
+for God or against God? For the hour draws near! The time is at hand!
+You must choose! You must choose!" And, striking the table with his
+hand, he leaned forward, and with glittering eyes fixed each of them
+in turn, as he cried, "You must choose! You must choose!" He came to
+the Archdeacon last.
+
+The Bishop's Vicar fidgeted in his chair, his face a shade more
+sallow, his cheeks hanging a trifle more loosely, than ordinary. "If
+my brother were here!" he muttered. "If M. de Montsoreau had arrived!"
+
+But Father Pezelay knew whose will would prevail if Montsoreau met
+Tavannes at his leisure. To force Montsoreau's hand, to surround him
+on his first entrance with a howling mob already committed to
+violence, to set him at their head and pledge him before he knew with
+whom he had to do--this had been, this still was, the priest's design.
+
+But how was he to pursue it while those gibbets stood? While their
+shadows lay even on the chapter table, and darkened the faces of his
+most forward associates? That for a moment staggered the priest; and
+had not private hatred, ever renewed by the touch of the scar on his
+brow, fed the fire of bigotry he had yielded, as the rabble of Angers
+were yielding, reluctant and scowling, to the hand which held the city
+in its grip. But to have come so far on the wings of hate, and to do
+nothing! To have come avowedly to preach a crusade, and to sneak away
+cowed! To have dragged the Bishop's Vicar hither, and fawned and
+cajoled and threatened by turns--and for nothing! These things were
+passing bitter--passing bitter, when the morsel of vengeance he had
+foreseen smacked so sweet on the tongue.
+
+For it was no common vengeance, no layman's vengeance, coarse and
+clumsy, which the priest had imagined in the dark hours of the night,
+when his feverish brain kept him wakeful. To see Count Hannibal roll
+in the dust had gone but a little way towards satisfying him. No! But
+to drag from his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her
+to shame and torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to
+burn her as a witch--it was that which had seemed to the priest in the
+night hours a vengeance sweet in the mouth.
+
+But the thing seemed unattainable in the circumstances. The city was
+cowed; the priest knew that no dependence was to be placed on
+Montsoreau, whose vice was avarice and whose object was plunder. To
+the Archdeacon's feeble words, therefore, "We must look," the priest
+retorted sternly, "not to M. de Montsoreau, reverend Father, but to
+the pious of Angers! We must cry in the streets, 'They do violence to
+God! They wound God and His Mother!' And so, and so only, shall the
+unholy thing be rooted out!"
+
+"Amen!" the Cure of St.-Benoist muttered, lifting his head; and his
+dull eyes glowed awhile. "Amen! Amen!" Then his chin sank again upon
+his breast.
+
+But the canons of Angers looked doubtfully at one another, and timidly
+at the speakers; the meat was too strong for them. And Lescot and
+Thuriot shuffled in their seats. At length, "I do not know," Lescot
+muttered timidly.
+
+"You do not know?"
+
+"What can be done!"
+
+"The people will know!" Father Pezelay retorted. "Trust them!"
+
+"But the people will not rise without a leader."
+
+"Then will I lead them!"
+
+"Even so, reverend Father--I doubt," Lescot faltered. And Thuriot
+nodded assent. Gibbets were erected in those days rather for laymen
+than for the Church.
+
+"You doubt!" the priest cried. "You doubt!" His baleful eyes passed
+from one to the other; from them to the rest of the company. He saw
+that with the exception of the Curé of St.-Benoist all were of a mind.
+"You doubt! Nay, but I see what it is! It is this," he continued
+slowly and in a different tone, "the King's will goes for nothing in
+Angers! His writ runs not here. And Holy Church cries in vain for help
+against the oppressor. I tell you, the sorceress who has bewitched him
+has bewitched you also. Beware! beware, therefore, lest it be with you
+as with him! And the fire that shall consume her, spare not your
+houses!"
+
+The two citizens crossed themselves, grew pale and shuddered. The fear
+of witchcraft was great in Angers, the peril, if accused of it,
+enormous. Even the canons looked startled. "If--if my brother were
+here," the Archdeacon repeated feebly, "something might be done!"
+
+"Vain is the help of man!" the priest retorted sternly, and with a
+gesture of sublime dismissal. "I turn from you to a mightier than
+you!" And, leaning his head on his hands, he covered his face.
+
+The Archdeacon and the churchmen looked at him, and from him their
+scared eyes passed to one another. Their one desire now was to be quit
+of the matter, to have done with it, to escape; and one by one with
+the air of whipped curs they rose to their feet, and in a hurry to be
+gone muttered a word of excuse shamefacedly and got themselves out of
+the room. Lescot and the printer were not slow to follow, and in less
+than a minute the two strange preachers, the men from Paris, remained
+the only occupants of the chamber; save, to be precise, a lean
+official in rusty black, who throughout the conference had sat by the
+door.
+
+Until the last shuffling footstep had ceased to sound in the still
+cloister no one spoke. Then Father Pezelay looked up, and the eyes of
+the two priests met in a long gaze. "What think you?" Pezelay muttered
+at last.
+
+"Wet hay," the other answered dreamily, "is slow to kindle, yet burns
+if the fire be big enough. At what hour does he state his will?"
+
+"At noon."
+
+"In the Council Chamber!"
+
+"It is so given out."
+
+"It is three hundred yards from the Place Ste.-Croix and he must go
+guarded," the Curé of St.-Benoist continued in the same dull fashion.
+"He cannot leave many in the house with the woman. If it were attacked
+in his absence----"
+
+"He would return, and----" Father Pezelay shook his head, his cheek
+turned a shade paler. Clearly, he saw with his mind's eye more than he
+expressed.
+
+"_Hoc est corpus_," the other muttered, his dreamy gaze on the table.
+"If he met us then, on his way to the house, and we had bell, book,
+and candle, would he stop?"
+
+"He would not stop!" Father Pezelay rejoined.
+
+"He would not?"
+
+"I know the man!"
+
+"Then----" but the rest St.-Beuoist whispered, his head drooping
+forward; whispered so low that even the lean man behind him, listening
+with greedy ears, failed to follow the meaning of his superior's
+words. But that he spoke plainly enough for his hearer Father
+Pezelay's face was witness. Astonishment, fear, hope, triumph, the
+lean pale face reflected all in turn; and, underlying all, a subtle
+malignant mischief, as if a devil's eyes peeped through the holes in
+an opera mask.
+
+When the other was at last silent Pezelay drew a deep breath. "'Tis
+bold! Bold! Bold!" he muttered. "But have you thought? He who bears
+the----"
+
+"Brunt?" the other whispered with a chuckle. "He may suffer? Yes, but
+it will not be you or I! No, he who was last here shall be first
+there! The Archdeacon-Vicar--if we can persuade him--who knows but
+that even for him the crown of martyrdom is reserved?" The dull eyes
+flickered with unholy amusement.
+
+"And the alarm that brings him from the Council Chamber?"
+
+"Need not of necessity be real. The pinch will be to make use of it.
+Make use of it--and the hay will burn!"
+
+"You think it will?"
+
+"What can one man do against a thousand? His own people dare not
+support him."
+
+Father Pezelay turned to the lean man who kept the door, and,
+beckoning to him, conferred a while with him in a low voice.
+
+"A score or so I might get," the man answered presently after some
+debate. "And well posted, something might be done. But we are not
+in Paris, good father, where the Quarter of the Butchers is to be
+counted on, and men know that to kill Huguenots is to do God service!
+Here"--he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously--"they are sheep."
+
+"It is the King's will," the priest answered, frowning on him darkly.
+
+"Ay, but it is not Tavannes," the man in black answered with a
+grimace. "And he rules here today."
+
+"Fool!" Pezelay retorted. "He has not twenty with him. Do you do as I
+say, and leave the rest to heaven!"
+
+"And to you, good master?" the other answered. "For it is not all you
+are going to do," he continued with a grin, "that you have told me.
+Well, so be it! I'll do my part, but I wish we were in Paris. Ste.
+Genevieve is ever kind to her servants."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                             THE ESCAPE.
+
+
+In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean,
+dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect
+more informing than a blind wall, two men sat, fretting; or, rather,
+one man sat, his chin resting on his hand, while his companion, less
+patient or more sanguine, strode ceaselessly to and fro. In the first
+despair of capture--for they were prisoners--they had made up their
+minds to the worst, and the slow hours of two days had passed over
+their heads without kindling more than a faint spark of hope in their
+breasts. But when they had been taken out and forced to mount and
+ride--at first with feet tied to the horses' girths--they had let the
+change, the movement, and the open air fan the flame. They had
+muttered a word to one another, they had wondered, they had reasoned.
+And though the silence of their guards--from whose sour vigilance the
+keenest question drew no response--seemed of ill-omen, and, taken with
+their knowledge of the man into whose hands they had fallen, should
+have quenched the spark, these two, having special reasons, the one
+the buoyancy of youth, the other the faith of an enthusiast, cherished
+the flame. In the breast of one indeed it had blazed into a confidence
+so arrogant that he now took all for granted, and was not content.
+
+"It is easy for you to say, 'Patience!'" he cried, as he walked the
+floor in a fever. "You stand to lose no more than your life, and if
+you escape go free at all points! But he has robbed me of more than
+life! Of my love, and my self-respect, curse him! He has worsted me
+not once, but twice and thrice! And if he lets me go now, dismissing
+me with my life, I shall--I shall kill him!" he concluded, through his
+teeth.
+
+"You are hard to please!"
+
+"I shall kill him!"
+
+"That were to fall still lower!" the minister answered, gravely
+regarding him. "I would, M. de Tignonville, you remembered that you
+are not yet out of jeopardy. Such a frame of mind as yours is no good
+preparation for death, let me tell you!"
+
+"He will not kill us!" Tignonville cried. "He knows better than most
+men how to avenge himself!"
+
+"Then he is above most!" La Tribe retorted. "For my part I wish I were
+sure of the fact, and I should sit here more at ease."
+
+"If we could escape, now, of ourselves!" Tignonville cried. "Then we
+should save not only life, but honour! Man, think of it! If we could
+escape, not by his leave but against it! Are you sure that this is
+Angers!"
+
+"As sure as a man can be who has only seen the Black Town once or
+twice!" La Tribe answered, moving to the casement--which was not
+glazed--and peering through the rough wooden lattice. "But if we could
+escape we are strangers here. We know not which way to go, nor where
+to find shelter. And for the matter of that," he continued, turning
+from the window with a shrug of resignation, "'tis no use to talk of
+it while yonder foot goes up and down the passage, and its owner bears
+the key in his pocket."
+
+"If we could get out of his power as we came into it!" Tignonville
+cried.
+
+"Ay, if! But it is not every floor has a trap!"
+
+"We could take up a board."
+
+The minister raised his eyebrows.
+
+"We could take up a board!" the younger man repeated; and he stepped
+the mean chamber from end to end, his eyes on the floor. "Or--yes,
+_mon Dieu!_" with a change of attitude, "we might break through the
+roof!" And, throwing back his head, he scanned the cobwebbed surface
+of laths which rested on the unceiled joists.
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"Well, why not, monsieur? Why not break through the ceiling?"
+Tignonville repeated, and in a fit of energy he seized his companion's
+shoulder and shook him. "Stand on the bed, and you can reach it."
+
+"And the floor which rests on it!"
+
+"_Par Dieu_, there is no floor! 'Tis a cockloft above us! See there!
+And there!" And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel
+of a spur through the laths.
+
+La Tribe's expression changed. He rose slowly to his feet. "Try
+again!" he said.
+
+Tignonville, his face red, drove the spur again between the laths, and
+worked it to and fro until he could pass his fingers into the hole he
+had made. Then he gripped and bent down a length of one of the laths,
+and, passing his arm as far as the elbow through the hole, moved it
+this way and that. His eyes, as he looked down at his companion
+through the lolling rubbish, gleamed with triumph. "Where is your
+floor now?" he asked.
+
+"You can touch nothing?"
+
+"Nothing. It's open. A little more and I might touch the tiles." And
+he strove to reach higher.
+
+For answer La Tribe gripped him. "Down! Down, monsieur," he muttered.
+"They are bringing our dinner."
+
+Tignonville thrust back the lath as well as he could, and slipped to
+the floor; and hastily the two swept the rubbish from the bed. When
+Badelon, attended by two men, came in with the meal he found La Tribe
+at the window blocking much of the light, and Tignonville laid
+sullenly on the bed. Even a suspicious eye must have failed to detect
+what had been done; the three who looked in suspected nothing and saw
+nothing. They went out, the key was turned again on the prisoners, and
+the footsteps of two of the men were heard descending the stairs.
+
+"We have an hour, now!" Tignonville cried; and leaping, with flaming
+eyes, on the bed, he fell to hacking and jabbing and tearing at
+the laths amid a rain of dust and rubbish. Fortunately the stuff,
+falling on the bed, made little noise; and in five minutes, working
+half-choked and in a frenzy of impatience, he had made a hole through
+which he could thrust his arms, a hole which extended almost from one
+joist to its neighbour. By this time the air was thick with floating
+lime; the two could scarcely breathe, yet they dared not pause.
+Mounting on La Tribe's shoulders--who took his stand on the bed--the
+young man thrust his head and arms through the hole, and, resting his
+elbows on the joists, dragged himself up, and with a final effort of
+strength landed nose and knees on the timbers, which formed his
+supports. A moment to take breath, and press his torn and bleeding
+fingers to his lips; then, reaching down, he gave a hand to his
+companion and dragged him to the same place of vantage.
+
+They found themselves in a long narrow cockloft, not more than six
+feet high at the highest, and insufferably hot. Between the tiles,
+which sloped steeply on either hand, a faint light filtered in,
+disclosing the giant rooftree running the length of the house, and at
+the farther end of the loft the main tie-beam, from which a network of
+knees and struts rose to the rooftree.
+
+Tignonville, who seemed possessed by unnatural energy, stayed only to
+put off his boots. Then "Courage!" he panted, "all goes well!" and,
+carrying his boots in his hands, he led the way, stepping gingerly
+from joist to joist until he reached the tie-beam. He climbed on it,
+and, squeezing himself between the struts, entered a second loft
+similar to the first. At the farther end of this a rough wall of
+bricks in a timber-frame lowered his hopes; but as he approached it,
+joy! Low down in the corner where the roof descended, a small door,
+square, and not more than two feet high, disclosed itself.
+
+The two crept to it on hands and knees and listened. "It will lead to
+the leads, I doubt?" La Tribe whispered. They dared not raise their
+voices.
+
+"As well that way as another!" Tignonville answered recklessly. He was
+the more eager, for there is a fear which transcends the fear of
+death. His eyes shone through the mask of dust, the sweat ran down to
+his chin, his breath came and went noisily. "Naught matters if we can
+escape him!" he panted. And he pushed the door recklessly. It flew
+open, the two drew back their faces with a cry of alarm.
+
+They were looking, not into the sunlight, but into a grey dingy
+garret open to the roof, and occupying the upper part of a gable-end
+somewhat higher than the wing in which they had been confined. Filthy
+truckle-beds and ragged pallets covered the floor, and, eked out by
+old saddles and threadbare horse-rugs, marked the sleeping quarters
+either of the servants or of travellers of the meaner sort. But the
+dinginess was naught to the two who knelt looking into it, afraid to
+move. Was the place empty? That was the point; the question which had
+first stayed, and then set their pulses at the gallop.
+
+Painfully their eyes searched each huddle of clothing, scanned each
+dubious shape. And slowly, as the silence persisted, their heads came
+forward until the whole floor lay within the field of sight. And still
+no sound! At last Tignonville stirred, crept through the doorway, and
+rose up, peering round him. He nodded, and, satisfied that all was
+safe, the minister followed him.
+
+They found themselves a pace or so from the head of a narrow
+staircase, leading downwards. Without moving they could see the door
+which closed it below. Tignonville signed to La Tribe to wait, and
+himself crept down the stairs. He reached the door, and, stooping, set
+his eye to the hole through which the string of the latch passed. A
+moment he looked, and then, turning on tiptoe, he stole up again, his
+face fallen.
+
+"You may throw the handle after the hatchet!" he muttered. "The man on
+guard is within four yards of the door." And in the rage of
+disappointment he struck the air with his hand.
+
+"Is he looking this way?"
+
+"No. He is looking down the passage towards our room. But it is
+impossible to pass him."
+
+La Tribe nodded, and moved softly to one of the lattices which lighted
+the room. It might be possible to escape that way, by the parapet and
+the tiles. But he found that the casement was set high in the roof,
+which sloped steeply from its sill to the eaves. He passed to the
+other window, in which a little wicket in the lattice stood open. He
+looked through it. In the giddy void white pigeons were wheeling in
+the dazzling sunshine, and gazing down he saw far below him, in the
+hot square, a row of booths, and troops of people moving to and fro
+like pigmies; and--and a strange thing, in the middle of all!
+Involuntarily, as if the persons below could have seen his face at the
+tiny dormer, he drew back.
+
+He beckoned to M. Tignonville to come to him; and when the young man
+complied, he bade him in a whisper look down. "See!" he muttered.
+"There!"
+
+The younger man saw and drew in his breath. Even under the coating of
+dust his face turned a shade greyer.
+
+"You had no need to fear that he would let us go!" the minister
+muttered, with half-conscious irony.
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor I! There are two ropes." And La Tribe breathed a few words of
+prayer. The object which had fixed his gaze was a gibbet: the only one
+of the three which could be seen from their eyrie.
+
+Tignonville, on the other hand, turned sharply away, and with haggard
+eyes stared about the room. "We might defend the staircase," he
+muttered. "Two men might hold it for a time."
+
+"We have no food."
+
+"No." And then he gripped La Tribe's arm. "I have it!" he cried. "And
+it may do! It must do!" he continued, his face working. "See!" And
+lifting from the floor one of the ragged pallets, from which the straw
+protruded in a dozen places, he set it flat on his head. It drooped at
+each corner--it had seen much wear--and while it almost hid his face,
+it revealed his grimy chin and mortar-stained shoulders. He turned to
+his companion.
+
+La Tribe's face glowed as he looked. "It may do!" he cried. "It's a
+chance! But you are right! It may do!"
+
+Tignonville dropped the ragged mattress, and tore off his coat; then
+he rent his breeches at the knee, so that they hung loose about his
+calves. "Do you the same!" he cried. "And quick, man, quick! Leave
+your boots! Once outside we must pass through the streets under
+these"--he took up his burden again and set it on his head--"until we
+reach a quiet part, and there we----"
+
+"Can hide! Or swim the river!" the minister said. He had followed his
+companion's example, and now stood under a similar burden. With
+breeches rent and whitened, and his upper garments in no better case,
+he looked a sorry figure.
+
+Tignonville eyed him with satisfaction, and turned to the staircase.
+"Come," he cried, "there is not a moment to be lost. At any minute
+they may enter our room and find it empty! You are ready? Then, not
+too softly, or it may rouse suspicion! And mumble something at the
+door."
+
+He began himself to scold, and, muttering incoherently, stumbled down
+the staircase, the pallet on his head rustling against the wall on
+each side. Arrived at the door he fumbled clumsily with the latch,
+and, when the door gave way, plumped out with an oath--as if the
+awkward burden he bore were the only thing on his mind. Badelon--he
+was on duty--stared at the apparition; but the next moment he sniffed
+the pallet, which was none of the freshest, and, turning up his nose,
+he retreated a pace. He had no suspicion; the men did not come from
+the part of the house where the prisoners lay, and he stood aside to
+let them pass. In a moment, staggering, and going a little unsteadily,
+as if they scarcely saw their way, they had passed by him, and were
+descending the staircase.
+
+So far well! Unfortunately, when they reached the foot of that flight
+they came on the main passage of the first-floor. It ran right and
+left, and Tignonville did not know which way he must turn to reach the
+lower staircase. Yet he dared not hesitate; in the passage, waiting
+about the doors, were four or five servants, and in the distance he
+caught sight of three men belonging to Tavannes' company. At any
+moment, too, an upper servant might meet them, ask what they were
+doing, and detect the fraud. He turned at random, therefore--to the
+left as it chanced--and marched along bravely, until the very thing
+happened which he had feared. A man came from a room plump upon them,
+saw them, and held up his hands in horror.
+
+"What are you doing!" he cried in a rage and with an oath. "Who set
+you on this?"
+
+Tignonville's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. La Tribe from
+behind muttered something about the stable.
+
+"And time too!" the man said. "Faugh! But how come you this way! Are
+you drunk? Here!" He opened the door of a musty closet beside him,
+"Pitch them in here, do you hear! And take them down when it is dark!
+Faugh! I wonder you did not carry the things through her ladyship's
+room at once! If my lord had been in and met you! Now then, do as I
+tell you! Are you drunk!"
+
+With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress. La Tribe did the
+same. Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many
+helpers and strange servants in the inn. The butler only thought them
+ill-looking fellows who knew no better. "Now be off!" he continued
+irascibly, "This is no place for your sort. Be off!" And, as they
+moved, "Coming! Coming!" he cried in answer to a distant summons; and
+he hurried away on the errand which their appearance had interrupted.
+
+Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the
+man had left the key in the door. But as he went to do so the butler
+looked back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following
+him. A moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew
+to regain them. A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a
+pace of him opened, a woman came out. She recoiled from the strange
+figure; her eyes met his. Unluckily the light from the room behind her
+fell on his face, and with a shrill cry she named him.
+
+One second and all had been lost, for the crowd of idlers at the other
+end of the passage had caught her cry, and were looking that way. With
+presence of mind Tignonville clapped his hand on her mouth, and,
+huddling her by force into the room, followed her, with La Tribe at
+his heels.
+
+It was a large room, in which seven or eight people, who had been at
+prayers when the cry startled them, were rising from their knees. The
+first thing they saw was Javette on the threshold, struggling in the
+grasp of a wild man, ragged and begrimed; they deemed the city risen
+and the massacre upon them. Carlat threw himself before his mistress,
+the Countess in her turn sheltered a young girl, who stood beside her
+and from whose face the last trace of colour had fled. Madame Carlat
+and a waiting-woman ran shrieking to the window; another instant and
+the alarm would have gone abroad.
+
+Tignonville's voice stopped it. "Don't you know me?" he cried.
+"Madame! you at least! Carlat! Are you all mad?"
+
+The words stayed them where they stood in an astonishment scarce less
+than their alarm. The Countess tried twice to speak; the third time,
+"Have you escaped?" she muttered.
+
+Tignonville nodded, his eyes bright with triumph. "So far," he said.
+"But they may be on our heels at any moment! Where can we hide?"
+
+The Countess, her hand pressed to her side, looked at Javette. "The
+door, girl!" she whispered. "Lock it!"
+
+"Ay, lock it! And they can go by the backstairs," Madame Carlat
+answered, awaking suddenly to the situation. "Through my closet! Once
+in the yard they may pass out through the stables."
+
+"Which way?" Tignonville asked impatiently. "Don't stand looking at
+me, but----"
+
+"Through this door!" Madame Carlat answered, hurrying to it.
+
+He was following when the Countess stepped forward and interposed
+between him and the door. "Stay!" she cried; and there was not one who
+did not notice a new decision in her voice, a new dignity in her
+bearing. "Stay, monsieur, we may be going too fast. To go out now and
+in that guise--may it not be to incur greater peril than you incur
+here? I feel sure that you are in no danger of your life at present.
+Therefore, why run the risk----"
+
+"In no danger, madame!" he cried, interrupting her in astonishment.
+"Have you seen the gibbet in the Square? Do you call that no danger?"
+
+"It is not erected for you."
+
+"No?"
+
+"No, monsieur," she answered firmly, "I swear it is not. And I know of
+reasons, urgent reasons, why you should not go. M. de Tavannes"--she
+named her husband nervously, as conscious of the weak spot--"before he
+rode abroad laid strict orders on all to keep within, since the
+smallest matter might kindle the city. Therefore, M. de Tignonville, I
+request, nay I entreat," she continued with greater urgency, as she
+saw his gesture of denial, "you to stay here until he returns."
+
+"And you, madame, will answer for my life!"
+
+She faltered. For a moment, a moment only, her colour ebbed. What if
+she deceived herself! What if she surrendered her old lover to death?
+What if--but the doubt was of a moment only. Her duty was plain. "I
+will answer for it," she said, with pale lips, "if you remain here.
+And I beg, I implore you--by the love you once had for me, M.
+Tignonville," she added desperately, seeing that he was about to
+refuse, "to remain here."
+
+"Once!" he retorted, lashing himself into ignoble rage. "By the
+love I once had! Say, rather, the love I have, madame--for I am no
+woman-weathercock to wed the winner, and hold or not hold, stay or go,
+as he commands! You, it seems," he continued with a sneer, "have
+learned the wife's lesson well! You would practise on me now, as you
+practised on me the other night when you stood between him and me! I
+yielded then, I spared him. And what did I get by it? Bonds and a
+prison! And what shall I get now! The same! No, madame," he continued
+bitterly, addressing himself as much to the Carlats and the others as
+to his old mistress. "I do not change! I loved! I love! I was going
+and I go! If death lay beyond that door"--and he pointed to it--"and
+life at his will were certain here, I would pass the threshold rather
+than take my life of him!" And, dragging La Tribe with him, with a
+passionate gesture he rushed by her, opened the door, and disappeared
+in the next room.
+
+The Countess took one pace forward, as if she would have followed him,
+as if she would have tried farther persuasion. But as she moved a cry
+rooted her to the spot. A rush of feet and the babel of many voices
+filled the passage with a tide of sound, which drew rapidly nearer.
+The escape was known! Would the fugitives have time to slip out
+below?
+
+Someone knocked at the door, tried it, pushed and beat on it. But the
+Countess and all in the room had run to the windows and were looking
+out.
+
+If the two had not yet made their escape they must be taken. Yet no;
+as the Countess leaned from the window, first one dusty figure and
+then a second darted from a door below, and made for the nearest
+turning out of the Place Ste.-Croix. Before they gained it, four men,
+of whom Badelon, his grey locks flying, was first, dashed out in
+pursuit, and the street rang with cries of "Stop him! Seize him! Seize
+him!" Someone--one of the pursuers or another--to add to the alarm let
+off a musket, and in a moment, as if the report had been a signal, the
+Place was in a hubbub, people flocked into it with mysterious
+quickness, and from a neighbouring roof--whence, precisely, it was
+impossible to say--the crackling fire of a dozen arquebuses alarmed
+the city far and wide.
+
+Unfortunately, the fugitives had been baulked at the first turning.
+Making for a second, they found it choked, and, swerving, darted
+across the Place towards St.-Maurice, seeking to lose themselves in
+the gathering crowd. But the pursuers clung desperately to their
+skirts, overturning here a man and there a child; and then in a
+twinkling, Tignonville, as he ran round a booth, tripped over a peg
+and fell, and La Tribe stumbled over him and fell also. The four
+riders flung themselves fiercely on their prey, secured them, and
+began to drag them with oaths and curses towards the door of the inn.
+
+The Countess had seen all from her window; had held her breath while
+they ran, had drawn it sharply when they fell. Now "They have them!"
+she muttered, a sob choking her, "They have them!" And she clasped her
+hands. If he had followed her advice! If he had only followed her
+advice!
+
+But the issue proved less certain than she deemed it. The crowd, which
+grew each moment, knew nothing of pursuers or pursued. On the
+contrary, a cry went up that the riders were Huguenots, and that the
+Huguenots were rising and slaying the Catholics; and as no story was
+too improbable for those days, and this was one constantly set about,
+first one stone flew, and then another, and another. A man with a
+staff darted forward and struck Badelon on the shoulder, two or three
+others pressed in and jostled the riders; and if three of Tavannes'
+following had not run out on the instant and faced the mob with their
+pikes, and for a moment forced them to give back, the prisoners would
+have been rescued at the very door of the inn. As it was they were
+dragged in, and the gates were flung to and barred in the nick of
+time. Another moment, almost another second, and the mob had seized
+them. As it was, a hail of stones poured on the front of the inn, and
+amid the rising yells of the rabble there presently floated heavy and
+slow over the city the tolling of the great bell of St. Maurice.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                              SACRILEGE!
+
+
+M. de Montsoreau, Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur, almost rose from his
+seat in his astonishment. "What! No letters?" he cried, a hand on
+either arm of his chair.
+
+The Magistrates stared, one and all. "No letters?" they muttered.
+
+And "No letters?" the Provost chimed in more faintly.
+
+Count Hannibal looked smiling round the Council table. He alone was
+unmoved. "No," he said. "I bear none."
+
+M. de Montsoreau, who, travel-stained and in his corselet, had the
+second place of honour at the foot of the table, frowned. "But--but,
+M. le Comte," he said, "my instructions from Monsieur were to proceed
+to carry out his Majesty's will in co-operation with you, who, I
+understood, would bring letters _de par le Roi_."
+
+"I had letters," Count Hannibal answered, negligently. "But on the way
+I mislaid them."
+
+"Mislaid them?" Montsoreau cried, unable to believe his ears; while
+the smaller dignitaries of the city, the magistrates and churchmen,
+who sat on either side of the table, gaped open-mouthed. It was
+incredible! It was unbelievable! Mislay the King's letters! Who had
+ever heard of such a thing?
+
+"Yes, I mislaid them. Lost them, if you like it better."
+
+"But you jest!" the Lieutenant-Governor retorted, moving uneasily in
+his chair. He was a man more highly named for address than courage;
+and, like most men skilled in finesse, he was prone to suspect a trap.
+"You jest, surely, monsieur! Men do not lose his Majesty's letters, by
+the way."
+
+"When they contain his Majesty's will, no," Tavannes answered, with a
+peculiar smile.
+
+"You imply, then?"
+
+Count Hannibal shrugged his shoulders but had not answered when Bigot
+entered and handed him his sweetmeat box; he paused to open it and
+select a prune. He was long in selecting; but no change of countenance
+led any of those at the table to suspect that inside the lid of the
+box was a message--a scrap of paper informing him that Montsoreau had
+left fifty spears in the suburb without the Saumur gate, besides those
+whom he had brought openly into the town. Tavannes read the note
+slowly while he seemed to be choosing his fruit. And then, "Imply?" he
+answered. "I imply nothing, M. de Montsoreau."
+
+"But----"
+
+"But that sometimes his Majesty finds it prudent to give orders which
+he does not mean to be carried out. There are things which start up
+before the eye," Tavannes continued, negligently tapping the box on
+the table, "and there are things which do not; sometimes the latter
+are the more important. You, better than I, M. de Montsoreau, know
+that the King in the Gallery at the Louvre is one, and in his closet
+is another."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that being so----"
+
+"You do not mean to carry the letters into effect?"
+
+"Had I the letters, certainly, my friend. I should be bound by them.
+But I took good care to lose them," Tavannes added naïvely. "I am no
+fool."
+
+"Umph!"
+
+"However," Count Hannibal continued, with an airy gesture, "that is my
+affair. If you, M. de Montsoreau, feel inclined, in spite of the
+absence of my letters, to carry yours into effect, by all means do
+so--after midnight of to-day."
+
+M. de Montsoreau breathed hard. "And why," he asked, half sulkily and
+half ponderously, "after midnight only, M. le Comte?"
+
+"Merely that I may be clear of all suspicion of having lot or part in
+the matter," Count Hannibal answered pleasantly. "After midnight of
+to-night by all means, do as you please. Until midnight, by your
+leave, we will be quiet."
+
+The Lieutenant-Governor moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear--which
+Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind--that he might be
+disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his
+avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and
+such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat
+gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding
+the body of the Huguenots to ransom--a notion which, in spite of
+everything, was to bear good fruit for Angers--began to form in his
+mind. The plan suited him: it left him free to face either way, and it
+would fill his pockets more genteelly than would open robbery. On the
+other hand, he would offend his brother and the fanatical party, with
+whom he commonly acted. They were looking to see him assert himself.
+They were looking to hear him declare himself. And----
+
+Harshly Count Hannibal's voice broke in on his thoughts; harshly, a
+something sinister in its tone. "Where is your brother?" he said. And
+it was evident that he had not noted his absence until then. "My
+lord's Vicar of all people should be here!" he continued, leaning
+forward and looking round the table. His brow was stormy.
+
+Lescot squirmed under his eye, Thuriot turned pale and trembled. It
+was one of the canons of St.-Maurice who at length took on himself to
+answer. "His Lordship requested, M. le Comte," he ventured, "that you
+would excuse him. His duties----"
+
+"Is he ill?"
+
+"He----"
+
+"Is he ill, sirrah?" Tavannes roared. And while all bowed before the
+lightning of his eye, no man at the table knew what had roused the
+sudden tempest. But Bigot knew, who stood by the door, and whose ear,
+keen as his master's, had caught the distant report of a musket shot.
+"If he be not ill," Tavannes continued, rising and looking round the
+table in search of signs of guilt, "and there be foul play here, and
+he the player, the Bishop's own hand shall not save him! By heaven it
+shall not! Nor yours!" he continued, looking fiercely at Montsoreau.
+"Nor your master's!"
+
+The Lieutenant-Governor sprang to his feet. "M. le Comte," he
+stammered, "I do not understand this language! Nor this heat, which
+may be real or not! All I say is, if there be foul play here----"
+
+"If!" Tavannes retorted. "At least, if there be, there be gibbets too!
+And I see necks!" he added, leaning forward. "Necks!" And then, with a
+look of flame, "Let no man leave this table until I return," he cried,
+"or he will have to deal with me. Nay," he continued, changing his
+tone abruptly, as the prudence which never entirely left him--and
+perhaps the remembrance of the other's fifty spearmen--sobered him in
+the midst of his rage, "I am hasty. I mean not you, M. de Montsoreau!
+Ride where you will, ride with me if you will--and I will thank you.
+Only remember, until midnight Angers is mine!"
+
+He was still speaking when he moved from the table, and, leaving all
+staring after him, strode down the room. An instant he paused on the
+threshold and looked back; then he passed out, and clattered down the
+stone stairs. His horse and riders were waiting, but, his foot in the
+stirrup, he stayed for a word with Bigot. "Is it so?" he growled.
+
+The Norman did not speak, but pointed towards the Place Ste.-Croix,
+whence an occasional shot made answer for him.
+
+In those days the streets of the Black City were narrow and crooked,
+overhung by timber houses and hampered by booths; nor could Tavannes
+from the old Town Hall--now abandoned--see the Place Ste.-Croix. But
+that he could cure. He struck spurs to his horse, and, followed by his
+ten horsemen, he clattered noisily down the paved street. A dozen
+groups hurrying the same way sprang panic-stricken to the walls, or
+saved themselves in doorways. He was up with them, he was beyond them!
+Another hundred yards, and he would see the Place.
+
+And then, with a cry of rage, he drew rein a little, discovering what
+was before him. In the narrow gut of the way a great black banner,
+borne on two poles, was lurching towards him. It was moving in the van
+of a dark procession of priests, who, with their attendants and a
+crowd of devout, filled the street from wall to wall. They were
+chanting one of the penitential psalms, but not so loudly as to drown
+the uproar in the Place beyond them.
+
+They made no way, and Count Hannibal swore furiously, suspecting
+treachery. But he was no madman, and at the moment the least
+reflection would have sent him about to seek another road.
+Unfortunately, as he hesitated a man sprang with a gesture of warning
+to his horse's head and seized it; and Tavannes, mistaking the motive
+of the act, lost his self-control. He struck the fellow down, and with
+a reckless word rode headlong into the procession, shouting to the
+black robes to make way, make way! A cry, nay, a very shriek of
+horror, answered him and rent the air. And in a minute the thing was
+done. Too late, as the Bishop's Vicar, struck by his horse, fell
+screaming under its hoofs--too late, as the consecrated vessels which
+he had been bearing rolled in the mud, Tavannes saw that they bore the
+canopy and the Host!
+
+He knew what he had done, then. Before his horse's iron shoes struck
+the ground again, his face--even his face--had lost its colour. But he
+knew also that to hesitate now, to pause now, was to be torn in
+pieces; for his riders, seeing that which the banner had veiled from
+him, had not followed him, and he was alone, in the middle of
+brandished fists and weapons. He hesitated not a moment. Drawing a
+pistol he spurred onwards, his horse plunging wildly among the
+shrieking priests; and though a hundred hands, hands of acolytes,
+hands of shaven monks, clutched at his bridle or gripped his boot,
+he got clear of them. Clear, carrying with him the memory of one
+face seen an instant amid the crowd, one face seen, to be ever
+remembered--the face of Father Pezelay, white, evil, scarred,
+distorted by wicked triumph.
+
+Behind him, the thunder of "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" rose to heaven, and
+men were gathering. In front the crowd which skirmished about the inn
+was less dense, and, ignorant of the thing that had happened in the
+narrow street, made ready way for him, the boldest recoiling before
+the look on his face. Some who stood nearest to the inn, and had begun
+to hurl stones at the window and to beat on the doors--which had only
+the minute before closed on Badelon and his prisoners--supposed that
+he had his riders behind him; and these fled apace. But he knew better
+even than they the value of time; he pushed his horse up to the gates,
+and hammered them with his boot while he kept his pistol-hand towards
+the Place and the cathedral, watching for the transformation which he
+knew would come!
+
+And come it did; on a sudden, in a twinkling! A white-faced monk,
+frenzy in his eyes, appeared in the midst of the crowd. He stood and
+tore his garments before the people, and, stooping, threw dust on his
+head. A second and a third followed his example; then from a thousand
+throats the cry of "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" rolled up, while clerks
+flew wildly hither and thither shrieking the tale, and priests denied
+the Sacraments to Angers until it should purge itself of the evil
+thing.
+
+By that time Count Hannibal had saved himself behind the great gates,
+by the skin of his teeth. The gates had opened to him in time. But
+none knew better than he that Angers had no gates thick enough, nor
+walls of a height, to save him for many hours from the storm he had
+let loose!
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                       THE FLIGHT FROM ANGERS.
+
+
+But that only the more roused the devil in the man; that, and the
+knowledge that he had his own headstrong act to thank for the
+position. He looked on the panic-stricken people who, scared by the
+turmoil without, had come together in the courtyard, wringing their
+hands and chattering; and his face was so dark and forbidding that
+fear of him took the place of all other fear, and the nearest shrank
+from contact with him. On any other entering as he had entered, they
+would have hailed questions; they would have asked what was amiss and
+if the city were rising, and where were Bigot and his men. But Count
+Hannibal's eye struck curiosity dumb. When he cried from his saddle,
+"Bring me the landlord!" the trembling man was found, and brought, and
+thrust forward almost without a word.
+
+"You have a back gate?" Tavannes said, while the crowd leaned forward
+to catch his words.
+
+"Yes, my lord," the man faltered.
+
+"Into the street which leads to the ramparts?"
+
+"Ye--yes, my lord."
+
+"Then"--to Badelon--"saddle! You have five minutes. Saddle as you
+never saddled before," he continued in a low tone, "or----" His tongue
+did not finish the threat, but his hand waved the man away. "For you,"
+he held Tignonville an instant with his lowering eye, "and the
+preaching fool with you, get arms and mount! You have never played
+aught but the woman yet; but play me false now, or look aside but a
+foot from the path I bid you take, and you thwart me no more,
+monsieur! And you, madame," he continued, turning to the Countess, who
+stood bewildered at one of the doors, the Provost's daughter clinging
+and weeping about her, "you have three minutes to get your women to
+horse! See you, if you please, that they take no longer!"
+
+She found her voice with difficulty. "And this child?" she said. "She
+is in my care."
+
+"Bring her," he muttered with a scowl of impatience. And then, raising
+his voice as he turned on the terrified gang of hostlers and inn
+servants who stood gaping round him, "Go help!" he thundered. "Go
+help! And quickly!" he added, his face growing a shade darker as a
+second bell began to toll from a neighbouring tower, and the confused
+babel in the Place Ste.-Croix settled into a dull roar of
+"_Sacrilege_! _sacrilege!_"--"Hasten!"
+
+Fortunately it had been his first intention to go to the Council
+attended by the whole of his troop; and eight horses stood saddled in
+the stalls. Others were hastily pulled out and bridled, and the women
+were mounted. La Tribe, at a look from Tavannes, took behind him the
+Provost's daughter, who was helpless with terror. Between the
+suddenness of the alarm, the uproar without, and the panic within,
+none but a man whose people served him at a nod and dreaded his very
+gesture could have got his party mounted in time. Javette would fain
+have swooned, but she dared not. Tignonville would fain have
+questioned, but he shrank from the venture. The Countess would fain
+have said something, but she forced herself to obey and no more. Even
+so the confusion in the courtyard, the mingling of horses and men and
+trappings and saddle-bags, would have made another despair; but
+wherever Count Hannibal, seated in his saddle in the middle, turned
+his face, chaos settled into a kind of order, servants, ceasing to
+listen to the yells and cries outside, ran to fetch, women dropped
+cloaks from the gallery, and men loaded muskets and strapped on
+bandoliers.
+
+Until at last--but none knew what those minutes of suspense cost
+him--he saw all mounted, and, pistol in hand, shepherded them to the
+back gates. As he did so he stooped for a few scowling words with
+Badelon, whom he sent to the van of the party: then he gave the word
+to open. It was done; and even as Montsoreau's horsemen, borne on the
+bosom of a second and more formidable throng, swept raging into the
+already crowded square, and the cry went up for "a ram! a ram!" to
+batter in the gates, Tavannes, hurling his little party before him,
+dashed out at the back, and putting to flight a handful of rascals who
+had wandered to that side, cantered unmolested down the lane to the
+ramparts. Turning eastward at the foot of the frowning Castle, he
+followed the inner side of the wall in the direction of the gate by
+which he had entered the preceding evening.
+
+To gain this his party had to pass the end of the Rue Toussaint, which
+issues from the Place Ste.-Croix and runs so straight that the mob
+seething in front of the inn had only to turn their heads to see them.
+The danger incurred at this point was great; for a party as small as
+Tavannes' and encumbered with women would have had no chance if
+attacked within the walls.
+
+Count Hannibal knew it. But he knew also that the act which he had
+committed rendered the north bank of the Loire impossible for him.
+Neither King nor Marshal, neither Charles of Valois nor Gaspard of
+Tavannes, would dare to shield him from an infuriated Church, a Church
+too wise to forgive certain offences. His one chance lay in reaching
+the southern bank of the Loire--roughly speaking, the Huguenot
+bank--and taking refuge in some town, Rochelle or St. Jean d'Angely,
+where the Huguenots were strong, and whence he might take steps to set
+himself right with his own side.
+
+But to cross the great river which divides France into two lands
+widely differing he must leave the city by the east gate; for the only
+bridge over the Loire within forty miles of Angers lay eastward from
+the town, at Ponts de Cé, four miles away. To this gate, therefore,
+past the Rue Toussaint, he whirled his party daringly; and though the
+women grew pale as the sounds of riot broke louder on the ear, and
+they discovered that they were approaching instead of leaving the
+danger--and though Tignonville for an instant thought him mad, and
+snatched at the Countess's rein--his men-at-arms, who knew him,
+galloped stolidly on, passed like clockwork the end of the street,
+and, reckless of the stream of persons hurrying in the direction of
+the alarm, heedless of the fright and anger their passage excited,
+pressed steadily on. A moment and the gate through which they had
+entered the previous evening appeared before them. And--a sight
+welcome to one of them--it was open.
+
+They were fortunate indeed, for a few seconds later they had been too
+late. The alarm had preceded them; as they dashed up, a man ran to the
+chains of the portcullis and tried to lower it. He failed to do so at
+the first touch, and quailing, fled from Badelon's levelled pistol. A
+watchman on one of the bastions of the wall shouted to them to halt or
+he would fire: but the riders yelled in derision, and thundering
+through the echoing archway, emerged into the open, and saw, extended
+before them, in place of the gloomy vistas of the Black Town, the
+glory of the open country and the vine-clad hills, and the fields
+about the Loire yellow with late harvest.
+
+The women gasped their relief, and one or two who were most out of
+breath would have pulled up their horses and let them trot, thinking
+the danger at an end. But a curt savage word from the rear set them
+flying again, and down and up and on again they galloped, driven
+forward by the iron hand which never relaxed its grip of them. Silent
+and pitiless he whirled them before him until they were within a mile
+of the long Ponts de Cé--a series of bridges rather than one
+bridge--and the broad shallow Loire lay plain before them, its
+sandbanks grilling in the sun, and grey lines of willows marking its
+eyots. By this time some of the women, white with fatigue, could only
+cling to their saddles with their hands; while others were red-hot,
+their hair unrolled, and the perspiration mingled with the dust on
+their faces. But he who drove them had no pity for weakness in an
+emergency. He looked back and saw, a half-mile behind them, the
+glitter of steel following hard on their heels: and "Faster! faster!"
+he cried, regardless of their prayers: and he beat the rearmost of the
+horses with his scabbard. A waiting-woman shrieked that she should
+fall, but he answered ruthlessly, "Fall then, fool!" and the instinct
+of self-preservation coming to her aid, she clung and bumped and
+toiled on with the rest until they reached the first houses of the
+town about the bridges, and Badelon raised his hand as a signal that
+they might slacken speed.
+
+The bewilderment of the start had been so great that it was then only,
+when they found their feet on the first link of the bridge, that two
+of the party, the Countess and Tignonville, awoke to the fact that
+their faces were set southwards. To cross the Loire in those days
+meant much to all: to a Huguenot very much. It chanced that these two
+rode on to the bridge side by side, and the memory of their last
+crossing--the remembrance that, on their journey north a month before,
+they had crossed it hand-in-hand with the prospect of passing their
+lives together, and with no faintest thought of the events which were
+to ensue, flashed into the mind of each of them. It deepened the flush
+which exertion had brought to the woman's cheek, then left it paler
+than before. A minute earlier she had been wroth with her old lover;
+she had held him accountable for the outbreak in the town and this
+hasty retreat; now her anger died as she looked and she remembered. In
+the man, shallower of feeling and more alive to present contingencies,
+the uppermost emotion as he trod the bridge was one of surprise and
+congratulation.
+
+He could not at first believe in their good fortune. "_Mon Dieu!_" he
+cried, "we are crossing!" And then again in a lower tone, "We are
+crossing! We are crossing!" And he looked at her.
+
+It was impossible that she should not look back; that she who had
+ceased to be angry should not feel and remember; impossible that her
+answering glance should not speak to his heart. Below them, as on that
+day a month earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going
+northward, the broad shallow river ran its course in the sunshine,
+its turbid currents gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and
+osier-beds. To the eye, the landscape, save that the vintage was
+farther advanced and the harvest in part gathered in, was the same.
+But how changed were their relations, their prospects, their hopes,
+who had then crossed the river hand-in-hand, planning a life to be
+passed together.
+
+The young man's rage boiled up at the thought. Too vividly, too
+sharply it showed him the wrongs which he had suffered at the hands of
+the man who rode behind him, the man who even now drove him on and
+ordered him and insulted him. He forgot that he might have perished in
+the general massacre if Count Hannibal had not intervened. He forgot
+that Count Hannibal had spared him once and twice. He laid on his
+enemy's shoulders the guilt of all, the blood of all: and as, quick on
+the thought of his wrongs and his fellows' wrongs followed the
+reflection that with every league they rode southwards the chance of
+requital grew, he cried again, and this time joyously, "We are
+crossing! A little, and we shall be in our own land!"
+
+The tears filled the Countess's eyes as she looked westwards and
+southwards. "Vrillac is there!" she cried; and she pointed. "I smell
+the sea!"
+
+"Ay!" he answered, almost under his breath. "It lies there! And no
+more than thirty leagues from us! With fresh horses we might see it in
+two days!"
+
+Badelon's voice broke in on them. "Forward!" he cried as they reached
+the southern bank. "_En avant!_" And, obedient to the word, the little
+party, refreshed by the short respite, took the road out of Ponts de
+Cé at a steady trot. Nor was the Countess the only one whose face
+glowed, being set southwards, or whose heart pulsed to the rhythm of
+the horses' hoofs that beat out "Home!" Carlat's and Madame Carlat's
+also. Javette even, hearing from her neighbour that they were over the
+Loire, plucked up courage; while La Tribe, gazing before him with
+moistened eyes, cried "Comfort" to the scared and weeping girl who
+clung to his belt. It was singular to see how all sniffed the air as
+if already it smacked of the sea and of the south; and how they of
+Poitou sat their horses as if they asked nothing better than to ride
+on and on and on until the scenes of home arose about them. For them
+the sky had already a deeper blue, the air a softer fragrance, the
+sunshine a purity long unknown!
+
+Was it wonderful, when they had suffered so much on that northern
+bank? When their experience during the month had been comparable only
+with the direst nightmare? Yet one among them, after the first impulse
+of relief and satisfaction, felt differently. Tignonville's gorge rose
+against the sense of compulsion, of inferiority. To be driven forward
+after this fashion, whether he would or no, to be placed at the beck
+of every base-born man-at-arms, to have no clearer knowledge of what
+had happened or of what was passing, or of the peril from which they
+fled, than the women among whom he rode--these things kindled anew the
+sullen fire of hate. North of the Loire there had been some excuse for
+his inaction under insult; he had been in the man's country and power.
+But south of the Loire, within forty leagues of Huguenot Niort, must
+he still suffer, still be supine?
+
+His rage was inflamed by a disappointment he presently underwent.
+Looking back as they rode clear of the wooden houses of Ponts de Cé,
+he missed Tavannes and several of his men; and he wondered if Count
+Hannibal had remained on his own side of the river. It seemed
+possible; and in that event La Tribe and he and Carlat might deal with
+Badelon and the four who still escorted them. But when he looked back
+a minute later, Tavannes was within sight, following the party with a
+stern face; and not Tavannes only. Bigot, with two of the ten men who
+hitherto had been missing, was with him.
+
+It was clear, however, that they brought no good news, for they had
+scarcely ridden up before Count Hannibal cried "Faster! faster!" in
+his harshest voice, and Bigot urged the horses to a quicker trot.
+Their course lay almost parallel with the Loire in the direction of
+Beaupréau; and Tignonville began to fear that Count Hannibal intended
+to recross the river at Nantes, where the only bridge below Angers
+spanned the stream. With this in view it was easy to comprehend his
+wish to distance his pursuers before he recrossed.
+
+The Countess had no such thought. "They must be close upon us!" she
+murmured, as she urged her horse in obedience to the order.
+
+"Whoever they are!" Tignonville muttered bitterly. "If we knew what
+had happened, or who followed, we should know more about it, madame.
+For that matter, I know what I wish he would do. And our heads are set
+for it."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Make for Vrillac!" he answered, a savage gleam in his eyes.
+
+"For Vrillac?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah, if he would!" she cried, her face turning pale. "If he would. He
+would be safe there!"
+
+"Ay, quite safe!" he answered with a peculiar intonation. And he
+looked at her askance.
+
+He fancied that his thought, the thought which had just flashed into
+his brain, was her thought; that she had the same notion in reserve,
+and that they were in sympathy. And Tavannes, seeing them talking
+together, and noting her look and the fervour of her gesture, formed
+the same opinion, and retired more darkly into himself. The downfall
+of his plan for dazzling her by a magnanimity unparalleled and beyond
+compare, a plan dependent on the submission of Angers--his
+disappointment in this might have roused the worst passions of a
+better man. But there was in this man a pride on a level at least with
+his other passions: and to bear himself in this hour of defeat and
+flight so that if she could not love him she must admire him, checked
+in a strange degree the current of his rage. When Tignonville
+presently looked back he found that Count Hannibal and six of his
+riders had pulled up and were walking their horses far in the rear. On
+which he would have done the same himself; but Badelon called over his
+shoulder the eternal "Forward, monsieur, _en avant!_" and sullenly,
+hating the man and his master more deeply every hour, Tignonville was
+forced to push on, with thoughts of vengeance in his heart.
+
+Trot, trot! Trot, trot! Through a country which had lost its smiling
+wooded character and grew more sombre and less fertile the farther
+they left the Loire behind them. Trot, trot! Trot, trot!--for ever, it
+seemed to some. Javette wept with fatigue, and the other women were
+little better. The Countess herself spoke seldom except to cheer the
+Provost's daughter; who, poor girl, flung suddenly out of the round of
+her life and cast among strangers, showed a better spirit than might
+have been expected. At length, on the slopes of some low hills, which
+they had long seen before them, a cluster of houses and a church
+appeared; and Badelon, drawing rein, cried, "Beaupréau, madame! We
+stay an hour!"
+
+It was six o'clock. They had ridden some hours without a break. With
+sighs and cries of pain the women dropped from their clumsy saddles,
+while the men laid out such food--it was little--as had been brought,
+and hobbled the horses that they might feed. The hour passed rapidly,
+and when it had passed Badelon was inexorable. There was wailing when
+he gave the word to mount again; and Tignonville, fiercely resenting
+this dumb, reasonless flight, was at heart one of the mutineers. But
+Badelon said grimly that they might go on and live, or stay and die,
+as it pleased them; and once more they climbed painfully to their
+saddles, and jogged steadily on through the sunset, through the
+gloaming, through the darkness, across a weird, mysterious country of
+low hills and narrow plains which grew more wild and less cultivated
+as they advanced. Fortunately the horses had been well saved during
+the long leisurely journey to Angers, and now went well and strongly.
+When they at last unsaddled for the night in a little dismal wood
+within a mile of Clisson, they had placed some forty miles between
+themselves and Angers.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                         THE ORDEAL BY STEEL.
+
+
+The women for the most part fell like sacks and slept where they
+alighted, dead weary. The men, when they had cared for the horses,
+followed the example; for Badelon would suffer no fire. In less than
+half an hour, a sentry who stood on guard at the edge of the wood, and
+Tignonville and La Tribe, who talked in low voices with their backs
+against a tree, were the only persons who remained awake, with the
+exception of the Countess. Carlat had made a couch for her, and
+screened it with cloaks from the wind and the eye; for the moon had
+risen, and where the trees stood sparsest its light flooded the soil
+with pools of white. But Madame had not yet retired to her bed. The
+two men, whose voices reached her, saw her from time to time moving
+restlessly to and fro between the road and the little encampment.
+Presently she came and stood over them.
+
+"He led His people out of the wilderness," La Tribe was saying; "out
+of the trouble of Paris, out of the trouble of Angers, and always,
+always southward. If you do not in this, monsieur, see His finger----"
+
+"And Angers?" Tignonville struck in, with a faint sneer. "Has He led
+that out of trouble? A day or two ago you would risk all to save it,
+my friend. Now, with your back safely turned on it, you think all for
+the best."
+
+"We did our best," the minister answered humbly. "From the day we met
+in Paris we have been but instruments."
+
+"To save Angers?"
+
+"To save a remnant."
+
+On a sudden the Countess raised her hand. "Do you not hear horses,
+monsieur?" she cried. She had been listening to the noises of the
+night, and had paid little heed to what the two were saying.
+
+"One of ours moved," Tignonville answered listlessly. "Why do you not
+lie down, madame?"
+
+Instead of answering, "Whither is he going?" she asked. "Do you know?"
+
+"I wish I did know," the young man answered peevishly. "To Niort, it
+may be. Or presently he will double back and recross the Loire."
+
+"He would have gone by Cholet to Niort," La Tribe said. "The direction
+is rather that of Rochelle. God grant we be bound thither!"
+
+"Or to Vrillac," the Countess cried, clasping her hands in the
+darkness. "Can it be to Vrillac he is going?"
+
+The minister shook his head.
+
+"Ah, let it be to Vrillac!" she cried, a thrill in her voice. "We
+should be safe there. And he would be safe."
+
+"Safe?" echoed a fourth and deeper voice. And out of the darkness
+beside them loomed a tall figure.
+
+The minister looked and leapt to his feet. Tignonville rose more
+slowly.
+
+The voice was Tavannes' "And where am I to be safe?" he repeated
+slowly, a faint ring of saturnine amusement in his tone.
+
+"At Vrillac," she cried. "In my house, monsieur."
+
+He was silent a moment. Then, "Your house, madame? In which direction
+is it, from here?"
+
+"Westwards," she answered impulsively, her voice quivering with
+eagerness and emotion and hope. "Westwards, monsieur--on the sea. The
+causeway from the land is long, and ten can hold it against ten
+hundred."
+
+"Westwards? And how far westwards?"
+
+Tignonville answered for her; in his tone throbbed the same eagerness,
+the same anxiety, which spoke in hers. Nor was Count Hannibal's ear
+deaf to it. "Through Challans," he said, "thirteen leagues."
+
+"From Clisson?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Comte."
+
+"And by Commequiers less," the Countess cried.
+
+"No, it is a worse road," Tignonville answered quickly; "and longer in
+time."
+
+"But we came----"
+
+"At our leisure, madame. The road is by Challans, if we wish to be
+there quickly."
+
+"Ah!" Count Hannibal said. In the darkness it was impossible to see
+his face or mark how he took it. "But being there, I have few men."
+
+"I have forty will come at call," she cried with pride. "A word to
+them, and in four hours or a little more----"
+
+"They would outnumber mine by four to one," Count Hannibal answered
+coldly, drily, in a voice like ice-water flung in their faces. "Thank
+you, madame; I understand. To Vrillac is no long ride; but we will not
+ride it at present." And he turned sharply on his heel and strode from
+them.
+
+He had not covered thirty paces before she overtook him in the middle
+of a broad patch of moonlight and touched his arm. He wheeled swiftly,
+his hand half-way to his hilt. Then he saw who it was. "Ah," he said,
+"I had forgotten, madame. You have come----"
+
+"No!" she cried passionately; and standing before him she shook back
+the hood of her cloak that he might look into her eyes. "You owe me no
+blow to-day. You have paid me, monsieur. You have struck me already,
+and foully, like a coward. Do you remember," she continued rapidly,
+"the hour after our marriage, and what you said to me? Do you remember
+what you told me? And whom to trust and whom to suspect, where lay our
+interest and where our foes? You trusted me then! What have I done
+that you now dare--ay, dare, monsieur," she repeated fearlessly, her
+face pale and her eyes glittering with excitement, "to insult me? That
+you treat me as--Javette? That you deem me capable of _that?_ Of
+luring you into a trap, and in my own house, or the house that was
+mine, of----"
+
+"Treating me as I have treated others."
+
+"You have said it!" she cried. She could not herself understand why
+his distrust had wounded her so sharply, so home, that all fear of him
+was gone. "You have said it, and put that between us which will not be
+removed. I could have forgiven blows," she continued, breathless in
+her excitement, "so you had thought me what I am. But now you will do
+well to watch me! You will do well to leave Vrillac on one side. For
+were you there, and raised your hand against me--not that that touches
+me, but it will do--and there are those, I tell you, would fling you
+from the tower at my word."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Ay, indeed! And indeed, monsieur!"
+
+Her face was in moonlight, his was in shadow.
+
+"And this is your new tone, madame, is it?" he said, slowly and after
+a pregnant pause. "The crossing of a river has wrought so great a
+change in you?"
+
+"No!" she cried.
+
+"Yes," he said. And despite herself she flinched before the grimness
+of his tone. "You have yet to learn one thing, however: that I do not
+change. That, north or south, I am the same to those who are the same
+to me. That what I have won on the one bank I will hold on the other,
+in the teeth of all, and though God's Church be thundering on my
+heels! I go to Vrillac----"
+
+"You--go?" she cried. "You go?"
+
+"I go," he repeated, "to-morrow. And among your own people I will see
+what language you will hold. While you were in my power I spared you.
+Now that you are in your own land, now that you lift your hand against
+me, I will show you of what make I am. If blows will not tame you, I
+will try that will suit you less. Ay, you wince, madame! You had done
+well had you thought twice before you threatened, and thrice before
+you took in hand to scare Tavannes with a parcel of clowns and
+fisherfolk. Tomorrow, to Vrillac and your duty! And one word more,
+madame," he continued, turning back to her truculently when he had
+gone some paces from her. "If I find you plotting with your lover by
+the way I will hang not you, but him. I have spared him a score of
+times; but I know him, and I do not trust him."
+
+"Nor me," she said, and with a white, set face she looked at him in
+the moonlight. "Had you not better hang me now?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Lest I do you an injury!" she cried with passion; and she raised her
+hand and pointed northward. "Lest I kill you some night, monsieur! I
+tell you, a thousand men on your heels are less dangerous than the
+woman at your side--if she hate you."
+
+"Is it so?" he cried. His hand flew to his hilt; his dagger flashed
+out. But she did not move, did not flinch, only she set her teeth; and
+her eyes, fascinated by the steel, grew wider.
+
+His hand sank slowly. He held the weapon to her, hilt foremost; she
+took it mechanically. "You think yourself brave enough to kill me, do
+you?" he sneered. "Then take this, and strike, if you dare. Take
+it--strike, madame! It is sharp, and my arms are open." And he
+flung them wide, standing within a pace of her. "Here, above the
+collar-bone, is the surest for a weak hand. What, afraid?" he
+continued, as, stiffly clutching the weapon which he had put into her
+hand, she glared at him, trembling and astonished. "Afraid, and a
+Vrillac! Afraid, and 'tis but one blow! See, my arms are open. One
+blow home, and you will never lie in them. Think of that. One blow
+home, and you may lie in his. Think of that! Strike, then, madame," he
+went on, piling taunt on taunt, "if you dare, and if you hate me.
+What, still afraid! How shall I give you heart? Shall I strike you? It
+will not be the first time by ten. I keep count, you see," he
+continued mockingly. "Or shall I kiss you? Ay, that may do. And it
+will not be against your will, either, for you have that in your hand
+will save you in an instant. Even"--he drew a foot nearer--"now!
+Even----" And he stooped until his lips almost touched hers.
+
+She sprang back. "Oh, do not!" she cried. "Oh, do not!" And, dropping
+the dagger, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into
+weeping.
+
+He stooped coolly, and, after groping some time for the poniard, drew
+it from the leaves among which it had fallen. He put it into the
+sheath, and not until he had done that did he speak. Then it was with
+a sneer. "I have no need to fear overmuch," he said. "You are a poor
+hater, madame. And poor haters make poor lovers. 'Tis his loss! If you
+will not strike a blow for him, there is but one thing left. Go, dream
+of him!"
+
+And shrugging his shoulders contemptuously he turned on his heel.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                             THE AMBUSH.
+
+
+The start they made at daybreak was gloomy and ill-omened, through one
+of those white mists which are blown from the Atlantic over the flat
+lands of Western Poitou. The horses, looming gigantic through the fog,
+winced as the cold harness was girded on them. The men hurried to and
+fro with saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and
+swore savagely. The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or,
+being dragged up by force, shrieked wild unfitting words, as they were
+driven to the horses. The Countess looked on and listened, and
+shuddered, waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse. She had gone
+during the last three weeks through much that was dreary, much that
+was hopeless; but the chill discomfort of this forced start, with
+tired horses and wailing women, would have darkened the prospect of
+home had there been no fear or threat to cloud it.
+
+He whose will compelled all stood a little apart and watched all,
+silent and gloomy. When Badelon, after taking his orders and
+distributing some slices of black bread to be eaten in the saddle,
+moved off at the head of his troop, Count Hannibal remained behind,
+attended by Bigot and the eight riders who had formed the rearguard so
+far. He had not approached the Countess since rising, and she had been
+thankful for it. But now, as she moved away, she looked back and saw
+him still standing; she marked that he wore his corselet, and in one
+of those revulsions of feeling--which outrun man's reason--she who had
+tossed on her couch through half the night, in passionate revolt
+against the fate before her, took fire at his neglect and his silence;
+she resented on a sudden the distance he kept, and his scorn of her.
+Her breast heaved, her colour came, involuntarily she checked her
+horse, as if she would return to him, and speak to him. Then the
+Carlats and the others closed up behind her, Badelon's monotonous
+"Forward, madame, _en avant!_" proclaimed the day's journey begun, and
+she saw him no more.
+
+Nevertheless, the motionless figure, looming Homeric through the fog,
+with gleams of wet light reflected from the steel about it, dwelt long
+in her mind. The road which Badelon followed, slowly at first, and
+with greater speed as the horses warmed to their work, and the women,
+sore and battered, resigned themselves to suffering, wound across a
+flat expanse broken by a few hills. These were little more than
+mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying
+sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to
+fade as strangely. Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those
+of this world's trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit,
+through which our travellers moved, jaded phantoms in a clinging
+nightmare. At a walk, at a trot, more often at a weary jog, they
+pushed on behind Badelon's humped shoulders. Sometimes the fog hung so
+thick about them that they saw only those who rose and fell in the
+saddles immediately before them; sometimes the air cleared a little,
+the curtain rolled up a space, and for a minute or two they discerned
+stretches of unfertile fields, half-tilled and stony, or long tracts
+of gorse and broom, with here and there a thicket of dwarf shrubs or a
+wood of wind-swept pines. Some looked and saw these things; more rode
+on sulky and unseeing, supporting impatiently the toils of a flight
+from they knew not what.
+
+To do Tignonville justice, he was not of these. On the contrary, he
+seemed to be in a better temper on this day; and, where so many took
+things unheroically, he showed to advantage. Avoiding the Countess and
+riding with Carlat, he talked and laughed with marked cheerfulness;
+nor did he ever fail, when the mist rose, to note this or that
+landmark, and confirm Badelon in the way he was going.
+
+"We shall be at Lége by noon!" he cried more than once, "and if M. le
+Comte persists in his plan, may reach Vrillac by late sunset. By way
+of Challans!"
+
+And always Carlat answered, "Ay, by Challans, monsieur, so be it!"
+
+He proved, too, so far right in his prediction that noon saw them
+drag, a weary train, into the hamlet of Lége, where the road from
+Nantes to Olonne runs southward over the level of Poitou. An hour
+later Count Hannibal rode in with six of his eight men, and, after a
+few minutes' parley with Badelon, who was scanning the horses, he
+called Carlat to him. The old man came.
+
+"Can we reach Vrillac to-night?" Count Hannibal asked curtly.
+
+"By Challans, my lord," the steward answered, "I think we can. We call
+it seven hours' riding from here."
+
+"And that route is the shortest?"
+
+"In time, M. le Comte, the road being better."
+
+Count Hannibal bent his brows. "And the other way?" he said.
+
+"Is by Commequiers, my lord. It is shorter in distance."
+
+"By how much!"
+
+"Two leagues. But there are fordings and a salt marsh; and with Madame
+and the women----"
+
+"It would be longer?"
+
+The steward hesitated. "I think so," he said slowly, his eyes
+wandering to the grey misty landscape, against which the poor hovels
+of the village stood out naked and comfortless. A low thicket of oaks
+sheltered the place from southwesterly gales. On the other three sides
+it lay open.
+
+"Very good," Tavannes said curtly. "Be ready to start in ten minutes.
+You will guide us."
+
+But when the ten minutes had elapsed and the party were ready to
+start, to the astonishment of all the steward was not to be found. To
+peremptory calls for him no answer came; and a hurried search through
+the hamlet proved equally fruitless. The only person who had seen him
+since his interview with Tavannes turned out to be M. de Tignonville;
+and he had seen him mount his horse five minutes before, and move
+off--as he believed--by the Challans road.
+
+"Ahead of us!"
+
+"Yes, M. le Comte," Tignonville answered, shading his eyes and gazing
+in the direction of the fringe of trees. "I did not see him take the
+road, but he was beside the north end of the wood when I saw him last.
+Thereabouts!" and he pointed to a place where the Challans road wound
+round the flank of the wood. "When we are beyond that point, I think
+we shall see him."
+
+Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his
+saddle, looked back the way he had come. Half a mile away, two or
+three dots could be seen approaching across the plain. He turned
+again. "You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.
+
+"Perfectly. As well as Carlat."
+
+"Then lead the way, monsieur, with Badelon. And spare neither whip nor
+spur. There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."
+
+Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of
+the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the
+main body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to
+cover the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two,
+was closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the
+wood than the trees faded out of sight behind them. It was not
+wonderful that they could not see Carlat. Objects a hundred paces from
+them were completely hidden.
+
+Trot, trot! Trot, trot! through a. grey world so featureless, so
+unreal that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking,
+seemed to themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare. A trot and
+then a walk, and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated,
+while the women bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses
+stumbled, and the men swore at them.
+
+Ha! La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans. The
+Countess raised her head, and began to look about her. There, should
+be a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by
+wizards, or the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the
+westward, the great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier. The mist hid
+all, but the knowledge that they were there set her heart beating,
+brought tears to her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.
+
+At Challans they halted half-an-hour, and washed out the horses'
+mouths with water and a little _guignolet_--the spirit of the country.
+A dose of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little
+after seven they began the last stage of the journey, through a
+landscape which even the mist could not veil from the eyes of love.
+There rose the windmill of Soullans! There the old dolmen, beneath
+which the grey wolf that ate the two children of Tornic had its lair.
+For a mile back they had been treading my lady's land; they had only
+two more leagues to ride, and one of those was crumbling under each
+dogged footfall. The salt flavour, which is new life to the
+shore-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated by them, now thinner,
+now more opaque; and almost they could hear the dull thunder of the
+Biscay waves falling on the rocks.
+
+Tignonville looked back at her and smiled. She caught the look; she
+fancied that she understood it and his thoughts. But her own eyes were
+moist at the moment with tears, and what his said, and what there was
+of strangeness in his glance, half-warning, half-exultant, escaped
+her. For there, not a mile before them, where the low hills about the
+fishing village began to rise from the dull inland level--hills green
+on the land side, bare and scarped towards the sea and the island--she
+espied the wayside chapel at which the nurse of her early childhood
+had told her beads. Where it stood, the road from Commequiers and the
+road she travelled became one: a short mile thence, after winding
+among the hillocks, it ran down to the beach and the causeway--and to
+her home.
+
+At the sight she bethought herself of Carlat, and calling to M. de
+Tignonville she asked him what he thought of the steward's continued
+absence.
+
+"He must have outpaced us!" he answered with an odd laugh.
+
+"But he must have ridden hard to do that."
+
+He reined back to her. "Say nothing!" he muttered under his breath.
+"But look ahead, madame, and see if we are expected!"
+
+"Expected? How can we be expected?" she cried. The colour rushed into
+her face.
+
+He put his finger to his lip, and looked warningly at Badelon's humped
+shoulders, jogging up and down in front of them. Then, stooping
+towards her, in a lower tone, "If Carlat has arrived before us, he
+will have told them," he said.
+
+"Have told them!" she exclaimed.
+
+"He came by the other road, and it is quicker."
+
+She gazed at him in astonishment, her lips parted; and slowly she
+comprehended, and her eyes grew hard. "Then why," she said, "did you
+say it was longer? Had we been overtaken, monsieur, we had had you to
+thank for it, it seems!"
+
+He bit his lip. "But we have not been overtaken," he rejoined. "On the
+contrary, you have me to thank for something quite different."
+
+"As unwelcome, perhaps!" she retorted. "For what?"
+
+"Softly, madame."
+
+"For what?" she repeated, refusing to lower her voice. "Speak,
+monsieur, if you please." He had never seen her look at him in that
+way.
+
+"For the fact," he answered, stung by her look and tone, "that when
+you arrive you will find yourself mistress in your own house! Is that
+nothing?"
+
+"You have called in my people?"
+
+"Carlat has done so, or should have," he answered. "Henceforth," he
+continued, a ring of exultation in his voice, "it will go hard with M.
+le Comte, if he does not treat you better than he has treated you
+hitherto. That is all!"
+
+"You mean that it will go hard with him in any case?" she cried, her
+bosom rising and falling.
+
+"I mean, madame---- But there they are! Good Carlat! Brave Carlat! He
+has done well."
+
+"Carlat?"
+
+"Ay, there they are! And you are mistress in your own land! At last
+you are mistress, and you have me to thank for it! See!" And heedless
+in his exultation whether Badelon understood or not, he pointed to a
+place before them where the road wound between two low hills. Over the
+green shoulder of one of these, a dozen bright points caught and
+reflected the last evening light; while as he spoke a man rose to his
+feet on the hill-side above, and began to make signs to persons below.
+A pennon, too, showed an instant over the shoulder, fluttered, and was
+gone.
+
+Badelon looked as they looked. The next instant he uttered a low oath,
+and dragged his horse across the front of the party. "Pierre!" he
+cried to the man on his left, "Ride for your life! To my lord, and
+tell him we are ambushed!" And as the trained soldier wheeled about
+and spurred away, the sacker of Rome turned a dark scowling face on
+Tignonville. "If this be your work," he hissed, "we shall thank you
+for it in hell! For it is where most of us will lie to-night! They are
+Montsoreau's spears, and they have those with them are worse to deal
+with than themselves!" Then in a different tone, and throwing off all
+disguise, "Men to the front!" he shouted. "And you, madame, to the
+rear quickly, and the women with you! Now, men, forward, and draw!
+Steady! Steady! They are coming!"
+
+There was an instant of confusion, disorder, panic; horses jostling
+one another, women screaming and clutching at men, men shaking them
+off and forcing their way to the van. Fortunately the enemy did not
+fall on at once, as Badelon expected, but after showing themselves in
+the mouth of the valley, at a distance of three hundred paces, hung
+for some reason irresolute. This gave Badelon time to array his seven
+swords in front; but real resistance was out of the question, as he
+knew. And to none seemed less in question than to Tignonville.
+
+When the truth, and what he had done, broke on the young man, he sat a
+moment motionless with horror. It was only when Badelon had twice
+summoned him with opprobrious words that he awoke to the relief of
+action. Even after that he hung an instant trying to meet the
+Countess's eyes, despair in his own; but it was not to be. She had
+turned her head, and was looking back, as if thence only and not from
+him could help come. It was not to him she turned; and he saw it, and
+the justice of it. And silent, grim, more formidable even than old
+Badelon, the veteran fighter, who knew all the tricks and shifts of
+the _mêlée_, he spurred to the flank of the line.
+
+"Now, steady!" Badelon cried again, seeing that the enemy were
+beginning to move. "Steady! Ha! Thank God, my lord! My lord is coming!
+Stand! Stand!"
+
+The distant sound of galloping hoofs had reached his ear in the nick
+of time. He stood in his stirrups and looked back. Yes, Count Hannibal
+was coming, riding a dozen paces in front of his men. The odds were
+still desperate--for he brought but six--the enemy were still three to
+one. But the thunder of his hoofs as he came up checked for a moment
+the enemy's onset; and before Montsoreau's people got started again
+Count Hannibal had ridden up abreast of the women, and the Countess,
+looking at him, knew that, desperate as was their strait, she had not
+looked behind in vain. The glow of battle, the stress of the moment,
+had displaced the cloud from his face; the joy of the born fighter
+lightened in his eye. His voice rang clear and loud above the press.
+
+"Badelon! wait you and two with madame!" he cried. "Follow at fifty
+paces' distance, and, when we have broken them, ride through! The
+others with me! Now forward, men, and show your teeth! A Tavannes! A
+Tavannes! A Tavannes! We carry it yet!"
+
+And he dashed forward, leading them on, leaving the women behind; and
+down the sward to meet him, thundering in double line, came
+Montsoreau's men-at-arms, and with the men-at-arms, a dozen pale,
+fierce eyed men in the Church's black, yelling the Church's curses.
+Madame's heart grew sick as she heard, as she waited, as she judged
+him by the fast-failing light a horse's length before his men--with
+only Tignonville beside him.
+
+She held her breath--would the shock never come? If Badelon had not
+seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And
+then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a
+mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of
+fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of
+grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to anyone,
+who it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were
+those who still fought single combats, twisting round one another's
+horses, those on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For
+Badelon dragged her on with whip and spur, and two horsemen--who
+obscured her view--galloped in front of her, and rode down bodily the
+only man who undertook to bar her passage. She had a glimpse of that
+man's face, as his horse, struck in the act of turning, fell sideways
+on him; and she knew it, in its agony of terror, though she had seen
+it but once. It was the face of the man whose eyes had sought hers
+from the steps of the church in Angers; the lean man in black, who had
+turned soldier of the Church--to his misfortune.
+
+Through? Yes, through, the way was clear before them! The fight with
+its screams and curses died away behind them. The horses swayed and
+all but sank under them. But Badelon knew it no time for mercy;
+iron-shod hoofs rang on the road behind, and at any moment the
+pursuers might be on their heels. He flogged on until the cots of the
+hamlet appeared on either side of the way; on, until the road forked
+and the Countess with strange readiness cried "The left!" on, until
+the beach appeared below them at the foot of a sharp pitch, and beyond
+the beach the slow heaving grey of the ocean.
+
+The tide was high. The causeway ran through it, a mere thread lipped
+by the darkling waves, and at the sight a grunt of relief broke from
+Badelon. For at the end of the causeway, black against the western
+sky, rose the gateway and towers of Vrillac; and he saw that, as the
+Countess had said, it was a place ten men could hold against ten
+hundred!
+
+They stumbled down the beach, reached the causeway and trotted along
+it; more slowly now, and looking back. The other women had followed by
+hook or by crook, some crying hysterically, yet clinging to their
+horses and even urging them; and in a medley, the causeway clear
+behind them and no one following, they reached the drawbridge, and
+passed under the arch of the gate beyond.
+
+There friendly hands, Carlat's foremost, welcomed them and aided them
+to alight, and the Countess saw, as in a dream, the familiar scene,
+all unfamiliar: the gate, where she had played, a child, aglow with
+lantern-light and arms. Men, whose rugged faces she had known in
+infancy, stood at the drawbridge chains and at the winches. Others
+blew matches and handled primers, while old servants crowded round
+her, and women looked at her, scared and weeping. She saw it all at a
+glance--the lights, the black shadows, the sudden glow of a match on
+the groining of the arch above. She saw it, and turning swiftly,
+looked back the way she had come; along the dusky causeway to the low,
+dark shore, which night was stealing quickly from their eyes. She
+clasped her hands.
+
+"Where is Badelon?" she cried. "Where is he? Where is he?"
+
+One of the men who had ridden before her answered that he had turned
+back.
+
+"Turned back!" she repeated. And then, shading her eyes, "Who is
+coming?" she asked, her voice insistent. "There is someone coming. Who
+is it? Who is it?"
+
+Two were coming out of the gloom, travelling slowly and painfully
+along the causeway. One was La Tribe, limping; the other a rider,
+slashed across the forehead, and sobbing curses.
+
+"No more!" she muttered. "Are there no more?"
+
+The minister shook his head. The rider wiped the blood from his eyes,
+and turned up his face that he might see the better. But he seemed to
+be dazed, and only babbled strange words in a strange _patois_.
+
+She stamped her foot in passion. "More lights!" she cried. "Lights!
+How can they find their way? And let six men go down the _digue_, and
+meet them. Will you let them be butchered between the shore and this?"
+
+But Carlat, who had not been able to collect more than a dozen men,
+shook his head; and before she could repeat the order, sounds of
+battle, shrill, faint, like cries of hungry seagulls, pierced the
+darkness which shrouded the farther end of the causeway. The women
+shrank inward over the threshold, while Carlat cried to the men at the
+chains to be ready, and to some who stood at loopholes above, to blow
+up their matches and let fly at his word. And then they all waited,
+the Countess foremost, peering eagerly into the growing darkness. They
+could see nothing.
+
+A distant scuffle, an oath, a cry, silence! The same, a little nearer,
+a little louder, followed this time, not by silence, but by the slow
+tread of a limping horse. Again a rush of feet, the clash of steel, a
+scream, a laugh, all weird and unreal, issuing from the night; then
+out of the darkness into the light, stepping slowly with hanging head,
+moved a horse, bearing on its back a man--or was it a man!--bending
+low in the saddle, his feet swinging loose. For an instant the horse
+and the man seemed to be alone, a ghostly pair; then at their heels
+came into view two figures, skirmishing this way and that; and now
+coming nearer, and now darting back into the gloom. One, a squat
+figure, stooping low, wielded a sword with two hands; the other
+covered him with a half-pike. And then beyond these--abruptly as it
+seemed--the night gave up to sight a swarm of dark figures pressing on
+them and after them, driving them before them.
+
+Carlat had an inspiration. "Fire!" he cried; and four arquebuses
+poured a score of slugs into the knot of pursuers. A man fell, another
+shrieked and stumbled, the rest gave back. Only the horse came on
+spectrally, with hanging head and shining eyeballs, until a man ran
+out and seized its head, and dragged it, more by his strength than its
+own, over the drawbridge. After it Badelon, with a gaping wound in his
+knee, and Bigot, bleeding from a dozen hurts, walked over the bridge,
+and stood on either side of the saddle, smiling foolishly at the man
+on the horse.
+
+"Leave me!" he muttered. "Leave me!" He made a feeble movement with
+his hand, as if it held a weapon; then his head sank lower. It was
+Count Hannibal. His thigh was broken, and there was a lance-head in
+his arm.
+
+The Countess looked at him, then beyond him, past him into the
+darkness. "Are there no more?" she whispered tremulously. "No more?
+Tignonville--my----"
+
+Badelon shook his head. The Countess covered her face and wept.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                       WHICH WILL YOU, MADAME?
+
+
+It was in the grey dawning of the next day, at the hour before the sun
+rose, that word of M. de Tignonville's fate came to them in the
+castle. The fog which had masked the van and coming of night hung
+thick on its retreating skirts, and only reluctantly and little by
+little gave up to sight and daylight a certain thing which night had
+left at the end of the causeway. The first man to see it was Carlat,
+from the roof of the gateway; and he rubbed eyes weary with watching,
+and peered anew at it through the mist, fancying himself back in the
+Place Ste.-Croix at Angers, supposing for a wild moment the journey a
+dream, and the return a nightmare. But rub as he might, and stare as
+he might, the ugly outlines of the thing he had seen persisted--nay,
+grew sharper as the haze began to lift from the grey, slow-heaving
+floor of sea. He called another man and bade him look. "What is it?"
+he said. "D'you see, there? Below the village?"
+
+"'Tis a gibbet," the man answered, with a foolish laugh; they had
+watched all night. "God keep us from it."
+
+"A gibbet?"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"It is there to hang those they have taken, very like," the man
+answered, stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared
+at it and growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten
+on the roof of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the
+thing; and by-and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway
+with a white flag in his hand.
+
+At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister. "He understands things,"
+he muttered, "and I misdoubt this. And see," he cried after the
+messenger, "that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!" Instinctively in
+the maiden home he reverted to the maiden title.
+
+The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose
+above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt
+before the gate. Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La
+Tribe, after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low,
+misty shore and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the
+causeway, looked down and met the envoy's eyes. For a moment no one
+spoke. Only the men who had remained on the gateway, and had watched
+the stranger's coming, breathed hard.
+
+At last, "I bear a message," the man announced loudly and clearly,
+"for the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?"
+
+"Give your message!" La Tribe replied.
+
+"It is for her ears only."
+
+"Do you want to enter?"
+
+"No!" The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had
+the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan;
+and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black
+and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. "No!" he
+repeated, "but if Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me----"
+
+"Madame has other fish to fry," Carlat blurted out. "Do you think that
+she has naught to do but listen to messages from a gang of bandits?"
+
+"If she does not listen she will repent it all her life!" the fellow
+answered hardily. "That is part of my message."
+
+There was a pause while La Tribe considered the matter. In the end,
+"From whom do you come?" he asked.
+
+"From His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of Saumur," the envoy
+answered glibly, "and from my lord Bishop of Angers, him assisting by
+his Vicar; and from others gathered lawfully, who will as lawfully
+depart if their terms are accepted. Also from M. de Tignonville, a
+gentleman, I am told, of these parts, now in their hands and adjudged
+to die at sunset this day if the terms I bring be not accepted."
+
+There was a long silence on the gate. The men looked down fixedly; not
+a feature of one of them moved, for no one was surprised. "Wherefore
+is he to die!" La Tribe asked at last.
+
+"For good cause shown."
+
+"Wherefore?"
+
+"He is a Huguenot."
+
+The minister nodded. "And the terms!" Carlat muttered.
+
+"Ay, the terms!" La Tribe repeated, nodding afresh. "What are they?"
+
+"They are for madame's ear only," the messenger made answer.
+
+"Then they will not reach it!" Carlat broke forth in wrath. "So much
+for that! And for yourself, see you go quickly before we make a target
+of you!"
+
+"Very well, I go," the envoy answered sullenly. "But----"
+
+"But what?" La Tribe cried, gripping Carlat's shoulder to quiet him.
+"But what! Say what you have to say, man! Speak out, and have done
+with it!"
+
+"I will say it to her and to no other."
+
+"Then you will not say it!" Carlat cried again. "For you will not see
+her. So you may go. And the black fever in your vitals."
+
+"Ay, go!" La Tribe added more quietly.
+
+The man turned away with a shrug of the shoulders, and moved off a
+dozen paces, watched by all on the gate with the same fixed attention.
+But presently he paused; he returned. "Very well," he said, looking up
+with an ill grace. "I will do my office here, if I cannot come to her.
+But I hold also a letter from M. de Tignonville, and that I can
+deliver to no other hands than hers!" He held it up as he spoke, a
+thin scrap of greyish paper, the fly-leaf of a missal perhaps. "See!"
+he continued, "and take notice! If she does not get this, and learns
+when it is too late that it was offered----"
+
+"The terms," Carlat growled impatiently. "The terms! Come to them!"
+
+"You will have them?" the man answered, nervously passing his tongue
+over his lips. "You will not let me see her, or speak to her
+privately?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then hear them. His Excellency is informed that one Hannibal de
+Tavannes, guilty of the detestable crime of sacrilege and of other
+gross crimes, has taken refuge here. He requires that the said
+Hannibal de Tavannes be handed to him for punishment, and, this being
+done before sunset this evening, he will yield to you free and
+uninjured the said M. de Tignonville, and will retire from the lands
+of Vrillac. But if you refuse"--the man passed his eye along the line
+of attentive faces which fringed the battlement--"he will at sunset
+hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will
+harry the demesne of Vrillac to its farthest border!"
+
+There was a long silence on the gate. Some, their gaze still fixed on
+him, moved their lips as if they chewed. Others looked aside, met
+their fellows' eyes in a pregnant glance, and slowly returned to him.
+But no one spoke. At his back the flush of dawn was flooding the east,
+and spreading and waxing brighter. The air was growing warm; the shore
+below, from grey, was turning green. In a minute or two the sun, whose
+glowing marge already peeped above the low hills of France, would top
+the horizon.
+
+The man, getting no answer, shifted his feet uneasily. "Well," he
+cried, "what answer am I to take?"
+
+Still no one moved.
+
+"I've done my part. Will no one give her the letter?" he cried. And he
+held it up. "Give me my answer, for I am going."
+
+"Take the letter!" The words came from the rear of the group in a
+voice that startled all. They turned as though some one had struck
+them, and saw the Countess standing beside the wooden hood which
+covered the stairs. They guessed that she had heard all or nearly all;
+but the glory of the sunrise, shining full on her at that moment, lent
+a false warmth to her face, and life to eyes wofully and tragically
+set. It was not easy to say whether she had heard or not. "Take the
+letter," she repeated.
+
+Carlat looked helplessly over the parapet.
+
+"Go down!"
+
+He cast a glance at La Tribe, but he got none in return, and he was
+preparing to do her bidding when a cry of dismay broke from those who
+still had their eyes bent downwards. The messenger, waving the letter
+in a last appeal, had held it too loosely; a light air, as treacherous
+as unexpected, had snatched it from his hand, and bore it--even as the
+Countess, drawn by the cry, sprang to the parapet--fifty paces from
+him. A moment it floated in the air, eddying, rising, falling; then,
+light as thistle-down, it touched the water and began to sink.
+
+The messenger uttered frantic lamentations, and stamped the causeway
+in his rage. The Countess only looked, and looked, until the rippling
+crest of a baby wave broke over the tiny venture, and with its freight
+of tidings it sank from sight.
+
+The man, silent now, stared a moment, then shrugged his shoulders.
+"Well, 'tis fortunate it was his," he cried brutally, "and not His
+Excellency's, or my back had suffered! And now," he added impatiently,
+"by your leave, what answer?"
+
+What answer? Ah, God, what answer? The men who leant on the parapet,
+rude and coarse as they were, felt the tragedy of the question and the
+dilemma, guessed what they meant to her, and looked everywhere save at
+her. What answer? Which of the two was to live? Which die--shamefully!
+Which? Which?
+
+"Tell him--to come back--an hour before sunset," she muttered.
+
+They told him and he went; and one by one the men began to go too, and
+stole from the roof, leaving her standing alone, her face to the
+shore, her hands resting on the parapet. The light breeze which blew
+off the land stirred loose ringlets of her hair, and flattened the
+thin robe against her sunlit figure. So had she stood a thousand
+times in old days, in her youth, in her maidenhood. So in her father's
+time had she stood to see her lover come riding along the sands to woo
+her! So had she stood to welcome him on the eve of that fatal journey
+to Paris! Thence had others watched her go with him. The men
+remembered--remembered all; and one by one they stole shamefacedly
+away, fearing lest she should speak or turn tragic eyes on them.
+
+True, in their pity for her was no doubt of the end, or thought of the
+victim who must suffer--of Tavannes. They, of Poitou, who had not been
+with him, knew nothing of him; they cared as little. He was a northern
+man, a stranger, a man of the sword, who had seized her--so they
+heard--by the sword. But they saw that the burden of choice was laid
+on her; there, in her sight and in theirs, rose the gibbet; and,
+clowns as they were, they discerned the tragedy of her _rôle_, play it
+as she might, and though her act gave life to her lover.
+
+When all had retired save three or four, she turned and saw these
+gathered at the head of the stairs in a ring about Carlat, who was
+addressing them in a low eager voice. She could not catch a syllable,
+but a look hard, and almost cruel, flashed into her eyes as she gazed;
+and raising her voice she called the steward to her. "The bridge is
+up," she said, her tone hard, "but the gates? Are they locked?"
+
+"Yes, Madame."
+
+"The wicket?"
+
+"No, not the wicket." And Carlat looked another way.
+
+"Then go, lock it, and bring the keys to me!" she replied. "Or stay!"
+Her voice grew harder, her eyes spiteful as a cat's. "Stay, and be
+warned that you play me no tricks! Do you hear? Do you understand? Or
+old as you are, and long as you have served us, I will have you thrown
+from this tower, with as little pity as Isabeau flung her gallants to
+the fishes. I am still mistress here, never more mistress than this
+day. Woe to you if you forget it."
+
+He blenched and cringed before her, muttering incoherently.
+
+"I know," she said, "I read you! And now the keys. Go, bring them to
+me! And if by chance I find the wicket unlocked when I come down,
+pray, Carlat, pray! For you will have need of prayers."
+
+He slunk away, the men with him; and she fell to pacing the roof
+feverishly. Now and then she extended her arms, and low cries broke
+from her, as from a dumb creature in pain. Wherever she looked, old
+memories rose up to torment her and redouble her misery. A thing she
+could have borne in the outer world, a thing which might have seemed
+tolerable in the reeking air of Paris or in the gloomy streets of
+Angers, wore here its most appalling aspect. Henceforth, whatever
+choice she made, this home, where even in those troublous times she
+had known naught but peace, must bear a damning stain! Henceforth this
+day and this hour must come between her and happiness, must brand her
+brow, and fix her with a deed of which men and women would tell while
+she lived! Oh, God--pray? Who said, pray?
+
+"I!" And La Tribe with tears in his eyes held out the keys to her. "I,
+madame," he continued solemnly, his voice broken with emotion. "For in
+man is no help. The strongest man, he who rode yesterday a master of
+men, a very man of war in his pride and his valour--see him now,
+and----"
+
+"Don't!" she cried, sharp pain in her voice. "Don't!" And she stopped
+him with her hand, her face averted. After an interval, "You come from
+him?" she muttered faintly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is he--hurt to death, think you?" She spoke low, and kept her face
+hidden from him.
+
+"Alas, no!" he answered, speaking the thought in his heart. "The men
+who are with him seem confident of his recovery."
+
+"Do they know?"
+
+"Badelon has had experience."
+
+"No, no. Do they know of this?" she cried. "Of this!" And she pointed
+with a gesture of loathing to the black gibbet on the farther strand.
+
+He shook his head. "I think not," he muttered. And after a moment,
+"God help you!" he added fervently. "God help and guide you, madame!"
+
+She turned on him suddenly, fiercely. "Is that all you can do?" she
+cried. "Is that all the help you can give! You are a man. Go down,
+lead them out; drive off these cowards who drain our life's blood, who
+trade on a woman's heart! On them! Do something, anything, rather than
+lie in safety here--here!"
+
+The minister shook his head sadly. "Alas, madame!" he said, "to sally
+were to waste life. They outnumber us three to one. If Count Hannibal
+could do no more than break through last night, with scarce a man
+unwounded----"
+
+"He had the women!"
+
+"And we have not him!"
+
+"He would not have left us!" she cried hysterically.
+
+"I believe it."
+
+"Had they taken me, do you think he would have lain behind walls? Or
+skulked in safety here, while--while----" Her voice failed her.
+
+He shook his head despondently.
+
+"And that is all you can do?" she cried, and turned from him, and to
+him again, extending her arms, in bitter scorn. "All you will do? Do
+you forget that twice he spared your life? That in Paris once, and
+once in Angers, he held his hand? That always, whether he stood or
+whether he fled, he held himself between us and harm? Ay, always? And
+who will now raise a hand for him? Who?"
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Who? Who? Had he died in the field," she continued, her voice shaking
+with grief, her hands beating the parapet--for she had turned from
+him--"had he fallen where he rode last night, in the front, with his
+face to the foe, I had viewed him tearless, I had deemed him happy! I
+had prayed dry-eyed for him who--who spared me all these days and
+weeks! Whom I robbed and he forgave me! Whom I tempted, and he forbore
+me! Ay, and who spared not once or twice him for whom he must now--he
+must now----" And unable to finish the sentence she beat her hands
+again and passionately on the stones.
+
+"Heaven knows, madame," the minister cried vehemently, "Heaven knows,
+I would advise you if I could."
+
+"Why did he wear his corselet?" she wailed, as if she had not heard
+him. "Was there no spear could reach his breast, that he must come to
+this? No foe so gentle he would spare him this? Or why did he not die
+with me in Paris when we waited? In another minute death might have
+come and saved us this."
+
+With the tears running down his face he tried to comfort her. "Man
+that is a shadow," he said, "passeth away--what matter how? A little
+while, a very little while, and we shall pass!"
+
+"With his curse upon us!" she cried. And, shuddering, she pressed her
+hands to her eyes to shut out the sight her fancy pictured.
+
+He left her for a while, hoping that in solitude she might regain
+control of herself. When he returned he found her seated, and
+outwardly more composed, her arms resting on the parapet-wall, her
+eyes bent steadily on the long stretch of hard sand which ran
+northward from the village. By that route her lover had many a time
+come to her; there she had ridden with him in the early days; and that
+way they had started for Paris on such a morning and at such an hour
+as this, with sunshine about them, and larks singing hope above the
+sand-dunes, and warm wavelets creaming to the horses' hoofs!
+
+Of all which, La Tribe, a stranger, knew nothing. The rapt gaze, the
+unchanging attitude only confirmed his opinion of the course she would
+adopt. He was thankful to find her more composed; and in fear of such
+a scene as had already passed between them he stole away again. He
+returned by-and-by, but with the greatest reluctance, and only because
+Carlat's urgency would take no refusal.
+
+He came this time to crave the key of the wicket, explaining
+that--rather to satisfy his own conscience and the men than with any
+hope of success--he proposed to go half-way along the causeway, and
+thence by signs invite a conference. "It is just possible," he added,
+hesitating--he feared nothing so much as to raise hopes in her--"that
+by the offer of a money ransom, Madame----"
+
+"Go," she said, without turning her head. "Offer what you please.
+But"--bitterly--"have a care of them! Montsoreau is very like
+Montereau! Beware of the bridge!"
+
+He went and came again in half-an-hour. Then, indeed, though she had
+spoken as if hope was dead in her, she was on her feet at the first
+sound of his tread on the stairs; her parted lips and her white face
+questioned him. He shook his head.
+
+"There is a priest," he said in broken tones, "with them, whom God
+will judge. It is his plan, and he is without mercy or pity."
+
+"You bring nothing from--him?"
+
+"They will not suffer him to write again."
+
+"You did not see him?"
+
+"No."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+                          AGAINST THE WALL.
+
+
+In a room beside the gateway, into which, as the nearest and most
+convenient place, Count Hannibal had been carried from his saddle, a
+man sat sideways in the narrow embrasure of a loophole, to which his
+eyes seemed glued. The room, which formed part of the oldest block of
+the château, and was ordinarily the quarters of the Carlats, possessed
+two other windows, deep-set indeed, yet superior to that through which
+Bigot--for he it was--peered so persistently. But the larger windows
+looked southwards, across the bay--at this moment the noon-high sun
+was pouring his radiance through them; while the object which held
+Bigot's gaze and fixed him to his irksome seat, lay elsewhere. The
+loophole commanded the causeway leading shorewards; through it the
+Norman could see who came and went, and even the crossbeam of the ugly
+object which rose where the causeway touched the land.
+
+On a flat truckle-bed behind the door lay Count Hannibal, his injured
+leg protected from the coverlid by a kind of cage. His eyes were
+bright with fever, and his untended beard and straggling hair
+heightened the wildness of his aspect. But he was in possession of his
+senses; and as his gaze passed from Bigot at the window to the old
+Free Companion, who sat on a stool beside him, engaged in shaping a
+piece of wood into a splint, an expression almost soft crept into his
+harsh face.
+
+"Old fool!" he said. And his voice, though changed, had not lost all
+its strength and harshness. "Did the Constable need a splint when you
+laid him under the tower at Gaeta?"
+
+The old man lifted his eyes from his task, and glanced through the
+nearest window. "It is long from noon to night," he said quietly, "and
+far from cup to lip, my lord!"
+
+"It would be if I had two legs," Tavannes answered, with a grimace,
+half-snarl, half-smile. "As it is--where is that dagger? It leaves me
+every minute."
+
+It had slipped from the coverlid to the ground. Badelon took it up,
+and set it on the bed within reach of his master's hand.
+
+Bigot swore fiercely. "It would be farther still," he growled, "if you
+would be guided by me, my lord. Give me leave to bar the door, and
+'twill be long before these fisher clowns force it. Badelon and I----"
+
+"Being in your full strength," Count Hannibal murmured cynically.
+
+"Could hold it. We have strength enough for that," the Norman boasted,
+though his livid face and his bandages gave the lie to his words. He
+could not move without pain; and for Badelon, his knee was as big as
+two with plaisters of his own placing.
+
+Count Hannibal stared at the ceiling. "You could not strike two
+blows!" he said. "Don't lie to me! And Badelon cannot walk two yards!
+Fine fighters!" he continued with bitterness, not all bitter. "Fine
+bars 'twixt a man and death! No, it is time to turn the face to the
+wall. And, since go I must, it shall not be said Count Hannibal dared
+not go alone! Besides----"
+
+Bigot stopped him with an oath that was in part a cry of pain. "D--n
+her!" he exclaimed in fury, "'tis she is that _besides!_ I know it.
+'Tis she has been our ruin from the day we saw her first, ay, to this
+day! 'Tis she has bewitched you until your blood, my lord, has turned
+to water. Or you would never, to save the hand that betrayed us, never
+to save a man----"
+
+"Silence!" Count Hannibal cried, in a terrible voice. And rising on
+his elbow, he poised the dagger as if he would hurl it. "Silence, or I
+will spit you like the vermin you are! Silence, and listen! And you,
+old ban-dog, listen too, for I know you obstinate! It is not to save
+him. It is because I will die as I have lived, fearing nothing and
+asking nothing! It were easy to bar the door as you would have me, and
+die in the corner here like a wolf at bay, biting to the last. That
+were easy, old wolf-hound! Pleasant and good sport!"
+
+"Ay! That were a death!" the veteran cried, his eyes brightening. "So
+I would fain die!"
+
+"And I!" Count Hannibal returned, showing his teeth in a grim smile.
+"I too! Yet I will not! I will not! Because so to die were to die
+unwillingly, and give them triumph. Be dragged to death? No, old dog,
+if die we must, we will go to death! We will die grandly, highly, as
+becomes Tavannes! That when we are gone they may say, 'There died a
+man!'"
+
+"_She_ may say!" Bigot muttered scowling.
+
+Count Hannibal heard and glared at him, but presently thought better
+of it, and after a pause, "Ay, she too!" he said. "Why not? As we have
+played the game--for her--so, though we lose, we will play it to the
+end; nor because we lose throw down the cards! Besides, man, die in
+the corner, die biting, and he dies too!"
+
+"And why not?" Bigot asked, rising in a fury. "Why not? Whose work is
+it we lie here, snared by these clowns of fisherfolk? Who led us wrong
+and betrayed us? He die? Would the devil had taken him a year ago!
+Would he were within my reach now! I would kill him with my bare
+fingers! He die? And why not?"
+
+"Why, because, fool, his death would not save me!" Count Hannibal
+answered coolly. "If it would, he would die! But it will not; and
+we must even do again as we have done. I have spared him--he's a
+white-livered hound!--both once and twice, and we must go to the end
+with it since no better can be! I have thought it out, and it must be.
+Only see you, old dog, that I have the dagger hid in the splint where
+I can reach it. And then, when the exchange has been made, and my lady
+has her silk glove again--to put in her bosom!"--with a grimace and a
+sudden reddening of his harsh features--"if master priest come within
+reach of my arm, I'll send him before me, where I go."
+
+"Ay, ay!" said Badelon. "And if you fail of your stroke I will not
+fail of mine! I shall be there, and I will see to it he goes! I shall
+be there!"
+
+"You?"
+
+"Ay, why not?" the old man answered quietly. "I may halt on this leg
+for aught I know, and come to starve on crutches like old Claude
+Boiteux who was at the taking of Milan and now begs in the passage
+under the Châtelet."
+
+"Bah, man, you will get a new lord!"
+
+Badelon nodded. "Ay, a new lord with new ways!" he answered slowly and
+thoughtfully. "And I am tired. They are of another sort, lords now,
+than they were when I was young. It was a word and a blow then. Now I
+am old, with most it is--'Old hog, your distance! You scent my lady!'
+Then they rode, and hunted, and tilted year in and year out, and
+summer or winter heard the lark sing. 'Now they are curled, and paint
+themselves, and lie in silk and toy with ladies--who shamed to be seen
+at Court or board when I was a boy--and love better to hear the mouse
+squeak than the lark sing."
+
+"Still, if I give you my gold chain," Count Hannibal answered quietly,
+"'twill keep you from that."
+
+"Give it to Bigot," the old man answered. The splint he was fashioning
+had fallen on his knees, and his eyes were fixed on the distance of
+his youth. "For me, my lord, I am tired, and I go with you. I go with
+you. It is a good death to die biting before the strength be quite
+gone. Have the dagger too, if you please, and I'll fit it within the
+splint right neatly. But I shall be there----"
+
+"And you'll strike home?" Tavannes cried eagerly. He raised himself on
+his elbow, a gleam of joy in his gloomy eyes.
+
+"Have no fear, my lord. See, does it tremble?" He held out his hand.
+"And when you are sped, I will try the Spanish stroke--upwards with a
+turn ere you withdraw, that I learned from Ruiz--on the shaven-pate. I
+see them about me now!" the old man continued, his face flushing, his
+form dilating.
+
+"It will be odd if I cannot snatch a sword and hew down three to go
+with Tavannes! And Bigot, he will see my lord the Marshal by-and-by;
+and as I do to the priest, the Marshal will do to Montsoreau. Ho! ho!
+He will teach him the _coup de Jarnac_, never fear!" And the old man's
+moustaches curled up ferociously.
+
+Count Hannibal's eyes sparkled with joy. "Old dog!" he cried--and he
+held his hand to the veteran, who brushed it reverently with his
+lips--"we will go together then! Who touches my brother, touches
+Tavannes!"
+
+"Touches Tavannes!" Badelon cried, the glow of battle lighting his
+bloodshot eyes. He rose to his feet. "Touches Tavannes! You mind at
+Jarnac----"
+
+"Ah! At Jarnac!"
+
+"When we charged their horse, was my boot a foot from yours, my lord?"
+
+"Not a foot!"
+
+"And at Dreux," the old man continued with a proud, elated gesture,
+"when we rode down the German pikemen--they were grass before us,
+leaves on the wind, thistle-down--was it not I who covered your bridle
+hand, and swerved not in the _mêlée?_"
+
+"It was! It was!"
+
+"And at St. Quentin, when we fled before the Spaniard--it was his day,
+you remember, and cost us dear----"
+
+"Ay, I was young then," Tavannes cried in turn, his eyes glistening.
+"St. Quentin! It was the tenth of August. And you were new with me,
+and seized my rein----"
+
+"And we rode off together, my lord--of the last, of the last, as God
+sees me! And striking as we went, so that they left us for easier
+game."
+
+"It was so, good sword! I remember it as if it had been yesterday!"
+
+"And at Cerisoles, the Battle of the Plain, in the old Spanish wars,
+that was most like a joust of all the pitched fields I ever saw--at
+Cerisoles, where I caught your horse? You mind me? It was in the shock
+when we broke Guasto's line----"
+
+"At Cerisoles?" Count Hannibal muttered slowly. "Why, man, I----"
+
+"I caught your horse, and mounted you afresh? You remember, my lord?
+And at Landriano, where Leyva turned the tables on us again."
+
+Count Hannibal stared. "Landriano?" he muttered bluntly. "'Twas in
+'29, forty years ago and more! My father, indeed----"
+
+"And at Rome--at Rome, my lord? _Mon Dieu!_ in the old days at Rome!
+When the Spanish company scaled the wall--Ruiz was first, I next--was
+it not my foot you held? And was it not I who dragged you up, while
+the devils of Swiss pressed us hard? Ah, those were days, my lord! I
+was young then, and you, my lord, young too, and handsome as the
+morning----"
+
+"You rave!" Tavannes cried, finding his tongue at last. "Rome? You
+rave, old man! Why, I was not born in those days. My father even was a
+boy! It was in '27 you sacked it--five-and-forty years ago!"
+
+The old man passed his hands over his heated face, and, as a man
+roused suddenly from sleep looks, he looked round the room. The light
+died out of his eyes--as a light blown out in a room; his form seemed
+to shrink, even while the others gazed at him, and he sat down. "No, I
+remember," he muttered slowly. "It was Prince Philibert of Chalons, my
+lord of Orange."
+
+"Dead these forty years!"
+
+"Ay, dead these forty years! All dead!" the old man whispered, gazing
+at his gnarled hand, and opening and shutting it by turns. "And I grow
+childish! 'Tis time, high time, I followed them! It trembles now; but
+have no fear, my lord, this hand will not tremble then. All dead! Ay,
+all dead!"
+
+He sank into a mournful silence; and Tavannes, after gazing at him
+awhile in rough pity, fell to his own meditations, which were gloomy
+enough. The day was beginning to wane, and with the downward turn,
+though the sun still shone brightly through the southern windows, a
+shadow seemed to fall across his thoughts. They no longer rioted in a
+turmoil of defiance as in the forenoon. In its turn, sober reflection
+marshalled the past before his eyes. The hopes of a life, the
+ambitious of a life, moved in sombre procession, and things done and
+things left undone, the sovereignty which Nostradamus had promised,
+the faces of men he had spared and of men he had not spared--and the
+face of one woman.
+
+She would not now be his. He had played highly, and he would lose
+highly, playing the game to the end, that to-morrow she might think of
+him highly. Had she begun to think of him at all? In the chamber of
+the inn at Angers he had fancied a change in her, an awakening to life
+and warmth, a shadow of turning to him. It had pleased him to think
+so, at any rate. It pleased him still to imagine--of this he was more
+confident--that in the time to come, when she was Tignonville's, she
+would think of him secretly and kindly. She would remember him, and in
+her thoughts and in her memory he would grow to the heroic, even as
+the man she had chosen would shrink as she learned to know him.
+
+It pleased him, that. It was almost all that was left to please
+him--that, and to die proudly as he had lived. But as the day wore on,
+and the room grew hot and close, and the pain in his thigh became more
+grievous, the frame of his mind altered. A sombre rage was born and
+grew in him, and a passion fierce and ill-suppressed. To end thus,
+with nothing done, nothing accomplished of all his hopes and
+ambitions! To die thus, crushed in a corner by a mean priest and a
+rabble of spearmen, he who had seen Dreux and Jarnac, had defied the
+King, and dared to turn the St. Bartholomew to his ends! To die thus,
+and leave her to that puppet! Strong man as he was, of a strength of
+will surpassed by few, it taxed him to the utmost to lie and make no
+sign. Once, indeed, he raised himself on his elbow with something
+between an oath and a snarl, and he seemed about to speak. So that
+Bigot came hurriedly to him.
+
+"My lord?"
+
+"Water!" he said. "Water, fool!" And, having drank, he turned his face
+to the wall, lest he should name her or ask for her. For the desire to
+see her before he died, to look into her eyes, to touch her hand once,
+only once, assailed his mind and all but whelmed his will. She had
+been with him, he knew it, in the night; she had left him only at
+daybreak. But then, in his state of collapse, he had been hardly
+conscious of her presence. Now to ask for her or to see her would
+stamp him coward, say what he might to her. The proverb, that the
+King's face gives grace, applied to her; and an overture on his side
+could mean but one thing, that he sought her grace. And that he would
+not do though the cold waters of death covered him more and more, and
+the coming of the end--in that quiet chamber, while the September sun
+sank to the appointed place--awoke wild longings and a wild rebellion
+in his breast. His thoughts were very bitter, as he lay, his
+loneliness of the uttermost. He turned his face to the wall.
+
+In that posture he slept after a time, watched over by Bigot with
+looks of rage and pity. And on the room fell a long silence. The sun
+had lacked three hours of setting when he fell asleep. When he
+reopened his eyes, and, after lying for a few minutes between sleep
+and waking, became conscious of his position, of the day, of the
+things which had happened, and his helplessness--an awakening which
+wrung from him an involuntary groan--the light in the room was still
+strong, and even bright. He fancied for a moment that he had merely
+dozed off and awaked again; and he continued to lie with his face to
+the wall, courting a return of slumber.
+
+But sleep did not come, and little by little, as he lay listening and
+thinking and growing more restless, he got the fancy that he was
+alone. The light fell brightly on the wall to which his face was
+turned; how could that be if Bigot's broad shoulders still blocked the
+loophole? Presently, to assure himself, he called the man by name.
+
+He got no answer.
+
+"Badelon!" he muttered. "Badelon!"
+
+Had he gone, too, the old and faithful? It seemed so, for again no
+answer came.
+
+He had been accustomed all his life to instant service; to see the act
+follow the word ere the word ceased to sound. And nothing which had
+gone before, nothing which he had suffered since his defeat at Angers,
+had brought him to feel his impotence and his position--and that the
+end of his power was indeed come--as sharply as this. The blood rushed
+to his head; almost the tears to eyes which had not shed them since
+boyhood, and would not shed them now, weak as he was! He rose on his
+elbow and looked with a full heart; it was as he had fancied.
+Badelon's stool was empty; the embrasure--that was empty too. Through
+its narrow outlet he had a tiny view of the shore and the low rocky
+hill, of which the summit shone warm in the last rays of the setting
+sun.
+
+The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold;
+the shore at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time
+was come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and
+without lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull
+fall of a wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the
+sunset a light breeze was rising.
+
+He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunset
+was the time they had named for the exchange. What did it mean? In
+five minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of
+warmth on the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot
+and old Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before
+sunset! Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners,
+and--what was that?
+
+He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a
+groan from him. At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman
+lay prone on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms. She
+lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the
+loophole, her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count
+Hannibal stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then
+looked again. It was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it was his
+wife!
+
+He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose
+slowly to his cheek. And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to
+foot, from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the
+shod feet; unchecked he took his fill, of that which he had so much
+desired--the seeing her! A woman prone, with all of her hidden but her
+hands: a hundred acquainted with her would not have known her. But he
+knew her, and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a
+thousand, by her hands alone.
+
+What was she doing here, and in this guise? He pondered; then he
+looked from her for an instant and saw that while he had gazed at her
+the sun had set, the light had passed from the top of the hill; the
+world without and the room within were growing cold. Was that the
+cause she no longer lay quiet? He saw a shudder run through her, and a
+second; then it seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned,
+and prayed in half-heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her
+forehead on her arms, and then was still again, as still as death. By
+the time the paroxysm had passed, the last flush of sunset had faded
+from the sky, and the hills were growing dark.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+                             HIS KINGDOM.
+
+
+Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at
+once. Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained
+silent, his eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor. A
+moment later she met his gaze, and he looked to see her start. Instead
+she stood quiet and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad
+solemnity, as if she saw not him only, but the dead; while first one
+tremor and then a second shook her frame.
+
+At length, "It is over!" she whispered. "Patience, monsieur; have no
+fear, I will be brave. But I must give a little to him."
+
+"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily pale.
+
+She smiled with an odd passionateness. "Who was my lover!" she cried,
+her voice a-thrill. "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied
+him, though I have left him to die! It was just. He who has so tried
+me knows it was just! He whom I have sacrificed--he knows it too, now!
+But it is hard to be--just," with a quavering smile. "You who take all
+may give him a little, may pardon me a little, may have--patience!"
+
+Count Hannibal uttered a strangled cry, between a moan and a roar. A
+moment he beat the coverlid with his hands in impotence. Then he sank
+back on the bed. "Water!" he muttered. "Water!"
+
+She fetched it hurriedly, and, raising his head on her arm, held it to
+his lips. He drank, and lay back again with closed eyes. He lay so
+still and so long that she thought that he had fainted; but after a
+pause he spoke. "You have done that?" he whispered, "you have done
+that?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, shuddering. "God forgive me! I have done that! I
+had to do that, or----"
+
+"And is it too late--to undo it?"
+
+"It is too late." A sob choked her voice.
+
+Tears--tears incredible, unnatural--welled from under Count Hannibal's
+closed eyelids, and rolled sluggishly down his harsh cheek to the edge
+of his beard. "I would have gone," he muttered. "If you had spoken, I
+would have spared you this."
+
+"I know," she answered unsteadily; "the men told me."
+
+"And yet----"
+
+"It was just. And you are my husband," she replied. "More, I am the
+captive of your sword, and as you spared me in your strength, my lord,
+I spared you in your weakness."
+
+"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, madame!" he cried, "at what a cost!"
+
+And that arrested, that touched her in the depths of her grief and her
+horror; even while the gibbet on the causeway, which had burned itself
+into her eyeballs, hung before her. For she knew that it was the cost
+to her he was counting. She knew that for himself he had ever held
+life cheap, that he could have seen Tignonville suffer without a
+qualm. And the thoughtfulness for her, the value he placed on a
+thing--even on a rival's life--because it was dear to her, touched her
+home, moved her as few things could have moved her at that moment. She
+saw it of a piece with all that had gone before, with all that had
+passed between them, since that fatal Sunday in Paris. But she made no
+sign. More than she had said she would not say; words of love, even of
+reconciliation, had no place on her lips while he whom she had
+sacrificed awaited his burial.
+
+And meantime the man beside her lay and found it incredible. "It was
+just," she had said. And he knew it; Tignonville's folly--that and
+that only had led them into the snare and caused his own capture. But
+what had justice to do with the things of this world? In his
+experience, the strong hand--that was justice, in France; and
+possession--that was law. By the strong hand he had taken her, and by
+the strong hand she might have freed herself.
+
+And she had not. There was the incredible thing. She had chosen
+instead to do justice! It passed belief. Opening his eyes on a silence
+which had lasted some minutes, a silence rendered more solemn by the
+lapping water without, Tavannes saw her kneeling in the dusk of the
+chamber, her head bowed over his couch, her face hidden in her hands.
+He knew that she prayed, and feebly he deemed the whole a dream. No
+scene akin to it had had place in his life; and, weakened and in pain,
+he prayed that the vision might last for ever, that he might never
+awake.
+
+But by-and-by, wrestling with the dread thought of what she had done,
+and the horror which would return upon her by fits and spasms, she
+flung out a hand, and it fell on him. He started, and the movement,
+jarring the broken limb, wrung from him a cry of pain. She looked up
+and was going to speak, when a scuffling of feet under the gateway
+arch, and a confused sound of several voices raised at once, arrested
+the words on her lips. She rose to her feet and listened. Dimly he
+could see her face through the dusk. Her eyes were on the door, and
+she breathed quickly.
+
+A moment or two passed in this way, and then from the hurly-burly in
+the gateway the footsteps of two men--one limped--detached themselves
+and came nearer and nearer. They stopped without. A gleam of light
+shone under the door, and someone knocked.
+
+She went to the door, and, withdrawing the bar, stepped quickly back
+to the bedside, where for an instant the light borne by those who
+entered blinded her. Then, above the lantern, the faces of La Tribe
+and Bigot broke upon her, and their shining eyes told her that they
+bore good news. It was well, for the men seemed tongue-tied. The
+minister's fluency was gone; he was very pale, and it was Bigot who in
+the end spoke for both. He stepped forward, and, kneeling, kissed her
+cold hand.
+
+"My lady," he said, "you have gained all, and lost nothing. Blessed be
+God!"
+
+"Blessed be God!" the minister wept. And from the passage without came
+the sound of laughter and weeping and many voices, with a flutter of
+lights and flying skirts, and women's feet.
+
+She stared at him wildly, doubtfully, her hand at her throat. "What?"
+she said, "he is not dead--M. de Tignonville?"
+
+"No, he is alive," La Tribe answered, "he is alive." And he lifted up
+his hands as if he gave thanks.
+
+"Alive?" she cried. "Alive! Oh, heaven is merciful! You are sure! You
+are sure?"
+
+"Sure, Madame, sure. He was not in their hands. He was dismounted in
+the first shock, it seems, and, coming to himself after a time, crept
+away and reached St. Gilles, and came hither in a boat. But the enemy
+learned that he had not entered with us, and of this the priest wove
+his snare. Blessed be God, who put it into your heart to escape it!"
+
+The Countess stood motionless and, with closed eyes, pressed her hands
+to her temples. Once she swayed as if she would fall her length, and
+Bigot sprang forward to support and save her. But she opened her eyes
+at that, sighed very deeply, and seemed to recover herself.
+
+"You are sure?" she said faintly. "It is no trick?"
+
+"No, madame, it is no trick," La Tribe answered. "M. de Tignonville is
+alive, and here."
+
+"Here!" She started at the word. The colour fluttered in her cheek.
+"But the keys," she murmured. And she passed her hand across her brow.
+"I thought--that I had them."
+
+"He has not entered," the minister answered, "for that reason. He is
+waiting at the postern, where he landed. He came, hoping to be of use
+to you."
+
+She paused a moment, and when she spoke again her aspect had undergone
+a subtle change. Her head was high, a flush had risen to her cheeks,
+her eyes were bright. "Then," she said, addressing La Tribe, "do you,
+monsieur, go to him, and pray him in my name to retire to St. Gilles,
+if he can do so without peril. He has no place here--now; and if he
+can go safely to his home it will be well that he do so. Add, if you
+please, that Madame de Tavannes thanks him for his offer of aid, but
+in her husband's house she needs no other protection."
+
+Bigot's eyes sparkled with joy.
+
+The minister hesitated. "No more, madame?" he faltered. He was
+tender-hearted, and Tignonville was of his people.
+
+"No more," she said gravely, bowing her head. "It is not M. de
+Tignonville I have to thank, but Heaven's mercy, that I do not stand
+here at this moment unhappy as I entered--a woman accursed, to be
+pointed at while I live. And the dead"--she pointed solemnly through
+the dark casement to the shore--"the dead lie there."
+
+La Tribe went.
+
+She stood a moment in thought, and then took the keys from the rough
+stone window-ledge on which she had laid them when she entered. As the
+cold iron touched her fingers she shuddered. The contact awoke again
+the horror and misery in which she had groped, a lost thing, when she
+last felt that chill.
+
+"Take them," she said; and she gave them to Bigot. "Until my lord can
+leave his couch they will remain in your charge, and you will answer
+for all to him. Go, now, take the light; and in half-an-hour send
+Madame Carlat to me."
+
+A wave broke heavily on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea;
+and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders.
+But the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where
+the Countess knelt in silence beside the bed--knelt, her head bowed on
+her clasped hands, as she had knelt before, but with a mind how
+different, with what different thoughts! Count Hannibal could see her
+head but dimly, for the light shed upwards by the spume of the sea
+fell only on the rafters. But he knew she was there, and he would
+fain, for his heart was full, have laid his hand on her hair.
+
+And yet he would not. He would not, out of pride. Instead he bit on
+his harsh beard, and lay looking upward to the rafters, waiting what
+would come. He who had held her at his will now lay at hers, and
+waited. He who had spared her life at a price now took his own a gift
+at her hands, and bore it.
+
+"_Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes_----"
+
+His mind went back by some chance to those words--the words he had
+neither meant nor fulfilled. It passed from them to the marriage and
+the blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last
+ride between La Flèche and Angers--the ride during which he had played
+with her fears and hugged himself on the figure he would make on the
+morrow. The figure! Alas! of all his plans for dazzling her had
+come--_this!_ Angers had defeated him, a priest had worsted him. In
+place of releasing Tignonville after the fashion of Bayard and the
+Paladins, and in the teeth of snarling thousands, he had come near to
+releasing him after another fashion and at his own expense. Instead of
+dazzling her by his mastery and winning her by his magnanimity, he lay
+here, owing her his life, and so weak, so broken, that the tears of
+childhood welled up in his eyes.
+
+Out of the darkness a hand, cool and firm, slid into his, clasped it
+tightly, drew it to warm lips, carried it to a woman's bosom. "My
+lord," she murmured, "I was the captive of your sword, and you spared
+me. Him I loved you took and spared him too--not once or twice.
+Angers, also, and my people you would have saved for my sake. And you
+thought I could do this! Oh! shame, shame!" But her hand held his
+always.
+
+"You loved him," he muttered.
+
+"Yes, I loved him," she answered slowly and thoughtfully. "I loved
+him." And she fell silent a minute. Then, "And I feared you," she
+added, her voice low. "Oh, how I feared you--and hated you!"
+
+"And now?"
+
+"I do not fear him," she answered, smiling in the darkness. "Nor hate
+him. And for you, my lord, I am your wife and must do your bidding,
+whether I will or no. I have no choice."
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Is that not so?" she asked.
+
+He tried weakly to withdraw his hand.
+
+But she clung to it. "I must bear your blows or your kisses. I must be
+as you will and do as you will, and go happy or sad, lonely or with
+you, as you will! As you will, my lord! For I am your chattel, your
+property, your own. Have you not told me so?"
+
+"But your heart," he cried fiercely, "is his! Your heart, which you
+told me in the meadow could never be mine!"
+
+"I lied," she murmured, laughing tearfully, and her hands hovered over
+him. "It has come back! And it is on my lips."
+
+And she leant over and kissed him. And Count Hannibal knew that he had
+entered into his kingdom, the sovereignty of a woman's heart.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+An hour later there was a stir in the village on the mainland.
+Lanterns began to flit to and fro. Sulkily men were saddling and
+preparing for the road. It was far to Challans, farther to Lège--more
+than one day, and many a weary league to Ponts de Cé and the Loire.
+The men who had ridden gaily southwards on the scent of spoil and
+revenge turned their backs on the castle with many a sullen oath and
+word. They burned a hovel or two, and stripped such as they spared,
+after the fashion of the day; and it had gone ill with the peasant
+woman who fell into their hands. Fortunately, under cover of the
+previous night every soul had escaped from the village, some to sea,
+and the rest to take shelter among the sand dunes; and as the troopers
+rode up the path from the beach, and through the green valley, where
+their horses shied from the bodies of the men they had slain, there
+was not an eye to see them go.
+
+Or to mark the man who rode last, the man of the white face--scarred
+on the temple--and the burning eyes, who paused on the brow of the
+hill, and, before he passed beyond, cursed with quivering lips the foe
+who had escaped him. The words were lost, as soon as spoken, in the
+murmur of the sea on the causeway; the sea, fit emblem of the Eternal,
+which rolled its tide regardless of blessing or cursing, good or ill
+will, nor spared one jot of ebb or flow because a puny creature had
+spoken to the night.
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+                        A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+    CHAPTER
+
+         I. The Sport of Fools.
+
+         II. The King of Navarre.
+
+       III. Boot And Saddle.
+
+        IV. Mademoiselle de la Vire.
+
+         V. The Road to Blois.
+
+        VI. My Mother's Lodging.
+
+       VII. Simon Fleix.
+
+      VIII. An Empty Room.
+
+        IX. The House in the Ruelle d'Arcy.
+
+         X. The Fight on the Stairs.
+
+        XI. The Man at the Door.
+
+       XII. Maximilian de Bethune, Baron de Rosny.
+
+      XIII. At Rosny.
+
+       XIV. M. de Rambouillet.
+
+        XV. Vilain Herodes.
+
+       XVI. In the King's Chamber.
+
+      XVII. The Jacobin Monk.
+
+     XVIII. The Offer of the League.
+
+       XIX. Men call it Chance.
+
+        XX. The King's Face.
+
+       XXI. Two Women.
+
+      XXII. 'La Femme Dispose.'
+
+     XXIII. The Last Valois.
+
+      XXIV. A Royal Peril.
+
+       XXV. Terms of Surrender.
+
+      XXVI. Meditations.
+
+     XXVII. To Me, my Friends!
+
+    XXVIII. The Castle on the Hill.
+
+      XXIX. Pestilence and Famine.
+
+       XXX. Stricken.
+
+      XXXI. Under the Greenwood.
+
+     XXXII. A Tavern Brawl.
+
+    XXXIII. At Meudon.
+
+     XXXIV. ''Tis an Ill Wind.'
+
+      XXXV. 'Le Roi est Mort.'
+
+     XXXVI. 'Vive le Roi!'
+
+
+
+
+
+                        A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                         THE SPORT OF FOOLS.
+
+
+The death of the Prince of Condé, which occurred in the spring of
+1588, by depriving me of my only patron, reduced me to such straits
+that the winter of that year, which saw the King of Navarre come to
+spend his Christmas at St. Jean d'Angely, saw also the nadir of my
+fortunes. I did not know at this time--I may confess it to-day without
+shame--whither to turn for a gold crown or a new scabbard, and neither
+had nor discerned any hope of employment. The peace lately patched up
+at Blois between the King of France and the League persuaded many of
+the Huguenots that their final ruin was at hand; but it could not fill
+their exhausted treasury or enable them to put fresh troops into the
+field.
+
+The death of the Prince had left the King of Navarre without a rival
+in the affections of the Huguenots; the Vicomte de Turenne, whose
+turbulent ambition already began to make itself felt, and M. de
+Chatillon, ranking next to him. It was my ill-fortune, however, to be
+equally unknown to all three leaders, and as the month of December
+which saw me thus miserably straitened saw me reach the age of forty,
+which I regard, differing in that from many, as the grand climacteric
+of a man's life, it will be believed that I had need of all the
+courage which religion and a campaigner's life could supply.
+
+I had been compelled some time before to sell all my horses except the
+black Sardinian with the white spot on its forehead; and I now found
+myself obliged to part also with my valet de chambre and groom, whom I
+dismissed on the same day, paying them their wages with the last links
+of gold chain left to me. It was not without grief and dismay that I
+saw myself thus stripped of the appurtenances of a man of birth, and
+driven to groom my own horse under cover of night. But this was not
+the worst. My dress, which suffered inevitably from this menial
+employment, began in no long time to bear witness to the change in my
+circumstances; so that on the day of the King of Navarre's entrance
+into St. Jean I dared not face the crowd, always quick to remark the
+poverty of those above them, but was fain to keep within doors and
+wear out my patience in the garret of the cutler's house in the Rue de
+la Coutellerie, which was all the lodging I could now afford.
+
+Pardieu, 'tis a strange world! Strange that time seems to me; more
+strange compared with this. My reflections on that day, I remember,
+were of the most melancholy. Look at it how I would, I could not but
+see that my life's spring was over. The crows'-feet were gathering
+about my eyes, and my moustachios, which seemed with each day of
+ill-fortune to stand out more fiercely in proportion as my face grew
+leaner, were already grey. I was out at elbows, with empty pockets,
+and a sword which peered through the sheath. The meanest ruffler who,
+with broken feather and tarnished lace, swaggered at the heels of
+Turenne, was scarcely to be distinguished from me. I had still, it is
+true, a rock and a few barren acres in Brittany, the last remains of
+the family property; but the small sums which the peasants could
+afford to pay were sent annually to Paris, to my mother, who had no
+other dower. And this I would not touch, being minded to die a
+gentleman, even if I could not live in that estate.
+
+Small as were my expectations of success, since I had no one at the
+king's side to push my business, nor any friend at Court, I
+nevertheless did all I could, in the only way that occurred to me. I
+drew up a petition, and lying in wait one day for M. Forget, the King
+of Navarre's secretary, placed it in his hand, begging him to lay it
+before that prince. He took it, and promised to do so, smoothly, and
+with as much lip-civility as I had a right to expect. But the careless
+manner in which he doubled up and thrust away the paper on which I had
+spent so much labour, no less than the covert sneer of his valet, who
+ran after me to get the customary present--and ran, as I still blush
+to remember, in vain--warned me to refrain from hope.
+
+In this, however, having little save hope left, I failed so signally
+as to spend the next day and the day after in a fever of alternate
+confidence and despair, the cold fit following the hot with perfect
+regularity. At length, on the morning of the third day--I remember it
+lacked but three of Christmas--I heard a step on the stairs. My
+landlord living in his shop, and the two intervening floors being
+empty, I had no doubt the message was for me, and went outside the
+door to receive it, my first glance at the messenger confirming me in
+my highest hopes, as well as in all I had ever heard of the generosity
+of the King of Navarre. For by chance I knew the youth to be one of
+the royal pages; a saucy fellow who had a day or two before cried 'Old
+Clothes' after me in the street. I was very far from resenting this
+now, however, nor did he appear to recall it; so that I drew the
+happiest augury as to the contents of the note he bore from the
+politeness with which he presented it to me.
+
+I would not, however, run the risk of a mistake, and before holding
+out my hand, I asked him directly and with formality if it was for me.
+
+He answered, with the utmost respect, that it was for the Sieur de
+Marsac, and for me if I were he.
+
+'There is an answer, perhaps?' I said, seeing that he lingered.
+
+'The King of Navarre, sir,' he replied, with a low bow, 'will receive
+your answer in person, I believe.' And with that, replacing the hat
+which he had doffed out of respect to me, he turned and went down the
+stairs.
+
+Returning to my room, and locking the door, I hastily opened the
+missive, which was sealed with a large seal, and wore every appearance
+of importance. I found its contents to exceed all my expectations. The
+King of Navarre desired me to wait on him at noon on the following
+day, and the letter concluded with such expressions of kindness and
+goodwill as left me in no doubt of the Prince's intentions. I read it,
+I confess, with emotions of joy and gratitude which would better have
+become a younger man, and then cheerfully sat down to spend the rest
+of the day in making such improvements in my dress as seemed possible.
+With a thankful heart I concluded that I had now escaped from poverty,
+at any rate from such poverty as is disgraceful to a gentleman; and
+consoled myself for the meanness of the appearance I must make at
+Court with the reflection that a day or two would mend both habit and
+fortune.
+
+Accordingly, it was with a stout heart that I left my lodgings a few
+minutes before noon next morning, and walked towards the castle. It
+was some time since I had made so public an appearance in the streets,
+which the visit of the King of Navarre's Court had filled with an
+unusual crowd, and I could not help fancying as I passed that some of
+the loiterers eyed me with a covert smile; and, indeed, I was shabby
+enough. But finding that a frown more than sufficed to restore the
+gravity of these gentry, I set down the appearance to my own
+self-consciousness, and, stroking my moustachios, strode along boldly
+until I saw before me, and coming to meet me, the same page who had
+delivered the note.
+
+He stopped in front of me with an air of consequence, and making me a
+low bow--whereat I saw the bystanders stare, for he was as gay a young
+spark as maid-of-honour could desire--he begged me to hasten, as the
+king awaited me in his closet.
+
+'He has asked for you twice, sir,' he continued importantly, the
+feather of his cap almost sweeping the ground.
+
+'I think,' I answered, quickening my steps, 'that the king's letter
+says noon, young sir. If I am late on such an occasion, he has indeed
+cause to complain of me.'
+
+'Tut, tut!' he rejoined, waving his hand with a dandified air. 'It is
+no matter. One man may steal a horse when another may not look over
+the wall, you know.'
+
+A man may be gray-haired, he may be sad-complexioned, and yet he may
+retain some of the freshness of youth. On receiving this indication of
+a favour exceeding all expectation, I remember I felt the blood rise
+to my face, and experienced the most lively gratitude. I wondered who
+had spoken in my behalf, who had befriended me; and concluding at last
+that my part in the affair at Brouage had come to the king's ears,
+though I could not conceive through whom, I passed through the castle
+gates with an air of confidence and elation which was not unnatural, I
+think, under the circumstances. Thence, following my guide, I mounted
+the ramp and entered the courtyard.
+
+A number of grooms and valets were lounging here, some leading horses
+to and fro, others exchanging jokes with the wenches who leaned from
+the windows, while their fellows again stamped up and down to keep
+their feet warm, or played ball against the wall in imitation of their
+masters. Such knaves are ever more insolent than their betters; but I
+remarked that they made way for me with respect, and with rising
+spirits, yet a little irony, I reminded myself as I mounted the stairs
+of the words, 'whom the king delighteth to honour!'
+
+Reaching the head of the flight, where was a soldier on guard, the
+page opened the door of the ante-chamber, and standing aside bade me
+enter. I did so, and heard the door close behind me.
+
+For a moment I stood still, bashful and confused. It seemed to me that
+there were a hundred people in the room, and that half the eyes which
+met mine were women's. Though I was not altogether a stranger to such
+state as the Prince of Condé had maintained, this crowded anteroom
+filled me with surprise, and even with a degree of awe, of which I was
+the next moment ashamed. True, the flutter of silk and gleam of jewels
+surpassed anything I had then seen, for my fortunes had never led me
+to the king's Court; but an instant's reflection reminded me that my
+fathers had held their own in such scenes, and with a bow regulated
+rather by this thought than by the shabbiness of my dress, I advanced
+amid a sudden silence.
+
+'M. de Marsac!' the page announced, in a tone which sounded a little
+odd in my ears; so much so, that I turned quickly to look at him. He
+was gone, however, and when I turned again the eyes which met mine
+were full of smiles. A young girl who stood near me tittered. Put out
+of countenance by this, I looked round in embarrassment to find
+someone to whom I might apply.
+
+The room was long and narrow, panelled in chestnut, with a row of
+windows on the one hand, and two fireplaces, now heaped with glowing
+logs, on the other. Between the fireplaces stood a rack of arms. Round
+the nearer hearth lounged a group of pages, the exact counterparts of
+the young blade who had brought me hither; and talking with these were
+as many young gentlewomen. Two great hounds lay basking in the heat,
+and coiled between them, with her head on the back of the larger, was
+a figure so strange that at another time I should have doubted my
+eyes. It wore the fool's motley and cap and bells, but a second glance
+showed me the features were a woman's. A torrent of black hair flowed
+loose about her neck, her eyes shone with wild merriment, and her
+face, keen, thin, and hectic, glared at me from the dog's back. Beyond
+her, round the farther fireplace, clustered more than a score of
+gallants and ladies, of whom one presently advanced to me.
+
+'Sir,' he said politely--and I wished I could match his bow--'you
+wished to see?'
+
+'The King of Navarre,' I answered, doing my best.
+
+He turned to the group behind him, and said, in a peculiarly even,
+placid tone, 'He wishes to see the King of Navarre.' Then in solemn
+silence he bowed to me again and went back to his fellows.
+
+Upon the instant, and before I could make up my mind how to take this,
+a second tripped forward, and saluting me, said, 'M. de Marsac, I
+think?'
+
+'At your service, sir,' I rejoined. In my eagerness to escape the gaze
+of all those eyes, and the tittering which was audible behind me, I
+took a step forward to be in readiness to follow him. But he gave no
+sign. 'M. de Marsac to see the King of Navarre' was all he said,
+speaking as the other had done to those behind. And with that he too
+wheeled round and went back to the fire.
+
+I stared, a first faint suspicion of the truth aroused in my mind.
+Before I could act upon it, however--in such a situation it was no
+easy task to decide how to act--a third advanced with the same
+measured steps. 'By appointment I think, sir?' he said, bowing lower
+than the others.
+
+'Yes,' I replied sharply, beginning to grow warm, 'by appointment at
+noon.'
+
+'M. de Marsac,' he announced in a sing-song tone to those behind him,
+'to see the King of Navarre by appointment at noon.' And with a second
+bow--while I grew scarlet with mortification--he too wheeled gravely
+round and returned to the fireplace.
+
+I saw another preparing to advance, but he came too late. Whether my
+face of anger and bewilderment was too much for them, or some among
+them lacked patience to see the end, a sudden uncontrollable shout of
+laughter, in which all the room joined, cut short the farce. God knows
+it hurt me: I winced, I looked this way and that, hoping here or there
+to find sympathy and help. But it seemed to me that the place rang
+with gibes, that every panel framed, however I turned myself, a cruel,
+sneering face. One behind me cried 'Old Clothes,' and when I turned
+the other hearth whispered the taunt. It added a thousandfold to my
+embarrassment that there was in all a certain orderliness, so that
+while no one moved, and none, while I looked at them, raised their
+voices, I seemed the more singled out, and placed as a butt in the
+midst.
+
+One face amid the pyramid of countenances which hid the farther
+fireplace so burned itself into my recollection in that miserable
+moment, that I never thereafter forgot it; a small, delicate woman's
+face, belonging to a young girl who stood boldly in front of her
+companions. It was a face full of pride, and, as I saw it then, of
+scorn--scorn that scarcely deigned to laugh; while the girl's graceful
+figure, slight and maidenly, yet perfectly proportioned, seemed
+instinct with the same feeling of contemptuous amusement.
+
+The play, which seemed long enough to me, might have lasted longer,
+seeing that no one there had pity on me, had I not, in my desperation,
+espied a door at the farther end of the room, and concluded, seeing no
+other, that it was the door of the king's bedchamber. The
+mortification I was suffering was so great that I did not hesitate,
+but advanced with boldness towards it. On the instant there was a lull
+in the laughter round me, and half a dozen voices called on me to
+stop.
+
+'I have come to see the king,' I answered, turning on them fiercely,
+for I was by this time in no mood for browbeating, 'and I will see
+him!'
+
+'He is out hunting,' cried all with one accord; and they signed
+imperiously to me to go back the way I had come.
+
+But having the king's appointment safe in my pouch, I thought I had
+good reason to disbelieve them; and taking advantage of their
+surprise--for they had not expected so bold a step on my part--I was
+at the door before they could prevent me. I heard Mathurine, the fool,
+who had sprung to her feet, cry 'Pardieu! he will take the Kingdom of
+Heaven by force!' And those were the last words I heard; for, as I
+lifted the latch--there was no one on guard there--a sudden swift
+silence fell upon the room behind me.
+
+I pushed the door gently open and went in. There were two men sitting
+in one of the windows, who turned and looked angrily towards me. For
+the rest the room was empty. The king's walking-shoes lay by his
+chair, and beside them the boot-hooks and jack. A dog before the fire
+got up slowly and growled, and one of the men, rising from the trunk
+on which he had been sitting, came towards me and asked me, with every
+sign of irritation, what I wanted there, and who had given me leave to
+enter.
+
+I was beginning to explain, with some diffidence--the stillness of the
+room sobering me--that I wished to see the king, when he who had
+advanced took me up sharply with, 'The king? the king? He is not here,
+man. He is hunting at St. Valery. Did they not tell you so outside?'
+
+I thought I recognised the speaker, than whom I have seldom seen a man
+more grave and thoughtful for his years, which were something less
+than mine, more striking in presence, or more soberly dressed. And
+being desirous to evade his question, I asked him if I had not the
+honour to address M. du Plessis Mornay; for that wise and courtly
+statesman, now a pillar of Henry's counsels, it was.
+
+'The same, sir,' he replied abruptly, and without taking his eyes from
+me. 'I am Mornay. What of that?'
+
+'I am M. de Marsac,' I explained. And there I stopped, supposing that,
+as he was in the king's confidence, this would make my errand clear to
+him.
+
+But I was disappointed. 'Well, sir?' he said, and waited impatiently.
+
+So cold a reception, following such treatment as I had suffered
+outside, would have sufficed to have dashed my spirits utterly had I
+not felt the king's letter in my pocket. Being pretty confident,
+however, that a single glance at this would alter M. du Mornay's
+bearing for the better, I hastened, looking on it as a kind of
+talisman, to draw it out and present it to him.
+
+He took it, and looked at it, and opened it, but with so cold and
+immovable an aspect as made my heart sink more than all that had gone
+before. 'What is amiss?' I cried, unable to keep silence. ''Tis from
+the king, sir.'
+
+'A king in motley!' he answered, his lip curling.
+
+The sense of his words did not at once strike home to me, and I
+murmured, in great disorder, that the king had sent for me.
+
+'The king knows nothing of it,' was his blunt answer, bluntly given.
+And he thrust the paper back into my hands. 'It is a trick,' he
+continued, speaking with the same abruptness, 'for which you have
+doubtless to thank some of those idle young rascals without. You had
+sent an application to the king, I suppose? Just so. No doubt they got
+hold of it, and this is the result. They ought to be whipped.'
+
+It was not possible for me to doubt any longer that what he said was
+true. I saw in a moment all my hopes vanish, all my plans flung to the
+winds; and in the first shock of the discovery I could neither find
+voice to answer him nor strength to withdraw. In a kind of vision I
+seemed to see my own lean, haggard face looking at me as in a glass,
+and, reading despair in my eyes, could have pitied myself.
+
+My disorder was so great that M. du Mornay observed it. Looking more
+closely at me, he two or three times muttered my name, and at last
+said, 'M. de Marsac? Ha! I remember. You were in the affair of
+Brouage, were you not?'
+
+I nodded my head in token of assent, being unable at the moment to
+speak, and so shaken that perforce I leaned against the wall, my head
+sunk on my breast. The memory of my age, my forty years, and my
+poverty, pressed hard upon me, filling me with despair and bitterness.
+I could have wept, but no tears came.
+
+M. du Mornay, averting his eyes from me, took two or three short,
+impatient turns up and down the chamber. When he addressed me again
+his tone was full of respect, mingled with such petulance as one brave
+man might feel, seeing another so hard pressed. 'M. de Marsac,' he
+said, 'you have my sympathy. It is a shame that men who have served
+the cause should be reduced to such straits. Were it possible for me
+to increase my own train at present, I should consider it an honour to
+have you with me. But I am hard put to it myself, and so are we all,
+and the King of Navarre not least among us. He has lived for a month
+upon a wood which M. de Rosny has cut down. I will mention your name
+to him, but I should be cruel rather than kind were I not to warn you
+that nothing can come of it.'
+
+With that he offered me his hand, and, cheered as much by this mark of
+consideration as by the kindness of his expressions, I rallied my
+spirits. True, I wanted comfort more substantial, but it was not to be
+had. I thanked him therefore as becomingly as I could, and seeing
+there was no help for it, took my leave of him, and slowly and
+sorrowfully withdrew from the room.
+
+Alas! to escape I had to face the outside world, for which his kind
+words were an ill preparation. I had to run the gauntlet of the
+ante-chamber. The moment I appeared, or rather the moment the door
+closed behind me, I was hailed with a shout of derision. While one
+cried, 'Way! way for the gentleman who has seen the king!' another
+hailed me uproariously as Governor of Guyenne, and a third requested a
+commission in my regiment.
+
+I heard these taunts with a heart full almost to bursting. It seemed
+to me an unworthy thing that, merely by reason of my poverty, I should
+be derided by youths who had still all their battles before them; but
+to stop or reproach them would only, as I well knew, make matters
+worse, and, moreover, I was so sore stricken that I had little spirit
+left even to speak. Accordingly, I made my way through them with what
+speed I might, my head bent, and my countenance heavy with shame and
+depression. In this way--I wonder there were not among them some
+generous enough to pity me--I had nearly gained the door, and was
+beginning to breathe, when I found my path stopped by that particular
+young lady of the Court whom I have described above. Something had for
+the moment diverted her attention from me, and it required a word from
+her companions to apprise her of my near neighbourhood. She turned
+then, as one taken by surprise, and finding me so close to her that my
+feet all but touched her gown, she stepped quickly aside, and with a
+glance as cruel as her act, drew her skirts away from contact with me.
+
+The insult stung me, I know not why, more than all the gibes which
+were being flung at me from every side, and moved by a sudden impulse
+I stopped, and in the bitterness of my heart spoke to her.
+'Mademoiselle,' I said, bowing low--for, as I have stated, she was
+small, and more like a fairy than a woman, though her face expressed
+both pride and self-will--'Mademoiselle,' I said sternly, 'such as I
+am, I have fought for France! Some day you may learn that there are
+viler things in the world--and have to bear them--than a poor
+gentleman!'
+
+The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I repented of them, for
+Mathurine, the fool, who was at my elbow, was quick to turn them into
+ridicule. Raising her hands above our heads, as in act to bless us,
+she cried out that Monsieur, having gained so rich an office, desired
+a bride to grace it; and this, bringing down upon us a coarse shout of
+laughter and some coarser gibes, I saw the young girl's face flush
+hotly.
+
+The next moment a voice in the crowd cried roughly, 'Out upon his
+wedding suit!' and with that a sweetmeat struck me in the face.
+Another and another followed, covering me with flour and comfits. This
+was the last straw. For a moment, forgetting where I was, I turned
+upon them, red and furious, every hair in my moustachios bristling.
+The next, the full sense of my impotence and of the folly of
+resentment prevailed with me, and, dropping my head upon my breast, I
+rushed from the room.
+
+I believe that the younger among them followed me, and that the cry of
+'Old Clothes!' pursued me even to the door of my lodgings in the Rue
+de la Coutellerie. But in the misery of the moment, and my strong
+desire to be within doors and alone, I barely noticed this, and am not
+certain whether it was so or not.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                         THE KING OF NAVARRE.
+
+
+I have already referred to the danger with which the alliance between
+Henry the Third and the League menaced us, an alliance whereof the
+news, it was said, had blanched the King of Navarre's moustache in a
+single night. Notwithstanding this, the Court had never shown itself
+more frolicsome or more free from care than at the time of which I am
+speaking; even the lack of money seemed for the moment forgotten. One
+amusement followed another, and though, without doubt, something was
+doing under the surface--for the wiser of his foes held our prince in
+particular dread when he seemed most deeply sunk in pleasure--to the
+outward eye St. Jean d'Angely appeared to be given over to enjoyment
+from one end to the other.
+
+The stir and bustle of the Court reached me even in my garret, and
+contributed to make that Christmas, which fell on a Sunday, a trial
+almost beyond sufferance. All day long the rattle of hoofs on the
+pavement, and the laughter of riders bent on diversion, came up to me,
+making the hard stool seem harder, the bare walls more bare, and
+increasing a hundredfold the solitary gloom in which I sat. For as
+sunshine deepens the shadows which fall athwart it, and no silence is
+like that which follows the explosion of a mine, so sadness and
+poverty are never more intolerable than when hope and wealth rub
+elbows with them.
+
+True, the great sermon which M. d'Amours preached in the market-house
+on the morning of Christmas-day cheered me, as it cheered all the more
+sober spirits. I was present myself, sitting in an obscure corner of
+the building, and heard the famous prediction, which was so soon to be
+fulfilled. 'Sire,' said the preacher, turning to the King, of Navarre,
+and referring, with the boldness that ever characterised that great
+man and noble Christian, to the attempt then being made to exclude the
+prince from the succession--'Sire, what God at your birth gave you man
+cannot take away. A little while, a little patience, and you shall
+cause us to preach beyond the Loire! With you for our Joshua we shall
+cross the Jordan, and in the Promised Land the Church shall be set
+up.'
+
+Words so brave, and so well adapted to encourage the Huguenots in the
+crisis through which their affairs were then passing, charmed all
+hearers; save indeed, those--and they were few--who, being devoted to
+the Vicomte de Turenne, disliked, though they could not controvert,
+this public acknowledgment of the King of Navarre as the Huguenot
+leader. The pleasure of those present was evinced in a hundred ways,
+and to such an extent that even I returned to my chamber soothed and
+exalted, and found, in dreaming of the speedy triumph of the cause,
+some compensation for my own ill-fortune.
+
+As the day wore on, however, and the evening brought no change, but
+presented to me the same dreary prospect with which morning had made
+me familiar, I confess without shame that my heart sank once more,
+particularly as I saw that I should be forced in a day or two to sell
+either my remaining horse or some part of my equipment as essential; a
+step which I could not contemplate without feelings of the utmost
+despair. In this state of mind I was adding up by the light of a
+solitary candle the few coins I had left, when I heard footsteps
+ascending the stairs. I made them out to be the steps of two persons,
+and was still lost in conjectures who they might be, when a hand
+knocked gently at my door.
+
+Fearing another trick, I did not at once open, the more as there was
+something stealthy and insinuating in the knock. Thereupon my visitors
+held a whispered consultation; then they, knocked again. I asked
+loudly who was there, but to this they did not choose to give any
+answer, while I, on my part, determined not to open until they did.
+The door was strong, and I smiled grimly at the thought that this time
+they would have their trouble for their pains.
+
+To my surprise, however, they did not desist, and go away, as I
+expected, but continued to knock at intervals and whisper much between
+times. More than once they called me softly by name and bade me open,
+but as they steadily refrained from saying who they were, I sat still.
+Occasionally I heard them laugh, but under their breath as it were;
+and persuaded by this that they were bent on a frolic, I might have
+persisted in my silence until midnight, which was not more than two
+hours off, had not a slight sound, as of a rat gnawing behind the
+wainscot, drawn my attention to the door. Raising my candle and
+shading my eyes I espied something small and bright protruding beneath
+it, and sprang up, thinking they were about to prise it in. To my
+surprise, however, I could discover, on taking the candle to the
+threshold, nothing more threatening than a couple of gold livres,
+which had been thrust through the crevice between the door and the
+floor.
+
+My astonishment may be conceived. I stood for full a minute staring at
+the coins, the candle in my hand. Then, reflecting that the young
+sparks at the Court would be very unlikely to spend such a sum on a
+jest, I hesitated no longer, but putting down the candle, drew the
+bolt of the door, purposing to confer with my visitors outside. In
+this, however, I was disappointed, for the moment the door was open
+they pushed forcibly past me and, entering the room pell-mell, bade me
+by signs to close the door again.
+
+I did so suspiciously, and without averting my eyes from my visitors.
+Great were my embarrassment and confusion, therefore, when, the door
+being shut, they dropped their cloaks one after the other, and I saw
+before me M. du Mornay and the well-known figure of the King of
+Navarre.
+
+They seemed so much diverted, looking at one another and laughing,
+that for a moment I thought some chance resemblance deceived me, and
+that here were my jokers again. Hence while a man might count ten I
+stood staring; and the king was the first to speak. 'We have made no
+mistake, Du Mornay, have we?' he said, casting a laughing glance at
+me.
+
+'No, sire,' Du Mornay answered. 'This is the Sieur de Marsac, the
+gentleman whom I mentioned to you.'
+
+I hastened, confused, wondering, and with a hundred apologies, to pay
+my respects to the king. He speedily cut me short, however, saying,
+with an air of much kindness, 'Of Marsac, in Brittany, I think, sir?'
+
+'The same, sire.'
+
+'Then you are of the family of Bonne?'
+
+'I am the last survivor of that family, sire,' I answered
+respectfully.
+
+'It has played its part,' he rejoined. And therewith he took his seat
+on my stool with an easy grace which charmed me. 'Your motto is
+"_Bonne foi_," is it not? And Marsac, if I remember rightly, is not
+far from Rennes, on the Vilaine?'
+
+I answered that it Was, adding, with a full heart, that it grieved me
+to be compelled to receive so great a prince in so poor a lodging.
+
+'Well, I confess,' Du Mornay struck in, looking carelessly round him,
+'you have a queer taste, M. de Marsac, in the arrangement of your
+furniture. You--'
+
+'Mornay!' the king cried sharply.
+
+'Sire?'
+
+'Chut! your elbow is in the candle. Beware of it!'
+
+But I well understood him. If my heart had been full before, it
+overflowed now. Poverty is not so shameful as the shifts to which it
+drives men. I had been compelled some days before, in order to make as
+good a show as possible--since it is the undoubted duty of a gentleman
+to hide his nakedness from impertinent eyes, and especially from the
+eyes of the _canaille_, who are wont to judge from externals--to
+remove such of my furniture and equipage as remained to that side of
+the room, which was visible from without when the door was open. This
+left the farther side of the room vacant and bare. To anyone within
+doors the artifice was, of course, apparent, and I am bound to say
+that M. du Mornay's words brought the blood to my brow.
+
+I rejoiced, however, a moment later that he had uttered them; for
+without them I might never have known, or known so early, the kindness
+of heart and singular quickness of apprehension which ever
+distinguished the king, my master. So, in my heart, I began to call
+him from that hour.
+
+The King of Navarre was at this time thirty-five years old, his hair
+brown, his complexion ruddy, his moustache, on one side at least,
+beginning to turn grey. His features, which Nature had cast in a harsh
+and imperious mould, were relieved by a constant sparkle and animation
+such as I have never seen in any other man, but in him became ever
+more conspicuous in gloomy and perilous times. Inured to danger from
+his earliest youth, he had come to enjoy it as others a festival,
+hailing its advent with a reckless gaiety which astonished even brave
+men, and led others to think him the least prudent of mankind. Yet
+such he was not: nay, he was the opposite of this. Never did Marshal
+of France make more careful dispositions for a battle--albeit once in
+it he bore himself like any captain of horse--nor ever did Du Mornay
+himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of
+affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while
+they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his
+adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only
+from a shallow nature, found when it was too late that they had been
+outwitted by him whom they contemptuously styled the Prince of Béarn,
+a man a hundredfold more astute than themselves, and master alike of
+pen and sword.
+
+Much of this, which all the world now knows, I learned afterwards. At
+the moment I could think of little save the king's kindness; to which
+he added by insisting that I should sit on the bed while we talked.
+'You wonder, M. de Marsac,' he said, 'what brings me here, and why I
+have come to you instead of sending for you? Still more, perhaps, why
+I have come to you at night and with such precautions? I will tell
+you. But first, that my coming may not fill you with false hopes, let
+me say frankly, that though I may relieve your present necessities,
+whether you fall into the plan I am going to mention, or not, I cannot
+take you into my service; wherein, indeed, every post is doubly
+filled. Du Mornay mentioned your name to me, but in fairness to others
+I had to answer that I could do nothing.'
+
+I am bound to confess that this strange exordium dashed hopes which
+had already risen to a high pitch. Recovering myself as quickly as
+possible, however, I murmured that the honour of a visit from the King
+of Navarre was sufficient happiness for me.
+
+'Nay, but that honour I must take from you' he replied, smiling;
+'though I see that you would make an excellent courtier--far better
+than Du Mornay here, who never in his life made so pretty a speech.
+For I must lay my commands on you to keep this visit a secret, M. de
+Marsac. Should but the slightest whisper of it get abroad, your
+usefulness, as far as I am concerned, would be gone, and gone for
+good!'
+
+So remarkable a statement filled me with wonder I could scarcely
+disguise. It was with difficulty I found words to assure the king that
+his commands should be faithfully obeyed.
+
+'Of that I am sure,' he answered with the utmost kindness. 'Were I
+not, and sure, too, from what I am told of your gallantry when my
+cousin took Brouage, that you are a man of deeds rather than words, I
+should not be here with the proposition I am going to lay before you.
+It is this. I can give you no hope of public employment, M. de Marsac,
+but I can offer you an adventure--if adventures be to your taste--as
+dangerous and as thankless as any Amadis ever undertook.'
+
+'As thankless, sire?' I stammered, doubting if I had heard aright, the
+expression was so strange.
+
+'As thankless,' he answered, his keen eyes seeming to read my soul. 'I
+am frank with you, you see, sir,' he continued, carelessly. 'I can
+suggest this adventure--it is for the good of the State--I can do no
+more. The King of Navarre cannot appear in it, nor can he protect you.
+Succeed or fail in it, you stand alone. The only promise I make is,
+that if it ever be safe for me to acknowledge the act, I will reward
+the doer.'
+
+He paused, and for a few moments I stared at him in sheer amazement.
+What did he mean? Were he and the other real figures, or was I
+dreaming?
+
+'Do you understand?' he asked at length, with a touch of impatience.
+
+'Yes, sire, I think I do,' I murmured, very certain in truth and
+reality that I did not.
+
+'What do you say, then--yes or no?' he rejoined. 'Will you undertake
+the adventure, or would you hear more before you make up your mind?'
+
+I hesitated. Had I been a younger man by ten years I should doubtless
+have cried assent there and then, having been all my life ready enough
+to embark on such enterprises as offered a chance of distinction. But
+something in the strangeness of the king's preface, although I had it
+in my heart to die for him, gave me check, and I answered, with an air
+of great humility, 'You will think me but a poor courtier now, sire,
+yet he is a fool who jumps into a ditch without measuring the depth. I
+would fain, if I may say it without disrespect, hear all that you can
+tell me.'
+
+'Then I fear,' he answered quickly, 'if you would have more light on
+the matter, my friend, you must get another candle.'
+
+I started, he spoke so abruptly; but perceiving that the candle had
+indeed burned down to the socket, I rose, with many apologies, and
+fetched another from the cupboard. It did not occur to me at the
+moment, though it did later, that the king had purposely sought this
+opportunity of consulting with his companion. I merely remarked, when
+I returned to my place on the bed, that they were sitting a little
+nearer one another, and that the king eyed me before he spoke--though
+he still swung one foot carelessly in the air--with close attention.
+
+'I speak to you, of course, sir,' he presently went on, 'in
+confidence, believing you to be an honourable as well as a brave man.
+That which I wish you to do is briefly, and in a word, to carry off a
+lady. Nay,' he added quickly, with a laughing grimace, 'have no fear!
+She is no sweetheart of mine, nor should I go to my grave friend here
+did I need assistance of that kind. Henry of Bourbon, I pray God, will
+always be able to free his own lady-love. This is a State affair, and
+a matter of quite another character, though we cannot at present
+entrust you with the meaning of it.'
+
+I bowed in silence, feeling somewhat chilled and perplexed, as who
+would not, having such an invitation before him? I had anticipated an
+affair with men only--a secret assault or a petard expedition. But
+seeing the bareness of my room, and the honour the king was doing me,
+I felt I had no choice, and I answered, 'That being the case, sire, I
+am wholly at your service.'
+
+'That is well,' he answered briskly, though methought he looked at Du
+Mornay reproachfully, as doubting his commendation of me. 'But will
+you say the same,' he continued, removing his eyes to me, and speaking
+slowly, as though he would try me, 'when I tell you that the lady to
+be carried off is the ward of the Vicomte de Turenne, whose arm is
+well-nigh as long as my own, and who would fain make it longer; who
+never travels, as he told me yesterday, with less than fifty
+gentlemen, and has a thousand arquebusiers in his pay? Is the
+adventure still to your liking, M. de Marsac, now that you know that?'
+
+'It is more to my liking, sire,' I answered stoutly.
+
+'Understand this too,' he rejoined. 'It is essential that this lady,
+who is at present confined in the Vicomte's house at Chizé, should be
+released; but it is equally essential that there should be no breach
+between the Vicomte and myself. Therefore the affair must be the work
+of an independent man, who has never been in my service, nor in any
+way connected with me. If captured, you pay the penalty without
+recourse to me.'
+
+'I fully understand, sire,' I answered.
+
+'Ventre Saint Gris!' he cried, breaking into a low laugh. 'I swear the
+man is more afraid of the lady than he is of the Vicomte! That is not
+the way of most of our Court.'
+
+Du Mornay, who had been sitting nursing his knee in silence, pursed up
+his lips, though it was easy to see that he was well content with the
+king's approbation. He now intervened. 'With your permission, sire,'
+he said, 'I will let this gentleman know the details.'
+
+'Do, my friend,' the king answered. 'And be short, for if we are here
+much longer I shall be missed, and in a twinkling the Court will have
+found me a new mistress.'
+
+He spoke in jest and with a laugh, but I saw Du Mornay start at the
+words, as though they were little to his liking; and I learned
+afterwards that the Court was really much exercised at this time with
+the question who would be the next favourite, the king's passion for
+the Countess de la Guiche being evidently on the wane, and that which
+he presently evinced for Madame de Guercheville being as yet a matter
+of conjecture.
+
+Du Mornay took no overt notice of the king's words, however, but
+proceeded to give me my directions. 'Chizé, which you know by name,'
+he said, 'is six leagues from here. Mademoiselle de la Vire is
+confined in the northwest room, on the first-floor, overlooking the
+park. More I cannot tell you, except that her woman's name is
+Fanchette, and that she is to be trusted. The house is well guarded,
+and you will need four or five men. There are plenty of cut-throats to
+be hired, only see, M. de Marsac, that they are such as you can
+manage, and that Mademoiselle takes no hurt among them. Have horses in
+waiting, and the moment you have released the lady ride north with her
+as fast as her strength will permit. Indeed, you must not spare her,
+if Turenne be on your heels. You should be across the Loire in sixty
+hours after leaving Chizé.'
+
+'Across the Loire?' I exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+'Yes, sir, across the Loire,' he replied, with some sternness. 'Your
+task, be good enough to understand, is to convoy Mademoiselle de la
+Vire with all speed to Blois. There, attracting as little notice as
+may be, you will inquire for the Baron de Rosny at the Bleeding Heart,
+in the Rue de St. Denys. He will take charge of the lady, or direct
+you how to dispose of her, and your task will then be accomplished.
+You follow me?'
+
+'Perfectly,' I answered, speaking in my turn with some dryness. 'But
+Mademoiselle I understand is young. What if she will not accompany me,
+a stranger, entering her room at night, and by the window?'
+
+'That has been thought of was the answer. He turned to the King of
+Navarre, who, after a moment's search, produced a small object from
+his pouch. This he gave to his companion, and the latter transferred
+it to me. I took it with curiosity. It was the half of a gold carolus,
+the broken edge of the coin being rough and jagged. 'Show that to
+Mademoiselle, my friend,' Du Mornay continued, 'and she will accompany
+you. She has the other half.'
+
+'But be careful,' Henry added eagerly, 'to make no mention, even to
+her, of the King of Navarre. You mark me, M. de Marsac! If you have at
+any time occasion to speak of me, you may have the honour of calling
+me _your friend_, and referring to me always in the same manner.'
+
+This he said with so gracious an air that I was charmed, and thought
+myself happy indeed to be addressed in this wise by a prince whose
+name was already so glorious. Nor was my satisfaction diminished when
+his companion drew out a bag containing, as he told me, three hundred
+crowns in gold, and placed it in my hands, bidding me defray therefrom
+the cost of the journey. 'Be careful, however,' he added earnestly,
+'to avoid, in hiring your men, any appearance of wealth, lest the
+adventure seem to be suggested by some outside person; instead of
+being dictated by the desperate state of your own fortunes. Promise
+rather than give, so far as that will avail. And for what you must
+give, let each livre seem to be the last in your pouch.'
+
+Henry nodded assent. 'Excellent advice!' he muttered, rising and
+drawing on his cloak, 'such as you ever give me, Mornay, and I as
+seldom take--more's the pity! But, after all, of little avail without
+this.' He lifted my sword from the table as he spoke, and weighed it
+in his hand. 'A pretty tool,' he continued, turning suddenly and
+looking me very closely in the face. 'A very pretty tool. Were I in
+your place, M. de Marsac, I would see that it hung loose in the
+scabbard. Ay, and more, man, use it!' he added, sinking his voice and
+sticking out his chin, while his grey eyes, looking ever closer into
+mine, seemed to grow cold and hard as steel. 'Use it to the last, for
+if you fall into Turenne's hands, God help you! I cannot!'
+
+'If I am taken, sire,' I answered, trembling, but not with fear, 'my
+fate be on my own head.'
+
+I saw the king's eyes soften at that, and his face change so swiftly
+that I scarce knew him for the same man. He let the weapon drop with a
+clash on the table. 'Ventre Saint Gris!' he exclaimed with a strange
+thrill of yearning in his tone. 'I swear by God, I would I were in
+your shoes, sir. To strike a blow or two with no care what came of it.
+To take the road with a good horse and a good sword, and see what
+fortune would send. To be rid of all this statecraft and protocolling,
+and never to issue another declaration in this world, but just to be
+for once a Gentleman of France, with all to win and nothing to lose
+save the love of my lady! Ah! Mornay, would it not be sweet to leave
+all this fret and fume, and ride away to the green woods by Coarraze?'
+
+'Certainly, if you prefer them to the Louvre, sire,' Du Mornay
+answered drily; while I stood, silent and amazed, before this strange
+man, who could so suddenly change from grave to gay, and one moment
+spoke so sagely, and the next like any wild lad in his teens.
+'Certainly,' he answered, 'if that be your choice, sire; and if you
+think that even there the Duke of Guise will leave you in peace.
+Turenne, I am sure, will be glad to hear of your decision. Doubtless
+he will be elected Protector of the Churches. Nay, sire, for shame!'
+Du Mornay continued, almost with sternness. 'Would you leave France,
+which at odd times I have heard you say you loved, to shift for
+herself? Would you deprive her of the only man who does love her for
+her own sake?'
+
+'Well, well, but she is such a fickle sweetheart, my friend,' the king
+answered, laughing, the side glance of his eye on me. 'Never was one
+so coy or so hard to clip! And, besides, has not the Pope divorced
+us?'
+
+'The Pope! A fig for the Pope!' Du Mornay rejoined with impatient
+heat. 'What has he to do with France? An impertinent meddler, and an
+Italian to boot! I would he and all the brood of them were sunk a
+hundred fathoms deep in the sea. But, meantime, I would send him a
+text to digest.'
+
+'_Exemplum?_' said the king.
+
+'Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.'
+
+'Amen!' quoth Henry softly. 'And France is a fair and comely bride.'
+
+After that he kept such a silence, falling as it seemed to me into a
+brown study, that he went away without so much as bidding me farewell,
+or being conscious, as far as I could tell, of my presence. Du Mornay
+exchanged a few words with me, to assure himself that I understood
+what I had to do, and then, with many kind expressions, which I did
+not fail to treasure up and con over in the times that were coming,
+hastened downstairs after his master.
+
+My joy when I found myself alone may be conceived. Yet was it no
+ecstasy, but a sober exhilaration; such as stirred my pulses indeed,
+and bade me once more face the world with a firm eye and an assured
+brow, but was far from holding out before me a troubadour's palace or
+any dazzling prospect. The longer I dwelt on the interview, the more
+clearly I saw the truth. As the glamour which Henry's presence and
+singular kindness had cast over me began to lose some of its power, I
+recognised more and more surely why he had come to me. It was not out
+of any special favour for one whom he knew by report only, if at all
+by name; but because he had need of a man poor, and therefore
+reckless, middle-aged (of which comes discretion), obscure--therefore
+a safe instrument; to crown all, a gentleman, seeing that both a
+secret and a woman were in question.
+
+Withal I wondered too. Looking from the bag of money on the table to
+the broken coin in my hand, I scarcely knew which to admire more: the
+confidence which entrusted the one to a man broken and beggared, or
+the courage of the gentlewoman who should accompany me on the faith of
+the other.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                           BOOT AND SADDLE.
+
+
+As was natural, I meditated deeply and far into the night on the
+difficulties of the task entrusted to me. I saw that it fell into two
+parts: the release of the lady, and her safe conduct to Blois, a
+distance of sixty leagues. The release I thought it probable I could
+effect single-handed, or with one companion only; but in the troubled
+condition of the country at this time, more particularly on both sides
+of the Loire, I scarcely saw how I could ensure a lady's safety on the
+road northwards unless I had with me at least five swords.
+
+To get these together at a few hours' notice promised to be no easy
+task; although the presence of the Court of Navarre had filled St.
+Jean with a crowd of adventurers. Yet the king's command was urgent,
+and at some sacrifice, even at some risk, must be obeyed. Pressed by
+these considerations, I could think of no better man to begin with
+than Fresnoy.
+
+His character was bad, and he had long forfeited such claim as he had
+ever possessed--I believe it was a misty one? on the distaff side--to
+gentility. But the same cause which had rendered me destitute--I mean
+the death of the Prince of Condé--had stripped him to the last rag;
+and this, perhaps, inclining me to serve him, I was the more quick to
+see his merits. I knew him already for a hardy, reckless man, very
+capable of striking a shrewd blow. I gave him credit for being trusty,
+as long as his duty jumped with his interest.
+
+Accordingly, as soon as it was light, having fed and groomed the Cid,
+which was always the first employment of my day, I set out in search
+of Fresnoy, and was presently lucky enough to find him taking his
+morning draught outside the 'Three Pigeons,' a little inn not far from
+the north gate. It was more than a fortnight since I had set eyes on
+him, and the lapse of time had worked so great a change for the worse
+in him that, forgetting my own shabbiness, I looked at him askance, as
+doubting the wisdom of enlisting one who bore so plainly the marks of
+poverty and dissipation. His great face--he was a large man--had
+suffered recent ill-usage, and was swollen and discoloured, one eye
+being as good as closed. He was unshaven, his hair was ill-kempt, his
+doublet unfastened at the throat, and torn and stained besides.
+Despite the cold--for the morning was sharp and frosty, though free
+from wind--there were half a dozen packmen drinking and squabbling
+before the inn, while the beasts they drove quenched their thirst at
+the trough. But these men seemed with one accord to leave him in
+possession of the bench at which he sat; nor did I wonder much at this
+when I saw the morose and savage glance which he shot at me as I
+approached. Whether he read my first impressions in my face, or for
+some other reason felt distaste for my company, I could not determine.
+But, undeterred by his behaviour, I sat down beside him and called for
+wine.
+
+He nodded sulkily in answer to my greeting, and cast a half-shamed,
+half-angry look at me out of the corners of his eyes. 'You need not
+look at me as though I were a dog,' he muttered presently. 'You are
+not so very spruce yourself, my friend. But I suppose you have grown
+proud since you got that fat appointment at Court!' And he laughed out
+loud, so that I confess I was in two minds whether I should not force
+the jest down his ugly throat.
+
+However I restrained myself, though my cheeks burned. 'You have heard
+about it, then,' I said, striving to speak indifferently.
+
+'Who has not?' he said, laughing with his lips, though his eyes were
+far from merry. 'The Sieur de Marsac's appointment! Ha! ha! Why,
+man----'
+
+'Enough of it now!' I exclaimed. And I dare say I writhed on my seat.
+'As far as I am concerned the jest is a stale one, sir, and does not
+amuse me.'
+
+'But it amuses me,' he rejoined with a grin.
+
+'Let it be, nevertheless,' I said; and I think he read a warning in my
+eyes. 'I have come to speak to you upon another matter.'
+
+He did not refuse to listen, but threw one leg over the other, and
+looking up at the inn-sign began to whistle in a rude, offensive
+manner. Still, having an object in view, I controlled myself and
+continued. 'It is this, my friend: money is not very plentiful at
+present with either of us.'
+
+Before I could say any more he turned on me savagely, and with a loud
+oath thrust his bloated face, flushed with passion, close to mine.
+'Now look here, M. de Marsac! he cried violently, 'once for all, it is
+no good! I have not got the money, and I cannot pay it. I said a
+fortnight ago, when you lent it, that you should have it this week.
+Well,' slapping his hand on the bench, 'I have not got it, and it is
+no good beginning upon me. You cannot have it, and that is flat!'
+
+'Damn the money!' I cried.
+
+'What?' he exclaimed, scarcely believing his ears.
+
+'Let the money be!' I repeated fiercely. 'Do you hear? I have not come
+about it. I am here to offer you work--good, well-paid work--if you
+will enlist with me and play me fair, Fresnoy.'
+
+'Play fair!' he cried with an oath.
+
+'There, there,' I said, 'I am willing to let bygones be bygones if you
+are. The point is, that I have an adventure on hand, and, wanting
+help, can pay you for it.'
+
+He looked at me cunningly, his eye travelling over each rent and darn
+in my doublet. 'I will help you fast enough,' he said at last. 'But I
+should like to see the money first.'
+
+'You shall,' I answered.
+
+'Then I am with you, my friend. Count on me till death!' he cried,
+rising and laying his hand in mine with a boisterous frankness which
+did not deceive me into trusting him far. 'And now, whose is the
+affair, and what is it?'
+
+'The affair is mine,' I said coldly. 'It is to carry off a lady.'
+
+He whistled and looked me over again, an impudent leer in his eyes. 'A
+lady?' he exclaimed. 'Umph! I could understand a young spark going in
+for such--but that's your affair. Who is it?'
+
+'That is my affair, too,' I answered coolly, disgusted by the man's
+venality and meanness, and fully persuaded that I must trust him no
+farther than the length of my sword. 'All I want you to do, M.
+Fresnoy,' I continued stiffly, 'is to place yourself at my disposal
+and under my orders for ten days. I will find you a horse and pay
+you--the enterprise is a hazardous one, and I take that into
+account--two gold crowns a day, and ten more if we succeed in reaching
+a place of safety.'
+
+'Such a place as----'
+
+'Never mind that,' I replied. 'The question is, do you accept?'
+
+He looked down sullenly, and I could see he was greatly angered by my
+determination to keep the matter to myself. 'Am I to know no more than
+that?' he asked, digging the point of his scabbard again and again
+into the ground.
+
+'No more,' I answered firmly. 'I am bent on a desperate attempt to
+mend my fortunes before they fall as low as yours; and that is as much
+as I mean to tell living man. If you are loth to risk your life with
+your eyes shut, say so, and I will go to someone else.'
+
+But he was not in a position, as I well knew, to refuse such an offer,
+and presently he accepted it with a fresh semblance of heartiness. I
+told him I should want four troopers to escort us, and these he
+offered to procure, saying that he knew just the knaves to suit me. I
+bade him hire two only, however, being too wise to put myself
+altogether in his hands; and then, having given him money to buy
+himself a horse--I made it a term that the men should bring their
+own--and named a rendezvous for the first hour after noon, I parted
+from him and went rather sadly away.
+
+For I began to see that the king had not underrated the dangers of an
+enterprise on which none but desperate men and such as were down in
+the world could be expected to embark. Seeing this, and also a thing
+which followed clearly from it--that I should have as much to fear
+from my own company as from the enemy--I looked forward with little
+hope to a journey during every day and every hour of which I must bear
+a growing weight of fear and responsibility.
+
+It was too late to turn back, however, and I went about my
+preparations, if with little cheerfulness, at least with steadfast
+purpose. I had my sword ground and my pistols put in order by the
+cutler over whom I lodged, and who performed this last office for me
+with the same goodwill which had characterised all his dealings with
+me. I sought out and hired a couple of stout fellows whom I believed
+to be indifferently honest, but who possessed the advantage of having
+horses; and besides bought two led horses myself for mademoiselle and
+her woman. Such other equipments as were absolutely necessary I
+purchased, reducing my stock of money in this way to two hundred and
+ten crowns. How to dispose of this sum so that it might be safe and
+yet at my command was a question which greatly exercised me. In the
+end I had recourse to my friend the cutler, who suggested hiding a
+hundred crowns of it in my cap, and deftly contrived a place for the
+purpose. This, the cap being lined with steel, was a matter of no
+great difficulty. A second hundred I sewed up in the stuffing of my
+saddle, placing the remainder in my pouch for present necessities.
+
+A small rain was falling in the streets when, a little after noon, I
+started with my two knaves behind me and made for the north gate. So
+many were moving this way and the other that we passed unnoticed, and
+might have done so had we numbered six swords instead of three. When
+we reached the rendezvous, a mile beyond the gate, we found Fresnoy
+already there, taking shelter in the lee of a big holly-tree. He had
+four horsemen with him, and on our appearance rode forward to meet us,
+crying heartily, 'Welcome, M. le Capitaine!'
+
+'Welcome, certainly,' I answered, pulling the Cid up sharply, and
+holding off from him. 'But who are these, M. Fresnoy?' and I pointed
+with my riding-cane to his four companions.
+
+He tried to pass the matter off with a laugh. 'Oh! these?' he said.
+'That is soon explained. The Evangelists would not be divided, so I
+brought them all--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--thinking it likely
+you might fail to secure your men. And I will warrant them for four as
+gallant boys as you will ever find behind you!'
+
+They were certainly four as arrant ruffians as I had ever seen before
+me, and I saw I must not hesitate. 'Two or none, M. Fresnoy,' I said
+firmly. 'I gave you a commission for two, and two I will take--Matthew
+and Mark, or Luke and John, as you please.'
+
+''Tis a pity to break the party,' said he, scowling.
+
+'If that be all,' I retorted, 'one of my men is called John. And we
+will dub the other Luke, if that will mend the matter.'
+
+'The Prince of Condé,' he muttered sullenly, 'employed these men.'
+
+'The Prince of Condé employed some queer people sometimes, M.
+Fresnoy,' I answered, looking him straight between the eyes, 'as we
+all must. A truce to this, if you please. We will take Matthew and
+Mark. The other two be good enough to dismiss.'
+
+He seemed to waver for a moment, as if he had a mind to disobey, but
+in the end, thinking better of it, he bade the men return; and as I
+complimented each of them with a piece of silver, they went off, after
+some swearing, in tolerably good humour. Thereon Fresnoy was for
+taking the road at once, but having no mind to be followed, I gave the
+word to wait until the two were out of sight.
+
+I think, as we sat our horses in the rain, the holly-bush not being
+large enough to shelter us all, we were as sorry a band as ever set
+out to rescue a lady; nor was it without pain that I looked round and
+saw myself reduced to command such people. There was scarcely one
+whole un-patched garment among us, and three of my squires had but a
+spur apiece. To make up for this deficiency we mustered two black
+eyes, Fresnoy's included, and a broken nose. Matthew's nag lacked a
+tail, and, more remarkable still, its rider, as I presently
+discovered, was stone-deaf; while Mark's sword was innocent of a
+scabbard, and his bridle was plain rope. One thing, indeed, I observed
+with pleasure. The two men who had come with me looked askance at the
+two who had come with Fresnoy, and these returned the stare with
+interest. On this division and on the length of my sword I based all
+my hopes of safety and of something more. On it I was about to stake,
+not my own life only--which was no great thing, seeing what my
+prospects were--but the life and honour of a woman, young, helpless,
+and as yet unknown to me.
+
+Weighed down as I was by these considerations, I had to bear the
+additional burden of hiding my fears and suspicions under a cheerful
+demeanour. I made a short speech to my following, who one and all
+responded by swearing to stand by me to the death. I then gave the
+word, and we started, Fresnoy and I leading the way, Luke and John
+with the led horses following, and the other two bringing up the rear.
+
+The rain continuing to fall and the country in this part being dreary
+and monotonous, even in fair weather, I felt my spirits sink still
+lower as the day advanced. The responsibility I was going to incur
+assumed more serious proportions each time I scanned my following;
+while Fresnoy, plying me with perpetual questions respecting my plans,
+was as uneasy a companion as my worst enemy could have wished me.
+
+'Come!' he grumbled presently, when we had covered four leagues or so,
+'you have not told me yet, sieur, where we stay to-night. You are
+travelling so slowly that----'
+
+'I am saving the horses,' I answered shortly. 'We shall do a long day
+to-morrow.'
+
+'Yours looks fit for a week of days,' he sneered, with an evil look at
+my Sardinian, which was, indeed, in better case than its master. 'It
+is sleek enough, any way!'
+
+'It is as good as it looks,' I answered, a little nettled by his tone.
+
+'There is a better here,' he responded.
+
+'I don't see it,' I said. I had already eyed the nags all round, and
+assured myself that, ugly and blemished as they were, they were up to
+their work. But I had discerned no special merit among them. I looked
+them over again now, and came to the same conclusion--that, except the
+led horses, which I had chosen with some care, there was nothing among
+them to vie with the Cid, either in speed or looks. I told Fresnoy so.
+
+'Would you like to try?' he said tauntingly.
+
+I laughed, adding, 'If you think I am going to tire our horses by
+racing them, with such work as we have before us, you are mistaken,
+Fresnoy. I am not a boy, you know.'
+
+'There need be no question of racing,' he answered more quietly. 'You
+have only to get on that rat-tailed bay of Matthew's to feel its paces
+and say I am right.'
+
+I looked at the bay, a bald-faced, fiddle-headed horse, and saw that,
+with no signs of breeding, it was still a big-boned animal with good
+shoulders and powerful hips. I thought it possible Fresnoy might be
+right, and if so, and the bay's manners were tolerable, it might do
+for mademoiselle better than the horse I had chosen. At any rate, if
+we had a fast horse among us, it was well to know the fact, so bidding
+Matthew change with me, and be careful of the Cid, I mounted the bay,
+and soon discovered that its paces were easy and promised speed, while
+its manners seemed as good as even a timid rider could desire.
+
+Our road at the time lay across a flat desolate heath, dotted here and
+there with thorn-bushes; the track being broken and stony, extended
+more than a score of yards in width, through travellers straying to
+this side and that to escape the worst places. Fresnoy and I, in
+making the change, had fallen slightly behind the other three, and
+were riding abreast of Matthew on the Cid.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'was I not right?'
+
+'In part,' I answered. 'The horse is better than its looks.'
+
+'Like many others,' he rejoined, a spark of resentment in his
+tone--'men as well as horses, M. de Marsac. But what do you say? Shall
+we canter on a little and overtake the others?'
+
+Thinking it well to do so, I assented readily, and we started
+together. We had ridden, however, no more than a hundred yards, and I
+was only beginning to extend the bay, when Fresnoy, slightly drawing
+rein, turned in his saddle and looked back. The next moment he cried,
+'Hallo! what is this? Those fellows are not following us, are they?'
+
+I turned sharply to look. At that moment, without falter or warning,
+the bay horse went down under me as if shot dead, throwing me half a
+dozen yards over its head; and that so suddenly that I had no time to
+raise my arms, but, falling heavily on my head and shoulder, lost
+consciousness.
+
+I have had many falls, but no other to vie with that in utter
+unexpectedness. When I recovered my senses I found myself leaning,
+giddy and sick, against the bole of an old thorn-tree. Fresnoy and
+Matthew supported me on either side, and asked me how I found myself;
+while the other three men, their forms black against the stormy
+evening sky, sat their horses a few paces in front of me. I was too
+much dazed at first to see more, and this only in a mechanical
+fashion; but gradually, my brain grew clearer, and I advanced from
+wondering who the strangers round me were to recognising them, and
+finally to remembering what had happened to me.
+
+'Is the horse hurt?' I muttered as soon as I could speak.
+
+'Not a whit,' Fresnoy answered, chuckling, or I was much mistaken. 'I
+am afraid you came off the worse of the two, captain.'
+
+He exchanged a look with the men on horseback as he spoke, and in a
+dull fashion I fancied I saw them smile. One even laughed, and another
+turned in his saddle as if to hide his face. I had a vague general
+sense that there was some joke on foot in which I had no part. But I
+was too much shaken at the moment to be curious, and gratefully
+accepted the offer of one of the men to fetch me a little water. While
+he was away the rest stood round me, the same look of ill-concealed
+drollery on their faces. Fresnoy alone talked, speaking volubly of the
+accident, pouring out expressions of sympathy and cursing the road,
+the horse, and the wintry light until the water came; when, much
+refreshed by the draught, I managed to climb to the Cid's saddle and
+plod slowly onwards with them.
+
+'A bad beginning,' Fresnoy said presently, stealing a sly glance at me
+as we jogged along side by side, Chizé half a league before us, and
+darkness not far off.
+
+By this time, however, I was myself again, save for a little humming
+in the head, and, shrugging my shoulders, I told him so. 'All's well
+that ends well,' I added. 'Not that it was a pleasant fall, or that I
+wish to have such another.'
+
+'No, I should think not,' he answered. His face was turned from me,
+but I fancied I heard him snigger.
+
+Something, which may have been a vague suspicion, led me a moment
+later to put my hand into my pouch. Then I understood. I understood
+too well. The sharp surprise of the discovery was such that
+involuntarily I drove my spurs into the Cid, and the horse sprang
+forward.
+
+'What is the matter?' Fresnoy asked.
+
+'The matter?' I echoed, my hand still at my belt, feeling--feeling
+hopelessly.
+
+'Yes, what is it?' he asked, a brazen smile on his rascally face.
+
+I looked at him, my brow as red as fire. 'Oh! nothing--nothing,' I
+said. 'Let us trot on.'
+
+In truth I had discovered that, taking advantage of my helplessness,
+the scoundrels had robbed me, while I lay insensible, of every gold
+crown in my purse! Nor was this all, or the worst, for I saw at once
+that in doing so they had effected something which was a thousandfold
+more ominous and formidable--established against me that secret
+understanding which it was my especial aim to prevent, and on the
+absence of which I had been counting. Nay, I saw that for my very life
+I had only my friend the cutler and my own prudence to thank, seeing
+that these rogues would certainly have murdered me without scruple had
+they succeeded in finding the bulk of my money. Baffled in this, while
+still persuaded that I had other resources, they had stopped short of
+that villany--or this memoir had never been written. They had kindly
+permitted me to live until a more favourable opportunity of enriching
+themselves at my expense should put them in possession of my last
+crown!
+
+Though I was sufficiently master of myself to refrain from complaints
+which I felt must be useless, and from menaces which it has never been
+my habit to utter unless I had also the power to put them into
+execution, it must not be imagined that I did not, as I rode on by
+Fresnoy's side, feel my position acutely or see how absurd a figure I
+cut in my dual character of leader and dupe. Indeed, the reflection
+that, being in this perilous position, I was about to stake another's
+safety as well as my own, made me feel the need of a few minutes'
+thought so urgent that I determined to gain them, even at the risk of
+leaving my men at liberty to plot further mischief. Coming almost
+immediately afterwards within sight of the turrets of the Château of
+Chizé, I told Fresnoy that we should lie the night at the village; and
+bade him take the men on and secure quarters at the inn. Attacked
+instantly by suspicion and curiosity, he demurred stoutly to leaving
+me, and might have persisted in his refusal had I not pulled up, and
+clearly shown him that I would have my own way in this case or come to
+an open breach. He shrank, as I expected, from the latter alternative,
+and, bidding me a sullen adieu, trotted on with his troop. I waited
+until they were out of sight, and then, turning the Cid's head,
+crossed a small brook which divided the road from the chase, and
+choosing a ride which seemed to pierce the wood in the direction of
+the Château, proceeded down it, keeping a sharp look-out on either
+hand.
+
+It was then, my thoughts turning to the lady who was now so near, and
+who, noble, rich, and a stranger, seemed, as I approached her, not the
+least formidable of the embarrassments before me--it was then that I
+made a discovery which sent a cold shiver through my frame, and in a
+moment swept all memory of my paltry ten crowns from my head. Ten
+crowns! Alas! I had lost that which was worth all my crowns put
+together--the broken coin which the King of Navarre had entrusted to
+me, and which formed my sole credential, my only means of persuading
+Mademoiselle de la Vire that I came from him. I had put it in my
+pouch, and of course, though the loss of it only came home to my mind
+now, it had disappeared with the rest.
+
+I drew rein and sat for some time motionless, the image of despair.
+The wind which stirred the naked boughs overhead, and whirled the dead
+leaves in volleys past my feet, and died away at last among the
+whispering bracken, met nowhere with wretchedness greater, I believe,
+than was mine at that moment.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                       MADEMOISELLE DE LA VIRE.
+
+
+My first desperate impulse on discovering the magnitude of my loss was
+to ride after the knaves and demand the token at the sword's point.
+The certainty, however, of finding them united, and the difficulty of
+saying which of the five possessed what I wanted, led me to reject
+this plan as I grew cooler; and since I did not dream, even in this
+dilemma, of abandoning the expedition, the only alternative seemed to
+be to act as if I still had the broken coin, and essay what a frank
+explanation might effect when the time came.
+
+After some wretched, very wretched, moments of debate, I resolved to
+adopt this course; and, for the present, thinking I might gain some
+knowledge of the surroundings while the light lasted, I pushed
+cautiously forward through the trees and came in less than five
+minutes within sight of a corner of the chateau, which I found to be a
+modern building of the time of Henry II., raised, like the houses of
+that time, for pleasure rather than defence, and decorated with many
+handsome casements and tourelles. Despite this, it wore, as I saw it,
+a grey and desolate air, due in part to the loneliness of the
+situation and the lateness of the hour; and in part, I think, to the
+smallness of the household maintained, for no one was visible on the
+terrace or at the windows. The rain dripped from the trees, which on
+two sides pressed so closely on the house as almost to darken the
+rooms, and everything I saw encouraged me to hope that mademoiselle's
+wishes would second my entreaties, and incline her to lend a ready ear
+to my story.
+
+The appearance of the house, indeed, was a strong inducement to me to
+proceed, for it was impossible to believe that a young lady, a
+kinswoman of the gay and vivacious Turenne, and already introduced to
+the pleasures of the Court, would elect of her own free will to spend
+the winter in so dreary a solitude.
+
+Taking advantage of the last moments of daylight, I rode cautiously
+round the house, and, keeping in the shadow of the trees, had no
+difficulty in discovering at the north-east corner the balcony of
+which I had been told. It was semicircular in shape, with a stone
+balustrade, and hung some fifteen feet above a terraced walk which ran
+below it, and was separated from the chase by a low sunk fence.
+
+I was surprised to observe that, notwithstanding the rain and the
+coldness of the evening, the window which gave upon this balcony was
+open. Nor was this all. Luck was in store for me at last. I had not
+gazed at the window more than a minute, calculating its height and
+other particulars, when, to my great joy, a female figure, closely
+hooded, stepped out and stood looking up at the sky. I was too far off
+to be able to discern by that uncertain light whether this was
+Mademoiselle de la Vire or her woman; but the attitude was so clearly
+one of dejection and despondency, that I felt sure it was either one
+or the other. Determined not to let the opportunity slip, I dismounted
+hastily and, leaving the Cid loose, advanced on foot until I stood
+within half-a-dozen paces of the window.
+
+At that point the watcher became aware of me. She started back, but
+did not withdraw. Still peering down at me, she called softly to some
+one inside the chamber, and immediately a second figure, taller and
+stouter, appeared. I had already doffed my cap, and I now, in a low
+voice, begged to know if I had the honour of speaking to Mademoiselle
+de la Vire. In the growing darkness it was impossible to distinguish
+faces.
+
+'Hush!' the stouter figure muttered in a tone of warning. 'Speak
+lower. Who are you, and what do you here?'
+
+'I am here,' I answered respectfully, 'commissioned by a friend of the
+lady I have named, to convey her to a place of safety.'
+
+'Mondieu!' was the sharp answer. 'Now? It is impossible.'
+
+'No,' I murmured, 'not now, but to-night. The moon rises at half-past
+two. My horses need rest and food. At three I will be below this
+window with the means of escape, if mademoiselle choose to use them.'
+
+I felt that they were staring at me through the dusk, as though they
+would read my breast. 'Your name, sir?' the shorter figure murmured at
+last, after a pause which was full of suspense and excitement.
+
+'I do not think my name of much import at present, Mademoiselle,' I
+answered, reluctant to proclaim myself a stranger. 'When----'
+
+'Your name, your name, sir!' she repeated imperiously, and I heard her
+little heel rap upon the stone floor of the balcony.
+
+'Gaston de Marsac,' I answered unwillingly.
+
+They both started, and cried out together. 'Impossible!' the last
+speaker exclaimed, amazement and anger in her tone. 'This is a jest,
+sir. This----'
+
+What more she would have said I was left to guess, for at that moment
+her attendant--I had no doubt now which was mademoiselle and which
+Fanchette--suddenly laid her hand on her mistress's mouth and pointed
+to the room behind them. A second's suspense, and with a warning
+gesture the two turned and disappeared through the window.
+
+I lost no time in regaining the shelter of the trees; and concluding,
+though I was far from satisfied with the interview, that I could do
+nothing more now, but might rather, by loitering in the neighbourhood,
+awaken suspicion, I remounted and made for the highway and the
+village, where I found my men in noisy occupation of the inn, a poor
+place, with unglazed windows, and a fire in the middle of the earthen
+floor. My first care was to stable the Cid in a shed at the back,
+where I provided for its wants as far as I could with the aid of a
+half-naked boy, who seemed to be in hiding there.
+
+This done, I returned to the front of the house, having pretty well
+made up my mind how I would set about the task before me. As I passed
+one of the windows, which was partially closed by a rude curtain made
+of old sacks, I stopped to look in. Fresnoy and his four rascals were
+seated on blocks of wood round the hearth, talking loudly and
+fiercely, and ruffling it as if the fire and the room were their own.
+A pedlar, seated on his goods in one corner, was eyeing them with
+evident fear and suspicion; in another corner two children had taken
+refuge under a donkey, which some fowls had chosen as a roosting-pole.
+The innkeeper, a sturdy fellow, with a great club in his fist, sat
+moodily at the foot of a ladder which led to the loft above, while a
+slatternly woman, who was going to and fro getting supper, seemed in
+equal terror of her guests and her good man.
+
+Confirmed by what I saw, and assured that the villains were ripe for
+any mischief, and, if not checked, would speedily be beyond my
+control, I noisily flung the door open and entered. Fresnoy looked up
+with a sneer as I did so, and one of the men laughed. The others
+became silent; but no one moved or greeted me. Without a moment's
+hesitation I stepped to the nearest fellow and, with a sturdy kick,
+sent his log from under him. 'Rise, you rascal, when I enter!' I
+cried, giving vent to the anger I had long felt. 'And you, too!' and
+with a second kick I sent his neighbour's stool flying also, and
+administered a couple of cuts with my riding-cane across the man's
+shoulders. 'Have you no manners, sirrah? Across with you, and leave
+this side to your betters.'
+
+The two rose, snarling and feeling for their weapons, and for a moment
+stood facing me, looking now at me and now askance at Fresnoy. But as
+he gave no sign, and their comrades only laughed, the men's courage
+failed them at the pinch, and with a very poor grace they sneaked over
+to the other side of the fire and sat there scowling.
+
+I seated myself beside their leader. 'This gentleman and I will eat
+here,' I cried to the man at the foot of the ladder. 'Bid your wife
+lay for us, and of the best you have; and do you give those knaves
+their provender where the smell of their greasy jackets will not come
+between us and our victuals.'
+
+The man came forward, glad enough, as I saw, to discover any one in
+authority, and very civilly began to draw wine and place a board for
+us, while his wife filled our platters from the black pot which hung
+over the fire. Fresnoy's face meanwhile wore the amused smile of one
+who comprehended my motives, but felt sufficiently sure of his
+position and influence with his followers to be indifferent to my
+proceedings. I presently showed him, however, that I had not yet done
+with him. Our table was laid in obedience to my orders at such a
+distance from the men that they could not overhear our talk, and
+by-and-by I leant over to him.
+
+'M. Fresnoy,' I said, 'you are in danger of forgetting one thing, I
+fancy, which it behoves you to remember.'
+
+'What?' he muttered, scarcely deigning to look up at me.
+
+'That you have to do with Gaston de Marsac,' I answered quietly. 'I am
+making, as I told you this morning, a last attempt to recruit my
+fortunes, and I will let no man--no man, do you understand, M.
+Fresnoy?--thwart me and go harmless.'
+
+'Who wishes to thwart you?' he asked impudently.
+
+'You,' I answered unmoved, helping myself, as I spoke, from the roll
+of black bread which lay beside me. 'You robbed me this afternoon; I
+passed it over. You encouraged those men to be insolent; I passed it
+over. But let me tell you this. If you fail me to-night, on the honour
+of a gentleman, M. Fresnoy, I will run you through as I would spit a
+lark.'
+
+'Will you? But two can play at that game,' he cried, rising nimbly
+from his stool. 'Still better six! Don't you think, M. de Marsac, you
+had better have waited?'
+
+'I think you had better hear one word more,' I answered coolly,
+keeping my seat, 'before you appeal to your fellows there.'
+
+'Well,' he said, still standing, 'what is it?'
+
+'Nay,' I replied, after once more pointing to his stool in vain, 'if
+you prefer to take my orders standing, well and good.'
+
+'Your orders?' he shrieked, growing suddenly excited.
+
+'Yes, my orders!' I retorted, rising as suddenly to my feet and
+hitching forward my sword. 'My orders, sir,' I repeated fiercely, 'or,
+if you dispute my right to command as well as to pay this party, let
+us decide the question here and now--you and I, foot to foot, M.
+Fresnoy.'
+
+The quarrel flashed up so suddenly, though I had been preparing it all
+along, that no one moved. The woman, indeed, fell back to her
+children, but the rest looked on open-mouthed. Had they stirred, or
+had a moment's hurly-burly heated his blood, I doubt not Fresnoy would
+have taken up my challenge, for he did not lack hardihood. But as it
+was, face to face with me in the silence, his courage failed him. He
+paused, glowering at me uncertainly, and did not speak.
+
+'Well,' I said, 'don't you think that if I pay I ought to give orders,
+sir?'
+
+'Who wishes to oppose your orders?' he muttered, drinking off a
+bumper, and sitting down with an air of impudent bravado, assumed to
+hide his discomfiture.
+
+'If you don't, no one else does,' I answered. 'So that is settled.
+Landlord, some more wine.'
+
+He was very sulky with me for a while, fingering his glass in silence
+and scowling at the table. He had enough gentility to feel the
+humiliation to which he had exposed himself, and a sufficiency of wit
+to understand that that moment's hesitation had cost him the
+allegiance of his fellow-ruffians. I hastened, therefore, to set him
+at his ease by explaining my plans for the night, and presently
+succeeded beyond my hopes; for when he heard who the lady was whom I
+proposed to carry off, and that she was lying that evening at the
+Château de Chizé, his surprise swept away the last trace of
+resentment. He stared at me as at a maniac.
+
+'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed. 'Do you know what you are doing, Sieur?'
+
+'I think so,' I answered.
+
+'Do you know to whom the chateau belongs?'
+
+'To the Vicomte de Turenne.'
+
+'And that Mademoiselle de la Vire is his relation?'
+
+'Yes,' I said.
+
+'Mon Dieu!' he exclaimed again. And he looked at me open-mouthed.
+
+'What is the matter?' I asked, though I had an uneasy consciousness
+that I knew--that I knew very well.
+
+'Man, he will crush you as I crush this hat!' he answered in great
+excitement. 'As easily. Who do you think will protect you from him in
+a private quarrel of this kind? Navarre? France? our good man? Not one
+of them. You had better steal the king's crown jewels--he is weak; or
+Guise's last plot--he is generous at times; or Navarre's last
+sweetheart--he is as easy as an old shoe. You had better have to do
+with all these together, I tell you, than touch Turenne's ewe-lambs,
+unless your aim be to be broken on the wheel! Mon Dieu, yes!'
+
+'I am much obliged to you for your advice,' I said stiffly, 'but the
+die is cast. My mind is made up. On the other hand, if you are afraid,
+M. Fresnoy----'
+
+'I am afraid; very much afraid,' he answered frankly.
+
+'Still your name need not be brought into the matter,' I replied, 'I
+will take the responsibility. I will let them know my name here at the
+inn, where, doubtless, inquiries will be made.'
+
+'To be sure, that is something,' he answered thoughtfully. 'Well, it
+is an ugly business, but I am in for it. You want me to go with you a
+little after two, do you? and the others to be in the saddle at three?
+Is that it?'
+
+I assented, pleased to find him so far acquiescent; and in this way,
+talking the details over more than once, we settled our course,
+arranging to fly by way of Poitiers and Tours. Of course I did not
+tell him why I selected Blois as our refuge, nor what was my purpose
+there; though he pressed me more than once on the point, and grew
+thoughtful and somewhat gloomy when I continually evaded it. A little
+after eight we retired to the loft to sleep; our men remaining below
+round the fire and snoring so merrily as almost to shake the crazy old
+building. The host was charged to sit up and call us as soon as the
+moon rose, but, as it turned out, I might as well have taken this
+office on myself, for between excitement and distrust I slept little,
+and was wide awake when I heard his step on the ladder and knew it was
+time to rise.
+
+I was up in a moment, and Fresnoy was little behind me; so that,
+losing no time in talk, we were mounted and on the road, each with a
+spare horse at his knee, before the moon was well above the trees.
+Once in the Chase we found it necessary to proceed on foot, but, the
+distance being short, we presently emerged without misadventure and
+stood opposite to the chateau, the upper part of which shone cold and
+white in the moon's rays.
+
+There was something so solemn in the aspect of the place, the night
+being fine and the sky without a cloud, that I stood for a minute awed
+and impressed, the sense of the responsibility I was here to accept
+strong upon me. In that short space of time all the dangers before me,
+as well the common risks of the road as the vengeance of Turenne and
+the turbulence of my own men, presented themselves to my mind, and
+made a last appeal to me to turn back from an enterprise so foolhardy.
+The blood in a man's veins runs low and slow at that hour, and mine
+was chilled by lack of sleep and the wintry air. It needed the
+remembrance of my solitary condition, of my past spent in straits and
+failure, of the grey hairs which swept my cheek, of the sword which I
+had long used honourably, if with little profit to myself; it needed
+the thought of all these things to restore me to courage and myself.
+
+I judged at a later period that my companion was affected in somewhat
+the same way; for, as I stooped to press home the pegs which I had
+brought to tether the horses, he laid his hand on my arm. Glancing up
+to see what he wanted, I was struck by the wild look in his face
+(which the moonlight invested with a peculiar mottled pallor), and
+particularly in his eyes, which glittered like a madman's. He tried to
+speak, but seemed to find a difficulty in doing so; and I had to
+question him roughly before he found his tongue. When he did speak, it
+was only to implore me in an odd, excited manner to give up the
+expedition and return.
+
+'What, now?' I said, surprised. 'Now we are here, Fresnoy?'
+
+'Ay, give it up!' he cried, shaking me almost fiercely by the arm.
+'Give it up, man! It will end badly, I tell you! In God's name, give
+it up, and go home before worse comes of it.'
+
+'Whatever comes of it,' I answered coldly, shaking his grasp from my
+arm, and wondering much at this sudden fit of cowardice, 'I go on.
+You, M. Fresnoy, may do as you please!'
+
+He started and drew back from me; but he did not reply, nor did he
+speak again. When I presently went off to fetch a ladder, of the
+position of which I had made a note during the afternoon, he
+accompanied me, and followed me back in the same dull silence to the
+walk below the balcony. I had looked more than once and eagerly at
+mademoiselle's window without any light or movement in that quarter
+rewarding my vigilance; but, undeterred by this, which might mean
+either that my plot was known, or that Mademoiselle de la Vire
+distrusted me, I set the ladder softly against the balcony, which was
+in deep shadow, and paused only to give Fresnoy his last instructions.
+These were simply to stand on guard at the foot of the ladder and
+defend it in case of surprise; so that, whatever happened inside the
+chateau, my retreat by the window might not be cut off.
+
+Then I went cautiously up the ladder, and, with my sheathed sword in
+my left hand, stepped over the balustrade. Taking one pace forward,
+with fingers outstretched, I felt the leaded panes of the window and
+tapped softly.
+
+As softly the casement gave way, and I followed it. A hand which I
+could see but not feel was laid on mine. All was darkness in the room,
+and before me, but the hand guided me two paces forward, then by a
+sudden pressure bade me stand. I heard the sound of a curtain being
+drawn behind me, and the next moment the cover of a rushlight was
+removed, and a feeble but sufficient light filled the chamber.
+
+I comprehended that the drawing of that curtain over the window had
+cut off my retreat as effectually as if a door had been closed behind
+me. But distrust and suspicion gave way the next moment to the natural
+embarrassment of the man who finds himself in a false position and
+knows he can escape from it only by an awkward explanation.
+
+The room in which I found myself was long, narrow, and low in the
+ceiling; and being hung with some dark stuff which swallowed up the
+light, terminated funereally at the farther end in the still deeper
+gloom of an alcove. Two or three huge chests, one bearing the remnants
+of a meal, stood against the walls. The middle of the floor was
+covered with a strip of coarse matting, on which a small table, a
+chair and foot-rest, and a couple of stools had place, with some
+smaller articles which lay scattered round a pair of half-filled
+saddle-bags. The slighter and smaller of the two figures I had seen
+stood beside the table, wearing a mask and riding cloak; and by her
+silent manner of gazing at me, as well as by a cold, disdainful
+bearing, which neither her mask nor cloak could hide, did more to
+chill and discomfit me than even my own knowledge that I had lost the
+pass-key which should have admitted me to her confidence.
+
+The stouter figure of the afternoon turned out to be a red-cheeked,
+sturdy woman of thirty, with bright black eyes and a manner which lost
+nothing of its fierce impatience when she came a little later to
+address me. All my ideas of Fanchette were upset by the appearance of
+this woman, who, rustic in her speech and ways, seemed more like a
+duenna than the waiting-maid of a court beauty, and better fitted to
+guard a wayward damsel than to aid her in such an escapade as we had
+in hand.
+
+She stood slightly behind her mistress, her coarse red hand resting on
+the back of the chair from which mademoiselle had apparently risen on
+my entrance. For a few seconds, which seemed minutes to me, we stood
+gazing at one another in silence, mademoiselle acknowledging my bow by
+a slight movement of the head. Then, seeing that they waited for me to
+speak, I did so.
+
+'Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I murmured doubtfully.
+
+She bent her head again; that was all.
+
+I strove to speak with confidence. 'You will pardon me, mademoiselle,'
+I said, 'if I seem to be abrupt, but time is everything. The horses
+are standing within a hundred yards of the house, and all the
+preparations for your night are made. If we leave now, we can do so
+without opposition. The delay even of an hour may lead to discovery.'
+
+For answer she laughed behind her mask--laughed coldly and ironically.
+'You go too fast, sir,' she said, her low clear voice matching the
+laugh and rousing a feeling almost of anger in my heart. 'I do not
+know you; or, rather, I know nothing of you which should entitle you
+to interfere in my affairs. You are too quick to presume, sir. You say
+you come from a friend. From whom?'
+
+'From one whom I am proud to call by that title,' I answered with what
+patience I might.
+
+'His name!'
+
+I answered firmly that I could not give it. And I eyed her steadily as
+I did so.
+
+This for the moment seemed to baffle and confuse her, but after a
+pause she continued: 'Where do you propose to take me, sir?'
+
+'To Blois; to the lodging of a friend of my friend.'
+
+'You speak bravely,' she replied with a faint sneer. 'You have made
+some great friends lately it seems! But you bring me some letter, no
+doubt; at least some sign, some token, some warranty, that you are the
+person you pretend to be, M. de Marsac?'
+
+'The truth is, mademoiselle,' I stammered, 'I must explain. I should
+tell you----'
+
+'Nay, sir,' she cried impetuously, 'there is no need of telling. If
+you have what I say, show it me! It is you who lose time. Let us have
+no more words!'
+
+I had used very few words, and, God knows, was not in the mind to use
+many; but, being in the wrong, I had no answer to make except the
+truth, and that humbly. 'I had such a token as you mention,
+mademoiselle,' I said, 'no farther back than this afternoon, in the
+shape of half a gold coin, entrusted to me by my friend. But, to my
+shame I say it, it was stolen from me a few hours back.'
+
+'Stolen from you!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Yes, mademoiselle; and for that reason I cannot show it,' I answered.
+
+'You cannot show it? And you dare to come to me without it!' she
+cried, speaking with a vehemence which fairly startled me, prepared as
+I was for reproaches. 'You come to me! You!' she continued. And with
+that, scarcely stopping to take breath, she loaded me with abuse;
+calling me impertinent, a meddler, and a hundred other things, which I
+now blush to recall, and displaying in all a passion which even in her
+attendant would have surprised me, but in one so slight and seemingly
+delicate, overwhelmed and confounded me. In fault as I was, I could
+not understand the peculiar bitterness she displayed, or the
+contemptuous force of her language, and I stared at her in silent
+wonder until, of her own accord, she supplied the key to her feelings.
+In a fresh outburst of rage she snatched off her mask, and to my
+astonishment I saw before me the young maid of honour whom I had
+encountered in the King of Navarre's ante-chamber, and whom I had been
+so unfortunate as to expose to the raillery of Mathurine.
+
+'Who has paid you, sir,' she continued, clenching her small hands
+and speaking with tears of anger in her eyes, 'to make me the
+laughing-stock of the Court? It was bad enough when I thought you the
+proper agent of those to whom I have a right to look for aid! It was
+bad enough when I thought myself forced, through their inconsiderate
+choice, to decide between an odious imprisonment and the ridicule to
+which your intervention must expose me! But that you should have
+dared, of your own notion, to follow me, you, the butt of the
+Court----'
+
+'Mademoiselle!' I cried.
+
+'A needy, out-at-elbows adventurer!' she persisted, triumphing in her
+cruelty. 'It exceeds all bearing! It is not to be suffered! It----'
+
+'Nay, mademoiselle; you shall hear me!' I cried, with a sternness
+which at last stopped her. 'Granted I am poor, I am still a gentleman;
+yes, mademoiselle,' I continued, firmly, 'a gentleman, and the last of
+a family which has spoken with yours on equal terms. And I claim to be
+heard. I swear that when I came here to-night I believed you to be a
+perfect stranger! I was unaware that I had ever seen you, unaware that
+I had ever met you before.'
+
+'Then why did you come?' she said viciously.
+
+'I was engaged to come by those whom you have mentioned, and there,
+and there only am I in fault. They entrusted to me a token which I
+have lost. For that I crave your pardon.'
+
+'You have need to,' she answered bitterly, yet with a changed
+countenance, or I was mistaken, 'if your story be true, sir.'
+
+'Ay, that you have!' the woman beside her echoed. 'Hoity toity,
+indeed! Here is a fuss about nothing. You call yourself a gentleman,
+and wear such a doublet as----'
+
+'Peace, Fanchette!' mademoiselle said imperiously. And then for a
+moment she stood silent, eyeing me intently, her lips trembling with
+excitement and two red spots burning in her cheeks. It was clear from
+her dress and other things that she had made up her mind to fly had
+the token been forthcoming; and seeing this, and knowing how unwilling
+a young girl is to forego her own way, I still had some hopes that she
+might not persevere in her distrust and refusal. And so it turned out.
+
+Her manner had changed to one of quiet scorn when she next spoke. 'You
+defend yourself skilfully, sir,' she said, drumming with her fingers
+on the table and eyeing me steadfastly. 'But can you give me any
+reason for the person you name making choice of such a messenger?'
+
+'Yes,' I answered, boldly. 'That he may not be suspected of conniving
+at your escape.'
+
+'Oh!' she cried, with a spark of her former passion. 'Then it is to be
+put about that Mademoiselle de la Vire had fled from Chizé with M. de
+Marsac, is it? I thought that!'
+
+'Through the assistance of M. de Marsac,' I retorted, correcting her
+coldly. 'It is for you, mademoiselle,' I continued, 'to weigh that
+disadvantage against the unpleasantness of remaining here. It only
+remains for me to ask you to decide quickly. Time presses, and I have
+stayed here too long already.'
+
+The words had barely passed my lips when they received unwelcome
+confirmation in the shape of a distant sound--the noisy closing of a
+door, which, clanging through the house at such an hour--I judged it
+to be after three o'clock--could scarcely mean anything but mischief.
+This noise was followed immediately, even while we stood listening
+with raised fingers, by other sounds--a muffled cry, and the tramp of
+heavy footsteps in a distant passage. Mademoiselle looked at me, and I
+at her woman. 'The door!' I muttered. 'Is it locked?'
+
+'And bolted!' Fanchette answered; 'and a great chest set against it.
+Let them ramp; they will do no harm for a bit.'
+
+'Then you have still time, mademoiselle,' I whispered, retreating a
+step and laying my hand on the curtain before the window. Perhaps I
+affected greater coolness than I felt. 'It is not too late. If you
+choose to remain, well and good. I cannot help it. If, on the other
+hand, you decide to trust yourself to me, I swear, on the honour of a
+gentleman, to be worthy of the trust--to serve you truly and protect
+you to the last! I can say no more.'
+
+She trembled, looking from me to the door, on which some one had just
+begun to knock loudly. That seemed to decide her. Her lips apart, her
+eyes full of excitement, she turned hastily to Fanchette.
+
+'Ay, go if you like,' the woman answered doggedly, reading the meaning
+of her look. 'There cannot be a greater villain than the one we know
+of. But once started, heaven help us, for if he overtakes us we'll pay
+dearly for it!'
+
+The girl did not speak herself, but it was enough. The noise at the
+door increased each second, and began to be mingled with angry appeals
+to Fanchette to open, and with threats in case she delayed. I cut the
+matter short by snatching up one of the saddle-bags--the other we left
+behind--and flung back the curtain which covered the window. At the
+same time the woman dashed out the light--a timely precaution--and
+throwing open the casement I stepped on to the balcony, the others
+following me closely.
+
+The moon had risen high, and flooding with light the small open space
+about the house enabled me to see clearly all round the foot of the
+ladder. To my surprise Fresnoy was not at his post, nor was he to be
+seen anywhere; but as, at the moment I observed this, an outcry away
+to my left, at the rear of the chateau, came to my ears, and announced
+that the danger was no longer confined to the interior of the house, I
+concluded that he had gone that way to intercept the attack. Without
+more, therefore, I began to descend as quickly as I could, my sword
+under one arm and the bag under the other.
+
+I was half-way down, and mademoiselle was already stepping on to the
+ladder to follow, when I heard footsteps below, and saw him run up,
+his sword in his hand.
+
+'Quick, Fresnoy!' I cried. 'To the horses and unfasten them! Quick!'
+
+I slid down the rest of the way, thinking he had gone to do my
+bidding. But my feet were scarcely on the ground when a tremendous
+blow in the side sent me staggering three paces from the ladder. The
+attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that but for the sight of
+Fresnoy's scowling face, wild with rage, at my shoulder, and the sound
+of his fierce breathing as he strove to release his sword, which had
+passed through my saddle-bag, I might never have known who struck the
+blow, or how narrow had been my escape.
+
+Fortunately the knowledge did come to me in time, and before he freed
+his blade; and it nerved my hand. To draw my blade at such close
+quarters was impossible, but, dropping the bag which had saved my
+life, I dashed my hilt twice in his face with such violence that he
+fell backwards and lay on the turf, a dark stain growing and spreading
+on his upturned face.
+
+It was scarcely done before the women reached the foot of the ladder
+and stood beside me. 'Quick!' I cried to them, 'or they will be upon
+us.' Seizing mademoiselle's hand, just as half-a-dozen men came
+running round the corner of the house, I jumped with her down the
+haha, and, urging her to her utmost speed, dashed across the open
+ground which lay between us and the belt of trees. Once in the shelter
+of the latter, where our movements were hidden from view, I had still
+to free the horses and mount mademoiselle and her woman, and this in
+haste. But my companions' admirable coolness and presence of mind, and
+the objection which our pursuers, who did not know our numbers, felt
+to leaving the open ground, enabled us to do all with comparative
+ease. I sprang on the Cid (it has always been my habit to teach my
+horse to stand for me, nor do I know any accomplishment more
+serviceable at a pinch), and giving Fresnoy's grey a cut over the
+flanks which despatched it ahead, led the way down the ride by which I
+had gained the chateau in the afternoon. I knew it to be level and
+clear of trees, and the fact that we chose it might throw our pursuers
+off the track for a time, by leading them to think we had taken the
+south road instead of that through the village.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V.
+
+                          THE ROAD TO BLOIS.
+
+
+We gained the road without let or hindrance, whence a sharp burst in
+the moonlight soon brought us to the village. Through this we swept on
+to the inn, almost running over the four evangelists, whom we found
+standing at the door ready for the saddle. I bade them, in a quick
+peremptory tone, to get to horse, and was overjoyed to see them obey
+without demur or word of Fresnoy. In another minute, with a great
+clatter of hoofs, we sprang clear of the hamlet, and were well on the
+road to Melle, with Poitiers some thirteen leagues before us. I looked
+back, and thought I discerned lights moving in the direction of the
+chateau; but the dawn was still two hours off, and the moonlight left
+me in doubt whether these were real or the creatures of my own fearful
+fancy.
+
+I remember, three years before this time, on the occasion of the
+famous retreat from Angers--when the Prince of Condé had involved his
+army beyond the Loire, and saw himself, in the impossibility of
+recrossing the river, compelled to take ship for England, leaving
+every one to shift for himself--I well remember on that occasion
+riding, alone and pistol in hand, through more than thirty miles of
+the enemy's country without drawing rein. But my anxieties were then
+confined to the four shoes of my horse. The dangers to which I was
+exposed at every ford and cross road were such as are inseparable from
+a campaign, and breed in generous hearts only a fierce pleasure,
+rarely to be otherwise enjoyed. And though I then rode warily, and
+where I could not carry terror, had all to fear myself, there was
+nothing secret or underhand in my business.
+
+It was very different now. During the first few hours of our flight
+from Chizé I experienced a painful excitement, an alarm, a feverish
+anxiety to get forward, which was new to me; which oppressed my
+spirits to the very ground; which led me to take every sound borne to
+us on the wind for the sound of pursuit, transforming the clang of a
+hammer on the anvil into the ring of swords, and the voices of my own
+men into those of the pursuers. It was in vain mademoiselle rode with
+a free hand, and leaping such obstacles as lay in our way, gave
+promise of courage and endurance beyond my expectations. I could think
+of nothing but the three long days before us, with twenty-four hours
+to every day, and each hour fraught with a hundred chances of disaster
+and ruin.
+
+In fact, the longer I considered our position--and as we pounded
+along, now splashing through a founderous hollow, now stumbling as we
+wound over a stony shoulder, I had ample time to reflect upon it--the
+greater seemed the difficulties before us. The loss of Fresnoy, while
+it freed me from some embarrassment, meant also the loss of a good
+sword, and we had mustered only too few before. The country which lay
+between us and the Loire, being the borderland between our party and
+the League, had been laid desolate so often as to be abandoned to
+pillage and disorder of every kind. The peasants had flocked into the
+towns. Their places had been taken by bands of robbers and deserters
+from both parties, who haunted the ruined villages about Poitiers, and
+preyed upon all who dared to pass. To add to our perils, the royal
+army under the Duke of Nevers was reported to be moving slowly
+southward, not very far to the left of our road; while a Huguenot
+expedition against Niort was also in progress within a few leagues of
+us.
+
+With four staunch and trustworthy comrades at my back, I might have
+faced even this situation with a smile and a light heart; but the
+knowledge that my four knaves might mutiny at any moment, or, worse
+still, rid themselves of me and all restraint by a single treacherous
+blow such as Fresnoy had aimed at me, filled me with an ever-present
+dread; which it taxed my utmost energies to hide from them, and which
+I strove in vain to conceal from mademoiselle's keener vision.
+
+Whether it was this had an effect upon her, giving her a meaner
+opinion of me than that which I had for a while hoped she entertained,
+or that she began, now it was too late, to regret her flight and
+resent my part in it, I scarcely know; but from daybreak onwards she
+assumed an attitude of cold suspicion towards me, which was only less
+unpleasant than the scornful distance of her manner when she deigned,
+which was seldom, to address me.
+
+Not once did she allow me to forget that I was in her eyes a needy
+adventurer, paid by her friends to escort her to a place of safety,
+but without any claim to the smallest privilege of intimacy or
+equality. When I would have adjusted her saddle, she bade her woman
+come and hold up her skirt, that my hands might not touch its hem even
+by accident. And when I would have brought wine to her at Melle, where
+we stayed for twenty minutes, she called Fanchette to hand it to her.
+She rode for the most part in her mask; and with her woman. One good
+effect only her pride and reserve had; they impressed our men with a
+strong sense of her importance, and the danger to which any
+interference with her might expose them.
+
+The two men whom Fresnoy had enlisted I directed to ride a score of
+paces in advance. Luke and John I placed in the rear. In this manner I
+thought to keep them somewhat apart. For myself, I proposed to ride
+abreast of mademoiselle, but she made it so clear that my
+neighbourhood displeased her that I fell back, leaving her to ride
+with Fanchette; and contented myself with plodding at their heels, and
+striving to attach the later evangelists to my interests.
+
+We were so fortunate, despite my fears, as to find the road nearly
+deserted--as, alas, was much of the country on either side--and to
+meet none but small parties travelling along it; who were glad enough,
+seeing the villainous looks of our outriders, to give us a wide berth,
+and be quit of us for the fright. We skirted Lusignan, shunning the
+streets, but passing near enough for me to point out to mademoiselle
+the site of the famous tower built, according to tradition, by the
+fairy Melusina, and rased thirteen years back by the Leaguers. She
+received my information so frigidly, however, that I offered no more,
+but fell back shrugging my shoulders, and rode in silence, until, some
+two hours after noon, the city of Poitiers came into sight, lying
+within its circle of walls and towers on a low hill in the middle of a
+country clothed in summer with rich vineyards, but now brown and bare
+and cheerless to the eye.
+
+Fanchette turned and asked me abruptly if that were Poitiers.
+
+I answered that it was, but added that for certain reasons I proposed
+not to halt, but to lie at a village a league beyond the city, where
+there was a tolerable inn.
+
+'We shall do very well here,' the woman answered rudely. 'Any way, my
+lady will go no farther. She is tired and cold, and wet besides, and
+has gone far enough.'
+
+'Still,' I answered, nettled by the woman's familiarity, 'I think
+mademoiselle will change her mind when she hears my reasons for going
+farther.'
+
+'Mademoiselle does not wish to hear them, sir,' the lady replied
+herself, and very sharply.
+
+'Nevertheless, I think you had better hear them,' I persisted, turning
+to her respectfully. 'You see, mademoiselle----'
+
+'I see only one thing, sir,' she exclaimed, snatching off her mask and
+displaying a countenance beautiful indeed, but flushed for the moment
+with anger and impatience, 'that, whatever betides, I stay at Poitiers
+to-night.'
+
+'If it would content you to rest an hour?' I suggested gently.
+
+'It will not content me!' she rejoined with spirit. 'And let me tell
+you, sir,' she went on impetuously, 'once for all, that you take too
+much upon yourself. You are here to escort me, and to give orders to
+these ragamuffins, for they are nothing better, with whom you have
+thought fit to disgrace our company; but not to give orders to me or
+to control my movements. Confine yourself for the future, sir, to your
+duties, if you please.'
+
+'I desire only to obey you,' I answered, suppressing the angry
+feelings which rose in my breast, and speaking as coolly as lay in my
+power. 'But, as the first of my duties is to provide for your safety,
+I am determined to omit nothing which can conduce to that end. You
+have not considered that, if a party in pursuit of us reaches Poitiers
+to-night, search will be made for us in the city, and we shall be
+taken. If, on the other hand, we are known to have passed through, the
+hunt may go no farther; certainly will go no farther to-night.
+Therefore we must not, mademoiselle,' I added firmly, 'lie in Poitiers
+to-night.'
+
+'Sir,' she exclaimed, looking at me, her face crimson with wonder and
+indignation, 'do you dare to?'
+
+'I dare do my duty, mademoiselle,' I answered, plucking up a spirit,
+though my heart was sore. 'I am a man old enough to be your father,
+and with little to lose, or I had not been here. I care nothing what
+you think or what you say of me, provided I can do what I have
+undertaken to do and place you safely in the hands of your friends.
+But enough, mademoiselle, we are at the gate. If you will permit me, I
+will ride through the streets beside you. We shall so attract less
+attention.'
+
+Without waiting for a permission which she was very unlikely to give,
+I pushed my horse forward, and took my place beside her, signing to
+Fanchette to fall back. The maid obeyed, speechless with indignation;
+while mademoiselle flashed a scathing glance at me and looked round in
+helpless anger, as though it was in her mind to appeal against me even
+to the passers-by. But she thought better of it, and contenting
+herself with muttering the word 'Impertinent' put on her mask with
+fingers which trembled, I fancy, not a little.
+
+A small rain was falling and the afternoon was well advanced when we
+entered the town, but I noticed that, notwithstanding this, the
+streets presented a busy and animated appearance, being full of knots
+of people engaged in earnest talk. A bell was tolling somewhere, and
+near the cathedral a crowd of no little size was standing, listening
+to a man who seemed to be reading a placard or manifesto attached to
+the wall. In another place a soldier, wearing the crimson colours of
+the League, but splashed and stained as with recent travel, was
+holding forth to a breathless circle who seemed to hang upon his lips.
+A neighbouring corner sheltered a handful of priests who whispered
+together with gloomy faces. Many stared at us as we passed, and some
+would have spoken; but I rode steadily on, inviting no converse.
+Nevertheless at the north gate I got a rare fright; for, though it
+wanted a full half-hour of sunset, the porter was in the act of
+closing it. Seeing us, he waited grumbling until we came up, and then
+muttered, in answer to my remonstrance, something about queer times
+and wilful people having their way. I took little notice of what he
+said, however, being anxious only to get through the gate and leave as
+few traces of our passage as might be.
+
+As soon as we were outside the town I fell back, permitting Fanchette
+to take my place. For another league, a long and dreary one, we
+plodded on in silence, horses and men alike jaded and sullen, and the
+women scarcely able to keep their saddles for fatigue. At last, much
+to my relief, seeing that I began to fear I had taxed mademoiselle's
+strength too far, the long low buildings of the inn at which I
+proposed to stay came in sight, at the crossing of the road and river.
+The place looked blank and cheerless, for the dusk was thickening; but
+as we trailed one by one into the courtyard a stream of firelight
+burst on us from doors and windows, and a dozen sounds of life and
+comfort greeted our ears.
+
+Noticing that mademoiselle was benumbed and cramped with long sitting,
+I would have helped her to dismount; but she fiercely rejected my aid,
+and I had to content myself with requesting the landlord to assign the
+best accommodation he had to the lady and her attendant, and secure as
+much privacy for them as possible. The man assented very civilly and
+said all should be done; but I noticed that his eyes wandered while I
+talked, and that he seemed to have something on his mind. When he
+returned, after disposing of them, it came out.
+
+'Did you ever happen to see him, sir?' he asked with a sigh; yet was
+there a smug air of pleasure mingled with his melancholy.
+
+'See whom?' I answered, staring at him, for neither of us had
+mentioned any one.
+
+'The Duke, sir.'
+
+I stared again between wonder and suspicion. 'The Duke of Nevers is
+not in this part, is he?' I said slowly. 'I heard he was on the
+Brittany border, away to the westward.'
+
+'Mon Dieu!' my host exclaimed, raising his hands in astonishment. 'You
+have not heard, sir?'
+
+'I have heard nothing,' I answered impatiently.
+
+'You have not heard, sir, that the most puissant and illustrious lord
+the Duke of Guise is dead?'
+
+'M. de Guise dead? It is not true!' I cried astonished.
+
+He nodded, however, several times with an air of great importance,
+and seemed as if he would have gone on to give me some particulars.
+But, remembering, as I fancied, that he spoke in the hearing of
+half-a-dozen guests who sat about the great fire behind me, and had
+both eyes and ears open, he contented himself with shifting his towel
+to his other arm and adding only, 'Yes, sir, dead as any nail. The
+news came through here yesterday, and made a pretty stir. It happened
+at Blois the day but one before Christmas, if all be true.'
+
+I was thunderstruck. This was news which might change the face of
+France. 'How did it happen?' I asked.
+
+My host covered his mouth with his hand and coughed, and, privily
+twitching my sleeve, gave me to understand with some shamefacedness
+that he could not say more in public. I was about to make some excuse
+to retire with him, when a harsh voice, addressed apparently to me,
+caused me to turn sharply. I found at my elbow a tall thin-faced monk
+in the habit of the Jacobin order. He had risen from his seat beside
+the fire, and seemed to be labouring under great excitement.
+
+'Who asked how it happened?' he cried, rolling his eyes in a kind of
+frenzy, while still observant, or I was much mistaken, of his
+listeners. Is there a man in France to whom the tale has not been
+told? Is there?'
+
+'I will answer for one,' I replied, regarding him with little favour.
+'I have heard nothing.'
+
+'Then you shall! Listen!' he exclaimed, raising his right hand and
+brandishing it as though he denounced a person then present. 'Hear my
+accusation, made in the name of Mother Church and the saints against
+the arch hypocrite, the perjurer and assassin sitting in high places!
+He shall be Anathema Maranatha, for he has shed the blood of the holy
+and the pure, the chosen of Heaven! He shall go down to the pit, and
+that soon. The blood that he has shed shall be required of him, and
+that before he is one year older.'
+
+'Tut-tut. All that sounds very fine, good father,' I said, waxing
+impatient, and a little scornful; for I saw that he was one of those
+wandering and often crazy monks in whom the League found their most
+useful emissaries. 'But I should profit more by your gentle words, if
+I knew whom you were cursing.'
+
+'The man of blood!' he cried; 'through whom the last but not the least
+of God's saints and martyrs entered into glory on the Friday before
+Christmas.'
+
+Moved by such profanity, and judging him, notwithstanding the
+extravagance of his words and gestures, to be less mad than he seemed,
+and at least as much knave as fool, I bade him sternly have done with
+his cursing, and proceed to his story if he had one.
+
+He glowered at me for a moment, as though he were minded to launch his
+spiritual weapons at my head; but as I returned his glare with an
+unmoved eye--and my four rascals, who were as impatient as myself to
+learn the news, and had scarce more reverence for a shaven crown,
+began to murmur--he thought better of it, and cooling as suddenly as
+he had flamed up, lost no more time in satisfying our curiosity.
+
+It would ill become me, however, to set down the extravagant and often
+blasphemous harangue in which, styling M. de Guise the martyr of God,
+he told the story now so familiar--the story of that dark wintry
+morning at Blois, when the king's messenger, knocking early at the
+duke's door, bade him hurry, for the king wanted him. The story is
+trite enough now. When I heard it first in the inn on the Clain, it
+was all new and all marvellous.
+
+The monk, too, telling the story as if he had seen the events with his
+own eyes, omitted nothing which might impress his hearers. He told us
+how the duke received warning after warning, and answered in the very
+antechamber, 'He dare not!' How his blood, mysteriously advised of
+coming dissolution, grew chill, and his eye, wounded at Château
+Thierry, began to run, so that he had to send for the handkerchief he
+had forgotten to bring. He told us, even, how the duke drew his
+assassins up and down the chamber, how he cried for mercy, and how he
+died at last at the foot of the king's bed, and how the king, who had
+never dared to face him living, came and spurned him dead!
+
+There were pale faces round the fire when he ceased, and bent brows
+and lips hard pressed together. When he stood and cursed the King of
+France--cursing him openly by the name of Henry of Valois, a thing I
+had never looked to hear in France--though no one said 'Amen,' and all
+glanced over their shoulders, and our host pattered from the room as
+if he had seen a ghost, it seemed to be no man's duty to gainsay him.
+
+For myself, I was full of thoughts which it would have been unsafe to
+utter in that company or so near the Loire. I looked back sixteen
+years. Who but Henry of Guise had spurned the corpse of Coligny? And
+who but Henry of Valois had backed him in the act? Who but Henry of
+Guise had drenched Paris with blood, and who but Henry of Valois had
+ridden by his side? One 23rd of the month--a day never to be erased
+from France's annals--had purchased for him a term of greatness. A
+second 23rd saw him pay the price--saw his ashes cast secretly and by
+night no man knows where!
+
+Moved by such thoughts, and observing that the priest was going the
+round of the company collecting money for masses for the duke's soul,
+to which object I could neither give with a good conscience nor refuse
+without exciting suspicion, I slipped out; and finding a man of decent
+appearance talking with the landlord in a small room beside the
+kitchen, I called for a flask of the best wine, and by means of that
+introduction obtained my supper in their company.
+
+The stranger was a Norman horsedealer, returning home after disposing
+of his string. He seemed to be in a large way of business, and being
+of a bluff, independent spirit, as many of those Norman townsmen are,
+was inclined at first to treat me with more familiarity than respect;
+the fact of my nag, for which he would have chaffered, excelling my
+coat in quality, leading him to set me down as a steward or intendant.
+The pursuit of his trade, however, had brought him into connection
+with all classes of men, and he quickly perceived his mistake; and as
+he knew the provinces between the Seine and Loire to perfection, and
+made it part of his business to foresee the chances of peace and war,
+I obtained a great amount of information from him, and indeed
+conceived no little liking for him. He believed that the assassination
+of M. de Guise would alienate so much of France from the king that his
+majesty would have little left save the towns on the Loire, and some
+other places lying within easy reach of his court at Blois.
+
+'But,' I said, 'things seem quiet now. Here, for instance.'
+
+'It is the calm before the storm,' he answered. 'There is a monk in
+there. Have you heard him?'
+
+I nodded.
+
+'He is only one among a hundred--a thousand,' the horsedealer
+continued, looking at me and nodding with meaning. He was a
+brown-haired man with shrewd grey eyes, such as many Normans have.
+'They will get their way too, you will see,' he went on. 'Well, horses
+will go up, so I have no cause to grumble; but, if I were on my way to
+Blois with women or gear of that kind, I should not choose this time
+for picking posies on the road. I should see the inside of the gates
+as soon as possible.'
+
+I thought there was much in what he said; and when he went on to
+maintain that the king would find himself between the hammer and the
+anvil--between the League holding all the north and the Huguenots
+holding all the south--and must needs in time come to terms with the
+latter, seeing that the former would rest content with nothing short
+of his deposition, I began to agree with him that we should shortly
+see great changes and very stirring times.
+
+'Still if they depose the king,' I said, 'the King of Navarre must
+succeed him. He is the heir of France.'
+
+'Bah!' my companion replied somewhat contemptuously. 'The League will
+see to that. He goes with the other.'
+
+'Then the kings are in one cry, and you are right,' I said with
+conviction. 'They must unite.'
+
+'So they will. It is only a question of time,' he said.
+
+In the morning, having only one man with him, and, as I guessed, a
+considerable sum of money, he volunteered to join our party as far as
+Blois. I assented gladly, and he did so, this addition to our numbers
+ridding me at once of the greater part of my fears. I did not expect
+any opposition on the part of mademoiselle, who would gain in
+consequence as well as in safety. Nor did she offer any. She was
+content, I think, to welcome any addition to our party which would
+save her from the necessity of riding in the company of my old cloak.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                         MY MOTHER'S LODGING.
+
+
+Travelling by way of Chatelhérault and Tours, we reached the
+neighbourhood of Blois a little after noon on the third day without
+misadventure or any intimation of pursuit. The Norman proved himself a
+cheerful companion on the road, as I already knew him to be a man of
+sense and shrewdness; while his presence rendered the task of keeping
+my men in order an easy one. I began to consider the adventure as
+practically achieved; and regarding Mademoiselle de la Vire as already
+in effect transferred to the care of M. de Rosny, I ventured to turn
+my thoughts to the development of my own plans and the choice of a
+haven in which I might rest secure from the vengeance of M. de
+Turenne.
+
+For the moment I had evaded his pursuit, and, assisted by the
+confusion caused everywhere by the death of Guise, had succeeded in
+thwarting his plans and affronting his authority with seeming ease.
+But I knew too much of his power and had heard too many instances of
+his fierce temper and resolute will to presume on short impunity or to
+expect the future with anything but diffidence and dismay.
+
+The exclamations of my companions on coming within sight of Blois
+aroused me from these reflections. I joined them, and fully shared
+their emotion as I gazed on the stately towers which had witnessed so
+many royal festivities, and, alas! one royal tragedy; which had
+sheltered Louis the Well-beloved and Francis the Great, and rung with
+the laughter of Diana of Poitiers and the second Henry. The play of
+fancy wreathed the sombre building with a hundred memories grave and
+gay. But, though the rich plain of the Loire still swelled upward as
+of old in gentle homage at the feet of the gallant town, the shadow of
+crime seemed to darken all, and dim even the glories of the royal
+standard which hung idly in the air.
+
+We had heard so many reports of the fear and suspicion which reigned
+in the city and of the strict supervision which was exercised over all
+who entered--the king dreading a repetition of the day of the
+Barricades--that we halted at a little inn a mile short of the gate
+and broke up our company. I parted from my Norman friend with mutual
+expressions of esteem, and from my own men, whom I had paid off in the
+morning, complimenting each of them with a handsome present, with a
+feeling of relief equally sincere. I hoped--but the hope was not fated
+to be gratified--that I might never see the knaves again.
+
+It wanted less than an hour of sunset when I rode up to the gate, a
+few paces in front of mademoiselle and her woman; as if I had really
+been the intendant for whom the horse-dealer had mistaken me. We found
+the guardhouse lined with soldiers, who scanned us very narrowly as we
+approached, and whose stern features and ordered weapons showed that
+they were not there for mere effect. The fact, however, that we came
+from Tours, a city still in the king's hands, served to allay
+suspicion, and we passed without accident.
+
+Once in the streets, and riding in single file between the houses, to
+the windows of which the townsfolk seemed to be attracted by the
+slightest commotion, so full of terror was the air, I experienced a
+moment of huge relief. This was Blois--Blois at last. We were within a
+few score yards of the Bleeding Heart. In a few minutes I should
+receive a quittance, and be free to think only of myself. Nor was my
+pleasure much lessened by the fact that I was so soon to part from
+Mademoiselle de la Vire. Frankly, I was far from liking her. Exposure
+to the air of a court had spoiled, it seemed to me, whatever graces of
+disposition the young lady had ever possessed. She still maintained,
+and had maintained throughout the journey, the cold and suspicious
+attitude assumed at starting; nor had she ever expressed the least
+solicitude on my behalf, or the slightest sense that we were incurring
+danger in her service. She had not scrupled constantly to prefer her
+whims to the common advantage, and even safety; while her sense of
+self-importance had come to be so great, that she seemed to hold
+herself exempt from the duty of thanking any human creature. I could
+not deny that she was beautiful--indeed, I often thought, when
+watching her, of the day when I had seen her in the King of Navarre's
+ante-chamber in all the glory of her charms. But I felt none the less
+that I could turn my back on her--leaving her in safety--without
+regret; and be thankful that her path would never again cross mine.
+
+With such thoughts in my breast I turned the corner of the Rue de St.
+Denys and came at once upon the Bleeding Heart, a small but
+decent-looking hostelry situate near the end of the street and
+opposite a church. A bluff, grey-haired man, who was standing in the
+doorway, came forward as we halted, and looking curiously at
+mademoiselle asked what I lacked; adding civilly that the house was
+full and they had no sleeping room, the late events having drawn a
+great assemblage to Blois.
+
+'I want only an address,' I answered, leaning from the saddle and
+speaking in a low voice that I might not be overheard by the
+passers-by. 'The Baron de Rosny is in Blois, is he not?'
+
+The man started at the name of the Huguenot leader, and looked round
+him nervously. But, seeing that no one was very near us, he answered:
+'He was, sir; but he left town a week ago and more. There have been
+strange doings here, and M. de Rosny thought that the climate suited
+him ill.'
+
+He said this with so much meaning, as well as concern that he should
+not be overheard, that, though I was taken aback and bitterly
+disappointed, I succeeded in restraining all exclamations and even
+show of feeling. After a pause of dismay, I asked whither M. de Rosny
+had gone.
+
+'To Rosny,' was the answer.
+
+'And Rosny?'
+
+'Is beyond Chartres, pretty well all the way to Mantes,' the man
+answered, stroking my horse's neck. 'Say thirty leagues.'
+
+I turned my horse, and hurriedly communicated what he said to
+mademoiselle, who was waiting a few paces away. Unwelcome to me, the
+news was still less welcome to her. Her chagrin and indignation knew
+no bounds. For a moment words failed her, but her flashing eyes said
+more than her tongue as she cried to me: 'Well, sir, and what now? Is
+this the end of your fine promises? Where is your Rosny, if all be not
+a lying invention of your own?'
+
+Feeling that she had some excuse I suppressed my choler, and humbly
+repeating that Rosny was at his house, two days farther on, and that I
+could see nothing for it but to go to him, I asked the landlord where
+we could find a lodging for the night.
+
+'Indeed, sir, that is more than I can say,' he answered, looking
+curiously at us, and thinking, I doubt not, that with my shabby cloak
+and fine horse, and mademoiselle's mask and spattered riding-coat, we
+were an odd couple. 'There is not an inn which is not full to the
+garrets--nay, and the stables; and, what is more, people are chary of
+taking strangers in. These are strange times. They say,' he continued
+in a lower tone, 'that the old queen is dying up there, and will not
+last the night.'
+
+I nodded. 'We must go somewhere,' I said.
+
+'I would help you if I could,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders.
+'But there it is! Blois is full from the tiles to the cellars.'
+
+My horse shivered under me, and mademoiselle, whose patience was gone,
+cried harshly to me to do something. 'We cannot spend the night in the
+streets,' she said fiercely.
+
+I saw that she was worn out and scarcely mistress of her-self. The
+light was falling, and with it some rain. The reek of the kennels and
+the close air from the houses seemed to stifle us. The bell at the
+church behind us was jangling out vespers. A few people, attracted by
+the sight of our horses standing before the inn, had gathered round
+and were watching us.
+
+Something I saw must be done, and done quickly. In despair, and seeing
+no other resort, I broached a proposal of which I had not hitherto
+even dreamed. 'Mademoiselle,' I said bluntly, 'I must take you to my
+mother's.'
+
+'To your mother's, sir?' she cried, rousing herself. Her voice rang
+with haughty surprise.
+
+'Yes,' I replied brusquely; 'since, as you say, we cannot spend the
+night in the streets, and I do not know where else I can dispose of
+you. From the last advices I had I believe her to have followed the
+court hither. My friend,' I continued, turning to the landlord, 'do
+you know by name a Madame de Bonne, who should be in Blois?'
+
+'A Madame de Bonne?' he muttered, reflecting. 'I have heard the name
+lately. Wait a moment.' Disappearing into the house, he returned
+almost immediately, followed by a lanky pale-faced youth wearing a
+tattered black soutane. 'Yes,' he said nodding, 'there is a worthy
+lady of that name lodging in the next street, I am told. As it
+happens, this young man lives in the same house, and will guide you,
+if you like.'
+
+I assented, and, thanking him for his information, turned my horse and
+requested the youth to lead the way. We had scarcely passed the corner
+of the street, however, and entered one somewhat more narrow and less
+frequented, when mademoiselle, who was riding behind me, stopped and
+called to me. I drew rein, and, turning, asked what it was.
+
+'I am not coming,' she said, her voice trembling slightly, but whether
+with alarm or anger I could not determine. 'I know nothing of you, and
+I--I demand to be taken to M. de Rosny.'
+
+'If you cry that name aloud in the streets of Blois, mademoiselle,' I
+retorted, 'you are like enough to be taken whither you will not care
+to go! As for M. de Rosny, I have told you that he is not here. He has
+gone to his seat at Mantes.'
+
+'Then take me to him!'
+
+'At this hour of the night?' I said drily. 'It is two days' journey
+from here.'
+
+'Then I will go to an inn,' she replied sullenly.
+
+'You have heard that there is no room in the inns,' I rejoined with
+what patience I could. 'And to go from inn to inn at this hour might
+lead us into trouble. I can assure you that I am as much taken aback
+by M. de Rosny's absence as you are. For the present, we are close to
+my mother's lodging, and----'
+
+'I know nothing of your mother!' she exclaimed passionately, her voice
+raised. 'You have enticed me hither by false pretences, sir, and I
+will endure it no longer. I will----'
+
+'What you will do, I do not know then, mademoiselle,' I replied,
+quite at my wits' end; for what with the rain and the darkness, the
+unknown streets--in which our tarrying might at any moment collect a
+crowd--and this stubborn girl's opposition, I knew not whither to
+turn. 'For my part I can suggest nothing else. It does not become me
+to speak of my mother,' I continued, 'or I might say that even
+Mademoiselle de la Vire need not be ashamed to accept the hospitality
+of Madame de Bonne. Nor are my mother's circumstances,' I added
+proudly, 'though narrow, so mean as to deprive her of the privileges
+of her birth.'
+
+My last words appeared to make some impression upon my companion. She
+turned and spoke to her woman, who replied in a low voice, tossing her
+head the while and glaring at me in speechless indignation. Had there
+been anything else for it, they would doubtless have flouted my offer
+still; but apparently Fanchette could suggest nothing, and presently
+mademoiselle, with a sullen air, bade me lead on.
+
+Taking this for permission, the lanky youth in the black soutane, who
+had remained at my bridle throughout the discussion, now listening and
+now staring, nodded and resumed his way; and I followed. After
+proceeding a little more than fifty yards he stopped before a
+mean-looking doorway, flanked by grated windows, and fronted by a
+lofty wall which I took to be the back of some nobleman's garden. The
+street at this point was unlighted, and little better than an alley;
+nor was the appearance of the house, which was narrow and ill-looking,
+though lofty, calculated, as far as I could make it out in the
+darkness, to allay mademoiselle's suspicions. Knowing, however, that
+people of position are often obliged in towns to lodge in poor houses,
+I thought nothing of this, and only strove to get mademoiselle
+dismounted as quickly as possible. The lad groped about and found two
+rings beside the door, and to these I tied up the horses. Then,
+bidding him lead the way, and begging mademoiselle to follow, I
+plunged into the darkness of the passage and felt my way to the foot
+of the staircase, which was entirely unlighted, and smelled close and
+unpleasant.
+
+'Which floor?' I asked my guide.
+
+'The fourth,' he answered quietly.
+
+'Morbleu!' I muttered, as I began to ascend, my hand on the wall.
+'What is the meaning of this?'
+
+For I was perplexed. The revenues of Marsac, though small, should have
+kept my mother, whom I had last seen in Paris before the Nemours
+edict, in tolerable comfort--such modest comfort, at any rate, as
+could scarcely be looked for in such a house as this--obscure,
+ill-tended, unlighted. To my perplexity was added, before I reached
+the top of the stairs, disquietude--disquietude on her account as well
+as on mademoiselle's. I felt that something was wrong, and would have
+given much to recall the invitation I had pressed on the latter.
+
+What the young lady thought herself I could pretty well guess, as I
+listened to her hurried breathing at my shoulder. With every step I
+expected her to refuse to go farther. But, having once made up her
+mind, she followed me stubbornly, though the darkness was such that
+involuntarily I loosened my dagger, and prepared to defend myself
+should this turn out to be a trap.
+
+We reached the top, however, without accident. Our guide knocked
+softly at a door and immediately opened it without waiting for an
+answer. A feeble light shone out on the stair-head, and bending my
+head, for the lintel was low, I stepped into the room.
+
+I advanced two paces and stood looking about me in angry bewilderment.
+The bareness of extreme poverty marked everything on which my eyes
+rested. A cracked earthenware lamp smoked and sputtered on a stool in
+the middle of the rotting floor. An old black cloak nailed to the
+wall, and flapping to and fro in the draught like some dead
+gallowsbird, hung in front of the unglazed window. A jar in a corner
+caught the drippings from a hole in the roof. An iron pot and a second
+stool--the latter casting a long shadow across the floor--stood beside
+the handful of wood ashes, which smouldered on the hearth. And that
+was all the furniture I saw, except a bed which filled the farther end
+of the long narrow room, and was curtained off so as to form a kind of
+miserable alcove.
+
+A glance sufficed to show me all this, and that the room was empty, or
+apparently empty. Yet I looked again and again, stupefied. At last
+finding my voice, I turned to the young man who had brought us hither,
+and with a fierce oath demanded of him what he meant.
+
+He shrank back behind the open door, and yet answered with a kind of
+sullen surprise that I had asked for Madame de Bonne's, and this was
+it.
+
+'Madame de Bonne's!' I muttered. 'This Madame de Bonne's!'
+
+He nodded.
+
+'Of course it is! And you know it!' mademoiselle hissed in my ear, her
+voice, as she interposed, hoarse with passion. 'Don't think that you
+can deceive us any longer. We know all! This,' she continued, looking
+round, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes ablaze with scorn, 'is your
+mother's, is it! Your mother who has followed the court hither--whose
+means are narrow, but not so small as to deprive her of the privileges
+of her rank! This is your mother's hospitality, is it? You are a
+cheat, sir! and a detected cheat! Let us begone! Let me go, sir, I
+say!'
+
+Twice I had tried to stop the current of her words; but in vain. Now
+with anger which surpassed hers a hundredfold--for who, being a man,
+would hear himself misnamed before his mother?--I succeeded. 'Silence,
+mademoiselle!' I cried, my grasp on her wrist. 'Silence, I say! This
+_is_ my mother!'
+
+And running forward to the bed, I fell on my knees beside it. A feeble
+hand had half withdrawn the curtain, and through the gap my mother's
+stricken face looked out, a great fear stamped upon it.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                             SIMON FLEIX.
+
+
+For some minutes I forgot mademoiselle in paying those assiduous
+attentions to my mother which her state and my duty demanded; and
+which I offered the more anxiously that I recognised, with a sinking
+heart, the changes which age and illness had made in her since my last
+visit. The shock of mademoiselle's words had thrown her into a
+syncope, from which she did not recover for some time; and then rather
+through the assistance of our strange guide, who seemed well aware
+what to do, than through my efforts. Anxious as I was to learn what
+had reduced her to such straits and such a place, this was not the
+time to satisfy my curiosity, and I prepared myself instead for the
+task of effacing the painful impression which mademoiselle's words had
+made on her mind.
+
+On first coming to herself she did not remember them, but, content to
+find me by her side--for there is something so alchemic in a mother's
+love that I doubt not my presence changed her garret to a palace--she
+spent herself in feeble caresses and broken words. Presently, however,
+her eye falling on mademoiselle and her maid, who remained standing by
+the hearth, looking darkly at us from time to time, she recalled,
+first the shock which had prostrated her, and then its cause, and
+raising herself on her elbow, looked about her wildly. 'Gaston!' she
+cried, clutching my hand with her thin fingers, 'what was it I heard?
+It was of you someone spoke--a woman! She called you--or did I dream
+it?--a cheat! You!'
+
+'Madame, madame,' I said, striving to speak carelessly, though the
+sight of her grey hair, straggling and dishevelled, moved me
+strangely, 'was it likely? Would anyone dare to use such expressions
+of me in your presence? You must indeed have dreamed it!'
+
+The words, however, returning more and more vividly to her mind, she
+looked at me very pitifully, and in great agitation laid her arm on my
+neck, as though she would shelter me with the puny strength which just
+enabled her to rise in bed. 'But someone,' she muttered, her eyes on
+the strangers, 'said it, Gaston? I heard it. What did it mean?'
+
+'What you heard, madame,' I answered, with an attempt at gaiety,
+though the tears stood in my eyes, 'was, doubtless, mademoiselle here
+scolding our guide from Tours, who demanded three times the proper
+_pourboire_. The impudent rascal deserved all that was said to him, I
+assure you.'
+
+'Was that it?' she murmured doubtfully.
+
+'That must have been what you heard, madame,' I answered, as if I felt
+no doubt.
+
+She fell back with a sigh of relief, and a little colour came into her
+wan face. But her eyes still dwelt curiously, and with apprehension,
+on mademoiselle, who stood looking sullenly into the fire; and seeing
+this my heart misgave me sorely that I had done a foolish thing in
+bringing the girl there. I foresaw a hundred questions which would be
+asked, and a hundred complications which must ensue, and felt already
+the blush of shame mounting to my cheek.
+
+'Who is that?' my mother asked softly. 'I am ill. She must excuse me.'
+She pointed with her fragile finger to my companions.
+
+I rose, and still keeping her hand in mine, turned so as to face the
+hearth. 'This, madame,' I answered formally, 'is Mademoiselle----, but
+her name I will commit to you later, and in private. Suffice it to say
+that she is a lady of rank, who has been committed to my charge by a
+high personage.'
+
+'A high personage?' my mother repeated gently, glancing at me with a
+smile of gratification.
+
+'One of the highest,' I said. 'Such a charge being a great honour to
+me, I felt that I could not better execute it, madame, since we must
+lie in Blois one night, than by requesting your hospitality on her
+behalf.'
+
+I dared mademoiselle as I spoke--I dared her with my eye to contradict
+or interrupt me. For answer, she looked at me once, inclining her head
+a little, and gazing at us from under her long eyelashes. Then she
+turned back to the fire, and her foot resumed its angry tapping on the
+floor.
+
+'I regret that I cannot receive her better,' my mother answered
+feebly. 'I have had losses of late. I--but I will speak of that at
+another time. Mademoiselle doubtless knows,' she continued with
+dignity, 'you and your position in the South too well to think ill of
+the momentary straits to which she finds me reduced.'
+
+I saw mademoiselle start, and I writhed under the glance of covert
+scorn, of amazed indignation, which she shot at me. But my mother
+gently patting my hand, I answered patiently, 'Mademoiselle will think
+only what is kind, madame--of that I am assured. And lodgings are
+scarce to-night in Blois.'
+
+'But tell me of yourself, Gaston,' my mother cried eagerly; and I had
+not the heart, with her touch on my hand, her eyes on my face, to tear
+myself away, much as I dreaded what was coming, and longed to end the
+scene. 'Tell me of yourself. You are still in favour with the king
+of---- I will not name him here?'
+
+'Still, madame,' I answered, looking steadily at mademoiselle, though
+my face burned.
+
+'You are still--he consults you, Gaston?'
+
+'Still, madame.'
+
+My mother heaved a happy sigh, and sank lower in the bed. 'And your
+employments?' she murmured, her voice trembling with gratification.
+'They have not been reduced? You still retain them, Gaston?'
+
+'Still, madame,' I answered, the perspiration standing on my brow, my
+shame almost more than I could bear.
+
+'Twelve thousand livres a year, I think?'
+
+'The same, madame.'
+
+'And your establishment? How many do you keep now? Your valet, of
+course? And lackeys--how many at present?' She glanced, with an eye of
+pride, while she waited for my answer, first at the two silent figures
+by the fire, then at the poverty-stricken room; as if the sight of its
+bareness heightened for her the joy of my prosperity.
+
+She had no suspicion of my trouble, my misery, or that the last
+question almost filled the cup too full. Hitherto all had been easy,
+but this seemed to choke me. I stammered and lost my voice.
+Mademoiselle, her head bowed, was gazing into the fire. Fanchette was
+staring at me, her black eyes round as saucers, her mouth half-open.
+'Well, madame,' I muttered at length, 'to tell you the truth, at
+present, you must understand, I have been forced to----'
+
+'What, Gaston?' Madame de Bonne half rose in bed. Her voice was sharp
+with disappointment and apprehension; the grasp of her fingers on my
+hand grew closer.
+
+I could not resist that appeal. I flung away the last rag of shame.
+'To reduce my establishment somewhat,' I answered, looking a miserable
+defiance at mademoiselle's averted figure. She had called me a liar
+and a cheat--here in the room! I must stand before her a liar and a
+cheat confessed. 'I keep but three lackeys now, madame.'
+
+'Still it is creditable,' my mother muttered thoughtfully, her eyes
+shining. 'Your dress, however, Gaston--only my eyes are weak--seems to
+me----'
+
+'Tut, tut! It is but a disguise,' I answered quickly.
+
+'I might have known that,' she rejoined, sinking back with a smile and
+a sigh of content. 'But when I first saw you I was almost afraid that
+something had happened to you. And I have been uneasy lately,' she
+went on, releasing my hand, and beginning to play with the coverlet,
+as though the remembrance troubled her. 'There was a man here a while
+ago--a friend of Simon Fleix there--who had been south to Pau and
+Nerac, and he said there was no M. de Marsac about the Court.'
+
+'He probably knew less of the Court than the wine-tavern,' I answered
+with a ghastly smile.
+
+'That was just what I told him,' my mother responded quickly and
+eagerly. 'I warrant you I sent him away ill-satisfied.'
+
+'Of course,' I said; 'there will always be people of that kind. But
+now, if you will permit me, madame, I will make such arrangements for
+mademoiselle as are necessary.'
+
+Begging her accordingly to lie down and compose herself--for even so
+short a conversation, following on the excitement of our arrival, had
+exhausted her to a painful degree--I took the youth, who had just
+returned from stabling our horses, a little aside, and learning that
+he lodged in a smaller chamber on the farther side of the landing,
+secured it for the use of mademoiselle and her woman. In spite of a
+certain excitability which marked him at times, he seemed to be a
+quick, ready fellow, and he willingly undertook to go out, late as it
+was, and procure some provisions and a few other things which were
+sadly needed, as well for my mother's comfort as for our own. I
+directed Fanchette to aid him in the preparation of the other chamber,
+and thus for a while I was left alone with mademoiselle. She had taken
+one of the stools, and sat cowering over the fire, the hood of her
+cloak drawn about her head; in such a manner that even when she looked
+at me, which she did from time to time, I saw little more than her
+eyes, bright with contemptuous anger.
+
+'So, sir,' she presently began, speaking in a low voice, and turning
+slightly towards me, 'you practise lying even here?'
+
+I felt so strongly the futility of denial or explanation that I
+shrugged my shoulders and remained silent under the sneer. Two more
+days--two more days would take us to Rosny, and my task would be done,
+and mademoiselle and I would part for good and all. What would it
+matter then what she thought of me? What did it matter now?
+
+For the first time in our intercourse my silence seemed to disconcert
+and displease her. 'Have you nothing to say for yourself?' she
+muttered sharply, crushing a fragment of charcoal under her foot, and
+stooping to peer at the ashes. 'Have you not another lie in your
+quiver, M. de Marsac? De Marsac!' And she repeated the title, with a
+scornful laugh, as if she put no faith in my claim to it.
+
+But I would answer nothing--nothing; and we remained silent until
+Fanchette, coming in to say that the chamber was ready, held the light
+for her mistress to pass out. I told the woman to come back and fetch
+mademoiselle's supper, and then, being left alone with my mother, who
+had fallen asleep, with a smile on her thin, worn face, I began to
+wonder what had happened to reduce her to such dire poverty.
+
+I feared to agitate her by referring to it; but later in the
+evening, when her curtains were drawn and Simon Fleix and I were left
+together, eyeing one another across the embers like dogs of different
+breeds--with a certain strangeness and suspicion--my thoughts recurred
+to the question; and determining first to learn something about my
+companion, whose pale, eager face and tattered, black dress gave him a
+certain individuality, I asked him whether he had come from Paris with
+Madame de Bonne.
+
+He nodded without speaking.
+
+I asked him if he had known her long.
+
+'Twelve months,' he answered. 'I lodged on the fifth, madame on the
+second, floor of the same house in Paris.'
+
+I leaned forward and plucked the hem of his black robe. 'What is
+this?' I said, with a little contempt. 'You are not a priest, man.'
+
+'No,' he answered, fingering the stuff himself, and gazing at me in a
+curious, vacant fashion. 'I am a student of the Sorbonne.'
+
+I drew off from him with a muttered oath, wondering--while I looked at
+him with suspicious eyes--how he came to be here, and particularly how
+he came to be in attendance on my mother, who had been educated from
+childhood in the Religion, and had professed it in private all her
+life. I could think of no one who, in old days, would have been less
+welcome in her house than a Sorbonnist, and began to fancy that here
+should lie the secret of her miserable condition.
+
+'You don't like the Sorbonne?' he said, reading my thoughts; which
+were, indeed, plain enough.
+
+'No more than I love the devil!' I said bluntly.
+
+He leaned forward and, stretching out a thin, nervous hand, laid it on
+my knee. 'What if they are right, though?' he muttered, his voice
+hoarse. 'What if they are right, M. de Marsac?'
+
+'Who right?' I asked roughly, drawing back afresh.
+
+'The Sorbonne,' he repeated, his face red with excitement, his eyes
+peering uncannily into mine. 'Don't you see,' he continued, pinching
+my knee in his earnestness, and thrusting his face nearer and nearer
+to mine, 'it all turns on that? It all turns on that--salvation or
+damnation! Are they right? Are you right? You say yes to this, no to
+that, you white-coats; and you say it lightly, but are you right? Are
+you right? Mon Dieu!' he continued, drawing back abruptly and clawing
+the air with impatience, 'I have read, read, read! I have listened to
+sermons, theses, disputations, and I know nothing. I know no more than
+when I began.'
+
+He sprang up and began to pace the floor, while I gazed at him with a
+feeling of pity. A very learned person once told me that the troubles
+of these times bred four kinds of men, who were much to be
+compassionated: fanatics on the one side or the other, who lost sight
+of all else in the intensity of their faith; men who, like Simon
+Fleix, sought desperately after something to believe, and found it
+not; and lastly, scoffers, who, believing in nothing, looked on all
+religion as a mockery.
+
+He presently stopped walking--in his utmost excitement I remarked that
+he never forgot my mother, but trod more lightly when he drew near the
+alcove--and spoke again.
+
+'You are a Huguenot?' he said.
+
+'Yes,' I replied.
+
+'So is she,' he rejoined, pointing towards the bed. 'But do you feel
+no doubts?'
+
+'None,' I said quietly.
+
+'Nor does she,' he answered again, stopping opposite me. You made up
+your mind--how?'
+
+'I was born in the Religion,' I said.
+
+'And you have never questioned it?'
+
+'Never.'
+
+'Nor thought much about it?'
+
+'Not a great deal,' I answered.
+
+'Saint Gris!' he exclaimed in a low tone. 'And do you never think of
+hell-fire--of the worm which dieth not, and the fire which shall not
+be quenched? Do you never think of that, M. de Marsac?'
+
+'No, my friend, never!' I answered, rising impatiently; for at that
+hour, and in that silent, gloomy room I found his conversation
+dispiriting. 'I believe what I was taught to believe, and I strive to
+hurt no one but the enemy. I think little; and if I were you I would
+think less. I would do something, man--fight, play, work, anything but
+think! Leave that to clerks.'
+
+'I am a clerk,' he answered.
+
+'A poor one, it seems,' I retorted, with a little scorn in my tone.
+'Leave it, man. Work! Fight! Do something!'
+
+'Fight?' he said, as if the idea were a novel one. 'Fight? But there,
+I might be killed; and then hell-fire you see!'
+
+'Zounds, man!' I cried, out of patience with a folly which, to tell
+the truth, the lamp burning low, and the rain pattering on the roof,
+made the skin of my back feel cold and creepy. 'Enough of this! Keep
+your doubts and your fire to yourself! And answer me,' I continued,
+sternly. 'How came Madame de Bonne so poor? How did she come down to
+this place?'
+
+He sat down on his stool, the excitement dying quickly out of his
+fare. 'She gave away all her money,' he said slowly and reluctantly.
+It may be imagined that this answer surprised me. 'Gave it away?' I
+exclaimed. 'To whom? And when?'
+
+He moved uneasily on his seat and avoided my eye, his altered manner
+filling me with suspicions which the insight I had just obtained into
+his character did not altogether preclude. At last he said, 'I had
+nothing to do with it, if you mean that; nothing. On the contrary, I
+have done all I could to make it up to her. I followed her here. I
+swear that is so, M. de Marsac.'
+
+'You have not told me yet to whom she gave it,' I said sternly.
+
+'She gave it,' he muttered, 'to a priest.'
+
+'To what priest?'
+
+'I do not know his name. He is a Jacobin.'
+
+'And why?' I asked, gazing incredulously at the student. 'Why did she
+give it to him? Come, come! have a care. Let me have none of your
+Sorbonne inventions!'
+
+He hesitated a moment, looking at me timidly, and then seemed to make
+up his mind to tell me. 'He found out--it was when we lived in Paris,
+you understand, last June--that she was a Huguenot. It was about the
+time they burned the Foucards, and he frightened her with that, and
+made her pay him money, a little at first, and then more and more, to
+keep her secret. When the king came to Blois she followed his Majesty,
+thinking to be safer here; but the priest came too, and got more
+money, and more, until he left her--this.'
+
+'This!' I said. And I set my teeth together.
+
+Simon Fleix nodded.
+
+I looked round the wretched garret to which my mother had been
+reduced, and pictured the days and hours of fear and suspense through
+which she had lived; through which she must have lived with that
+caitiff's threat hanging over her grey head! I thought of her birth
+and her humiliation, of her frail form and patient, undying love for
+me; and solemnly, and before heaven, I swore that night to punish the
+man. My anger was too great for words, and for tears I was too old. I
+asked Simon Fleix no more questions, save when the priest might be
+looked for again--which he could not tell me--and whether he would
+know him again--to which he answered, 'Yes.' But, wrapping myself in
+my cloak, I lay down by the fire and pondered long and sadly.
+
+So, while I had been pinching there, my mother had been starving here.
+She had deceived me, and I her. The lamp flickered, throwing uncertain
+shadows as the draught tossed the strange window-curtain to and fro.
+The leakage from the roof fell drop by drop, and now and again the
+wind shook the crazy building, as though it would lift it up bodily
+and carry it away.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                            AN EMPTY ROOM.
+
+
+Desiring to start as early as possible, that we might reach Rosny on
+the second evening, I roused Simon Fleix before it was light, and
+learning from him where the horses were stabled, went out to attend to
+them; preferring to do this myself, that I might have an opportunity
+of seeking out a tailor, and providing myself with clothes better
+suited to my rank than those to which I had been reduced of late. I
+found that I still had ninety crowns left of the sum which the King of
+Navarre had given me, and twelve of these I laid out on a doublet of
+black cloth with russet points and ribands, a dark cloak lined with
+the same sober colour, and a new cap and feather. The tradesman would
+fain have provided me with a new scabbard also, seeing my old one was
+worn-out at the heel; but this I declined, having a fancy to go with
+my point bare until I should have punished the scoundrel who had made
+my mother's failing days a misery to her; a business which, the King
+of Navarre's once done, I promised myself to pursue with energy and at
+all costs.
+
+The choice of my clothes, and a few alterations which it was necessary
+to make in them, detained me some time, so that it was later than I
+could have wished when I turned my face towards the house again, bent
+on getting my party to horse as speedily as possible. The morning, I
+remember, was bright, frosty, and cold; the kennels were dry, the
+streets comparatively clean. Here and there a ray of early sunshine,
+darting between the overhanging eaves, gave promise of glorious
+travelling-weather. But the faces, I remarked in my walk, did not
+reflect the surrounding cheerfulness. Moody looks met me everywhere
+and on every side; and while courier after courier galloped by me
+bound for the castle, the townsfolk stood aloof in doorways listless
+and inactive, or, gathering in groups in corners, talked what I took
+to be treason under the breath. The queen-mother still lived, but
+Orleans had revolted, and Sens and Mans, Chartres and Melun. Rouen was
+said to be wavering, Lyons in arms, while Paris had deposed her king,
+and cursed him daily from a hundred altars. In fine, the great
+rebellion which followed the death of Guise, and lasted so many years,
+was already in progress; so that on this first day of the new year the
+king's writ scarce ran farther than he could see, peering anxiously
+out from the towers above my head.
+
+Reaching the house, I climbed the long staircase hastily, abusing its
+darkness and foulness, and planning as I went how my mother might most
+easily and quickly be moved to a better lodging. Gaining the top of
+the last flight, I saw that mademoiselle's door on the left of the
+landing was open, and concluding from this that she was up, and ready
+to start, I entered my mother's room with a brisk step and spirits
+reinforced by the crisp morning air.
+
+But on the threshold. I stopped, and stood silent and amazed. At first
+I thought the room was empty. Then, at a second glance, I saw the
+student. He was on his knees beside the bed in the alcove, from which
+the curtain had been partially dragged away. The curtain before the
+window had been torn down also, and the cold light of day, pouring in
+on the unsightly bareness of the room, struck a chill to my heart. A
+stool lay overturned by the fire, and above it a grey cat, which I had
+not hitherto noticed, crouched on a beam and eyed me with stealthy
+fierceness. Mademoiselle was not to be seen, nor was Fanchette, and
+Simon Fleix did not hear me. He was doing something at the bed--for my
+mother it seemed.
+
+'What is it, man?' I cried softly, advancing on tiptoe to the bedside.
+'Where are the others?'
+
+The student looked round and saw me. His face was pale and gloomy. His
+eyes burned, and yet there were tears in them, and on his cheeks. He
+did not speak, but the chilliness, the bareness, the emptiness of the
+room spoke for him, and my heart sank.
+
+I took him by the shoulders. 'Find your tongue, man!' I said angrily.
+'Where are they?'
+
+He rose from his knees and stood staring at me. 'They are gone!' he
+said stupidly.
+
+'Gone?' I exclaimed. 'Impossible! When? Whither?'
+
+'Half an hour ago. Whither--I do not know.'
+
+Confounded and amazed, I glared at him between fear and rage. 'You do
+not know?' I cried. 'They are gone, and you do not know?'
+
+He turned suddenly on me and gripped my arm. 'No, I do not know! I do
+not know!' he cried, with a complete change of manner and in a tone of
+fierce excitement. 'Only, may the fiend go with them! But I do know
+this. I know this, M. de Marsac, with whom they went, these friends of
+yours! A fop came, a dolt, a fine spark, and gave them fine words and
+fine speeches and a gold token, and, hey presto! they went, and forgot
+you!'
+
+'What!' I cried, beginning to understand, and snatching fiercely at
+the one clue in his speech. 'A gold token? They have been decoyed away
+then! There is no time to be lost. I must follow.'
+
+'No, for that is not all!' he replied, interrupting me sternly, while
+his grasp on my arm grew tighter and his eyes flashed as they looked
+into mine. 'You have not heard all. They have gone with one who called
+you an impostor, and a thief, and a beggar, and that to your mother's
+face--and killed her! Killed her as surely as if he had taken a sword
+to her, M. de Marsac! Will you, after that, leave her for them?'
+
+He spoke plainly. And yet, God forgive me, it was some time before I
+understood him: before I took in the meaning of his words, or could
+transfer my thoughts from the absent to my mother lying on the bed
+before me. When I did do so, and turned to her, and saw her still face
+and thin hair straggling over the coarse pillow, then, indeed, the
+sight overcame me. I thought no more of others--for I thought her
+dead; and with a great and bitter cry I fell on my knees beside her
+and hid my face. What, after all, was this headstrong girl to me? what
+were even kings and king's commissions to me beside her--beside the
+one human being who loved me still, the one being of my blood and name
+left, the one ever-patient, ever-constant heart which for years had
+beaten only for me? For a while, for a few moments, I was worthy of
+her for I forgot all others.
+
+Simon Fleix roused me at last from my stupor, making me understand
+that she was not dead, but in a deep swoon, the result of the shock
+she had undergone. A leech, for whom he had despatched a neighbour,
+came in as I rose, and taking my place, presently restored her to
+consciousness. But her extreme feebleness warned me not to hope for
+more than a temporary recovery; nor had I sat by her long before I
+discerned that this last blow, following on so many fears and
+privations, had reached a vital part, and that she was even now dying.
+
+She lay for a while with her hand in mine and her eyes closed, but
+about noon, the student, contriving to give her some broth, she
+revived, and, recognising me, lay for more than an hour gazing at me
+with unspeakable content and satisfaction. At the end of that time,
+and when I thought she was past speaking, she signed to me to bend
+over her, and whispered something, which at first I could not catch.
+Presently I made it out to be, 'She is gone--The girl you brought?'
+
+Much troubled, I answered yes, begging her not to think about the
+matter. I need not have feared, however, for when she spoke again she
+did so without emotion, and rather as one seeing clearly something
+before her.
+
+'When you find her, Gaston,' she murmured, 'do not be angry with her.
+It was not her fault. She--he deceived her. See!'
+
+I followed the direction rather of her eyes than her hand, and found
+beneath the pillow a length of gold chain. 'She left that?' I
+murmured, a strange tumult of emotions in my breast.
+
+'She laid it there,' my mother whispered. 'And she would have stopped
+him saying what he did'--a shudder ran through my mother's frame at
+the remembrance of the man's words, though her eyes still gazed into
+mine with faith and confidence--'she would have stopped him, but she
+could not, Gaston. And then he hurried her away.'
+
+'He showed her a token, madame, did he not?' I could not for my life
+repress the question, so much seemed to turn on the point.
+
+'A bit of gold,' my mother whispered, smiling faintly. 'Now let me
+sleep.' And, clinging always to my hand, she closed her eyes.
+
+The student came back soon afterwards with some comforts for which I
+had despatched him, and we sat by her until the evening fell, and far
+into the night. It was a relief to me to learn from the leech that she
+had been ailing for some time, and that in any case the end must have
+come soon. She suffered no pain and felt no fears, but meeting my eyes
+whenever she opened her own, or came out of the drowsiness which
+possessed her, thanked God, I think, and was content. As for me, I
+remember that room became, for the time, the world. Its stillness
+swallowed up all the tumults which filled the cities of France, and
+its one interest--the coming and going of a feeble breath--eclipsed
+the ambitions and hopes of a lifetime.
+
+Before it grew light Simon Fleix stole out to attend to the horses.
+When he returned he came to me and whispered in my ear that he had
+something to tell me; and my mother lying in a quiet sleep at the
+time, I disengaged my hand, and, rising softly, went with him to the
+hearth.
+
+Instead of speaking, he held his fist before me and suddenly unclosed
+the fingers. 'Do you know it?' he said, glancing at me abruptly.
+
+I took what he held, and looking at it, nodded. It was a knot of
+velvet of a peculiar dark red colour, and had formed, as I knew the
+moment I set eyes on it, part of the fastening of mademoiselle's mask.
+'Where did you find it?' I muttered, supposing that he had picked it
+up on the stairs.
+
+'Look at it!' he answered impatiently. 'You have not looked.'
+
+I turned it over, and then saw something which had escaped me at
+first--that the wider part of the velvet was disfigured by a fantastic
+stitching, done very roughly and rudely with a thread of white silk.
+The stitches formed letters, the letters words. With a start I read,
+'_A moi!_' and saw in a corner, in smaller stitches, the initials 'C.
+d. l. V.'
+
+I looked eagerly at the student. 'Where did you find this?' I said.
+
+'I picked it up in the street,' he answered quietly, 'not three
+hundred paces from here.'
+
+I thought a moment. 'In the gutter, or near the wall?' I asked.
+
+'Near the wall, to be sure.'
+
+'Under a window?'
+
+'Precisely,' he said. 'You may be easy; I am not a fool. I marked the
+place, M. de Marsac, and shall not forget it.'
+
+Even the sorrow and solicitude I felt on my mother's behalf--feelings
+which had seemed a minute before to secure me against all other cares
+or anxieties whatever--were not proof against this discovery. For I
+found myself placed in a strait so cruel I must suffer either way. On
+the one hand, I could not leave my mother; I were a heartless ingrate
+to do that. On the other, I could not, without grievous pain, stand
+still and inactive while Mademoiselle de la Vire, whom I had sworn to
+protect, and who was now suffering through my laches and mischance,
+appealed to me for help. For I could not doubt that this was what the
+bow of velvet meant; still less that it was intended for me, since few
+save myself would be likely to recognise it, and she would naturally
+expect me to make some attempt at pursuit.
+
+And I could not think little of the sign. Remembering mademoiselle's
+proud and fearless spirit, and the light in which she had always
+regarded me, I augured the worst from it. I felt assured that no
+imaginary danger and no emergency save the last would have induced her
+to stoop so low; and this consideration, taken with the fear I felt
+that she had fallen into the hands of Fresnoy, whom I believed to be
+the person who had robbed me of the gold coin, filled me with a
+horrible doubt which way my duty lay. I was pulled, as it were, both
+ways. I felt my honour engaged both to go and to stay, and while my
+hand went to my hilt, and my feet trembled to be gone, my eyes sought
+my mother, and my ears listened for her gentle breathing.
+
+Perplexed and distracted, I looked at the student, and he at me. 'You
+saw the man who took her away,' I muttered. Hitherto, in my absorption
+on my mother's account, I had put few questions, and let the matter
+pass as though it moved me little and concerned me less. 'What was he
+like? Was he a big, bloated man, Simon, with his head bandaged, or
+perhaps a wound on his face?'
+
+'The gentleman who went away with mademoiselle, do you mean?' he
+asked.
+
+'Yes, yes, gentleman if you like!'
+
+'Not at all,' the student answered. 'He was a tall young gallant, very
+gaily dressed, dark-haired, and with a rich complexion. I heard him
+tell her that he came from a friend of hers too high to be named in
+public or in Blois. He added that he brought a token from him; and
+when mademoiselle mentioned you--she had just entered madame's room
+with her woman when he appeared----'
+
+'He had watched me out, of course.'
+
+'Just so. Well, when she mentioned you, he swore you were an
+adventurer, and a beggarly impostor, and what not, and bade her say
+whether she thought it likely that her friend would have entrusted
+such a mission, to such a man.'
+
+'And then she went with him?'
+
+The student nodded.
+
+'Readily? Of her own free-will?'
+
+'Certainly,' he answered. 'It seemed so to me. She tried to prevent
+him speaking before your mother, but that was all.'
+
+On the impulse of the moment I took a step towards the door;
+recollecting my position, I turned back with a groan. Almost beside
+myself, and longing for any vent for my feelings, I caught the lad by
+the shoulder, where he stood on the hearth, and shook him to and fro.
+
+'Tell me, man, what am I to do?' I said between my teeth. 'Speak!
+think! invent something!'
+
+But he shook his head.
+
+I let him go with a muttered oath, and sat down on a stool by the bed
+and took my head between my hands. At that very moment, however,
+relief came--came from an unexpected quarter. The door opened and the
+leech entered. He was a skilful man, and, though much employed about
+the Court, a Huguenot--a fact which had emboldened Simon Fleix to
+apply to him through the landlord of the 'Bleeding Heart,' the secret
+rendezvous of the Religion in Blois. When he had made his examination
+he was for leaving, being a grave and silent man, and full of
+business, but at the door I stopped him.
+
+'Well, sir?' I said in a low tone, my hand on his cloak.
+
+'She has rallied, and may live three days,' he answered quietly.
+'Four, it may be, and as many more as God wills.'
+
+Pressing two crowns into his hand, I begged him to call daily, which
+he promised to do; and then he went. My mother was still dozing
+peacefully, and I turned to Simon Fleix, my doubts resolved and my
+mind made up.
+
+'Listen,' I said, 'and answer me shortly. We cannot both leave; that
+is certain. Yet I must go, and at once, to the place where you found
+the velvet knot. Do you describe the spot exactly, so that I may find
+it, and make no mistake.'
+
+He nodded, and after a moment's reflection answered,
+
+'You know the Rue St. Denys, M. de Marsac? Well, go down it, keeping
+the "Bleeding Heart" on your left. Take the second turning on the same
+side after passing the inn. The third house from the corner, on the
+left again, consists of a gateway leading to the Hospital of the Holy
+Cross. Above the gateway are two windows in the lower story, and above
+them two more. The knot lay below the first window you come to. Do you
+understand?'
+
+'Perfectly,' I said. 'It is something to be a clerk, Simon.'
+
+He looked at me thoughtfully, but added nothing; and I was busy
+tightening my sword-hilt, and disposing my cloak about the lower part
+of my face. When I had arranged this to my satisfaction, I took out
+and counted over the sum of thirty-five crowns, which I gave to him,
+impressing on him the necessity of staying beside my mother should I
+not return; for though I proposed to reconnoitre only, and learn if
+possible whether mademoiselle was still in Blois, the future was
+uncertain, and whereas I was known to my enemies, they were strangers
+to me.
+
+Having enjoined this duty upon him, I bade my mother a silent
+farewell, and, leaving the room, went slowly down the stairs, the
+picture of her worn and patient face going with me, and seeming, I
+remember, to hallow the purpose I had in my mind.
+
+The clocks were striking the hour before noon as I stepped from the
+doorway, and, standing a moment in the lane, looked this way and that
+for any sign of espionage. I could detect none, however. The lane was
+deserted; and feeling assured that any attempt to mislead my
+opponents, who probably knew Blois better than I did, must fail, I
+made none, but deliberately took my way towards the 'Bleeding Heart,'
+in the Rue St. Denys. The streets presented the same appearance of
+gloomy suspense which I had noticed on the previous day. The same
+groups stood about in the same corners, the same suspicious glances
+met me in common with all other strangers who showed themselves; the
+same listless inaction characterised the townsfolk, the same anxious
+hurry those who came and went with news. I saw that even here, under
+the walls of the palace, the bonds of law and order were strained
+almost to bursting, and judged that if there ever was a time in France
+when right counted for little, and the strong hand for much, it was
+this. Such a state of things was not unfavourable to my present
+design, and caring little for suspicious looks, I went resolutely on
+my way.
+
+I had no difficulty in finding the gateway of which Simon had spoken,
+or in identifying the window beneath which he had picked up the velvet
+knot. An alley opening almost opposite, I took advantage of this to
+examine the house at my leisure, and remarked at once, that whereas
+the lower window was guarded only by strong shutters, now open, that
+in the story above was heavily barred. Naturally I concentrated my
+attention on the latter. The house, an old building of stone, seemed
+sufficiently reputable, nor could I discern anything about it which
+would have aroused my distrust had the knot been found elsewhere. It
+bore the arms of a religious brotherhood, and had probably at one time
+formed the principal entrance to the hospital, which still stood
+behind it, but it had now come, as I judged, to be used as a dwelling
+of the better class. Whether the two floors were separately inhabited
+or not I failed to decide.
+
+After watching it for some time without seeing anyone pass in or out,
+or anything occurring to enlighten me one way or the other, I resolved
+to venture in, the street being quiet and the house giving no sign of
+being strongly garrisoned. The entrance lay under the archway, through
+a door on the right side. I judged from what I saw that the porter was
+probably absent, busying himself with his gossips in matters of State.
+
+And this proved to be the case, for when I had made the passage of the
+street with success, and slipped quietly in through the half-open
+door, I found only his staff and charcoal-pan there to represent him.
+A single look satisfied me on that point; forthwith, without
+hesitation, I turned to the stairs and began to mount, assured that if
+I would effect anything single-handed I must trust to audacity and
+surprise rather than to caution or forethought.
+
+The staircase was poorly lighted by loopholes looking towards the
+rear, but it was clean and well-kept. Silence, broken only by the
+sound of my footsteps, prevailed throughout the house, and all seemed
+so regular and decent and orderly that the higher I rose the lower
+fell my hopes of success. Still, I held resolutely on until I reached
+the second floor and stood before a closed door. The moment had come
+to put all to the touch. I listened for a few seconds, but hearing
+nothing, cautiously lifted the latch. Somewhat to my surprise the door
+yielded to my hand, and I entered.
+
+A high settle stood inside, interrupting my view of the room, which
+seemed to be spacious and full of rich stuffs and furniture, but low
+in the roof, and somewhat dimly lighted by two windows rather wide
+than high. The warm glow of a fire shone on the woodwork of the
+ceiling, and as I softly closed the door a log on the hearth gave way,
+with a crackling of sparks, which pleasantly broke the luxurious
+silence. The next moment a low, sweet voice asked, 'Alphonse, is that
+you?'
+
+I walked round the settle and came face to face with a beautiful woman
+reclining on a couch. On hearing the door open she had raised herself
+on her elbow. Now, seeing a stranger before her, she sprang up with a
+low cry, and stood gazing at me, her face expressing both astonishment
+and anger. She was of middling height, her features regular though
+somewhat childlike, her complexion singularly fair. A profusion of
+golden hair hung in disorder about her neck, and matched the deep blue
+of her eyes, wherein it seemed to me, there lurked more spirit and
+fire than the general cast of her features led one to expect.
+
+After a moment's silence, during which she scanned me from head to
+foot with great haughtiness--and I her with curiosity and wonder--she
+spoke, 'Sir!' she said slowly, 'to what am I to attribute
+this--visit?'
+
+For the moment I was so taken aback by her appearance and
+extraordinary beauty, as well as by the absence of any sign of those I
+sought, that I could not gather my thoughts to reply, but stood
+looking vaguely at her. I had expected, when I entered the room,
+something so different from this!
+
+'Well, sir?' she said again, speaking sharply, and tapping her foot on
+the floor.
+
+'This visit, madame?' I stammered.
+
+'Call it intrusion, sir, if you please!' she cried imperiously. 'Only
+explain it, or begone.'
+
+'I crave leave to do both, madame,' I answered, collecting myself
+by an effort. 'I ascended these stairs and opened your door in
+error--that is the simple fact--hoping to find a friend of mine here.
+I was mistaken, it seems, and it only remains for me to withdraw,
+offering at the same time the humblest apologies.' And as I spoke I
+bowed low and prepared to retire.
+
+'One moment, sir!' she said quickly, and in an altered tone. 'You are,
+perhaps, a friend of M. de Bruhl--of my husband. In that case, if you
+desire to leave any message I will--I shall be glad to deliver it.'
+
+She looked so charming that, despite the tumult of my feelings, I
+could not but regard her with admiration. 'Alas! madame, I cannot
+plead that excuse,' I answered. 'I regret that I have not the honour
+of his acquaintance.'
+
+She eyed me with some surprise. 'Yet still, sir,' she answered,
+smiling a little, and toying with a gold brooch which clasped her
+habit, 'you must have had some ground, some reason, for supposing you
+would find a friend here?'
+
+'True, madame,' I answered, 'but I was mistaken.'
+
+I saw her colour suddenly. With a smile and a faint twinkle of the eye
+she said, 'It is not possible, sir, I suppose--you have not come here,
+I mean, out of any reason connected with a--a knot of velvet, for
+instance?'
+
+I started, and involuntarily advanced a step towards her. 'A knot of
+velvet!' I exclaimed, with emotion. 'Mon Dieu! Then I was not
+mistaken! I have come to the right house, and you--you know something
+of this! Madame,' I continued impulsively, 'that knot of velvet? Tell
+me what it means, I implore you!'
+
+She seemed alarmed by my violence, retreating a step or two, and
+looking at me haughtily, yet with a kind of shamefacedness. 'Believe
+me, it means nothing,' she said hurriedly. 'I beg you to understand
+that, sir. It was a foolish jest.'
+
+'A jest?' I said. 'It fell from this window.'
+
+'It was a jest, sir,' she answered stubbornly. But I could see that,
+with all her pride, she was alarmed; her face was troubled, and there
+were tears in her eyes. And this rendered me under the circumstances
+only the more persistent.
+
+'I have the velvet here, madame,' I said. 'You must tell me more about
+it.'
+
+She looked at me with a weightier impulse of anger than she had yet
+exhibited. 'I do not think you know to whom you are speaking,' she
+said, breathing fast. 'Leave the room, sir, and at once! I have told
+you it was a jest. If you are a gentleman you will believe me, and
+go.' And she pointed to the door.
+
+But I held my ground, with an obstinate determination to pierce the
+mystery. 'I am a gentleman, madame,' I said, 'and yet I must know
+more. Until I know more I cannot go.'
+
+'Oh, this is insufferable!' she cried, looking round as if for a way
+of escape; but; I was between her and the only door. 'This is
+unbearable! The knot was never intended for you, sir. And what is
+more, if M. de Bruhl come and find you here, you will repent it
+bitterly.'
+
+I saw that she was at least as much concerned on her own account as on
+mine, and thought myself justified under the circumstances in taking
+advantage of her fears. I deliberately laid my cap on the table which
+stood beside me. 'I will go, madame,' I said, looking at her fixedly,
+'when I know all that you know about this knot I hold, and not before.
+If you are unwilling to tell me, I must wait for M. de Bruhl, and ask
+him.'
+
+She cried out 'Insolent!' and looked at me as if in her rage and
+dismay she would gladly have killed me; being, I could see, a
+passionate woman. But I held my ground, and after a moment she spoke.
+'What do you want to know?' she said, frowning darkly.
+
+'This knot--how did it come to lie in the street below your window? I
+want to know that first.'
+
+'I dropped it,' she answered sullenly.
+
+'Why?' I said.
+
+'Because----' And then she stopped and looked at me, and then again
+looked down, her face crimson. 'Because, if you must know,' she
+continued hurriedly, tracing a pattern on the table with her finger,
+'I saw it bore the words "_A moi_." I have been married only two
+months, and I thought my husband might find it--and bring it to me. It
+was a silly fancy.'
+
+'But where did you get it? 'I asked, and I stared at her in growing
+wonder and perplexity. For the more questions I put, the further, it
+seemed to me, I strayed from my object.
+
+'I picked it up in the Ruelle d'Arcy,' she answered, tapping her foot
+on the floor resentfully. 'It was the silly thing put it into my head
+to--to do what I did. And now, have you any more questions, sir?'
+
+'One only,' I said, seeing it all clearly enough. 'Will you tell me,
+please, exactly where you found it?'
+
+'I have told you. In the Ruelle d'Arcy, ten paces from the Rue de
+Valois. Now, sir, will you go?'
+
+'One word, madame. Did----'
+
+But she cried, 'Go, sir, go! go!' so violently, that after making one
+more attempt to express my thanks, I thought it better to obey her. I
+had learned all she knew; I had solved the puzzle. But, solving it, I
+found myself no nearer to the end I had in view, no nearer to
+mademoiselle. I closed the door with a silent bow, and began to
+descend the stairs, my mind full of anxious doubts and calculations.
+The velvet knot was the only clue I possessed, but was I right in
+placing any dependence on it? I knew now that, wherever it had
+originally lain, it had been removed once. If once, why not twice? why
+not three times?
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                   THE HOUSE IN THE RUELLE D'ARCY.
+
+
+I had not gone down half a dozen steps before I heard a man enter the
+staircase from the street, and begin to ascend. It struck me at once
+that this might be M. de Bruhl; and I realised that I had not left
+madame's apartment a moment too soon. The last thing I desired, having
+so much on my hands, was to embroil myself with a stranger, and
+accordingly I quickened my pace, hoping to meet him so near the foot
+of the stairs as to leave him in doubt whether I had been visiting the
+upper or lower part of the house. The staircase was dark, however, and
+being familiar with it, he had the advantage over me. He came leaping
+up two steps at a time, and turning the angle abruptly, surprised me
+before I was clear of the upper flight.
+
+On seeing me, he stopped short and stared; thinking at first, I fancy,
+that he ought to recognise me. When he did not, he stood back a pace.
+'Umph!' he said. 'Have you been--have you any message for me, sir?'
+
+'No,' I said, 'I have not.'
+
+He frowned. 'I am M. de Bruhl,' he said.
+
+'Indeed?' I muttered, not knowing what else to say.
+
+'You have been----'
+
+'Up your stairs, sir? Yes. In error,' I answered bluntly.
+
+He gave a kind of grunt at that, and stood aside, incredulous and
+dissatisfied, yet uncertain how to proceed. I met his black looks with
+a steady countenance, and passed by him, becoming aware, however, as I
+went on down the stairs that he had turned and was looking after me.
+He was a tall, handsome man, dark, and somewhat ruddy of complexion,
+and was dressed in the extreme of Court fashion, in a suit of
+myrtle-green trimmed with sable. He carried also a cloak lined with
+the same on his arm. Beyond looking back when I reached the street, to
+see that he did not follow me, I thought no more of him. But we were
+to meet again, and often. Nay, had I then known all that was to be
+known I would have gone back and---- But of that in another place.
+
+The Rue de Valois, to which a tradesman, who was peering cautiously
+out of his shop, directed me, proved to be one of the main streets of
+the city, narrow and dirty, and darkened by overhanging eaves and
+signboards, but full of noise and bustle. One end of it opened on the
+_parvis_ of the Cathedral; the other and quieter end appeared to abut
+on the west gate of the town. Feeling the importance of avoiding
+notice in the neighbourhood of the house I sought, I strolled into the
+open space in front of the Cathedral, and accosting two men who stood
+talking there, learned that the Ruelle d'Arcy was the third lane on
+the right of the Rue de Valois, and some little distance along it.
+Armed with this information I left them, and with my head bent down,
+and my cloak drawn about the lower part of my face, as if I felt the
+east wind, I proceeded down the street until I reached the opening of
+the lane. Without looking up I turned briskly into it.
+
+When I had gone ten paces past the turning, however, I stopped and,
+gazing about me, began to take in my surroundings as fast as I could.
+The lane, which seemed little frequented, was eight or nine feet wide,
+unpaved, and full of ruts. The high blank wall of a garden rose on one
+side of it, on the other the still higher wall of a house; and both
+were completely devoid of windows, a feature which I recognised with
+the utmost dismay. For it completely upset all my calculations. In
+vain I measured with my eye the ten paces I had come; in vain I looked
+up, looked this way and that. I was nonplussed. No window opened on
+the lane at that point, nor, indeed, throughout its length. For it was
+bounded to the end, as far as I could see, by dead-walls as of
+gardens.
+
+Recognising, with a sinking heart, what this meant, I saw in a moment
+that all the hopes I had raised on Simon Fleix's discovery were
+baseless. Mademoiselle had dropped the velvet bow, no doubt, but not
+from a window. It was still a clue, but one so slight and vague as to
+be virtually useless, proving only that she was in trouble and in need
+of help; perhaps that she had passed through this lane on her way from
+one place of confinement to another.
+
+Thoroughly baffled and dispirited, I leant for awhile against the
+wall, brooding over the ill-luck which seemed to attend me in this, as
+in so many previous adventures. Nor was the low voice of conscience,
+suggesting that such failures arose from mismanagement rather than
+from ill-luck, slow to make itself heard. I reflected that if I had
+not allowed myself to be robbed of the gold token, mademoiselle would
+have trusted me; that if I had not brought her to so poor an abode as
+my mother's, she would not have been cajoled into following a
+stranger; finally, that if I had remained with her, and sent Simon to
+attend to the horses in my place, no stranger would have gained access
+to her.
+
+But it has never been my way to accept defeat at the first offer, and
+though I felt these self-reproaches to be well deserved, a moment's
+reflection persuaded me that in the singular and especial providence
+which had brought the velvet knot safe to my hands I ought to find
+encouragement. Had Madame de Bruhl not picked it up it would have
+continued to lie in this by-path, through which neither I nor Simon
+Fleix would have been likely to pass. Again, had madame not dropped it
+in her turn, we should have sought in vain for any, even the
+slightest, clue to Mademoiselle de la Vire's fate or position.
+
+Cheered afresh by this thought, I determined to walk to the end of the
+lane; and forthwith did so, looking sharply about me as I went, but
+meeting no one. The bare upper branches of a tree rose here and there
+above the walls, which were pierced at intervals by low, strong doors.
+These doors I carefully examined, but without making any discovery;
+all were securely fastened, and many seemed to have been rarely
+opened. Emerging at last and without result on the inner side of the
+city ramparts, I turned, and moodily retraced my steps through the
+lane, proceeding more slowly as I drew near to the Rue de Valois. This
+time, being a little farther from the street, I made a discovery.
+
+The corner house, which had its front on the Rue Valois, presented, as
+I have said, a dead, windowless wall to the lane; but from my present
+standpoint I could see the upper part of the back of this house--that
+part of the back, I mean, which rose above the lower garden-wall that
+abutted on it--and in this there were several windows. The whole of
+two and a part of a third were within the range of my eyes; and
+suddenly in one of these I discovered something which made my heart
+beat high with hope and expectation. The window in question was
+heavily grated; that which I saw was tied to one of the bars. It was a
+small knot of some white stuff--linen apparently--and it seemed a
+trifle to the eye; but it was looped, as far as I could see from a
+distance, after the same fashion as the scrap of velvet I had in my
+pouch.
+
+The conclusion was obvious, at the same time that it inspired me with
+the liveliest admiration of mademoiselle's wit and resources. She was
+confined in that room; the odds were that she was behind those bars. A
+bow dropped thence would fall, the wind being favourable, into the
+lane, not ten, but twenty paces from the street. I ought to have been
+prepared for a slight inaccuracy in a woman's estimate of distance.
+
+It may be imagined with what eagerness I now scanned the house, with
+what minuteness I sought for a weak place. The longer I looked,
+however, the less comfort I derived from my inspection. I saw before
+me a gloomy stronghold of brick, four-square, and built in the old
+Italian manner, with battlements at the top, and a small
+machicolation, little more than a string-course, above each story;
+this serving at once to lessen the monotony of the dead-walls, and to
+add to the frowning weight of the upper part. The windows were few and
+small, and the house looked damp and mouldy; lichens clotted the
+bricks, and moss filled the string-courses. A low door opening from
+the lane into the garden naturally attracted my attention; but it
+proved to be of abnormal strength, and bolted both at the top and
+bottom.
+
+Assured that nothing could be done on that side, and being unwilling
+to remain longer in the neighbourhood, lest I should attract
+attention, I returned to the street, and twice walked past the front
+of the house, seeing all I could with as little appearance of seeing
+anything as I could compass. The front retreated, somewhat from the
+line of the street, and was flanked on the farther side by stables.
+Only one chimney smoked, and that sparely. Three steps led up to
+imposing double doors, which stood half open, and afforded a glimpse
+of a spacious hall and a state staircase. Two men, apparently
+servants, lounged on the steps, eating chestnuts, and jesting with one
+another; and above the door were three shields blazoned in colours. I
+saw with satisfaction, as I passed the second time, that the middle
+coat was that of Turenne impaling one which I could not read--which
+thoroughly satisfied me that the bow of velvet had not lied; so that,
+without more ado, I turned homewards, formulating my plans as I went.
+
+I found all as I had left it; and my mother still lying in a
+half-conscious state, I was spared the pain of making excuses for past
+absence, or explaining that which I designed. I communicated the plan
+I had formed to Simon Fleix, who saw no difficulty in procuring a
+respectable person to stay with Madame de Bonne. But for some time he
+would come no farther into the business. He listened, his mouth open
+and his eyes glittering, to my plan until I came to his share in it;
+and then he fell into a violent fit of trembling.
+
+'You want me to fight, monsieur,' he cried reproachfully, shaking all
+over like one in the palsy. 'You said so the other night. You want to
+get me killed! That's it.'
+
+'Nonsense!' I answered sharply. 'I want you to hold the horses!'
+
+He looked at me wildly, with a kind of resentment in his face, and yet
+as if he were fascinated.
+
+'You will drag me into it!' he persisted. 'You will!'
+
+'I won't,' I said.
+
+'You will! You will! And the end I know. I shall have no chance. I am
+a clerk, and not bred to fighting. You want to be the death of me!' he
+cried excitedly.
+
+'I don't want you to fight,' I answered with some contempt. 'I would
+rather that you kept out of it for my mother's sake. I only want you
+to stay in the lane and hold the horses. You will run little more risk
+than you do sitting by the hearth here.'
+
+And in the end I persuaded him to do what I wished; though still,
+whenever he thought of what was in front of him, he fell a-trembling
+again, and many times during the afternoon got up and walked to and
+fro between the window and the hearth, his face working and his hands
+clenched like those of a man in a fever. I put this down at first to
+sheer chicken-heartedness, and thought it augured ill for my
+enterprise; but presently remarking that he made no attempt to draw
+back, and that though the sweat stood on his brow he set about such
+preparations as were necessary--remembering also how long and kindly,
+and without pay or guerdon, he had served my mother, I began to see
+that here was something phenomenal; a man strange and beyond the
+ordinary, of whom it was impossible to predicate what he would do when
+he came to be tried.
+
+For myself, I passed the afternoon in a state almost of apathy. I
+thought it my duty to make this attempt to free mademoiselle, and to
+make it at once, since it was impossible to say what harm might come
+of delay, were she in such hands as Fresnoy's; but I had so little
+hope of success that I regarded the enterprise as desperate. The
+certain loss of my mother, however, and the low ebb of my fortunes,
+with the ever-present sense of failure, contributed to render me
+indifferent to risks; and even when we were on our way, through
+by-streets known to Simon, to the farther end of the Ruelle d'Arcy,
+and the red and frosty sunset shone in our faces, and gilded for a
+moment the dull eaves and grey towers above us, I felt no softening.
+Whatever the end, there was but one in the world whom I should regret,
+or who would regret me; and she hung, herself, on the verge of
+eternity.
+
+So that I was able to give Simon Fleix his last directions with as
+much coolness as I ever felt in my life. I stationed him with the
+three horses in the lane--which seemed as quiet and little frequented
+as in the morning--near the end of it, and about a hundred paces or
+more from the house.
+
+'Turn their heads towards the ramparts,' I said, wheeling them round
+myself, 'and then they will be ready to start. They are all quiet
+enough. You can let the Cid loose. And now listen to me, Simon,' I
+continued. 'Wait here until you see me return, or until you see you
+are going to be attacked. In the first case, stay for me, of course;
+in the second, save yourself as you please. Lastly, if neither event
+occurs before half-past five--you will hear the convent-bell yonder
+ring at the half-hour--begone, and take the horses; they are yours.
+And one word more,' I added hurriedly. 'If you can only get away with
+one horse, Simon, take the Cid. It is worth more than most men, and
+will not fail you at a pinch.'
+
+As I turned away, I gave him one look to see if he understood. It was
+not without hesitation that after that look I left him. The lad's face
+was flushed, he was breathing hard, his eyes seemed to be almost
+starting from his head. He sat his horse shaking in every limb, and
+had all the air of a man in a fit. I expected him to call me back; but
+he did not, and reflecting that I must trust him, or give up the
+attempt, I went up the lane with my sword under my arm, and my cloak
+loose on my shoulders. I met a man driving a donkey laden with
+faggots. I saw no one else. It was already dusk between the walls,
+though light enough in the open country; but that was in my favour,
+my only regret being that as the town gates closed shortly after
+half-past five, I could not defer my attempt until a still later hour.
+
+Pausing in the shadow of the house while a man might count ten, I
+impressed on my memory the position of the particular window which
+bore the knot; then I passed quickly into the street, which was still
+full of movement, and for a second, feeling myself safe from
+observation in the crowd, I stood looking at the front of the house.
+The door was shut. My heart sank when I saw this, for I had looked to
+find it still open.
+
+The feeling, however, that I could not wait, though time might present
+more than one opportunity, spurred me on. What I could do I must do
+now, at once. The sense that this was so being heavy upon me, I saw
+nothing for it but to use the knocker and gain admission, by fraud if
+I could, and if not, by force. Accordingly I stepped briskly across
+the kennel, and made for the entrance.
+
+When I was within two paces of the steps, however, someone abruptly
+threw the door open and stepped out. The man did not notice me, and I
+stood quickly aside, hoping that at the last minute my chance had
+come. Two men, who had apparently attended this first person
+downstairs, stood respectfully behind him, holding lights. He paused a
+moment on the steps to adjust his cloak, and with more than a little
+surprise I recognised my acquaintance of the morning, M. de Bruhl.
+
+I had scarcely time to identify him before he walked down the steps
+swinging his cane, brushed carelessly past me, and was gone. The two
+men looked after him awhile, shading their lights from the wind, and
+one saying something, the other laughed coarsely. The next moment they
+threw the door to and went, as I saw by the passage of their light,
+into the room on the left of the hall.
+
+Now was my time. I could have hoped for, prayed for, expected no
+better fortune than this. The door had rebounded slightly from the
+jamb, and stood open an inch or more. In a second I pushed it from me
+gently, slid into the hall, and closed it behind me.
+
+The door of the room on the left was wide open, and the light which
+shone through the doorway--otherwise the hall was dark--as well as the
+voices of the two men I had seen, warned me to be careful. I stood,
+scarcely daring to breathe, and looked about me. There was no matting
+on the floor, no fire on the hearth. The hall felt cold, damp, and
+uninhabited. The state staircase rose in front of me, and presently
+bifurcating, formed a gallery round the place. I looked up, and up,
+and far above me, in the dim heights of the second floor, I espied a
+faint light--perhaps, the reflection of a light.
+
+A movement in the room on my left warned me that I had no time to
+lose, if I meant to act. At any minute one of the men might come out
+and discover me. With the utmost care I started on my journey. I stole
+across the stone floor of the hall easily and quietly enough, but I
+found the real difficulty begin when I came to the stairs. They were
+of wood, and creaked and groaned under me to such an extent that, with
+each step I trod, I expected the men to take the alarm. Fortunately
+all went well until I passed the first corner--I chose, of course, the
+left-hand flight--then a board jumped under my foot with a crack which
+sounded in the empty hall, and to my excited ears, as loud as a
+pistol-shot. I was in two minds whether I should not on the instant
+make a rush for it, but happily I stood still. One of the men came out
+and listened, and I heard the other ask, with an oath, what it was. I
+leant against the wall, holding my breath.
+
+'Only that wench in one of her tantrums!' the man who had come out
+answered, applying an epithet to her which I will not set down, but
+which I carried to his account in the event of our coming face to face
+presently. 'She is quiet now. She may hammer and hammer, but----'
+
+The rest I lost, as he passed through the doorway and went back to his
+place by the fire. But in one way his words were of advantage to me. I
+concluded that I need not be so very cautious now, seeing that they
+would set down anything they heard to the same cause; and I sped on
+more quickly. I had just gained the second floor landing when a loud
+noise below--the opening of the street door and the heavy tread of
+feet in the hall--brought me to a temporary standstill. I looked
+cautiously over the balustrade, and saw two men go across to the room
+on the left. One of them spoke as he entered, chiding the other
+knaves, I fancied, for leaving the door unbarred; and the tone, though
+not the words, echoing sullenly up the staircase, struck a familiar
+chord in my memory. The voice was Fresnoy's!
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X.
+
+                       THE FIGHT ON THE STAIRS.
+
+
+The certainty, which this sound gave me, that I was in the right
+house, and that it held also the villain to whom I owed all my
+misfortunes--for who but Fresnoy could have furnished the broken coin
+which had deceived mademoiselle?--had a singularly inspiriting effect
+upon me. I felt every muscle in my body grow on the instant hard as
+steel, my eyes more keen, my ears sharper--all my senses more apt and
+vigorous. I stole off like a cat from the balustrade, over which I had
+been looking, and without a second's delay began the search for
+mademoiselle's room; reflecting that though the garrison now amounted
+to four, I had no need to despair. If I could release the prisoners
+without noise--which would be easy were the key in the lock--we might
+hope to pass through the hall by a _tour de force_ of one kind or
+another. And a church-clock at this moment striking Five, and
+reminding me that we had only half an hour in which to do all and
+reach the horses, I was the more inclined to risk something.
+
+The light which I had seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern
+just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one of
+two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house.
+Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I
+guessed that the light had been placed for his convenience. With this
+clue and the position of the window to guide me, I fixed on a door on
+the right of this passage, and scarcely four paces from the head of
+the stairs. Before I made any sign, however, I knelt down and
+ascertained that there was a light in the room, and also that the key
+was not in the lock.
+
+So far satisfied, I scratched on the door with my fingernails, at
+first softly, then with greater force, and presently I heard someone
+in the room rise. I felt sure that the person, whoever it was, had
+taken the alarm and was listening, and putting my lips to the keyhole
+I whispered mademoiselle's name.
+
+A footstep crossed the room sharply, and I heard muttering just within
+the door. I thought I detected two voices. But I was impatient, and,
+getting no answer, whispered in the same manner as before,
+'Mademoiselle de la Vire, are you there?'
+
+Still no answer. The muttering, too, had stopped, and all was
+still--in the room, and in the silent house. I tried again. 'It is I,
+Gaston de Marsac,' I said. 'Do you hear? I am come to release you.' I
+spoke as loudly as I dared, but most of the sound seemed to come back
+on me and wander in suspicious murmurings down the staircase.
+
+This time, however, an exclamation of surprise rewarded me, and a
+voice, which I recognised at once as mademoiselle's, answered softly:
+
+'What is it? Who is there?'
+
+'Gaston de Marsac,' I answered. 'Do you need my help?'
+
+The very brevity of her reply; the joyful sob which accompanied it,
+and which I detected even through the door: the wild cry of
+thankfulness--almost an oath--of her companion--all these assured me
+at once that I was welcome--welcome as I had never been before--and,
+so assuring me, braced me to the height of any occasion which might
+befall.
+
+'Can you open the door?' I muttered. All the time I was on my knees,
+my attention divided between the inside of the room and the stray
+sounds which now and then came up to me from the hall below. 'Have you
+the key?'
+
+'No; we are locked in,' mademoiselle answered.
+
+I expected this. 'If the door is bolted inside,' I whispered,
+'unfasten it, if you please.'
+
+They answered that it was not, so bidding them stand back a little
+from it, I rose and set my shoulder against it. I hoped to be able to
+burst it in with only one crash, which by itself, a single sound,
+might not alarm the men downstairs. But my weight made no impression
+upon the lock, and the opposite wall being too far distant to allow me
+to get any purchase for my feet, I presently desisted. The closeness
+of the door to the jambs warned me that an attempt to prise it open
+would be equally futile; and for a moment I stood gazing in perplexity
+at the solid planks, which bid fair to baffle me to the end.
+
+The position was, indeed, one of great difficulty, nor can I now think
+of any way out of it better or other than that which I adopted.
+Against the wall near the head of the stairs I had noticed, as I came
+up, a stout wooden stool. I stole out and fetched this, and setting it
+against the opposite wall, endeavoured in this way to get sufficient
+purchase for my feet. The lock still held; but, as I threw my whole
+weight on the door, the panel against which I leaned gave way and
+broke inwards with a loud, crashing sound, which echoed through the
+empty house, and might almost have been heard in the street outside.
+
+It reached the ears, at any rate, of the men sitting below, and I
+heard them troop noisily out and stand in the hall, now talking
+loudly, and now listening. A minute of breathless suspense
+followed--it seemed a long minute; and then, to my relief, they
+tramped back again, and I was free to return to my task. Another
+thrust, directed a little lower, would, I hoped, do the business; but
+to make this the more certain I knelt down and secured the stool
+firmly against the wall. As I rose after settling it, something
+else, without sound or warning, rose also, taking me completely by
+surprise--a man's head above the top stair, which, as it happened,
+faced me. His eyes met mine, and I knew I was discovered.
+
+He turned and bundled downstairs again with a scared face, going so
+quickly that I could not have caught him if I would, or had had the
+wit to try. Of silence there was no longer need. In a few seconds the
+alarm would be raised. I had small time for thought. Laying myself
+bodily against the door, I heaved and pressed with all my strength;
+but whether I was careless in my haste, or the cause was other, the
+lock did not give. Instead the stool slipped, and I fell with a crash
+on the floor at the very moment the alarm reached the men below.
+
+I remember that the crash of my unlucky fall seemed to release all the
+prisoned noises of the house. A faint scream within the room was but a
+prelude, lost the next moment in the roar of dismay, the clatter of
+weapons, and volley of oaths and cries and curses which, rolling up
+from below, echoed hollowly about me, as the startled knaves rushed to
+their weapons, and charged across the flags and up the staircase. I
+had space for one desperate effort. Picking myself up, I seized the
+stool by two of its legs and dashed it twice against the door, driving
+in the panel I had before splintered. But that was all. The lock held,
+and I had no time for a third blow. The men were already halfway up
+the stairs. In a breath almost they would be upon me. I flung down the
+useless stool and snatched up my sword, which lay unsheathed beside
+me. So far the matter had gone against us, but it was time for a
+change of weapons now, and the end was not yet. I sprang to the head
+of the stairs and stood there, my arm by my side and my point resting
+on the floor, in such an attitude of preparedness as I could compass
+at the moment.
+
+For I had not been in the house all this time, as may well be
+supposed, without deciding what I would do in case of surprise, and
+exactly where I could best stand on the defensive. The flat bottom of
+the lamp which hung outside the passage threw a deep shadow on the
+spot immediately below it, while the light fell brightly on the steps
+beyond. Standing in the shadow I could reach the edge of the stairs
+with my point, and swing the blade freely, without fear of the
+balustrade; and here I posted myself with a certain grim satisfaction
+as Fresnoy, with his three comrades behind him, came bounding up the
+last flight.
+
+They were four to one, but I laughed to see how, not abruptly, but
+shamefacedly and by degrees, they came to a stand halfway up the
+flight, and looked at me, measuring the steps and the advantage which
+the light shining in their eyes gave me. Fresnoy's ugly face was
+rendered uglier by a great strip of plaister which marked the place
+where the hilt of my sword had struck him in our last encounter at
+Chizé; and this and the hatred he bore to me gave a peculiar
+malevolence to his look. The deaf man, Matthew, whose savage stolidity
+had more than once excited my anger on our journey, came next to him.
+the two strangers whom I had seen in the hall bringing up the rear. Of
+the four, these last seemed the most anxious to come to blows, and had
+Fresnoy not barred the way with his hand we should have crossed swords
+without parley.
+
+'Halt, will you!' he cried, with an oath, thrusting one of them back.
+And then to me he said, 'So, so, my friend! It is you, is it?'
+
+I looked at him in silence, with a scorn which knew no bounds, and did
+not so much as honour him by raising my sword, though I watched him
+heedfully.
+
+'What are you doing here?' he continued, with an attempt at bluster.
+
+Still I would not answer him, or move, but stood looking down at him.
+After a moment of this, he grew restive, his temper being churlish and
+impatient at the best. Besides, I think he retained just so much of a
+gentleman's feelings as enabled him to understand my contempt and
+smart under it. He moved a step upward, his brow dark with passion.
+
+'You beggarly son of a scarecrow!' he broke out on a sudden, adding a
+string of foul imprecations, 'will you speak, or are you going to wait
+to be spitted where you stand? If we once begin, my bantam, we shall
+not stop until we have done your business! If you have anything to
+say, say it, and----' But I omit the rest of his speech, which was
+foul beyond the ordinary.
+
+Still I did not move or speak, but looked at him unwavering, though it
+pained me to think the women heard. He made a last attempt. 'Come, old
+friend,' he said, swallowing his anger again, or pretending to do so,
+and speaking with a vile _bonhomie_ which I knew to be treacherous,
+'if we come to blows we shall give you no quarter. But one chance you
+shall have, for the sake of old days when we followed Condé. Go! Take
+the chance, and go. We will let you pass, and that broken door shall
+be the worst of it. That is more,' he added with a curse, 'than I
+would do for any other man in your place, M. de Marsac.'
+
+A sudden movement and a low exclamation in the room behind me showed
+that his words were heard there; and these sounds being followed
+immediately by a noise as of riving wood, mingled with the quick
+breathing of someone hard at work, I judged that the women were
+striving with the door--enlarging the opening it might be. I dared not
+look round, however, to see what progress they made, nor did I answer
+Fresnoy, save by the same silent contempt, but stood watching the men
+before me with the eye of a fencer about to engage. And I know nothing
+more keen, more vigilant, more steadfast than that.
+
+It was well I did, for without signal or warning the group wavered a
+moment, as though retreating, and the next instant precipitated itself
+upon me. Fortunately, only two could engage me at once, and Fresnoy, I
+noticed, was not of the two who dashed forward up the steps. One of
+the strangers forced himself to the front, and, taking the lead,
+pressed me briskly, Matthew seconding him in appearance, while really
+watching for an opportunity of running in and stabbing me at close
+quarters, a man[oe]uvre I was not slow to detect.
+
+That first bout lasted half a minute only. A fierce exultant joy ran
+through me as the steel rang and grated, and I found that I had not
+mistaken the strength of wrist or position. The men were mine. They
+hampered one another on the stairs, and fought in fetters, being
+unable to advance or retreat, to lunge with freedom, or give back
+without fear. I apprehended greater danger from Matthew than from my
+actual opponent, and presently, watching my opportunity, disarmed the
+latter by a strong parade, and sweeping Matthew's sword aside by the
+same movement, slashed him across the forehead; then, drawing back a
+step, gave my first opponent the point. He fell in a heap on the
+floor, as good as dead, and Matthew, dropping his sword, staggered
+backwards and downwards into Fresnoy's arms.
+
+'Bonne Foi! France et Bonne Foi!' It seemed to me that I had not
+spoken, that I had plied steel in grimmest silence; and yet the cry
+still rang and echoed in the roof as I lowered my point, and stood
+looking grimly down at them. Fresnoy's face was disfigured with rage
+and chagrin. They were now but two to one, for Matthew, though his
+wound was slight, was disabled by the blood which ran down into his
+eyes and blinded him. 'France et Bonne Foi!'
+
+'Bonne Foi and good sword!' cried a voice behind me. And looking
+swiftly round, I saw mademoiselle's face thrust through the hole in
+the door. Her eyes sparkled with a fierce light, her lips were red
+beyond the ordinary, and her hair, loosened and thrown into disorder
+by her exertions, fell in thick masses about her white cheeks, and
+gave her the aspect of a war-witch, such as they tell of in my country
+of Brittany. 'Good sword!' she cried again, and clapped her hands.
+
+'But better board, mademoiselle!' I answered gaily. Like most of the
+men of my province, I am commonly melancholic, but I have the habit of
+growing witty at such times as these. 'Now, M. Fresnoy,' I continued,'
+I am waiting your convenience. Must I put on my cloak to keep myself
+warm?'
+
+He answered by a curse, and stood looking at me irresolutely. 'If you
+will come down,' he said.
+
+'Send your man away and I will come,' I answered briskly. 'There is
+space on the landing, and a moderate light. But I must be quick.
+Mademoiselle and I are due elsewhere, and we are late already.'
+
+Still he hesitated. Still he looked at the man lying at his feet--who
+had stretched himself out and passed, quietly enough, a minute
+before--and stood dubious, the most pitiable picture of cowardice and
+malice--he being ordinarily a stout man--I ever saw. I called him
+poltroon and white-feather, and was considering whether I had not
+better go down to him, seeing that our time must be up, and Simon
+would be quitting his post, when a cry behind me caused me to turn,
+and I saw that mademoiselle was no longer looking through the opening
+in the door.
+
+Alarmed on her behalf, as I reflected that there might be other
+doors to the room, and the men have other accomplices in the house, I
+sprang to the door to see, but had barely time to send a single glance
+round the interior--which showed me only that the room was still
+occupied--before Fresnoy, taking advantage of my movement and of my
+back being turned, dashed up the stairs, with his comrade at his
+heels, and succeeded in penning me into the narrow passage where I
+stood.
+
+I had scarcely time, indeed, to turn and put myself on guard before he
+thrust at me. Nor was that all. The superiority in position no longer
+lay with me. I found myself fighting between walls close to the
+opening in the door, through which the light fell athwart my eyes,
+baffling and perplexing me. Fresnoy was not slow to see the aid this
+gave him, and pressed me hard and desperately; so that we played for a
+full minute at close quarters, thrusting and parrying, neither of us
+having room to use the edge, or time to utter word or prayer.
+
+At this game we were so evenly matched that for a time the end was
+hard to tell. Presently, however, there came a change. My opponent's
+habit of wild living suited ill with a prolonged bout, and as his
+strength and breath failed and he began to give ground I discerned I
+had only to wear him out to have him at my mercy. He felt this
+himself, and even by that light I saw the sweat spring in great drops
+to his forehead, saw the terror grow in his eyes. Already I was
+counting him a dead man and the victory mine, when something flashed
+behind his blade, and his comrade's poniard, whizzing past his
+shoulder, struck me fairly on the chin, staggering me and hurling me
+back dizzy and half-stunned, uncertain what had happened to me.
+
+Sped an inch lower it would have done its work and finished mine. Even
+as it was, my hand going up as I reeled back gave Fresnoy an opening,
+of which he was not slow to avail himself. He sprang forward, lunging
+at me furiously, and would have run me through there and then, and
+ended the matter, had not his foot, as he advanced, caught in the
+stool, which still lay against the wall. He stumbled, his point missed
+my hip by a hair's breadth, and he himself fell all his length on the
+floor, his rapier breaking off short at the hilt.
+
+His one remaining backer stayed to cast a look at him, and that was
+all. The man fled, and I chased him as far as the head of the stairs;
+where I left him, assured by the speed and agility he displayed in
+clearing flight after flight that I had nothing to fear from him.
+Fresnoy lay, apparently stunned, and completely at my mercy. I stood
+an instant looking down at him, in two minds whether I should not run
+him through. But the memory of old days, when he had played his part
+in more honourable fashion and shown a coarse good-fellowship in the
+field, held my hand; and flinging a curse at him, I turned in anxious
+haste to the door, the centre of all this bloodshed and commotion. The
+light still shone through the breach in the panel, but for some
+minutes--since Fresnoy's rush up the stairs, indeed--I had heard no
+sound from this quarter. Now, looking in with apprehensions which grew
+with the continuing silence, I learned the reason. The room was empty!
+
+Such a disappointment in the moment of triumph was hard to bear. I saw
+myself, after all done and won, on the point of being again outwitted,
+distanced, it might be fooled. In frantic haste and excitement I
+snatched up the stool beside me, and, dashing it twice against the
+lock, forced it at last to yield. The door swung open, and I rushed
+into the room, which, abandoned by those who had so lately occupied
+it, presented nothing to detain me. I cast a single glance round, saw
+that it was squalid, low-roofed, unfurnished, a mere prison; then
+swiftly crossing the floor, I made for a door at the farther end,
+which my eye had marked from the first. A candle stood flaring and
+guttering on a stool, and as I passed I took it up.
+
+Somewhat to my surprise the door yielded to my touch. In trembling
+haste--for what might not befall the women while I fumbled with doors
+or wandered in passages?--I flung it wide, and passing through it,
+found myself at the head of a narrow, mean staircase, leading,
+doubtless, to the servants' offices. At this, and seeing no hindrance
+before me, I took heart of grace, reflecting that mademoiselle might
+have escaped from the house this way. Though it would now be too late
+to quit the city, I might still overtake her, and all end well.
+Accordingly I hurried down the stairs, shading my candle as I went
+from a cold draught of air which met me, and grew stronger as I
+descended; until reaching the bottom at last, I came abruptly upon an
+open door, and an old, wrinkled, shrivelled woman.
+
+The hag screamed at sight of me, and crouched down on the floor; and
+doubtless, with my drawn sword, and the blood dripping from my chin
+and staining all the front of my doublet, I looked tierce and uncanny
+enough. But I felt it was no time for sensibility--I was panting to be
+away--and I demanded of her sternly where they were. She seemed to
+have lost her voice--through fear, perhaps--and for answer only stared
+at me stupidly; but on my handling my weapon with some readiness she
+so far recovered her senses as to utter two loud screams, one after
+the other, and point to the door beside her. I doubted her; and yet I
+thought in her terror she must be telling the truth, the more as I saw
+no other door. In any case I must risk it, so, setting the candle down
+on the step beside her, I passed out.
+
+For a moment the darkness was so intense that I felt my way with my
+sword before me, in absolute ignorance where I was or on what my foot
+might next rest. I was at the mercy of anyone who chanced to be lying
+in wait for me; and I shivered as the cold damp wind struck my cheek
+and stirred my hair. But by-and-by, when I had taken two or three
+steps, my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and I made out the naked
+boughs of trees between myself and the sky, and guessed that I was in
+a garden. My left hand, touching a shrub, confirmed me in this belief,
+and in another moment I distinguished something like the outline of a
+path stretching away before me. Following it rapidly--as rapidly as I
+dared--I came to a corner, as it seemed to me, turned it blindly, and
+stopped short, peering into a curtain of solid blackness which barred
+my path, and overhead mingled confusedly with the dark shapes of
+trees. But this, too, after a brief hesitation, I made out to be a
+wall. Advancing to it with outstretched hands, I felt the woodwork of
+a door, and, groping about, lit presently on a loop of cord. I pulled
+at this, the door yielded, and I went out.
+
+I found myself in a narrow, dark lane, and looking up and down
+discovered, what I might have guessed before, that it was the Ruelle
+d'Arcy. But mademoiselle? Fanchette? Simon? Where were they? No one
+was to be seen. Tormented by doubts, I lifted up my voice and called
+on them in turn; first on mademoiselle, then on Simon Fleix. In vain;
+I got no answer. High up above me I saw, as I stood back a little,
+lights moving in the house I had left; and the suspicion that, after
+all, the enemy had foiled me grew upon me. Somehow they had decoyed
+mademoiselle to another part of the house, and then the old woman had
+misled me!
+
+I turned fiercely to the door, which I had left ajar, resolved to
+re-enter by the way I had come, and have an explanation whether or no.
+To my surprise--for I had not moved six paces from the door nor heard
+the slightest sound--I found it not only closed but bolted--bolted
+both at top and bottom, as I discovered on trying it.
+
+I fell on that to kicking it furiously, desperately; partly in a
+tempest of rage and chagrin, partly in the hope that I might frighten
+the old woman, if it was she who had closed it, into opening it again.
+In vain, of course; and presently I saw this and desisted, and, still
+in a whirl of haste and excitement, set off running towards the place
+where I had left Simon Fleix and the horses. It was fully six o'clock
+as I judged; but some faint hope that I might find him there with
+mademoiselle and her woman still lingered in my mind. I reached the
+end of the lane, I ran to the very foot of the ramparts, I looked
+right and left. In vain. The place was dark, silent, deserted.
+
+I called 'Simon! Simon! Simon Fleix!' but my only answer was the
+soughing of the wind in the eaves, and the slow tones of the
+convent-bell striking Six.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                         THE MAN AT THE DOOR.
+
+
+There are some things, not shameful in themselves, which it shames one
+to remember, and among these I count the succeeding hurry and
+perturbation of that night: the vain search, without hope or clue, to
+which passion impelled me, and the stubborn persistence with which I
+rushed frantically from place to place long after the soberness of
+reason would have had me desist. There was not, it seems to me,
+looking back now, one street or alley, lane or court, in Blois which I
+did not visit again and again in my frantic wanderings; not a beggar
+skulking on foot that night whom I did not hunt down and question; not
+a wretched woman sleeping in arch or doorway whom I did not see and
+scrutinise. I returned to my mother's lodging again and again, always
+fruitlessly. I rushed to the stables and rushed away again, or stood
+and listened in the dark, empty stalls, wondering what had happened,
+and torturing myself with suggestions of this or that. And everywhere,
+not only at the North-gate, where I interrogated the porters and found
+that no party resembling that which I sought had passed out, but on
+the _parvis_ of the Cathedral, where a guard was drawn up, and in the
+common streets, where I burst in on one group and another with my
+queries, I ran the risk of suspicion and arrest, and all that might
+follow thereon.
+
+It was strange indeed that I escaped arrest. The wound in my chin
+still bled at intervals, staining my doublet; and as I was without my
+cloak, which I had left in the house in the Rue Valois, I had nothing
+to cover my disordered dress. I was keenly, fiercely anxious. Stray
+passers meeting me in the glare of a torch, or seeing me hurry by the
+great braziers which burned where four streets met, looked askance at
+me and gave me the wall; while men in authority cried to me to stay
+and answer their questions. I ran from the one and the other with the
+same savage impatience, disregarding everything in the feverish
+anxiety which spurred me on and impelled me to a hundred imprudences,
+such as at my age I should have blushed to commit. Much of this
+feeling was due, no doubt, to the glimpse I had had of mademoiselle,
+and the fiery words she had spoken; more, I fancy, to chagrin and
+anger at the manner in which the cup of success had been dashed at the
+last moment from my lips.
+
+For four hours I wandered through the streets, now hot with purpose,
+now seeking aimlessly. It was ten o'clock when at length I gave up the
+search, and, worn out both in body and mind, climbed the stairs at my
+mother's lodgings and entered her room. An old woman sat by the fire,
+crooning softly to herself, while she stirred something in a black
+pot. My mother lay in the same heavy, deep sleep in which I had left
+her. I sat down opposite the nurse (who cried out at my appearance)
+and asked her dully for some food. When I had eaten it, sitting in a
+kind of stupor the while, the result partly of my late exertions, and
+partly of the silence which prevailed round me, I bade the woman call
+me if any change took place; and then going heavily across to the
+garret Simon had occupied, I lay down on his pallet, and fell into a
+sound, dreamless sleep.
+
+The next day and the next night I spent beside my mother, watching the
+life ebb fast away, and thinking with grave sorrow of her past and my
+future. It pained me beyond measure to see her die thus, in a garret,
+without proper attendance or any but bare comforts; the existence
+which had once been bright and prosperous ending in penury and gloom,
+such as my mother's love and hope and self-sacrifice little deserved.
+Her state grieved me sharply on my own account too, seeing that I had
+formed none of those familiar relations which men of my age have
+commonly formed, and which console them for the loss of parents and
+forbears; Nature so ordering it, as I have taken note, that men look
+forward rather than backward, and find in the ties they form with the
+future full compensation for the parting strands behind them. I was
+alone, poverty-stricken, and in middle life, seeing nothing before me
+except danger and hardship, and these unrelieved by hope or affection.
+This last adventure, too, despite all my efforts, had sunk me deeper
+in the mire; by increasing my enemies and alienating from me some to
+whom I might have turned at the worst. In one other respect also it
+had added to my troubles not a little; for the image of mademoiselle
+wandering alone and unguarded through the streets, or vainly calling
+on me for help, persisted in thrusting itself on my imagination when I
+least wanted it, and came even between my mother's patient face and
+me.
+
+I was sitting beside Madame de Bonne a little after sunset on the
+second day, the woman who attended her being absent on an errand, when
+I remarked that the lamp, which had been recently lit, and stood on a
+stool in the middle of the room, was burning low and needed snuffing.
+I went to it softly, and while stooping over it, trying to improve the
+light, heard a slow, heavy step ascending the stairs. The house was
+quiet, and the sound attracted my full attention. I raised myself and
+stood listening, hoping that this might be the doctor, who had not
+been that day.
+
+The footsteps passed the landing below, but at the first stair of the
+next flight the person, whoever it was, stumbled, and made a
+considerable noise. At that, or it might be a moment later, the step
+still ascending, I heard a sudden rustling behind me, and, turning
+quickly with a start, saw my mother sitting up in bed. Her eyes were
+open, and she seemed fully conscious; which she had not been for days,
+nor indeed since the last conversation I have recorded. But her face,
+though it was now sensible, was pinched and white, and so drawn with
+mortal fear that I believed her dying, and sprang to her, unable to
+construe otherwise the pitiful look in her straining eyes.
+
+'Madame,' I said, hastily passing my arm round her, and speaking with
+as much encouragement as I could infuse into my voice, 'take comfort.
+I am here. Your son.'
+
+'Hush!' she muttered in answer, laying her feeble hand on my wrist and
+continuing to look, not at me, but at the door. 'Listen, Gaston! Don't
+you hear? There it is again. Again!'
+
+For a moment I thought her mind still wandered, and I shivered, having
+no fondness for hearing such things. Then I saw she was listening
+intently to the sound which had attracted my notice. The step had
+reached the landing by this time. The visitor, whoever it was, paused
+there a moment, being in darkness, and uncertain, perhaps, of the
+position of the door; but in a little while I heard him move forward
+again, my mother's fragile form, clasped as it was in my embrace,
+quivering with each step he took, as though his weight stirred the
+house. He tapped at the door.
+
+I had thought, while I listened and wondered, of more than one whom
+this might be: the leech, Simon Fleix, Madame Bruhl, Fresnoy even. But
+as the tap came, and I felt my mother tremble in my arms,
+enlightenment came with it, and I pondered no more. I knew as well as
+if she had spoken and told me. There could be only one man whose
+presence had such power to terrify her, only one whose mere step,
+sounding through the veil, could drag her back to consciousness and
+fear! And that was the man who had beggared her, who had traded so
+long on her terrors.
+
+I moved a little, intending to cross the floor softly, that when he
+opened the door he might find me face to face with him; but she
+detected the movement, and, love giving her strength, she clung to my
+wrist so fiercely that I had not the heart, knowing how slender was
+her hold on life and how near the brink she stood, to break from her.
+I constrained myself to stand still, though every muscle grew tense as
+a drawn bowstring, and I felt the strong rage rising in my throat and
+choking me as I waited for him to enter.
+
+A log on the hearth gave way with a dull sound startling in the
+silence. The man tapped again, and getting no answer, for neither of
+us spoke, pushed the door slowly open, uttering before he showed
+himself the words, 'Dieu vous bénisse!' in a voice so low and smooth I
+shuddered at the sound. The next moment he came in and saw me, and,
+starting, stood at gaze, his head thrust slightly forward, his
+shoulders bent, his hand still on the latch, amazement and frowning
+spite in turn distorting his lean face. He had looked to find a weak,
+defenceless woman, whom he could torture and rob at his will; he saw
+instead a strong man armed, whose righteous anger he must have been
+blind indeed had he failed to read.
+
+Strangest thing of all, we had met before! I knew him at once--he me.
+He was the same Jacobin monk whom I had seen at the inn on the Claine,
+and who had told me the news of Guise's death!
+
+I uttered an exclamation of surprise on making this discovery, and my
+mother, freed suddenly, as it seemed, from the spell of fear, which
+had given her unnatural strength, sank back on the bed. Her grasp
+relaxed, and her breath came and went with so loud a rattle that I
+removed my gaze from him, and bent over her, full of concern and
+solicitude. Our eyes met. She tried to speak, and at last gasped, 'Not
+now, Gaston! Let him--let him----'
+
+Her lips framed the word 'go,' but she could not give it sound. I
+understood, however, and in impotent wrath I waved my hand to him to
+begone. When I looked up he had already obeyed me. He had seized the
+first opportunity to escape. The door was closed, the lamp burned
+steadily, and we were alone.
+
+I gave her a little Armagnac, which stood beside the bed for such an
+occasion, and she revived, and presently opened her eyes. But I saw at
+once a great change in her. The look of fear had passed altogether
+from her face, and one of sorrow, yet content, had taken its place.
+She laid her hand in mine, and looked up at me, being too weak, as I
+thought, to speak. But by-and-by, when the strong spirit had done its
+work, she signed to me to lower my head to her mouth.
+
+'The King of Navarre,' she murmured--'you are sure, Gaston--he will
+retain you in your--employments?'
+
+Her pleading eyes were so close to mine, I felt no scruples such as
+some might have felt, seeing her so near death; but I answered firmly
+and cheerfully, 'Madame, I am assured of it. There is no prince in
+Europe so trustworthy or so good to his servants.'
+
+She sighed with infinite content, and blessed him in a feeble whisper.
+'And if you live,' she went on, 'you will rebuild the old house,
+Gaston. The walls are sound yet. And the oak in the hall was not
+burned. There is a chest of linen at Gil's, and a chest with your
+father's gold lace--but that is pledged,' she added dreamily. 'I
+forgot.'
+
+'Madame,' I answered solemnly, 'it shall be done--it shall be done as
+you wish, if the power lie with me.'
+
+She lay for some time after that murmuring prayers, her head supported
+on my shoulder. I longed impatiently for the nurse to return, that I
+might despatch her for the leech; not that I thought anything could be
+done, but for my own comfort and greater satisfaction afterwards, and
+that my mother might not die without some fitting attendance. The
+house remained quiet, however, with that impressive quietness which
+sobers the heart at such times, and I could not do this. And about six
+o'clock my mother opened her eyes again.
+
+'This is not Marsac,' she murmured abruptly, her eyes roving from the
+ceiling to the wall at the foot of the bed.
+
+'No, Madame,' I answered, leaning over her, 'you are in Blois. But I
+am here--Gaston, your son.'
+
+She looked at me, a faint smile of pleasure stealing over her pinched
+face. 'Twelve thousand livres a year,' she whispered, rather to
+herself than to me, 'and an establishment, reduced a little, yet
+creditable, very creditable.' For a moment she seemed to be dying in
+my arms, but again opened her eyes quickly and looked me in the face.
+'Gaston?' she said, suddenly and strangely. 'Who said Gaston? He is
+with the King--I have blessed him; and his days shall be long in the
+land!' Then, raising herself in my arms with a last effort of
+strength, she cried loudly, 'Way there! Way for my son, the Sieur de
+Marsac!'
+
+They were her last words. When I laid her down on the bed a moment
+later, she was dead, and I was alone.
+
+Madame de Bonne, my mother, was seventy at the time of her death,
+having survived my father eighteen years. She was Marie de Roche de
+Loheac, third daughter of Raoul, Sieur de Loheac, on the Vilaine, and
+by her great-grandmother, a daughter of Jean de Laval, was descended
+from the ducal family of Rohan, a relationship which in after-times,
+and under greatly altered circumstances, Henry Duke of Rohan
+condescended to acknowledge, honouring me with his friendship on more
+occasions than one. Her death, which I have here recorded, took place
+on the fourth of January, the Queen-Mother of France, Catherine de
+Medicis, dying a little after noon on the following day.
+
+In Blois, as in every other town, even Paris itself, the Huguenots
+possessed at this time a powerful organisation; and with the aid of
+the surgeon, who showed me much respect in my bereavement, and
+exercised in my behalf all the influence which skilful and honest men
+of his craft invariably possess, I was able to arrange for my mother's
+burial in a private ground about a league beyond the walls and near
+the village of Chaverny. At the time of her death I had only thirty
+crowns in gold remaining, Simon Fleix, to whose fate I could obtain no
+clue, having carried off thirty-five with the horses. The whole of
+this residue, however, with the exception of a handsome gratuity to
+the nurse and a trifle spent on my clothes, I expended on the funeral,
+desiring that no stain should rest on my mother's birth or my
+affection. Accordingly, though the ceremony was of necessity private,
+and indeed secret, and the mourners were few, it lacked nothing, I
+think, of the decency and propriety which my mother loved; and which
+she preferred, I have often heard her say, to the vulgar show that is
+equally at the command of the noble and the farmer of taxes.
+
+Until she was laid in her quiet resting-place I stood in constant fear
+of some interruption on the part either of Bruhl, whose connection
+with Fresnoy and the abduction I did not doubt, or of the Jacobin
+monk. But none came; and nothing happening to enlighten me as to the
+fate of Mademoiselle de la Vire, I saw my duty clear before me. I
+disposed of the furniture of my mother's room, and indeed of
+everything which was saleable, and raised in this way enough money to
+buy myself a new cloak--without which I could not travel in the wintry
+weather--and to hire a horse. Sorry as the animal was, the dealer
+required security, and I had none to offer. It was only at the last
+moment I bethought me of the fragment of gold chain which mademoiselle
+had left behind her, and which, as well as my mother's rings and
+vinaigrette, I had kept back from the sale. This I was forced to lodge
+with him. Having thus, with some pain and more humiliation, provided
+means for the journey, I lost not an hour in beginning it. On the
+eighth of January I set out for Rosny, to carry the news of my
+ill-success and of mademoiselle's position whither I had looked a week
+before to carry herself.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, BARON DE ROSNY.
+
+
+I looked to make the journey to Rosny in two days. But the heaviness
+of the roads and the sorry condition of my hackney hindered me so
+greatly that I lay the second night at Dreux, and, hearing the way was
+still worse between that place and my destination, began to think that
+I should be fortunate if I reached Rosny by the following noon. The
+country in this part seemed devoted to the League, the feeling
+increasing in violence as I approached the Seine. I heard nothing save
+abuse of the King of France and praise of the Guise princes, and had
+much ado, keeping a still tongue and riding modestly, to pass without
+molestation or inquiry.
+
+Drawing near to Rosny, on the third morning, through a low marshy
+country covered with woods and alive with game of all kinds, I began
+to occupy myself with thoughts of the reception I was likely to
+encounter; which, I conjectured, would be none of the most pleasant.
+The daring and vigour of the Baron de Rosny, who had at this time the
+reputation of being in all parts of France at once, and the familiar
+terms on which he was known to live with the King of Navarre, gave me
+small reason to hope that he would listen with indulgence to such a
+tale as I had to tell. The nearer I came to the hour of telling it,
+indeed, the more improbable seemed some of its parts, and the more
+glaring my own carelessness in losing the token, and in letting
+mademoiselle out of my sight in such a place as Blois. I saw this so
+clearly now, and more clearly as the morning advanced, that I do not
+know that I ever anticipated anything with more fear than this
+explanation; which it yet seemed my duty to offer with all reasonable
+speed. The morning was warm, I remember; cloudy, yet not dark; the air
+near at hand full of moisture and very clear, with a circle of mist
+rising some way off, and filling the woods with blue distances. The
+road was deep and foundrous, and as I was obliged to leave it from
+time to time in order to pass the worst places, I presently began to
+fear that I had strayed into a by-road. After advancing some distance,
+in doubt whether I should persevere or turn back, I was glad to see
+before me a small house placed at the junction of several woodland
+paths. From the bush which hung over the door, and a water-trough
+which stood beside it, I judged the place to be an inn; and
+determining to get my horse fed before I went farther, I rode up to
+the door and rapped on it with my riding-switch.
+
+The position of the house was so remote that I was surprised to see
+three or four heads thrust immediately out of a window. For a moment I
+thought I should have done better to have passed by; but the landlord
+coming out very civilly, and leading the way to a shed beside the
+house, I reflected that I had little to lose, and followed him. I
+found, as I expected, four horses tied up in the shed, the bits
+hanging round their necks and their girths loosed; while my surprise
+was not lessened by the arrival, before I had fastened up my own
+horse, of a sixth rider, who, seeing us by the shed, rode up to us,
+and saluted me as he dismounted.
+
+He was a tall, strong man in the prime of youth, wearing a plain,
+almost mean suit of dust-coloured leather, and carrying no weapons
+except a hunting-knife, which hung in a sheath at his girdle. He rode
+a powerful silver-roan horse, and was splashed to the top of his high
+untanned boots, as if he had come by the worst of paths, if by any.
+
+He cast a shrewd glance at the landlord as he led his horse into the
+shed; and I judged from his brown complexion and quick eyes that he
+had seen much weather and lived an out-of-door life.
+
+He watched me somewhat curiously while I mixed the fodder for my
+horse; and when I went into the house and sat down in the first room I
+came to, to eat a little bread-and-cheese which I had in my pouch, he
+joined me almost immediately. Apparently he could not stomach my poor
+fare, however, for after watching me for a time in silence, switching
+his boot with his whip the while, he called the landlord, and asked
+him, in a masterful way, what fresh meat he had, and particularly if
+he had any lean collops, or a fowl.
+
+The fellow answered that there was nothing. His honour could have some
+Lisieux cheese, he added, or some stewed lentils.
+
+'His honour does not want cheese,' the stranger answered peevishly,
+'nor lentil porridge. And what is this I smell, my friend?' he
+continued, beginning suddenly to sniff with vigour. 'I swear I smell
+cooking.'
+
+'It is the hind-quarter of a buck, which is cooking for the four
+gentlemen of the Robe; with a collop or two to follow,' the landlord
+explained; and humbly excused himself on the ground that the gentlemen
+had strictly engaged it for their own eating.
+
+'What? A whole quarter! _and_ a collop or two to follow!' the stranger
+retorted, smacking his lips. 'Who are they?'
+
+'Two advocates and their clerks from the Parliament of Paris. They
+have been viewing a boundary near here, and are returning this
+afternoon,' the landlord answered.
+
+'No reason why they should cause a famine!' ejaculated the stranger
+with energy. 'Go to them and say a gentleman, who has ridden far, and
+fasted since seven this morning, requests permission to sit at their
+table. A quarter of venison and a collop or two among four!' he
+continued, in atone of extreme disgust. 'It is intolerable! And
+advocates! Why, at that rate, the King of France should eat a whole
+buck, and rise hungry! Don't you agree with me, sir?' he continued,
+turning on me and putting the question abruptly.
+
+He was so comically and yet so seriously angry, and looked so closely
+at me as he spoke, that I hastened to say I agreed with him perfectly.
+
+'Yet you eat cheese, sir!' he retorted irritably.
+
+I saw that, not withstanding the simplicity of his dress, he was a
+gentleman, and so, forbearing to take offence, I told him plainly that
+my purse being light I travelled rather as I could than as I would.
+
+'Is it so?' he answered hastily. 'Had I known that, I would have
+joined you in the cheese! After all, I would rather fast with a
+gentleman, than feast with a churl. But it is too late now. Seeing you
+mix the fodder, I thought your pockets were full.'
+
+'The nag is tired, and has done its best,' I answered.
+
+He looked at me curiously, and as though he would say more. But the
+landlord returning at that moment, he turned to him instead.
+
+'Well!' he said briskly. 'Is it all right?'
+
+'I am sorry, your honour,' the man answered, reluctantly, and with a
+very downcast air, 'but the gentlemen beg to be excused.'
+
+'Zounds!' cried my companion roundly. 'They do, do they?'
+
+'They say they have no more, sir,' the landlord continued, faltering,
+'than enough for themselves and a little dog they have with them.'
+
+A shout of laughter which issued at that moment from the other room
+seemed to show that the quartette were making merry over my
+companion's request. I saw his cheek redden, and looked for an
+explosion of anger on his part; but instead he stood a moment in
+thought in the middle of the floor, and then, much to the innkeeper's
+relief, pushed a stool towards me, and called for a bottle of the best
+wine. He pleasantly begged leave to eat a little of my cheese, which
+he said looked better than the Lisieux, and, filling my glass with
+wine, fell to as merrily as if he had never heard of the party in the
+other room.
+
+I was more than a little surprised, I remember; for I had taken him to
+be a passionate man, and not one to sit down under an affront. Still I
+said nothing, and we conversed very well together. I noticed, however,
+that he stopped speaking more than once, as though to listen; but
+conceiving that he was merely reverting to the party in the other
+room, who grew each moment more uproarious, I said nothing, and was
+completely taken by surprise when he rose on a sudden, and, going to
+the open window, leaned out, shading his eyes with his hand.
+
+'What is it?' I said, preparing to follow him.
+
+He answered by a quiet chuckle. 'You shall see,' he added the next
+instant.
+
+I rose, and going to the window looked out over his shoulder. Three
+men were approaching the inn on horseback. The first, a great burly,
+dark-complexioned man with fierce black eyes and a feathered cap, had
+pistols in his holsters and a short sword by his side. The other two,
+with the air of servants, were stout fellows, wearing green doublets
+and leather breeches. All three rode good horses, while a footman led
+two hounds after them in a leash. On seeing us they cantered forward,
+the leader waving his bonnet.
+
+'Halt, there!' cried my companion, lifting up his voice when they were
+within a stone's throw of us. 'Maignan!'
+
+'My lord?' answered he of the feather, pulling up on the instant.
+
+'You will find six horses in the shed there,' the stranger cried in a
+voice of command. 'Turn out the four to the left as you go in. Give
+each a cut, and send it about its business!'
+
+The man wheeled his horse before the words were well uttered, and
+crying obsequiously 'that it was done,' flung his reins to one of the
+other riders and disappeared in the shed, as if the order given him
+were the most commonplace one in the world.
+
+The party in the other room, however, by whom, all could be heard,
+were not slow to take the alarm. They broke into a shout of
+remonstrance, and one of their number, leaping from the window, asked
+with a very fierce air what the devil we meant. The others thrust out
+their faces, swollen and flushed with the wine they had drunk, and
+with many oaths backed up his question. Not feeling myself called upon
+to interfere, I prepared to see something diverting.
+
+My companion, whose coolness surprised me, had all the air of being as
+little concerned as myself. He even persisted for a time in ignoring
+the angry lawyer, and, turning a deaf ear to all the threats and abuse
+with which the others assailed him, continued to look calmly at the
+prospect. Seeing this, and that nothing could move him, the man who
+had jumped through the window, and who seemed the most enterprising of
+the party, left us at last and ran towards the stalls. The aspect of
+the two serving-men, however, who rode up grinning, and made as if
+they would ride him down, determined him to return; which he did, pale
+with fury, as the last of the four horses clattered out, and after a
+puzzled look round trotted off at its leisure into the forest.
+
+On this, the man grew more violent, as I have remarked frightened men
+do; so that at last the stranger condescended to notice him. 'My good
+sir,' he said coolly, looking at him through the window as if he had
+not seen him before, 'you annoy me. What is the matter?'
+
+The fellow retorted with a vast amount of bluster, asking what the
+devil we meant by turning out his horses.
+
+'Only to give you and the gentlemen with you a little exercise,' my
+companion answered, with grim humour, and in a severe tone strange in
+one so young--'than which, nothing is more wholesome after a full
+meal. That, and a lesson in good manners. Maignan,' he continued,
+raising his voice, 'if this person has anything more to say, answer
+him. He is nearer your degree than mine.'
+
+And leaving the man to slink away like a whipped dog--for the mean are
+ever the first to cringe--my friend turned from the window. Meeting my
+eyes as he went back to his seat, he laughed. 'Well,' he said, 'what
+do you think?'
+
+'That the ass in the lion's skin is very well till it meets the lion,'
+I answered.
+
+He laughed again, and seemed pleased, as I doubt not he was. 'Pooh,
+pooh!' he said. 'It passed the time, and I think I am quits with my
+gentlemen now. But I must be riding. Possibly our roads may lie for a
+while in the same direction, sir?' And he looked at me irresolutely.
+
+I answered cautiously that I was going to the town of Rosny.
+
+'You are not from Paris?' he continued, still looking at me.
+
+'No,' I answered. 'I am from the south.'
+
+'From Blois, perhaps?'
+
+I nodded.
+
+'Ah!' he said, making no comment, which somewhat surprised me, all men
+at this time desiring news, and looking to Blois for it. 'I am riding
+towards Rosny also. Let us be going.'
+
+But I noticed that as we got to horse, the man he called Maignan
+holding his stirrup with much formality, he turned and looked at me
+more than once with an expression in his eye which I could not
+interpret; so that, being in an enemy's country, where curiosity was a
+thing to be deprecated, I began to feel somewhat uneasy. However, as
+he presently gave way to a fit of laughter, and seemed to be digesting
+his late diversion at the inn, I thought no more of it, finding him
+excellent company and a man of surprising information.
+
+Notwithstanding this my spirits began to flag as I approached Rosny;
+and as on such occasions nothing is more trying than the well-meant
+rallying of a companion ignorant of our trouble, I felt rather relief
+than regret when he drew rein at four cross-roads a mile or so short
+of the town, and, announcing that here our paths separated, took a
+civil leave of me, and went his way with his servants.
+
+I dismounted at an inn at the extremity of the town, and, stopping
+only to arrange my dress and drink a cup of wine, asked the way to the
+Château, which was situate, I learned, no more than a third of a mile
+away. I went thither on foot by way of an avenue of trees leading up
+to a drawbridge and gateway. The former was down, but the gates were
+closed, and all the formalities of a fortress in time of war were
+observed on my admission, though the garrison appeared to consist only
+of two or three serving-men and as many foresters. I had leisure after
+sending in my name to observe that the house was old and partly
+ruinous, but of great strength, covered in places with ivy, and
+closely surrounded by woods. A staid-looking page came presently to
+me, and led me up a narrow staircase to a parlour lighted by two
+windows, looking, one into the courtyard, the other towards the town.
+Here a tall man was waiting to receive me, who rose on my entrance and
+came forward. Judge of my surprise when I recognised my acquaintance
+of the afternoon! 'M. de Rosny?' I exclaimed, standing still and
+looking at him in confusion.
+
+'The same, sir,' he answered, with a quiet smile. 'You come from the
+King of Navarre, I believe, and on an errand to me. You may speak
+openly. The king has no secrets from me.'
+
+There was something in the gravity of his demeanour as he waited for
+me to speak which strongly impressed me; notwithstanding that he was
+ten years younger than myself, and I had seen him so lately in a
+lighter mood. I felt that his reputation had not belied him--that here
+was a great man; and reflecting with despair on the inadequacy of the
+tale I had to tell him, I paused to consider in what terms I should
+begin. He soon put an end to this, however. 'Come, sir,' he said with
+impatience. 'I have told you that you may speak out. You should have
+been here four days ago, as I take it. Now you are here, where is the
+lady?'
+
+'Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I stammered, rather to gain time than with
+any other object.
+
+'Tut, tut!' he rejoined, frowning. 'Is there any other lady in the
+question? Come, sir, speak out. Where have you left her? This is no
+affair of gallantry,' he continued, the harshness of his demeanour
+disagreeably surprising me, I that you need beat about the bush. The
+king entrusted to you a lady, who, I have no hesitation in telling you
+now, was in possession of certain State secrets. It is known that she
+escaped safely from Chizé and arrived safely at Blois. Where is she?'
+
+'I would to Heaven I knew, sir!' I exclaimed in despair, feeling the
+painfulness of my position increased a hundredfold by his manner. 'I
+wish to God I did.'
+
+'What is this?' he cried in a raised voice. 'You do not know where she
+is? You jest, M. de Marsac.'
+
+'It were a sorry jest,' I answered, summoning up a rueful smile. And
+on that, plunging desperately into the story which I have here set
+down, I narrated the difficulties under which I had raised my escort,
+the manner in which I came to be robbed of the gold token, how
+mademoiselle was trepanned, the lucky chance by which I found her
+again, and the final disappointment. He listened, but listened
+throughout with no word of sympathy--rather with impatience, which
+grew at last into derisive incredulity. When I had done he asked me
+bluntly what I called myself.
+
+Scarcely understanding what he meant, I repeated my name.
+
+He answered, rudely and flatly, that it was impossible. 'I do not
+believe it, sir!' he repeated, his brow dark. 'You are not the man.
+You bring neither the lady nor the token, nor anything else by which I
+can test your story. Nay, sir, do not scowl at me,' he continued
+sharply. 'I am the mouthpiece of the King of Navarre, to whom this
+matter is of the highest importance. I cannot believe that the man
+whom he would choose would act so. This house you prate of in Blois,
+for instance, and the room with the two doors? What were you doing
+while mademoiselle was being removed?'
+
+'I was engaged with the men of the house,' I answered, striving to
+swallow the anger which all but choked me. 'I did what I could. Had
+the door given way, all would have been well.'
+
+He looked at me darkly. 'That is fine talking!' he said with a sneer.
+Then he dropped his eyes and seemed for a time to fall into a brown
+study, while I stood before him, confounded by this new view of the
+case, furious, yet not knowing how to vent my fury, cut to the heart
+by his insults, yet without hope or prospect of redress.
+
+'Come!' he said harshly, after two or three minutes of gloomy
+reflection on his part and burning humiliation on mine, 'is there
+anyone here who can identify you, or in any other way confirm your
+story, sir? Until I know how the matter stands I can do nothing.'
+
+I shook my head in sullen shame. I might protest against his brutality
+and this judgment of me, but to what purpose while he sheltered
+himself behind his master?
+
+'Stay!' he said presently, with an abrupt gesture of remembrance. 'I
+had nearly forgotten. I have some here who have been lately at the
+King of Navarre's Court at St. Jean d'Angely. If you still maintain
+that you are the M. de Marsac to whom this commission was entrusted,
+you will doubtless have no objection to seeing them?'
+
+On this I felt myself placed in a most cruel dilemma. If I refused to
+submit my case to the proposed ordeal, I stood an impostor confessed.
+If I consented to see these strangers, it was probable they would not
+recognise me, and possible that they might deny me in terms calculated
+to make my position even worse, if that might be. I hesitated; but,
+Rosny standing inexorable before me awaiting an answer, I finally
+consented.
+
+'Good!' he said curtly. 'This way, if you please. They are here. The
+latch is tricky. Nay, sir, it is my house.'
+
+Obeying the stern motion of his hand, I passed before him into the
+next room, feeling myself more humiliated than I can tell by this
+reference to strangers. For a moment I could see no one. The day was
+waning, the room I entered was long and narrow, and illuminated only
+by a glowing fire. Besides I was myself, perhaps, in some
+embarrassment. I believed that my conductor had made a mistake, or
+that his guests had departed, and I turned towards him to ask for an
+explanation. He merely pointed onwards, however, and I advanced;
+whereupon a young and handsome lady, who had been seated in the shadow
+of the great fireplace, rose suddenly, as if startled, and stood
+looking at me, the glow of the burning wood falling on one side of her
+face and turning her hair to gold.
+
+'Well!' M. de Rosny said, in a voice which sounded a little odd in my
+ears. 'You do not know madame, I think?'
+
+I saw that she was a complete stranger to me, and bowed to her without
+speaking. The lady saluted me in turn ceremoniously and in silence.
+
+'Is there no one else here who should know you?' M. de Rosny
+continued, in a tone almost of persiflage, and with the same change in
+his voice which had struck me before; but now it was more marked. 'If
+not, M. de Marsac, I am afraid---- But first look round, look round,
+sir; I would not judge any man hastily.'
+
+He laid his hand on my shoulder as he finished in a manner so familiar
+and so utterly at variance with his former bearing that I doubted if I
+heard or felt aright. Yet I looked mechanically at the lady, and
+seeing that her eyes glistened in the firelight, and that she gazed at
+me very kindly, I wondered still more; falling, indeed, into a very
+confusion of amazement. This was not lessened but augmented a
+hundredfold when, turning in obedience to the pressure of de Rosny's
+hand, I saw beside me, as if she had risen from the floor, another
+lady--no other than Mademoiselle de la Vire herself! She had that
+moment stepped out of the shadow of the great fireplace, which had
+hitherto hidden her, and stood before me curtseying prettily, with the
+same look on her face and in her eyes which madame's wore.
+
+'Mademoiselle!' I muttered, unable to take my eyes from her.
+
+'Mais oui, monsieur, mademoiselle,' she answered, curtseying lower,
+with the air of a child rather than a woman.
+
+'Here?' I stammered, my mouth open, my eyes staring.
+
+'Here, sir--thanks to the valour of a brave man,' she answered,
+speaking in a voice so low I scarcely heard her. And then, dropping
+her eyes, she stepped back into the shadow, as if either she had said
+too much already, or doubted her composure were she to say more. She
+was so radiantly dressed, she looked in the firelight more like a
+fairy than a woman, being of small and delicate proportions; and she
+seemed in my eyes so different a person, particularly in respect of
+the softened expression of her features, from the Mademoiselle de la
+Vire whom I had known and seen plunged in sloughs and bent to the
+saddle with fatigue, that I doubted still if I had seen aright, and
+was as far from enlightenment as before.
+
+It was M. de Rosny himself who relieved me from the embarrassment I
+was suffering. He embraced me in the most kind and obliging manner,
+and this more than once; begging me to pardon the deception he had
+practised upon me, and to which he had been impelled partly by the odd
+nature of our introduction at the inn, and partly by his desire to
+enhance the joyful surprise he had in store for me. 'Come,' he said
+presently, drawing me to the window, 'let me show you some more of
+your old friends.'
+
+I looked out, and saw below me in the courtyard my three horses drawn
+up in a row, the Cid being bestridden by Simon Fleix, who, seeing me,
+waved a triumphant greeting. A groom stood at the head of each horse,
+and on either side was a man with a torch. My companion laughed
+gleefully. 'It was Maignan's arrangement,' he said. 'He has a quaint
+taste in such things.'
+
+After greeting Simon Fleix a hundred times, I turned back into the
+room, and, my heart overflowing with gratitude and wonder, I begged M.
+de Rosny to acquaint me with the details of mademoiselle's escape.
+
+'It was the most simple thing in the world,' he said, taking me by the
+hand and leading me back to the hearth. 'While you were engaged with
+the rascals, the old woman who daily brought mademoiselle's food grew
+alarmed at the uproar, and came into the room to learn what it was.
+Mademoiselle, unable to help you, and uncertain of your success,
+thought the opportunity too good to be lost. She forced the old woman
+to show her and her maid the way out through the garden. This done,
+they ran down a lane, as I understand, and came immediately upon the
+lad with the horses, who recognised them and helped them to mount.
+They waited some minutes for you, and then rode off.'
+
+'But I inquired at the gate,' I said.
+
+'At which gate?' inquired M. de Rosny, smiling.
+
+'The North-gate, of course,' I answered.
+
+'Just so,' he rejoined with a nod. 'But they went out through the
+West-gate and made a circuit. He is a strange lad, that of yours below
+there. He has a head on his shoulder, M. de Marsac. Well, two leagues
+outside the town they halted, scarcely knowing how to proceed. By good
+fortune, however, a horse-dealer of my acquaintance was at the inn. He
+knew Mademoiselle de la Vire, and, hearing whither she was bound,
+brought her hither without let or hindrance.'
+
+'Was he a Norman?' I asked.
+
+M. de Rosny nodded, smiling at me shrewdly. 'Yes,' he said, 'he told
+me much about you. And now let me introduce you to my wife, Madame de
+Rosny.'
+
+He led me up to the lady who had risen at my entrance, and who now
+welcomed me as kindly as she had before looked on me, paying me many
+pleasant compliments. I gazed at her with interest, having heard much
+of her beauty and of the strange manner in which M. de Rosny, being
+enamoured of two young ladies, and chancing upon both while lodging in
+different apartments at an inn, had decided which he should visit and
+make his wife. He appeared to read what was in my mind, for as I bowed
+before her, thanking her for the obliging things which she had
+uttered, and which for ever bound me to her service, he gaily pinched
+her ear, and said, 'When you want a good wife, M. de Marsac, be sure
+you turn to the right.'
+
+He spoke in jest, and having his own case only in his mind. But I,
+looking mechanically in the direction he indicated, saw mademoiselle
+standing a pace or two to my right in the shadow of the great
+chimney-piece. I know not whether she frowned more or blushed more;
+but this for certain, that she answered my look with one of sharp
+displeasure, and, turning her back on me, swept quickly from the room,
+with no trace in her bearing of that late tenderness and gratitude
+which I had remarked.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                              AT ROSNY.
+
+
+The morning brought only fresh proofs of the kindness which M. de
+Rosny had conceived for me. Awaking early I found on a stool beside my
+clothes, a purse of gold containing a hundred crowns; and a youth
+presently entering to ask me if I lacked anything, I had at first some
+difficulty in recognising Simon Fleix, so sprucely was the lad
+dressed, in a mode resembling Maignan's. I looked at the student more
+than once before I addressed him by his name; and was as much
+surprised by the strange change I observed in him--for it was not
+confined to his clothes--as by anything which had happened since I
+entered the house. I rubbed my eyes, and asked him what he had done
+with his soutane.
+
+'Burned it, M. de Marsac,' he answered briefly.
+
+I saw that he had burned much, metaphorically speaking, besides his
+soutane. He was less pale, less lank, less wo-begone than formerly,
+and went more briskly. He had lost the air of crack-brained disorder
+which had distinguished him, and was smart, sedate, and stooped less.
+Only the odd sparkle remained in his eyes, and bore witness to the
+same nervous, eager spirit within.
+
+'What are you going to do, then, Simon?' I asked, noting these changes
+curiously.
+
+'I am a soldier,' he answered, 'and follow M. de Marsac.'
+
+I laughed. 'You have chosen a poor service, I am afraid,' I said,
+beginning to rise; 'and one, too, Simon, in which it is possible you
+may be killed. I thought that would not suit you,' I continued, to see
+what he would say. But he answered nothing, and I looked at him in
+great surprise. 'You have made up your mind, then, at last?' I said.
+
+'Perfectly,' he answered.
+
+'And solved all your doubts?'
+
+'I have no doubts.'
+
+'You are a Huguenot?'
+
+'That is the only true and pure religion,' he replied gravely. And
+with apparent sincerity and devotion he repeated Beza's Confession of
+Faith.
+
+This filled me with profound astonishment, but I said no more at the
+time, though I had my doubts. I waited until I was alone with M. de
+Rosny, and then I unbosomed myself on the matter; expressing my
+surprise at the suddenness of the conversion, and at such a man, as I
+had found the student to be, stating his views so firmly and
+steadfastly, and with so little excitement. Observing that M. de Rosny
+smiled but answered nothing, I explained myself farther.
+
+'I am surprised,' I said, 'because I have always heard it maintained
+that clerkly men, becoming lost in the mazes of theology, seldom find
+any sure footing; that not one in a hundred returns to his old faith,
+or finds grace to accept a new one. I am speaking only of such, of
+course, as I believe this lad to be--eager, excitable brains, learning
+much, and without judgment to digest what they learn.'
+
+'Of such I also believe it to be true,' M. de Rosny answered, still
+smiling. 'But even on them a little influence, applied at the right
+moment, has much effect, M. de Marsac.'
+
+'I allow that,' I said. 'But my mother, of whom I have spoken to you,
+saw much of this youth. His fidelity to her was beyond praise. Yet her
+faith, though grounded on a rock, had no weight with him.'
+
+M. de Rosny shook his head, still smiling.
+
+'It is not our mothers who convert us,' he said.
+
+'What!' I cried, my eyes opened. 'Do you mean--do you mean that
+Mademoiselle has done this?'
+
+'I fancy so,' he answered, nodding. 'I think my lady cast her spell
+over him by the way. The lad left Blois with her, if what you say be
+true, without faith in the world. He came to my hands two days later
+the stoutest of Huguenots. It is not hard to read this riddle.'
+
+'Such conversions are seldom lasting,' I said.
+
+He looked at me queerly; and, the smile still hovering about his lips,
+answered 'Tush, man! Why so serious? Theodore Beza himself could not
+look dryer. The lad is in earnest, and there is no harm done.'
+
+And, Heaven knows, I was in no mood to suspect harm; nor inclined just
+then to look at the dark side of things. It may be conceived how
+delightful it was to me to be received as an equal and honoured guest
+by a man, even then famous, and now so grown in reputation as to
+overshadow all Frenchmen save his master; how pleasant to enjoy the
+comforts and amiabilities of home, from which I had been long
+estranged; to pour my mother's story into Madame's ears and find
+comfort in her sympathy; to feel myself, in fine, once more a
+gentleman with an acknowledged place in the world. Our days we spent
+in hunting, or excursions of some kind, our evenings in long
+conversations, which impressed me with an ever-growing respect for my
+lord's powers.
+
+For there seemed to be no end either to his knowledge of France, or to
+the plans for its development, which even then filled his brain, and
+have since turned wildernesses into fruitful lands, and squalid towns
+into great cities. Grave and formal, he could yet unbend; the most
+sagacious of counsellors, he was a soldier also, and loved the
+seclusion in which we lived the more that it was not devoid of danger;
+the neighbouring towns being devoted to the League, and the general
+disorder alone making it possible for him to lie unsuspected in his
+own house.
+
+One thing only rendered my ease and comfort imperfect, and that was
+the attitude which Mademoiselle de la Vire assumed towards me. Of her
+gratitude in the first blush of the thing I felt no doubt, for not
+only had she thanked me very prettily, though with reserve, on the
+evening of my arrival, but the warmth of M. de Rosny's kindness left
+me no choice, save to believe that she had given him an exaggerated
+idea of my merits and services. I asked no more than this. Such good
+offices left me nothing to expect or desire; my age and ill-fortune
+placing me at so great a disadvantage that, far from dreaming of
+friendship or intimacy with her, I did not even assume the equality in
+our daily intercourse to which my birth, taken by itself, entitled me.
+Knowing that I must appear in her eyes old, poor, and ill-dressed, and
+satisfied with having asserted my conduct and honour, I was careful
+not to trespass on her gratitude; and while forward in such courtesies
+as could not weary her, I avoided with equal care every appearance of
+pursuing her, or inflicting my company upon her. I addressed her
+formally and upon formal topics only, such, I mean, as we shared with
+the rest of our company; and reminded myself often that though we now
+met in the same house and at the same table, she was still the
+Mademoiselle de la Vire who had borne herself so loftily in the King
+of Navarre's ante-chamber. This I did, not out of pique or wounded
+pride, which I no more, God knows, harboured against her than against
+a bird; but that I might not in my new prosperity forget the light in
+which such a woman, young, spoiled, and beautiful, must still regard
+me.
+
+Keeping to this inoffensive posture, I was the more hurt when I found
+her gratitude fade with the hour. After the first two days, during
+which I remarked that she was very silent, seldom speaking to me or
+looking at me, she resumed much of her old air of disdain. For that I
+cared little; but she presently went farther, and began to rake up the
+incidents which had happened at St. Jean d'Angely, and in which I had
+taken part. She continually adverted to my poverty while there, to the
+odd figure I had cut, and the many jests her friends had made at my
+expense. She seemed to take a pleasure positively savage in these,
+gibing at me sometimes so bitterly as to shame and pain me, and bring
+the colour to Madame de Rosny's cheeks.
+
+To the time we had spent together, on the other hand, she never or
+rarely referred. One afternoon, however, a week after my arrival at
+Rosny, I found her sitting alone in the parlour. I had not known she
+was there, and I was for withdrawing at once with a bow and a muttered
+apology. But she stopped me with an angry gesture. 'I do not bite,'
+she said, rising from her stool and meeting my eyes, a red spot in
+each cheek. 'Why do you look at me like that? Do you know, M. de
+Marsac, that I have no patience with you.' And she stamped her foot on
+the floor.
+
+'But, mademoiselle,' I stammered humbly, wondering what in the world
+she meant, 'what have I done?'
+
+'Done?' she repeated angrily. 'Done? It is not what you have done, it
+is what you are. I have no patience with you. Why are you so dull,
+sir? Why are you so dowdy? Why do you go about with your doublet awry,
+and your hair lank? Why do you speak to Maignan as if he were a
+gentleman? Why do you look always solemn and polite, and as if all the
+world were a prêche? Why? Why? Why, I say?'
+
+She stopped from sheer lack of breath, leaving me as much astonished
+as ever in my life. She looked so beautiful in her fury and fierceness
+too, that I could only stare at her and wonder dumbly what it all
+meant.
+
+'Well!' she cried impatiently, after bearing this as long as she
+could, 'have you not a word to say for yourself? Have you no tongue?
+Have you no will of your own at all, M. de Marsac?'
+
+'But, mademoiselle,' I began, trying to explain.
+
+'Chut!' she exclaimed, cutting me short before I could get farther, as
+the way of women is. And then she added, in a changed tone, and very
+abruptly, 'You have a velvet knot of mine, sir. Give it me.'
+
+'It is in my room,' I answered, astonished beyond measure at this
+sudden change of subject, and equally sudden demand.
+
+'Then fetch it, sir, if you please,' she replied, her eyes flashing
+afresh. 'Fetch it. Fetch it, I say! It has served its turn, and I
+prefer to have it. Who knows but that some day you may be showing it
+for a love-knot?'
+
+'Mademoiselle!' I cried, hotly. And I think that for the moment I was
+as angry as she was.
+
+'Still, I prefer to have it,' she answered sullenly, casting down her
+eyes.
+
+I was so much enraged, I went without a word and fetched it, and,
+bringing it to her where she stood, in the same place, put it into her
+hands. When she saw it some recollection, I fancy, of the day when she
+had traced the cry for help on it, came to her in her anger; for she
+took it from me with all her bearing altered. She trembled, and held
+it for a moment in her hands, as if she did not know what to do with
+it. She was thinking, doubtless, of the house in Blois and the peril
+she had run there; and, being for my part quite willing that she
+should think and feel how badly she had acted, I stood looking at her,
+sparing her no whit of my glance.
+
+'The gold chain you left on my mother's pillow,' I said coldly, seeing
+she continued silent, 'I cannot return to you at once, for I have
+pledged it. But I will do so as soon as I can.'
+
+'You have pledged it?' she muttered, with her eyes averted.
+
+'Yes, mademoiselle, to procure a horse to bring me here,' I replied
+drily. 'However, it shall be redeemed. In return, there is something I
+too would ask.'
+
+'What?' she murmured, recovering herself with an effort, and looking
+at me with something of her old pride and defiance.
+
+'The broken coin you have,' I said. 'The token, I mean. It is of no
+use to you, for your enemies hold the other half. It might be of
+service to me.'
+
+'How?' she asked curtly.
+
+'Because some day I may find its fellow, mademoiselle.'
+
+'And then?' she cried. She looked at me, her lips parted, her eyes
+flashing. 'What then, when you have found its fellow, M. de Marsac?'
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+'Bah!' she exclaimed, clenching her little hand, and stamping her foot
+on the floor in a passion I could not understand. 'That is you! That
+is M. de Marsac all over. You say nothing, and men think nothing of
+you. You go with your hat in your hand, and they tread on you. They
+speak, and you are silent! Why, if I could use a sword as you can, I
+would keep silence before no man, nor let any man save the King of
+France cock his hat in my presence! But you! There! go, leave me. Here
+is your coin. Take it and go. Send me that lad of yours to keep me
+awake. At any rate he has brains, he is young, he is a man, he has a
+soul, he can feel--if he were anything but a clerk.'
+
+She waved me off in such a wind of passion as might have amused me in
+another, but in her smacked so strongly of ingratitude as to pain me
+not a little. I went, however, and sent Simon to her; though I liked
+the errand very ill, and no better when I saw the lad's face light up
+at the mention of her name. But apparently she had not recovered her
+temper when he reached her, for he fared no better than I had done;
+coming away presently with the air of a whipped dog, as I saw from the
+yew-tree walk where I was strolling.
+
+Still, after that she made it a habit to talk to him more and more;
+and, Monsieur and Madame de Rosny being much taken up with one
+another, there was no one to check her fancy or speak a word of
+advice. Knowing her pride, I had no fears for her; but it grieved me
+to think that the lad's head should be turned. A dozen times I made up
+my mind to speak to her on his behalf; but for one thing it was not my
+business, and for another I soon discovered that she was aware of my
+displeasure, and valued it not a jot. For venturing one morning, when
+she was in a pleasant humour, to hint that she treated those beneath
+her too inhumanly, and with an unkindness as little becoming noble
+blood as familiarity, she asked me scornfully if I did not think she
+treated Simon Fleix well enough. To which I had nothing to answer.
+
+I might here remark on the system of secret intelligence by means of
+which M. de Rosny, even in this remote place, received news of all
+that was passing in France. But it is common fame. There was no coming
+or going of messengers, which would quickly have aroused suspicion in
+the neighbouring town, nor was it possible even for me to say exactly
+by what channels news came. But come it did, and at all hours of the
+day. In this way we heard of the danger of La Ganache and of the
+effort contemplated by the King of Navarre for its relief. M. de Rosny
+not only communicated these matters to me without reserve, but engaged
+my affections by farther proofs of confidence such as might well have
+flattered a man of greater importance.
+
+I have said that, as a rule, there was no coming or going of
+messengers. But one evening, returning from the chase with one of the
+keepers, who had prayed my assistance in hunting down a crippled doe,
+I was surprised to find a strange horse, which had evidently been
+ridden hard and far, standing smoking in the yard. Inquiring whose it
+was, I learned that a man believed by the grooms to be from Blois had
+just arrived and was closeted with the baron. An event so far out of
+the ordinary course of things naturally aroused my wonder; but
+desiring to avoid any appearance of curiosity, which, if indulged, is
+apt to become the most vulgar of vices, I refrained from entering the
+house, and repaired instead to the yew-walk. I had scarcely, however,
+heated my blood, a little chilled with riding, before the page came to
+me to fetch me to his master.
+
+I found M. de Rosny striding up and down his room, his manner so
+disordered and his face disfigured by so much grief and horror that I
+started on seeing him. My heart sinking in a moment, I did not need to
+look at Madame, who sat weeping silently in a chair, to assure myself
+that something dreadful had happened. The light was failing, and a
+lamp had been brought into the room. M. de Rosny pointed abruptly to a
+small piece of paper which lay on the table beside it, and, obeying
+his gesture, I took this up and read its contents, which consisted of
+less than a score of words.
+
+'He is ill and like to die,' the message ran, 'twenty leagues south of
+La Ganache. Come at all costs. P. M.'
+
+'Who?' I said stupidly--stupidly, for already I began to understand.
+'Who is ill and like to die?'
+
+M. de Rosny turned to me, and I saw that the tears were trickling
+unbidden down his cheeks. 'There is but one he for me,' he cried. 'May
+God spare that one! May He spare him to France, which needs him, to
+the Church, which hangs on him, and to me, who love him! Let him not
+fall in the hour of fruition. O Lord, let him not fall!' And he sank
+on to a stool, and remained in that posture with his face in his
+hands, his broad shoulders shaken with grief.
+
+'Come, sir,' I said, after a pause sacred to sorrow and dismay; 'let
+me remind you that while there is life there is hope.'
+
+'Hope?'
+
+'Yes, M. de Rosny, hope,' I replied more cheerfully. He has work to
+do. He is elected, called, and chosen; the Joshua of his people, as M.
+d'Amours rightly called him. God will not take him yet. You shall see
+him and be embraced by him, as has happened a hundred times. Remember,
+sir, the King of Navarre is strong, hardy, and young, and no doubt in
+good hands.'
+
+'Mornay's,' M. de Rosny cried, looking up with contempt in his eye.
+
+Yet from that moment he rallied, spurred, I think, by the thought that
+the King of Navarre's recovery depended under God on M. de Mornay;
+whom he was ever inclined to regard as his rival. He began to make
+instant preparations for departure from Rosny, and bade me do so also,
+telling me, somewhat curtly and without explanation, that he had need
+of me. The danger of so speedy a return to the South, where the full
+weight of the Vicomte de Turenne's vengeance awaited me, occurred to
+me strongly; and I ventured, though with a little shame, to mention
+it. But M. de Rosny, after gazing at me a moment in apparent doubt,
+put the objection aside with a degree of peevishness unusual in him,
+and continued to press on his arrangements as earnestly as though they
+did not include separation from a wife equally loving and beloved.
+
+Having few things to look to myself, I was at leisure, when the hour
+of departure came, to observe both the courage with which Madame de
+Rosny supported her sorrow, 'for the sake of France,' and the unwonted
+tenderness which Mademoiselle de la Vire, lifted for once above
+herself, lavished on her. I seemed to stand--happily in one light, and
+yet the feeling was fraught with pain--outside their familiar
+relations; yet, having made my adieux as short and formal as possible,
+that I might not encroach on other and more sacred ones, I found at
+the last moment something in waiting for me. I was surprised as I rode
+under the gateway a little ahead of the others, by something small and
+light falling on the saddle-bow before me. Catching it before it could
+slide to the ground, I saw, with infinite astonishment, that I held in
+my hand a tiny velvet bow.
+
+To look up at the window of the parlour, which I have said was over
+the archway, was my first impulse. I did so, and met mademoiselle's
+eyes for a second, and a second only. The next moment she was gone. M.
+de Rosny clattered through the gate at my heels, the servants behind
+him. And we were on the road.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                          M. DE RAMBOUILLET.
+
+
+For a while we were but a melancholy party. The incident I have last
+related--which seemed to admit of more explanations than one--left me
+in a state of the greatest perplexity; and this prevailed with me for
+a time, and was only dissipated at length by my seeing my own face, as
+it were, in a glass. For, chancing presently to look behind me, I
+observed that Simon Fleix was riding, notwithstanding his fine hat
+and feather and his new sword, in a posture and with an air of
+dejection difficult to exaggerate; whereon the reflection that master
+and man had the same object in their minds--nay, the thought that
+possibly he bore in his bosom a like token to that which lay warm in
+mine--occurring to me, I roused myself as from some degrading dream,
+and, shaking up the Cid, cantered forward to join Rosny, who, in no
+cheerful mood himself, was riding steadily forward, wrapped to his
+eyes in his cloak.
+
+The news of the King of Navarre's illness had fallen on him, indeed,
+in the midst of his sanguine scheming with the force of a thunderbolt.
+He saw himself in danger of losing at once the master he loved and the
+brilliant future to which he looked forward; and amid the imminent
+crash of his hopes and the destruction of the system in which he
+lived, he had scarcely time to regret the wife he was leaving at Rosny
+or the quiet from which he was so suddenly called. His heart was in
+the South, at La Ganache, by Henry's couch. His main idea was to get
+there quickly at all risks. The name of the King of Navarre's
+physician was constantly on his lips. 'Dortoman is a good man. If
+anyone can save him, Dortoman will,' was his perpetual cry. And
+whenever he met anyone who had the least appearance of bearing news,
+he would have me stop and interrogate him, and by no means let the
+traveller go until he had given us the last rumour from Blois--the
+channel through which all the news from the South reached us.
+
+An incident which occurred at the inn that evening cheered him
+somewhat; the most powerful minds being prone, I have observed, to
+snatch at omens in times of uncertainty. An elderly man, of strange
+appearance, and dressed in an affected and bizarre fashion, was seated
+at table when we arrived. Though I entered first in my assumed
+capacity of leader of the party, he let me pass before him without
+comment, but rose and solemnly saluted M. de Rosny, albeit the latter
+walked behind me and was much more plainly dressed. Rosny returned his
+greeting and would have passed on; but the stranger, interposing with
+a still lower bow, invited him to take his seat, which was near the
+fire and sheltered from the draught, at the same time making as if he
+would himself remove to another place.
+
+'Nay,' said my companion, surprised by such an excess of courtesy, 'I
+do not see why I should take your place, sir.'
+
+'Not mine only,' the old man rejoined, looking at him with a
+particularity and speaking with an emphasis which attracted our
+attention, 'but those of many others, who I can assure you will very
+shortly yield them up to you, whether they will or not.'
+
+M. de Rosny shrugged his shoulders and passed on, affecting to suppose
+the old man wandered. But privately he thought much of his words, and
+more when he learned that he was an astrologer from Paris, who had the
+name, at any rate in this country, of having studied under
+Nostradamus. And whether he drew fresh hopes from this, or turned his
+attention more particularly as we approached Blois to present matters,
+certainly he grew more cheerful, and began again to discuss the
+future, as though assured of his master's recovery.
+
+'You have never been to the King's Court?' he said presently,
+following up, as I judged, a train of thought in his own mind. 'At
+Blois, I mean.'
+
+'No; nor do I feel anxious to visit it,' I answered. 'To tell you the
+truth, M. le Baron,' I continued with some warmth, 'the sooner we are
+beyond Blois, the better I shall be pleased. I think we run some risk
+there, and, besides, I do not fancy a shambles. I do not think I could
+see the king without thinking of the Bartholomew, nor his chamber
+without thinking of Guise.'
+
+'Tut, tut!' he said, 'you have killed a man before now.'
+
+'Many,' I answered.
+
+'Do they trouble you?'
+
+'No, but they were killed in fair fight,' I replied. 'That makes a
+difference.'
+
+'To you,' he said drily. 'But you are not the King of France, you see.
+Should you ever come across him, he continued, flicking his horse's
+ears, a faint smile on his lips, 'I will give you a hint. Talk to him
+of the battles at Jarnac and Moncontour, and praise your Condé's
+father! As Condé lost the fight and he won it, the compliment comes
+home to him. The more hopelessly a man has lost his powers, my friend,
+the more fondly he regards them, and the more highly he prizes the
+victories he can no longer gain.'
+
+'Ugh!' I muttered.
+
+'Of the two parties at Court,' Rosny continued, calmly overlooking my
+ill-humour, 'trust D'Aumont and Biron and the French clique. They are
+true to France at any rate. But whomsoever you see consort with the
+two Retzs--the King of Spain's jackals as men name them--avoid him for
+a Spaniard and a traitor.'
+
+'But the Retzs are Italians,' I objected peevishly.
+
+'The same thing,' he answered curtly. 'They cry, "Vive le Roi!" but
+privately they are for the League, or for Spain, or for whatever may
+most hurt us; who are better Frenchmen than themselves, and whose
+leader will some day, if God spare his life, be King of France.'
+
+'Well, the less I have to do with the one or the other of them, save
+at the sword's point, the better I shall be pleased,' I rejoined.
+
+On that he looked at me with a queer smile; as was his way when he had
+more in his mind than appeared. And this, and something special in the
+tone of his conversation, as well, perhaps, as my own doubts about my
+future and his intentions regarding me, gave me an uneasy feeling;
+which lasted through the day, and left me only when more immediate
+peril presently rose to threaten us.
+
+It happened in this way. We had reached the outskirts of Blois, and
+were just approaching the gate, hoping to pass through it without
+attracting attention, when two travellers rode slowly out of a lane,
+the mouth of which we were passing. They eyed us closely as they
+reined in to let us go by; and M. de Rosny, who was riding with his
+horse's head at my stirrup, whispered me to press on. Before I could
+comply, however, the strangers cantered by us, and turning in the
+saddle when abreast of us looked us in the face. A moment later one of
+them cried loudly, 'It is he! and both pulled their horses across the
+road, and waited for us to come up.
+
+Aware that if M. de Rosny were discovered he would be happy if he
+escaped with imprisonment, the king being too jealous of his Catholic
+reputation to venture to protect a Huguenot, however illustrious, I
+saw that the situation was desperate; for, though we were five to
+two, the neighbourhood of the city--the gate being scarcely a bow-shot
+off--rendered flight or resistance equally hopeless. I could think of
+nothing for it save to put a bold face on the matter, and, M. de Rosny
+doing the same, we advanced in the most innocent way possible.
+
+'Halt, there!' cried one of the strangers sharply. 'And let me tell
+you, sir, you are known.'
+
+'What if I am?' I answered impatiently, still pressing on. 'Are you
+highwaymen, that you stop the way?'
+
+The speaker on the other side looked at me keenly, but in a moment
+retorted, 'Enough trifling, sir! Who you are I do not know. But the
+person riding at your rein is M. de Rosny. Him I do know, and I warn
+him to stop.'
+
+I thought the game was lost, but to my surprise my companion answered
+at once and almost in the same words I had used. 'Well, sir, and what
+of that?' he said.
+
+'What of that?' the stranger exclaimed, spurring his horse so as still
+to bar the way. 'Why, only this, that you must be a madman to show
+yourself on this side of the Loire.'
+
+'It is long since I have seen the other,' was my companion's unmoved
+answer.
+
+'You are M. de Rosny? You do not deny it?' the man cried in
+astonishment.
+
+'Certainly I do not deny it,' M. de Rosny answered bluntly. 'And more,
+the day has been, sir,' he continued with sudden fire, 'when few at
+his Majesty's Court would have dared to chop words with Solomon de
+Bethune, much less to stop him on the highway within a mile of the
+palace. But times are changed with me, sir, and it would seem with
+others also, if true men rallying to his Majesty in his need are to be
+challenged by every passer on the road.'
+
+'What! Are you Solomon de Bethune?' the man cried incredulously.
+Incredulously, but his countenance fell, and his voice was full of
+chagrin and disappointment.
+
+'Who else, sir?' M. de Rosny replied haughtily. 'I am, and, as far as
+I know, I have as much right on this side of the Loire as any other
+man.'
+
+'A thousand pardons.'
+
+'If you are not satisfied----'
+
+'Nay, M. de Rosny, I am perfectly satisfied.'
+
+The stranger repeated this with a very crestfallen air, adding, 'A
+thousand pardons'; and fell to making other apologies, doffing his hat
+with great respect. 'I took you, if you will pardon me saying so, for
+your Huguenot brother, M. Maximilian,' he explained. 'The saying goes
+that he is at Rosny.'
+
+'I can answer for that being false,' M. de Rosny answered
+peremptorily, 'for I have just come from there, and I will answer for
+it he is not within ten leagues of the place. And now, sir, as we
+desire to enter before the gates shut, perhaps you will excuse us.'
+With which he bowed, and I bowed, and they bowed, and we separated.
+They gave us the road, which M. de Rosny took with a great air, and we
+trotted to the gate, and passed through it without misadventure.
+
+The first street we entered was a wide one, and my companion took
+advantage of this to ride up abreast of me. 'That is the kind of
+adventure our little prince is fond of,' he muttered. 'But for my
+part, M. de Marsac, the sweat is running down my forehead. I have
+played the trick more than once before, for my brother and I are as
+like as two peas. And yet it would have gone ill with us if the fool
+had been one of his friends.'
+
+'All's well that ends well,' I answered in a low voice, thinking it an
+ill time for compliments. As it was, the remark was unfortunate, for
+M. de Rosny was still in the act of reining back when Maignan called
+out to us to say we were being followed.
+
+I looked behind, but could see nothing except gloom and rain and
+overhanging eaves and a few figures cowering in doorways. The
+servants, however, continued to maintain that it was so, and we held,
+without actually stopping, a council of war. If detected, we were
+caught in a trap, without hope of escape; and for the moment I am sure
+M. de Rosny regretted that he had chosen this route by Blois--that he
+had thrust himself, in his haste and his desire to take with him the
+latest news, into a snare so patent. The castle--huge, dark, and
+grim--loomed before us at the end of the street in which we were, and,
+chilled as I was myself by the sight, I could imagine how much more
+appalling it must appear to him, the chosen counsellor of his master,
+and the steadfast opponent of all which it represented.
+
+Our consultation came to nothing, for no better course suggested
+itself than to go as we had intended to the lodging commonly used by
+my companion. We did so, looking behind us often, and saying more than
+once that Maignan must be mistaken. As soon as we had dismounted,
+however, and gone in, he showed us from the window a man loitering
+near; and this confirmation of our alarm sending as to our expedients
+again, while Maignan remained watching in a room without a light, I
+suggested that I might pass myself off, though ten years older, for,
+my companion.
+
+'Alas!' he said, drumming with his fingers on the table, 'there are
+too many here who know me to make that possible. I thank you all the
+same.'
+
+'Could you escape on foot? Or pass the wall anywhere, or slip through
+the gates early?' I suggested.
+
+'They might tell us at the Bleeding Heart,' he answered. 'But I doubt
+it. I was a fool, sir, to put my neck into Mendoza's halter, and that
+is a fact. But here is Maignan. What is it, man?' he continued
+eagerly.
+
+'The watcher is gone, my lord,' the equerry answered.
+
+'And has left no one?'
+
+'No one that I can see.'
+
+We both went into the next room and looked from the windows. The man
+was certainly not where we had seen him before. But the rain was
+falling heavily, the eaves were dripping, the street was a dark cavern
+with only here and there a spark of light, and the fellow might be
+lurking elsewhere. Maignan, being questioned, however, believed he had
+gone off of set purpose.
+
+'Which may be read half a dozen ways,' I remarked.
+
+'At any rate, we are fasting,' M. de Rosny answered. 'Give me a full
+man in a fight. Let us sit down and eat. It is no good jumping in the
+dark, or meeting troubles half way.'
+
+We were not through our meal, however, Simon Fleix waiting on us with
+a pale face, when Maignan came in again from the dark room. 'My lord,'
+he said quietly, 'three men have appeared. Two of them remain twenty
+paces away. The third has come to the door.'
+
+As he spoke we heard a cautious summons below. Maignan was for going
+down, but his master bade him stand. 'Let the woman of the house go,'
+he said.
+
+I remarked and long remembered M. de Rosny's _sangfroid_ on this
+occasion. His pistols he had already laid on a chair beside him,
+throwing his cloak over them; and now, while we waited, listening in
+breathless silence, I saw him hand a large slice of bread-and-meat to
+his equerry, who, standing behind his chair, began eating it with the
+same coolness. Simon Fleix, on the other hand, stood gazing at the
+door, trembling in every limb, and with so much of excitement and
+surprise in his attitude that I took the precaution of bidding him, in
+a low voice, do nothing without orders. At the same moment it occurred
+to me to extinguish two of the four candles which had been lighted;
+and I did so, M. de Rosny nodding assent, just as the muttered
+conversation which was being carried on below ceased, and a man's
+tread sounded on the stairs.
+
+It was followed immediately by a knock on the outside of our door.
+Obeying my companion's look, I cried, 'Enter!'
+
+A slender man of middle height, booted and wrapped up, with his face
+almost entirely hidden by a fold of his cloak, came in quickly, and,
+closing the door behind him, advanced towards the table. 'Which is M.
+de Rosny?' he said.
+
+Rosny had carefully turned his face from the light, but at the sound
+of the other's voice he sprang up with a cry of relief. He was about
+to speak, when the new-comer, raising his hand peremptorily,
+continued, 'No names, I beg. Yours, I suppose, is known here. Mine is
+not, nor do I desire it should be. I want speech of you, that is all.'
+
+'I am greatly honoured,' M. de Rosny replied, gazing at him eagerly.
+'Yet, who told you I was here?'
+
+'I saw you pass under a lamp in the street,' the stranger answered. 'I
+knew your horse first, and you afterwards, and bade a groom follow
+you. Believe me,' he added, with a gesture of the hand, 'you have
+nothing to fear from me.'
+
+'I accept the assurance in the spirit in which it is offered,' my
+companion answered with a graceful bow, 'and think myself fortunate in
+being recognised'--he paused a moment and then continued--'by a
+Frenchman and a man of honour.'
+
+The stranger shrugged his shoulders. 'Your pardon, then,' he said, 'if
+I seem abrupt. My time is short. I want to do the best with it I can.
+Will you favour me?'
+
+I was for withdrawing, but M. de Rosny ordered Maignan to place lights
+in the next room, and, apologising to me very graciously, retired
+thither with the stranger; leaving me relieved indeed by these
+peaceful appearances, but full of wonder and conjectures who this
+might be, and what the visit portended. At one moment I was inclined
+to identify the stranger with M. de Rosny's brother; at another with
+the English ambassador; and then, again, a wild idea that he might be
+M. de Bruhl occurred to me. The two remained together about a quarter
+of an hour and then came out, the stranger leading the way, and
+saluting me politely as he passed through the room. At the door he
+turned to say, 'At nine o'clock, then?'
+
+'At nine o'clock,' M. de Rosny replied, holding the door open. 'You
+will excuse me if I do not descend, Marquis?'
+
+'Yes, go back, my friend,' the stranger answered. And, lighted by
+Maignan, whose face on such occasions could assume the most stolid air
+in the world, he disappeared down the stairs, and I heard him go out.
+
+M. de Rosny turned to me, his eyes sparkling with joy, his face and
+mien full of animation. 'The King of Navarre is better,' he said. 'He
+is said to be out of danger. What do you think of that, my friend?'
+
+'That is the best news I have heard for many a day,' I answered. And I
+hastened to add, that France and the Religion had reason to thank God
+for His mercy.
+
+'Amen to that,' my patron replied reverently. 'But that is not
+all--that is not all.' And he began to walk up and down the room
+humming the 118th Psalm a little above his breath--
+
+
+              La voici l'heureuse journée
+                Que Dieu a faite à plein désir;
+              Par nous soit joie démenée,
+                Et prenons en elle plaisir.
+
+
+He continued, indeed, to walk up and down the floor so long, and with
+so joyful a countenance and demeanour, that I ventured at last to
+remind him of my presence, which he had clearly forgotten. 'Ha! to
+be sure,' he said, stopping short and looking at me with the utmost
+good-humour. 'What time is it? Seven. Then until nine o'clock, my
+friend, I crave your indulgence. In fine, until that time I must keep
+counsel. Come, I am hungry still. Let us sit down, and this time I
+hope we may not be interrupted. Simon, set us on a fresh bottle. Ha!
+ha! _Vivent le Roi et le Roi de Navarre!_' And again he fell to
+humming the same psalm--
+
+
+              O Dieu éternel, je te prie,
+                Je te prie, ton roi maintiens:
+              O Dieu, je te prie et reprie,
+                Sauve ton roi et l'entretiens!
+
+
+doing so with a light in his eyes and a joyous emphasis, which
+impressed me the more in a man ordinarily so calm and self-contained.
+I saw that something had occurred to gratify him beyond measure, and,
+believing his statement that this was not the good news from La
+Ganache only, I waited with the utmost interest and anxiety for the
+hour of nine, which had no sooner struck than our former visitor
+appeared with the same air of mystery and disguise which had attended
+him before.
+
+M. de Rosny, who had risen on hearing his step and had taken up his
+cloak, paused with it half on and half off, to cry anxiously, 'All is
+well, is it not?'
+
+'Perfectly,' the stranger replied, with a nod.
+
+'And my friend?'
+
+'Yes, on condition that you answer for his discretion and fidelity.'
+And the stranger glanced involuntarily at me, who stood uncertain,
+whether to hold my ground or retire.
+
+'Good,' M. de Rosny cried. Then he turned to me with a mingled air of
+dignity and kindness, and continued: 'This is the gentleman. M. de
+Marsac, I am honoured with permission to present you to the Marquis de
+Rambouillet, whose interest and protection I beg you to deserve, for
+he is a true Frenchman and a patriot whom I respect.'
+
+M. de Rambouillet saluted me politely. 'Of a Brittany family, I
+think?' he said.
+
+I assented; and he replied with something complimentary. But
+afterwards he continued to look at me in silence with a keenness and
+curiosity I did not understand. At last, when M. de Rosny's impatience
+had reached a high pitch, the marquis seemed impelled to add
+something. 'You quite understand, M. de Rosny?' he said. 'Without
+saying anything disparaging of M. de Marsac, who is, no doubt, a man
+of honour'--and he bowed to me very low--'this is a delicate matter,
+and you will introduce no one into it, I am sure, whom you cannot
+trust as yourself.'
+
+'Precisely,' M. de Rosny replied, speaking drily, yet with a grand air
+which fully matched his companion's. 'I am prepared to trust this
+gentleman not only with my life but with my honour.'
+
+'Nothing more remains to be said then,' the marquis rejoined, bowing
+to me again. 'I am glad to have been the occasion of a declaration so
+flattering to you, sir.'
+
+I returned his salute in silence, and obeying M. de Rosny's muttered
+direction put on my cloak and sword. M. de Rosny took up his pistols.
+
+'You will have no need of those,' the marquis said with a high glance.
+
+'Where we are going, no,' my companion answered, calmly continuing to
+dispose them about him. 'But the streets are dark and not too safe.'
+
+M. de Rambouillet laughed. 'That is the worst of you Huguenots,' he
+said. 'You never know when to lay suspicion aside.'
+
+A hundred retorts sprang to my lips. I thought of the Bartholomew, of
+the French fury of Antwerp, of half a dozen things which make my blood
+boil to this day. But M. de Rosny's answer was the finest of all.
+'That is true, I am afraid,' he said quietly. 'On the other hand, you
+Catholics--take the late M. de Guise for instance--have the habit of
+erring on the other side, I think, and sometimes trust too far.'
+
+The marquis, without making any answer to this home-thrust, led the
+way out, and we followed, being joined at the door of the house by a
+couple of armed lackeys, who fell in behind us. We went on foot. The
+night was dark, and the prospect out of doors was not cheering. The
+streets were wet and dirty, and notwithstanding all our care we fell
+continually into pitfalls or over unseen obstacles. Crossing the
+_parvis_ of the cathedral, which I remembered, we plunged in silence
+into an obscure street near the river, and so narrow that the decrepit
+houses shut out almost all view of the sky. The gloom of our
+surroundings, no less than my ignorance of the errand on which we were
+bound, filled me with anxiety and foreboding. My companions keeping
+strict silence, however, and taking every precaution to avoid being
+recognised, I had no choice but to do likewise.
+
+I could think, and no more. I felt myself borne along by an
+irresistible current, whither and for what purpose I could not tell;
+an experience to an extent strange at my age the influence of the
+night and the weather. Twice we stood aside to let a party of
+roisterers go by, and the excessive care M. de Rambouillet evinced on
+these occasions to avoid recognition did not tend to reassure me or
+make me think more lightly of the unknown business on which I was
+bound.
+
+Reaching at last an open space, our leader bade us in a low voice be
+careful and follow him closely. We did so, and crossed in this way and
+in single file a narrow plank or wooden bridge; but whether water ran
+below or a dry ditch only, I could not determine. My mind was taken up
+at the moment with the discovery which I had just made, that the dark
+building, looming huge and black before us with a single light
+twinkling here and there at great heights, was the Castle of Blois.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                           VILAIN HERODES.
+
+
+All the distaste and misliking I had expressed earlier in the day for
+the Court of Blois recurred with fresh force in the darkness and
+gloom; and though, booted and travel-stained as we were, I did not
+conceive it likely that we should be obtruded on the circle about the
+king, I felt none the less an oppressive desire to be through with our
+adventure, and away from the ill-omened precincts in which I found
+myself. The darkness prevented me seeing the faces of my companions;
+but on M. de Rosny, who was not quite free himself, I think, from the
+influences of the time and place, twitching my sleeve to enforce
+vigilance, I noted that the lackeys had ceased to follow us, and that
+we three were beginning to ascend a rough staircase cut in the rock. I
+gathered, though the darkness limited my view behind as well as in
+front to a few twinkling lights, that we were mounting the scarp from
+the moat to the side wall of the castle; and I was not surprised when
+the marquis muttered to us to stop, and knocked softly on the wood of
+a door.
+
+M. de Rosny might have spared the touch he had laid on my sleeve, for
+by this time I was fully and painfully sensible of the critical
+position in which we stood, and was very little likely to commit an
+indiscretion. I trusted he had not done so already! No doubt--it
+flashed across me while we waited--he had taken care to safeguard
+himself. But how often, I reflected, had all safeguards been set
+aside and all precautions eluded by those to whom he was committing
+himself! Guise had thought himself secure in this very building, which
+we were about to enter. Coligny had received the most absolute of
+safe-conducts from those to whom we were apparently bound. The end in
+either case had been the same--the confidence of the one proving of no
+more avail than the wisdom of the other. What if the King of France
+thought to make his peace with his Catholic subjects--offended by the
+murder of Guise--by a second murder of one as obnoxious to them as he
+was precious to their arch-enemy in the South? Rosny was sagacious
+indeed; but then I reflected with sudden misgiving that he was young,
+ambitious, and bold.
+
+The opening of the door interrupted without putting an end to this
+train of apprehension. A faint light shone out; so feebly as to
+illumine little more than the stairs at our feet. The marquis
+entered at once, M. de Rosny followed, I brought up the rear; and the
+door was closed by a man who stood behind it. We found ourselves
+crowded together at the foot of a very narrow staircase, which the
+doorkeeper--a stolid pikeman in a grey uniform, with a small lanthorn
+swinging from the crosspiece of his halberd--signed to us to ascend. I
+said a word to him, but he only stared in answer, and M. de
+Rambouillet, looking back and seeing what I was about, called to me
+that it was useless, as the man was a Swiss and spoke no French.
+
+'This did not tend to reassure me; any more than did the chill
+roughness of the wall which my hand touched as I groped upwards, or
+the smell of bats which invaded my nostrils and suggested that the
+staircase was little used and belonged to a part of the castle fitted
+for dark and secret doings.
+
+We stumbled in the blackness up the steps, passing one door and then a
+second before M. de Rambouillet whispered to us to stand, and knocked
+gently at a third.
+
+The secrecy, the darkness, and above all the strange arrangements made
+to receive us, filled me with the wildest conjectures. But when the
+door opened and we passed one by one into a bare, unfurnished,
+draughty gallery, immediately, as I judged, under the tiles, the
+reality agreed with no one of my anticipations. The place was a mere
+garret, without a hearth, without a single stool. Three windows, of
+which one was roughly glazed, while the others were filled with oiled
+paper, were set in one wall; the others displaying the stones and
+mortar without disguise or ornament. Beside the door through which we
+had entered stood a silent figure in the grey uniform I had seen
+below, his lanthorn on the floor at his feet. A second door at the
+farther end of the gallery, which was full twenty paces long, was
+guarded in like manner. A couple of lanthorns stood in the middle of
+the floor, and that was all.
+
+Inside the door, M. de Rambouillet with his finger on his lip stopped
+us, and we stood a little group of three a pace in front of the
+sentry, and with the empty room before us. I looked at M. de Rosny,
+but he was looking at Rambouillet. The marquis had his back towards
+me, the sentry was gazing into vacancy; so that baffled in my attempt
+to learn anything from the looks of the other actors in the scene, I
+fell back on my ears. The rain dripped outside and the moaning wind
+rattled the casements; but mingled with these melancholy sounds--which
+gained force, as such things always do, from the circumstances in
+which we were placed and our own silence--I fancied I caught the
+distant hum of voices and music and laughter. And that, I know not
+why, brought M. de Guise again to my mind.
+
+The story of his death, as I had heard it from that accursed monk in
+the inn on the Claine, rose up in all its freshness, with all its
+details. I started when M. de Rambouillet coughed. I shivered when
+Rosny shifted his feet. The silence grew oppressive. Only the stolid
+men in grey seemed unmoved, unexpectant; so that I remember wondering
+whether it was their nightly duty to keep guard over an empty garret,
+the floor strewn with scraps of mortar and ends of tiles.
+
+The interruption, when it came at last, came suddenly. The sentry at
+the farther end of the gallery started and fell back a pace. Instantly
+the door beside him opened and a man came in, and closing it quickly
+behind him, advanced up the room with an air of dignity, which even
+his strange appearance and attire could not wholly destroy.
+
+He was of good stature and bearing, about forty years old as I judged,
+his wear a dress of violet velvet with black points cut in the extreme
+of the fashion. He carried a sword but no ruff, and had a cup and ball
+of ivory--a strange toy much in vogue among the idle--suspended from
+his wrist by a ribbon. He was lean and somewhat narrow, but so far I
+found little fault with him. It was only when my eye reached his face,
+and saw it rouged like a woman's and surmounted by a little turban,
+that a feeling of scarcely understood disgust seized me, and I said to
+myself, 'This is the stuff of which kings' minions are made!'
+
+To my surprise, however, M. de Rambouillet went to meet him with the
+utmost respect, sweeping the dirty floor with his bonnet, and bowing
+to the very ground. The newcomer acknowledged his salute with
+negligent kindness. Remarking pleasantly 'You have brought a friend, I
+think?' he looked towards us with a smile.
+
+'Yes, sire, he is here,' the marquis answered, stepping aside a
+little. And with the word I understood that this was no minion, but
+the king himself: Henry, the Third of the name, and the last of the
+great House of Valois, which had ruled France by the grace of God for
+two centuries and a half! I stared at him, and stared at him, scarcely
+believing what I saw. For the first time in my life I was in the
+presence of the king!
+
+Meanwhile M. de Rosny, to whom he was, of course, no marvel, had gone
+forward and knelt on one knee. The king raised him graciously, and
+with an action which, viewed apart from his woman's face and silly
+turban, seemed royal and fitting. 'This is good of you, Rosny,' he
+said. 'But it is only what I expected of you.'
+
+'Sire,' my companion answered, 'your Majesty has no more devoted
+servant than myself, unless it be the king my master.'
+
+'By my faith,' Henry answered with energy--'and if I am not a good
+churchman, whatever those rascally Parisians say, I am nothing--by my
+faith, I think I believe you!'
+
+'If your Majesty would believe me in that and in some other things
+also,' M. de Rosny answered, 'it would be very well for France.'
+Though he spoke courteously, he threw so much weight and independence
+into his words that I thought of the old proverb, 'A good master, a
+bold servant.'
+
+'Well, that is what we are here to see,' the king replied. 'But one
+tells me one thing,' he went on fretfully, 'and one another, and which
+am I to believe?'
+
+'I know nothing of others, sire,' Rosny answered with the same spirit.
+'But my master has every claim to be believed. His interest in the
+royalty of France is second only to your Majesty's. He is also a king
+and a kinsman, and it irks him to see rebels beard you, as has
+happened of late.'
+
+'Ay, but the chief of them?' Henry exclaimed, giving way to sudden
+excitement and stamping furiously on the floor. 'He will trouble me no
+more. Has my brother heard of _that?_ Tell me, sir, has that news
+reached him?'
+
+'He has heard it, sire.'
+
+'And he approved? He approved, of course?'
+
+'Beyond doubt the man was a traitor,' M. de Rosny answered delicately.
+'His life was forfeit, sire. Who can question it?'
+
+'And he has paid the forfeit,' the king rejoined, looking down at the
+floor and immediately falling into a moodiness as sudden as his
+excitement. His lips moved. He muttered something inaudible, and began
+to play absently with his cup and ball, his mind occupied apparently
+with a gloomy retrospect. 'M. de Guise, M. de Guise,' he murmured at
+last, with a sneer and an accent of hate which told of old
+humiliations long remembered. 'Well, damn him, he is dead now. He is
+dead. But being dead he yet troubles us. Is not that the verse,
+father? Ha!' with a start, 'I was forgetting. But that is the worst
+wrong he has done me,' he continued, looking up and growing excited
+again. 'He has cut me off from Mother Church. There is hardly a priest
+comes near me now, and presently they will excommunicate me. And, as I
+hope for salvation, the Church has no more faithful son than me.'
+
+I believe he was on the point, forgetting M. de Rosny's presence there
+and his errand, of giving way to unmanly tears, when M. de
+Rambouillet, as if by accident, let the heel of his scabbard fall
+heavily on the floor. The king started, and passing his hand once or
+twice across his brow, seemed to recover himself. 'Well,' he said, 'no
+doubt we shall find a way out of our difficulties.'
+
+'If your Majesty,' Rosny answered respectfully, 'would accept the aid
+my master proffers, I venture to think that they would vanish the
+quicker.'
+
+'You think so,' Henry rejoined. 'Well, give me your shoulder. Let us
+walk a little.' And, signing to Rambouillet to leave him, he began to
+walk up and down with M. de Rosny, talking familiarly with him in an
+undertone. Only such scraps of the conversation as fell from them when
+they turned at my end of the gallery now reached me. Patching these
+together, however, I managed to understand somewhat. At one turn I
+heard the king say, 'But then Turenne offers----' At the next, 'Trust
+him? Well, I do not know why I should not. He promises----' Then 'A
+Republic, Rosny? That his plan? Pooh! he dare not. He could not.
+France is a kingdom by the ordinance of God in my family.'
+
+I gathered from these and other chance words, which I have since
+forgotten, that M. de Rosny was pressing the king to accept the help
+of the King of Navarre, and warning him against the insidious offers
+of the Vicomte de Turenne. The mention of a Republic, however, seemed
+to excite his Majesty's wrath rather against Rosny for presuming to
+refer to such a thing than against Turenne, to whom he refused to
+credit it. He paused near my end of the promenade.
+
+'Prove it!' he said angrily. 'But can you prove it? Can you prove it?
+Mind you, I will take no hearsay evidence, sir. Now, there is
+Turenne's agent here--you did not know, I dare say, that he had an
+agent here?'
+
+'You refer, sire, to M. de Bruhl,' Rosny answered, without hesitation.
+'I know him, sire.'
+
+'I think you are the devil,' Henry answered, looking curiously at him.
+'You seem to know most things. But mind you, my friend, he speaks me
+fairly, and I will not take this on hearsay even from your master.
+Though,' he added after pausing a moment, 'I love him.'
+
+'And he, your Majesty. He desires only to prove it.'
+
+'Yes, I know, I know,' the king answered fretfully. 'I believe he
+does. I believe he does wish me well. But there will be a devil of an
+outcry among my people. And Turenne gives fair words too. And I do not
+know,' he continued, fidgeting with his cup and ball, 'that it might
+not suit me better to agree with him, you see.'
+
+I saw M. de Rosny draw himself up. 'Dare I speak openly to you, sire,'
+he said, with less respect and more energy than he had hitherto used.
+'As I should to my master?'
+
+'Ay, say what you like,' Henry answered. But he spoke sullenly, and it
+seemed to me that he looked less pleasantly at his companion.
+
+'Then I will venture to utter what is in your Majesty's mind,' my
+patron answered steadfastly. 'You fear, sire, lest, having accepted my
+master's offer and conquered your enemies, you should not be easily
+rid of him.'
+
+Henry looked relieved! 'Do you call that diplomacy?' he said with a
+smile. 'However, what if it be so? What do you say to it? Methinks I
+have heard an idle tale about a horse which would hunt a stag; and for
+the purpose set a man upon its back.'
+
+'This I say, sire, first,' Rosny answered very earnestly. 'That the
+King of Navarre is popular only with one-third of the kingdom, and is
+only powerful when united with you. Secondly, sire, it is his interest
+to support the royal power, to which he is heir. And, thirdly, it must
+be more to your Majesty's honour to accept help from a near kinsman
+than from an ordinary subject, and one who, I still maintain, sire,
+has no good designs in his mind.'
+
+'The proof?' Henry said sharply. 'Give me that!'
+
+'I can give it in a week from this day.'
+
+'It must be no idle tale, mind you,' the king continued suspiciously.
+
+'You shall have Turenne's designs, sire, from one who had them from
+his own mouth.'
+
+The king looked startled, but after a pause turned and resumed his
+walk. 'Well,' he said, 'if you do that, I on my part----'
+
+The rest I lost, for the two passing to the farther end of the
+gallery, came to a standstill there, balking my curiosity and
+Rambouillet's also. The marquis, indeed, began to betray his
+impatience, and the great clock immediately over our heads presently
+striking the half-hour after ten he started and made as if he would
+have approached the king. He checked the impulse, however, but still
+continued to fidget uneasily, losing his reserve by-and-by so far as
+to whisper to me that his Majesty would be missed.
+
+I had been, up to this point, a silent and inactive spectator of a
+scene which appealed to my keenest interests and aroused my most
+ardent curiosity. Surprise following surprise, I had begun to doubt my
+own identity; so little had I expected to find myself first in the
+presence of the Most Christian King--and that under circumstances as
+strange and bizarre as could well be imagined--and then an authorised
+witness at a negotiation upon which the future of all the great land
+of France stretching for so many hundred leagues on every side of us,
+depended. I say I could scarcely believe in my own identity; or that I
+was the same Gaston de Marsac who had slunk, shabby and out-at-elbows,
+about St. Jean d'Angely. I tasted the first sweetness of secret power,
+which men say is the sweetest of all and the last relinquished; and,
+the hum of distant voices and laughter still reaching me at intervals,
+I began to understand why we had been admitted with so much
+precaution, and to comprehend the gratification of M. de Rosny when
+the promise of this interview first presented to him the hope of
+effecting so much for his master and for France.
+
+Now I was to be drawn into the whirlpool itself. I was still
+travelling back over the different stages of the adventure which had
+brought me to this point, when I was rudely awakened by M. de Rosny
+calling my name in a raised voice. Seeing, somewhat late, that he was
+beckoning to me to approach, I went forward in a confused and hasty
+fashion; kneeling before the king as I had seen him kneel, and then
+rising to give ear to his Majesty's commands. Albeit, having expected
+nothing less than to be called upon, I was not in the clearest mood to
+receive them. Nor was my bearing such as I could have wished it to be.
+
+'M. de Rosny tells me that you desire a commission at Court, sir,' the
+king said quickly.
+
+'I, sire?' I stammered, scarcely able to believe my ears. I was so
+completely taken aback that I could say no more, and I stopped there
+with my mouth open.
+
+'There are few things I can deny M. de Rosny,' Henry continued,
+speaking very rapidly, 'and I am told that you are a gentleman of
+birth and ability. Out of kindness to him, therefore, I grant you a
+commission to raise twenty men for my service. Rambouillet,' he
+continued, raising his voice slightly, 'you will introduce this
+gentleman to me publicly to-morrow, that I may carry into effect my
+intention on his behalf. You may go now, sir. No thanks. And M. de
+Rosny,' he added, turning to my companion and speaking with energy,
+'have a care for my sake that you are not recognised as you go.
+Rambouillet must contrive something to enable you to leave without
+peril. I should be desolated if anything happened to you, my friend,
+for I could not protect you. I give you my word if Mendoza or Retz
+found you in Blois I could not save you from them unless you
+recanted.'
+
+'I will not trouble either your Majesty or my conscience,' M. de Rosny
+replied, bowing low, 'if my wits can help me.'
+
+'Well, the saints keep you,' the king answered piously, going towards
+the door by which he had entered; 'for your master and I have both
+need of you. Rambouillet, take care of him as you love me. And come
+early in the morning to my closet and tell me how it has fared with
+him.'
+
+We all stood bowing while he withdrew, and only turned to retire when
+the door closed behind him. Burning with indignation and chagrin as I
+was at finding myself disposed of in the way I have described, and
+pitchforked, whether I would or no, into a service I neither fancied
+nor desired, I still managed for the present to restrain myself; and,
+permitting my companions to precede me, followed in silence, listening
+sullenly to their jubilations. The marquis seemed scarcely less
+pleased than M. de Rosny; and as the latter evinced a strong desire to
+lessen any jealousy the former might feel, and a generous inclination
+to attribute to him a full share of the credit gained, I remained the
+only person dissatisfied with the evening's events. We retired from
+the château with the same precautions which had marked our entrance,
+and parting with M. de Rambouillet at the door of our lodging--not
+without many protestations of esteem on his part and of gratitude on
+that of M. de Rosny--mounted to the first-floor in single file and in
+silence, which I was determined not to be the first to break.
+
+Doubtless M. de Rosny knew my thoughts, for, speedily dismissing
+Maignan and Simon, who were in waiting, he turned to me without
+preface. 'Come, my friend,' he said, laying his hand on my shoulder
+and looking me in the face in a way which all but disarmed me at once,
+'do not let us misunderstand one another. You think you have cause to
+be angry with me. I cannot suffer that, for the King of Navarre had
+never greater need of your services than now.'
+
+'You have played me an unworthy trick, sir,' I answered, thinking he
+would cozen me with fair speeches.
+
+'Tut, tut!' he replied. 'You do not understand.'
+
+'I understand well enough,' I answered, with bitterness, 'that, having
+done the King of Navarre's work, he would now be rid of me.'
+
+'Have I not told you,' M. de Rosny replied, betraying for the first
+time some irritation, 'that he has greater need of your services than
+ever? Come, man, be reasonable, or, better still, listen to me.' And
+turning from me, he began to walk up and down the room, his hands
+behind him. 'The King of France--I want to make it as clear to you as
+possible--' he said, 'cannot make head against the League without
+help, and, willy-nilly, must look for it to the Huguenots whom he has
+so long persecuted. The King of Navarre, their acknowledged leader,
+has offered that help; and so, to spite my master, and prevent a
+combination so happy for France, has M. de Turenne, who would fain
+raise the faction he commands to eminence, and knows well how to make
+his profit out of the dissensions of his country. Are you clear so
+far, sir?'
+
+I assented. I was becoming absorbed in spite of myself.
+
+'Very well,' he resumed. 'This evening--never did anything fall out
+more happily than Rambouillet's meeting with me--he is a good man!--I
+have brought the king to this: that if proof of the selfish nature of
+Turenne's designs be laid before him he will hesitate no longer. That
+proof exists. A fortnight ago it was here; but it is not here now.'
+
+'That is unlucky!' I exclaimed. I was so much interested in his story,
+as well as flattered by the confidence he was placing in me, that my
+ill-humour vanished. I went and stood with my shoulder against the
+mantelpiece, and he, passing to and fro between me and the light,
+continued his tale.
+
+'A word about this proof,' he said. 'It came into the King of
+Navarre's hands before its full value was known to us, for that only
+accrued to it on M. de Guise's death. A month ago it--this piece of
+evidence I mean--was at Chizé. A fortnight or so ago it was here in
+Blois. It is now, M. de Marsac,' he continued, facing me suddenly as
+he came opposite me, 'in my house at Rosny.'
+
+I started. 'You mean Mademoiselle de la Vire?' I cried.
+
+'I mean Mademoiselle de la Vire!' he answered, 'who, some month or two
+ago, overheard M. de Turenne's plans, and contrived to communicate
+with the King of Navarre. Before the latter could arrange a private
+interview, however, M. de Turenne got wind of her dangerous knowledge,
+and swept her off to Chizé. The rest you know, M. de Marsac, if any
+man knows it.'
+
+'But what will you do?' I asked. 'She is at Rosny.'
+
+'Maignan, whom I trust implicitly, as far as his lights go, will start
+to fetch her to-morrow. At the same hour I start southwards. You, M.
+de Marsac, will remain here as my agent, to watch over my interests,
+to receive Mademoiselle on her arrival, to secure for her a secret
+interview with the king, to guard her while she remains here. Do you
+understand?'
+
+Did I understand? I could not find words in which to thank him. My
+remorse and gratitude, my sense of the wrong I had done him, and of
+the honour he was doing me, were such that I stood mute before him as
+I had stood before the king. 'You accept, then?' he said, smiling.
+'You do not deem the adventure beneath you, my friend?'
+
+'I deserve your confidence so little, sir,' I answered, stricken to
+the ground, 'that I beg you to speak, while I listen. By attending
+exactly to your instructions I may prove worthy of the trust reposed
+in me. And only so.'
+
+He embraced me again and again, with a kindness which moved me almost
+to tears. 'You are a man after my own heart,' he said, 'and if God
+wills I will make your fortune. Now listen, my friend. To-morrow at
+Court, as a stranger and a man introduced by Rambouillet, you will be
+the cynosure of all eyes. Bear yourself bravely. Pay court to the
+women, but attach yourself to no one in particular. Keep aloof from
+Retz and the Spanish faction, but beware especially of Bruhl. He alone
+will have your secret, and may suspect your design. Mademoiselle
+should be here in a week; while she is with you, and until she has
+seen the king, trust no one, suspect everyone, fear all things.
+Consider the battle won only when the king says, "I am satisfied."'
+
+Much more he told me, which served its purpose and has been forgotten.
+Finally he honoured me by bidding me share his pallet with him, that
+we might talk without restraint, and that if anything occurred to him
+in the night he might communicate it to me.
+
+'But will not Bruhl denounce me as a Huguenot?' I asked him.
+
+'He will not dare to do so,' M. de Rosny answered, 'both as a Huguenot
+himself, and as his master's representative; and, further, because it
+would displease the king. No, but whatever secret harm one man can do
+another, that you have to fear. Maignan, when he returns with
+mademoiselle, will leave two men with you; until they come I should
+borrow a couple of stout fellows from Rambouillet, Do not go out alone
+after dark, and beware of doorways, especially your own.'
+
+A little later, when I thought him asleep, I heard him chuckle; and
+rising on my elbow I asked him what it was. 'Oh, it is your affair,'
+he answered, still laughing silently, so that I felt the mattress
+shake under him. 'I don't envy you one part of your task, my friend.'
+
+'What is that?' I said suspiciously.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' he answered, stilling with difficulty a burst of
+laughter. And after that he would not say another word, bad, good, or
+indifferent, though I felt the bed shake more than once, and knew that
+he was digesting his pleasantry.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                        IN THE KING'S CHAMBER.
+
+
+M. de Rosny had risen from my side and started on his journey when I
+opened my eyes in the morning, and awoke to the memory of the task
+which had been so strangely imposed upon me; and which might,
+according as the events of the next fortnight shaped themselves, raise
+me to high position or put an end to my career. He had not forgotten
+to leave a souvenir behind him, for I found beside my pillow a
+handsome silver-mounted pistol, bearing the letter 'R.' and a coronet;
+nor had I more than discovered this instance of his kindness before
+Simon Fleix came in to tell me that M. de Rosny had left two hundred
+crowns in his hands for me.
+
+'Any message with it?' I asked the lad.
+
+'Only that he had taken a keepsake in exchange,' Simon answered,
+opening the window as he spoke.
+
+In some wonder I began to search, but I could not discover that
+anything was missing until I came to put on my doublet, when I found
+that the knot of ribbon which mademoiselle had flung to me at my
+departure from Rosny was gone from the inside of the breast, where I
+had pinned it for safety with a long thorn. The discovery that M. de
+Rosny had taken this was displeasing to me on more than one account.
+In the first place, whether mademoiselle had merely wished to plague
+me (as was most probable) or not, I was loth to lose it, my day for
+ladies' favours being past and gone; in the second, I misdoubted the
+motive which had led him to purloin it, and tormented myself with
+thinking of the different constructions he might put upon it, and the
+disparaging view of my trustworthiness which it might lead him to
+take. I blamed myself much for my carelessness in leaving it where a
+chance eye might rest upon it; and more when, questioning Simon
+further, I learned that M. de Rosny had added, while mounting at the
+door, 'Tell your master, safe bind, safe find; and a careless lover
+makes a loose mistress.'
+
+I felt my cheek burn in a manner unbecoming my years while Simon with
+some touch of malice repeated this; and I made a vow on the spot,
+which I kept until I was tempted to break it, to have no more to do
+with such trifles. Meanwhile, I had to make the best of it; and
+brisking up, and bidding Simon, who seemed depressed by the baron's
+departure, brisk up also, I set about my preparations for making such
+a figure at Court as became me: procuring a black velvet suit, and a
+cap and feather to match; item, a jewelled clasp to secure the
+feather; with a yard or two of lace and two changes of fine linen.
+
+Simon had grown sleek at Rosny, and losing something of the wildness
+which had marked him, presented in the dress M. de Rosny had given him
+a very creditable appearance; being also, I fancy, the only equerry in
+Blois who could write. A groom I engaged on the recommendation of M.
+de Rambouillet's master of the horse; and I gave out also that I
+required a couple of valets. It needed only an hour under the barber's
+hands and a set of new trappings for the Cid to enable me to make a
+fair show, such as might be taken to indicate a man of ten or twelve
+thousand livres a year.
+
+In this way I expended a hundred and fifteen crowns. Reflecting that
+this was a large sum, and that I must keep some money for play, I was
+glad to learn that in the crowded state of the city even men with high
+rank were putting up with poor lodging; I determined, therefore, to
+combine economy with a scheme which I had in my head by taking the
+rooms in which my mother died, with one room below them. This I did,
+hiring such furniture as I needed, which was not a great deal. To
+Simon Fleix, whose assistance in these matters was invaluable, I
+passed on much of M. de Rosny's advice, bidding him ruffle it with the
+best in his station, and inciting him to labour for my advancement by
+promising to make his fortune whenever my own should be assured. I
+hoped, indeed, to derive no little advantage from the quickness of wit
+which had attracted M. de Rosny's attention; although I did not fail
+to take into account at the same time that the lad was wayward and
+fitful, prone at one time to depression, and at another to giddiness,
+and equally uncertain in either mood.
+
+M. de Rambouillet being unable to attend the _levée_, had appointed me
+to wait upon him at six in the evening; at which hour I presented
+myself at his lodgings, attended by Simon Fleix. I found him in the
+midst of half a dozen gentlemen whose habit it was to attend him upon
+all public occasions; and these gallants, greeting me with the same
+curious and suspicious glances which I have seen hounds bestow on a
+strange dog introduced into their kennel, I was speedily made to feel
+that it is one thing to have business at Court, and another to be well
+received there.
+
+M. de Rambouillet, somewhat to my surprise, did nothing to remove this
+impression. On all ordinary occasions a man of stiff and haughty
+bearing, and thoroughly disliking, though he could not prevent, the
+intrusion of a third party into a transaction which promised an
+infinity of credit, he received me so coldly and with so much reserve
+as for the moment to dash my spirits and throw me back on myself.
+
+During the journey to the castle, however, which we performed on foot,
+attended by half a dozen armed servants bearing torches, I had time to
+recall M. de Rosny's advice, and to bethink me of the intimacy which
+that great man had permitted me; with so much effect in the way of
+heartening me, that as we crossed the courtyard of the castle I
+advanced myself, not without some murmuring on the part of others, to
+Rambouillet's elbow, considering that as I was attached to him by the
+king's command, this was my proper place. I had no desire to quarrel,
+however, and persisted for some time in disregarding the nudges and
+muttered words which were exchanged round me, and even the efforts
+which were made as we mounted the stairs to oust me from my position.
+But a young gentleman, who showed himself very forward in these
+attempts, presently stumbling against me, I found it necessary to look
+at him.
+
+'Sir,' he said, in a small and lisping voice, 'you trod on my toe.'
+
+Though I had not done so, I begged his pardon very politely. But as
+his only acknowledgment of this courtesy consisted in an attempt to
+get his knee in front of mine--we were mounting very slowly, the
+stairs being cumbered with a multitude of servants, who stood on
+either hand--I did tread on his toe, with a force and directness which
+made him cry out.
+
+'What is the matter?' Rambouillet asked, looking back hastily.
+
+'Nothing, M. le Marquis,' I answered, pressing on steadfastly.
+
+'Sir,' my young friend said again, in the same lisping voice, 'you
+trod on my toe.'
+
+'I believe I did, sir,' I answered.
+
+'You have not yet apologised,' he murmured gently in my ear.
+
+'Nay, there you are wrong,' I rejoined bluntly, 'for it is always my
+habit to apologise first and tread afterwards.'
+
+He smiled as at a pleasant joke; and I am bound to say that his
+bearing was so admirable that if he had been my son I could have
+hugged him. 'Good!' he answered. 'No doubt your sword is as sharp as
+your wits, sir. I see,' he continued, glancing naïvely at my old
+scabbard--he was himself the very gem of a courtier, a slender youth
+with a pink-and-white complexion, a dark line for a moustache, and a
+pearl-drop in his ear--'it is longing to be out. Perhaps you will take
+a turn in the tennis-court to-morrow?'
+
+'With pleasure, sir,' I answered, 'if you have a father, or your elder
+brother is grown up.'
+
+What answer he would have made to this gibe I do not know, for at that
+moment we reached the door of the antechamber; and this being narrow,
+and a sentry in the grey uniform of the Swiss Guard compelling all to
+enter in single file, my young friend was forced to fall back, leaving
+me free to enter alone, and admire at my leisure a scene at once
+brilliant and sombre.
+
+The Court being in mourning for the Queen-mother, black predominated
+in the dresses of those present, and set off very finely the gleaming
+jewels and gemmed sword-hilts which were worn by the more important
+personages. The room was spacious and lofty, hung with arras, and lit
+by candles burning in silver sconces; it rang as we entered with the
+shrill screaming of a parrot, which was being teased by a group
+occupying the farther of the two hearths. Near them play was going on
+at one table, and primero at a second. In a corner were three or four
+ladies, in a circle about a red-faced, plebeian-looking man, who was
+playing at forfeits with one of their number; while the middle of the
+room seemed dominated by a middle-sized man with a peculiarly inflamed
+and passionate countenance, who, seated on a table, was inveighing
+against someone or something in the most violent terms, his language
+being interlarded with all kinds of strange and forcible oaths. Two or
+three gentlemen, who had the air of being his followers, stood about
+him, listening between submission and embarrassment; while beside the
+nearer fireplace, but at some distance from him, lounged a nobleman,
+very richly dressed, and wearing on his breast the Cross of the Holy
+Ghost; who seemed to be the object of his invective, but affecting to
+ignore it was engaged in conversation with a companion. A bystander
+muttering that Crillon had been drinking, I discovered with immense
+surprise that the declaimer on the table was that famous soldier; and
+I was still looking at him in wonder--for I had been accustomed all my
+life to associate courage with modesty---when, the door of the chamber
+suddenly opening, a general movement in that direction took place.
+Crillon, disregarding all precedency, sprang from his table and
+hurried first to the threshold. The Baron de Biron, on the other
+hand--for the gentleman by the fire was no other--waited, in apparent
+ignorance of the slight which was being put upon him, until M. de
+Rambouillet came up; then he went forward with him. Keeping close to
+my patron's elbow, I entered the chamber immediately behind him.
+
+Crillon had already seized upon the king, and, when we entered, was
+stating his grievance in a voice not much lower than that which he had
+used outside. M. de Biron, seeing this, parted from the marquis, and,
+going aside with his former companion, sat down on a trunk against the
+wall; while Rambouillet, followed by myself and three or four
+gentlemen of his train, advanced to the king, who was standing near
+the alcove. His Majesty seeing him, and thankful, I think, for the
+excuse, waved Crillon off. 'Tut, tut! You told me all that this
+morning,' he said good-naturedly. 'And here is Rambouillet, who has, I
+hope, something fresh to tell. Let him speak to me. Sanctus! Don't
+look at me as if you would run me through, man. Go and quarrel with
+someone of your own size.'
+
+Crillon at this retired grumbling, and Henry, who had just risen from
+primero with the Duke of Nevers, nodded to Rambouillet. 'Well, my
+friend, anything fresh?' he cried. He was more at his ease and looked
+more cheerful than at our former interview; yet still care and
+suspicion lurked about his peevish mouth, and in the hollows under his
+gloomy eyes. 'A new guest, a new face, or a new game--which have you
+brought?'
+
+'In a sense, sire, a new face,' the marquis answered, bowing, and
+standing somewhat aside that I might have place.
+
+'Well, I cannot say much for the pretty baggage,' quoth the king
+quickly. And amid a general titter he extended his hand to me. 'I'll
+be sworn, though,' he continued, as I rose from my knee, 'that you
+want something, my friend?'
+
+'Nay, sire,' I answered, holding up my head boldly--for Cillon's
+behaviour had been a further lesson to me--'I have, by your leave, the
+advantage. For your Majesty has supplied me with a new jest. I see
+many new faces round me, and I have need only of a new game. If your
+Majesty would be pleased to grant me----'
+
+'There! Said I not so?' cried the king, raising his hand with a laugh.
+'He does want something. But he seems not undeserving. What does he
+pray, Rambouillet?'
+
+'A small command,' M. de Rambouillet answered, readily playing his
+part. 'And your Majesty would oblige me if you could grant the Sieur
+de Marsac's petition. I will answer for it he is a man of experience.
+
+'Chut! A small command?' Henry ejaculated, sitting down suddenly in
+apparent ill-humour. 'It is what everyone wants--when they do not want
+big ones. Still, I suppose,' he continued, taking up a comfit-box,
+which lay beside him, and opening it, 'if you do not get what you want
+for him you will sulk like the rest, my friend.'
+
+'Your Majesty has never had cause to complain of me,' quoth the
+marquis, forgetting his _rôle_, or too proud to play it.
+
+'Tut, tut, tut, tut! Take it, and trouble me no more,' the king
+rejoined. 'Will pay for twenty men do for him? Very well then. There,
+M. de Marsac,' he continued, nodding at me and yawning, 'your request
+is granted. You will find some other pretty baggages over there. Go to
+them. And now, Rambouillet,' he went on, resuming his spirits as he
+turned to matters of more importance, 'here is a new sweetmeat Zamet
+has sent me. I have made Zizi sick with it. Will you try it? It is
+flavoured with white mulberries.'
+
+Thus dismissed, I fell back; and stood for a moment, at a loss whither
+to turn, in the absence of either friends or acquaintances. His
+Majesty, it is true, had bidden me go to certain pretty baggages,
+meaning, apparently, five ladies who were seated at the farther end of
+the room, diverting themselves with as many cavaliers; but the
+compactness of this party, the beauty of the ladies, and the merry
+peals of laughter which proceeded from them, telling of a wit and
+vivacity beyond the ordinary, sapped the resolution which had borne me
+well hitherto. I felt that to attack such a phalanx, even with a
+king's good will, was beyond the daring of a Crillon, and I looked
+round to see whether I could not amuse myself in some more modest
+fashion.
+
+The material was not lacking. Crillon, still mouthing out his anger,
+strode up and down in front of the trunk on which M. de Biron was
+seated; but the latter was, or affected to be, asleep. 'Crillon is for
+ever going into rages now,' a courtier beside me whispered.
+
+'Yes,' his fellow answered, with a shrug of the shoulder; 'it is a
+pity there is no one to tame him. But he has such a long reach,
+morbleu!'
+
+'It is not that so much as the fellow's fury,' the first speaker
+rejoined under his breath. 'He fights like a mad thing; fencing is no
+use against him.'
+
+The other nodded. For a moment the wild idea of winning renown by
+taming M. de Crillon occurred to me as I stood alone in the middle of
+the floor; but it had not more than passed through my brain when I
+felt my elbow touched, and turned to find the young gentleman whom I
+had encountered on the stairs standing by my side.
+
+'Sir,' he lisped, in the same small voice, 'I think you trod on my toe
+a while ago?'
+
+I stared at him, wondering what he meant by this absurd repetition.
+'Well, sir,' I answered drily, 'and if I did?'
+
+'Perhaps,' he said, stroking his chin with his jewelled fingers,
+'pending our meeting to-morrow, you would allow me to consider it as a
+kind of introduction?'
+
+'If it please you,' I answered, bowing stiffly, and wondering what he
+would be at.
+
+'Thank you,' he answered. 'It does please me, under the circumstances;
+for there is a lady here who desires a word with you. I took up her
+challenge. Will you follow me?'
+
+He bowed, and turned in his languid fashion. I, turning too, saw, with
+secret dismay, that the five ladies, referred to above, were all now
+gazing at me, as expecting my approach; and this with such sportive
+glances as told only too certainly of some plot already in progress or
+some trick to be presently played me. Yet I could not see that I had
+any choice save to obey, and, following my leader with as much dignity
+as I could compass, I presently found myself bowing before the lady
+who sat nearest, and who seemed to be the leader of these nymphs.
+
+'Nay, sir,' she said, eyeing me curiously, yet with a merry face, 'I
+do not need you; I do not look so high!'
+
+Turning in confusion to the next, I was surprised to see before me the
+lady whose lodging I had invaded in my search for Mademoiselle de la
+Vire--she, I mean, who, having picked up the velvet knot, had dropped
+it so providentially where Simon Fleix found it. She looked at me,
+blushing and laughing, and the young gentleman, who had done her
+errand, presenting me by name, she asked me, while the others
+listened, whether I had found my mistress.
+
+Before I could answer, the lady to whom I had first addressed myself
+interposed. 'Stop, sir!' she cried. 'What is this--a tale, a jest, a
+game, or a forfeit?'
+
+'An adventure, madam,' I answered, bowing low.
+
+'Of gallantry, I'll be bound,' she exclaimed. 'Fie, Madame de Bruhl,
+and you but six months married!'
+
+Madame de Bruhl protested, laughing, that she had no more to do with
+it than Mercury. 'At the worst,' she said, 'I carried the _poulets!_
+But I can assure you, duchess, this gentleman should be able to tell
+us a very fine story, if he would.'
+
+The duchess and all the other ladies clapping their hands at this, and
+crying out that the story must and should be told, I found myself in a
+prodigious quandary; and one wherein my wits derived as little
+assistance as possible from the bright eyes and saucy looks which
+environed me. Moreover, the commotion attracting other listeners, I
+found my position, while I tried to extricate myself, growing each
+moment worse, so that I began to fear that as I had little imagination
+I should perforce have to tell the truth. The mere thought of this
+threw me into a cold perspiration, lest I should let slip something of
+consequence, and prove myself unworthy of the trust which M. de Rosny
+had reposed in me.
+
+At the moment when, despairing of extricating myself, I was stooping
+over Madame de Bruhl begging her to assist me, I heard, amid the babel
+of laughter and raillery which surrounded me--certain of the courtiers
+having already formed hands in a circle and sworn I should not depart
+without satisfying the ladies--a voice which struck a chord in my
+memory. I turned to see who the speaker was, and encountered no other
+than M. de Bruhl himself; who, with a flushed and angry face, was
+listening to the explanation which a friend was pouring into his ear.
+Standing at the moment with my knee on Madame de Bruhl's stool, and
+remembering very well the meeting on the stairs, I conceived in a
+flash that the man was jealous; but whether he had yet heard my name,
+or had any clew to link me with the person who had rescued
+Mademoiselle de la Vire from his clutches, I could not tell.
+Nevertheless his presence led my thoughts into a new channel. The
+determination to punish him began to take form in my mind, and very
+quickly I regained my composure. Still I was for giving him one
+chance. Accordingly I stooped once more to Madame de Bruhl's ear, and
+begged her to spare me the embarrassment of telling my tale. But then,
+finding her pitiless, as I expected, and the rest of the company
+growing more and more insistent, I hardened my heart to go through
+with the fantastic notion which had occurred to me.
+
+Indicating by a gesture that I was prepared to obey, and the duchess
+crying for a hearing, this was presently obtained, the sudden silence
+adding the king himself to my audience. 'What is it?' he asked, coming
+up effusively, with a lap-dog in his arms. 'A new scandal, eh?'
+
+'No, sire, a new tale-teller,' the duchess answered pertly. 'If your
+Majesty will sit, we shall hear him the sooner.'
+
+He pinched her ear and sat down in the chair which a page presented.
+'What? is it Rambouillet's _grison_ again?' he said with some
+surprise. 'Well, fire away, man. But who brought you forward as a
+Rabelais?'
+
+There was a general cry of 'Madame de Bruhl!' whereat that lady shook
+her fair hair about her face, and cried out for someone to bring her a
+mask.
+
+'Ha, I see!' said the king drily, looking pointedly at M. de Bruhl,
+who was as black as thunder. 'But go on, man.'
+
+The king's advent, by affording me a brief respite, had enabled me to
+collect my thoughts, and, disregarding the ribald interruptions, which
+at first were frequent, I began as follows: 'I am no Rabelais, sire,'
+I said, 'but droll things happen to the most unlikely. Once upon a
+time it was the fortune of a certain swain, whom I will call Dromio,
+to arrive in a town not a hundred miles from Blois, having in his
+company a nymph of great beauty, who had been entrusted to his care by
+her parents. He had not more than lodged her in his apartments,
+however, before she was decoyed away by a trick, and borne off against
+her will by a young gallant, who had seen her and been smitten by her
+charms. Dromio, returning, and finding his mistress gone, gave way to
+the most poignant grief. He ran up and down the city, seeking her in
+every place, and filling all places with his lamentations; but for a
+time in vain, until chance led him to a certain street, where, in an
+almost incredible manner, he found a clew to her by discovering
+underfoot a knot of velvet, bearing Phyllida's name wrought on it in
+delicate needlework, with the words, "A moi!"'
+
+'Sanctus!' cried the king, amid a general murmur of surprise, 'that is
+well devised! Proceed, sir. Go on like that, and we will make your
+twenty men twenty-five.'
+
+'Dromio,' I continued, 'at sight of this trifle experienced the most
+diverse emotions, for while he possessed in it a clew to his
+mistress's fate, he had still to use it so as to discover the place
+whither she had been hurried. It occurred to him at last to begin his
+search with the house before which the knot had lain. Ascending
+accordingly to the second-floor, he found there a fair lady reclining
+on a couch, who started up in affright at his appearance. He hastened
+to reassure her, and to explain the purpose of his coming, and learned
+after a conversation with which I will not trouble your Majesty,
+though it was sufficiently diverting, that the lady had found the
+velvet knot in another part of the town, and had herself dropped it
+again in front of her own house.'
+
+'Pourquoi?' the king asked, interrupting me.
+
+'The swain, sire,' I answered, 'was too much taken up with his own
+troubles to bear that in mind, even if he learned it. But this
+delicacy did not save him from misconception, for as he descended from
+the lady's apartment he met her husband on the stairs.'
+
+'Good!' the king exclaimed, rubbing his hands in glee. 'The husband!'
+And under cover of the gibe and the courtly laugh which followed it M.
+de Bruhl's start of surprise passed unnoticed save by me.
+
+'The husband,' I resumed, 'seeing a stranger descending his staircase,
+was for stopping him and learning the reason of his presence; but
+Dromio, whose mind was with Phyllida, refused to stop, and, evading
+his questions, hurried to the part of the town where the lady had told
+him she found the velvet knot. Here, sire, at the corner of a lane
+running between garden-walls, he found a great house, barred and
+gloomy, and well adapted to the abductor's purpose. Moreover, scanning
+it on every side, he presently discovered, tied about the bars of an
+upper window, a knot of white linen, the very counterpart of that
+velvet one which he bore in his breast. Thus he knew that the nymph
+was imprisoned in that room!'
+
+'I will make, it twenty-five, as I am a good Churchman!' his Majesty
+exclaimed, dropping the little dog he was nursing into the duchess's
+lap, and taking out his comfit-box. 'Rambouillet,' he added languidly,
+'your friend is a treasure!'
+
+I bowed my acknowledgments, and took occasion as I did so to step a
+pace aside, so as to command a view of Madame de Bruhl, as well as her
+husband. Hitherto madame, willing to be accounted a part in so pretty
+a romance, and ready enough also, unless I was mistaken, to cause her
+husband a little mild jealousy, had listened to the story with a
+certain sly demureness. But this I foresaw would not last long; and I
+felt something like compunction as the moment for striking the blow
+approached. But I had now no choice. 'The best is yet to come, sire,'
+I went on, 'as I think you will acknowledge in a moment. Dromio,
+though he had discovered his mistress, was still in the depths of
+despair. He wandered round and round the house, seeking ingress and
+finding none, until at length, sunset approaching, and darkness
+redoubling his fears for the nymph, fortune took pity on him. As he
+stood in front of the house he saw the abductor come out, lighted by
+two servants. Judge of his surprise, sire,' I continued, looking round
+and speaking slowly, to give full effect to my words, 'when he
+recognised in him no other than the husband of the lady who, by
+picking up and again dropping the velvet knot, had contributed so much
+to the success of his search!'
+
+'Ha! these husbands!' cried the king. And slapping his knee in an
+ecstasy at his own acuteness, he laughed in his seat till he rolled
+again. 'These husbands! Did I not say so?'
+
+The whole Court gave way to like applause, and clapped their hands as
+well, so that few save those who stood nearest took notice of Madame
+de Bruhl's faint cry, and still fewer understood why she rose up
+suddenly from her stool and stood gazing at her husband with burning
+cheeks and clenched hands. She took no heed of me, much less of the
+laughing crowd round her, but looked only at him with her soul in her
+eyes. He, after uttering one hoarse curse, seemed to have no thought
+for any but me. To have the knowledge that his own wife had baulked
+him brought home to him in this mocking fashion, to find how little a
+thing had tripped him that day, to learn how blindly he had played
+into the hands of fate, above all to be exposed at once to his wife's
+resentment and the ridicule of the Court--for he could not be sure
+that I should not the next moment disclose his name--all so wrought on
+him that for a moment I thought he would strike me in the presence.
+
+His rage, indeed, did what I had not meant to do. For the king,
+catching sight of his face, and remembering that Madame de Bruhl had
+elicited the story, screamed suddenly, 'Haro!' and pointed ruthlessly
+at him with his finger. After that I had no need to speak, the story
+leaping from eye to eye, and every eye settling on Bruhl, who sought
+in vain to compose his features. Madame, who surpassed him, as women
+commonly do surpass men, in self-control, was the first to recover
+herself, and sitting down as quickly as she had risen, confronted
+alike her husband and her rivals with a pale smile.
+
+For a moment curiosity and excitement kept all breathless, the eye
+alone busy. Then the king laughed mischievously. 'Come, M. de Bruhl,'
+he cried, 'perhaps you will finish the tale for us?' And he threw
+himself back in his chair, a sneer on his lips.
+
+'Or why not Madame de Bruhl?' said the duchess, with her head on one
+side and her eyes glittering over her fan. 'Madame would, I am sure,
+tell it so well.'
+
+But madame only shook her head, smiling always that forced smile. For
+Bruhl himself, glaring from face to face like a bull about to charge,
+I have never seen a man more out of countenance, or more completely
+brought to bay. His discomposure, exposed as he was to the ridicule of
+all present, was such that the presence in which he stood scarcely
+hindered him from some violent attack; and his eyes, which had
+wandered from me at the king's word, presently returning to me again,
+he so far forgot himself as to raise his hand furiously, uttering at
+the same time a savage oath.
+
+The king cried out angrily, 'Have a care, sir!' But Bruhl only heeded
+this so far as to thrust aside those who stood round him and push his
+way hurriedly through the circle.
+
+'Arnidieu!' cried the king, when he was gone. 'This is fine conduct! I
+have half a mind to send after him and have him put where his hot
+blood would cool a little. Or----'
+
+He stopped abruptly, his eyes resting on me. The relative positions of
+Bruhl and myself as the agents of Rosny and Turenne occurred to him
+for the first time, I think, and suggested the idea, perhaps, that I
+had laid a trap for him, and that he had fallen into it. At any rate
+his face grew darker and darker, and at last, 'A nice kettle of fish
+this is you have prepared for us, sir!' he muttered, gazing at me
+gloomily.
+
+The sudden change in his humour took even courtiers by surprise. Faces
+a moment before broad with smiles grew long again. The less important
+personages looked uncomfortably at one another, and with one accord
+frowned on me. 'If your Majesty would please to hear the end of the
+story at another time?' I suggested humbly, beginning to wish with all
+my heart that I had never said a word.
+
+'Chut!' he answered, rising, his face still betraying his
+perturbation. 'Well, be it so. For the present you may go, sir.
+Duchess, give me Zizi, and come to my closet. I want you to see my
+puppies. Retz, my good friend, do you come too. I have something to
+say to you. Gentlemen, you need not wait. It is likely I shall be
+late.'
+
+And, with the utmost abruptness, he broke up the circle.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                          THE JACOBIN MONK.
+
+
+Had I needed any reminder of the uncertainty of Court favour, or an
+instance whence I might learn the lesson of modesty, and so stand in
+less danger of presuming on my new and precarious prosperity, I had it
+in this episode, and in the demeanour of the company round me. On the
+circle breaking up in confusion, I found myself the centre of general
+regard, but regard of so dubious a character, the persons who would
+have been the first to compliment me had the king retired earlier,
+standing farthest aloof now, that I felt myself rather insulted than
+honoured by it. One or two, indeed, of the more cautious spirits did
+approach me; but it was with the air of men providing against a danger
+particularly remote, their half-hearted speeches serving only to fix
+them in my memory as belonging to a class, especially abhorrent to
+me--the class, I mean, of those who would run at once with the hare
+and the hounds.
+
+I was rejoiced to find that on one person, and that the one whose
+disposition towards me was, next to the king's, of first importance,
+this episode had produced a different impression. Feeling, as I made
+for the door, a touch on my arm, I turned to find M. de Rambouillet at
+my elbow, regarding me with a glance of mingled esteem and amusement;
+in fine, with a very different look from that which had been my
+welcome earlier in the evening. I was driven to suppose that he was
+too great a man, or too sure of his favour with the king, to be swayed
+by the petty motives which actuated the Court generally, for he laid
+his hand familiarly on my shoulder, and walked on beside me.
+
+'Well, my friend,' he said,' you have distinguished yourself finely! I
+do not know that I ever remember a pretty woman making more stir in
+one evening. But if you are wise you will not go home alone to-night.'
+
+'I have my sword, M. le Marquis,' I answered, somewhat proudly.
+
+'Which will avail you little against a knife in the back!' he retorted
+drily. 'What attendance have you?'
+
+'My equerry, Simon Fleix, is on the stairs.'
+
+'Good, so far, but not enough,' he replied, as we reached the head of
+the staircase. 'You had better come home with me now, and two or three
+of my fellows shall go on to your lodging with you. Do you know, my
+friend,' he continued, looking at me keenly, 'you are either a very
+clever or a very foolish man?'
+
+I made answer modestly. 'Neither the one, I fear, nor the other, I
+hope, sir,' I said.
+
+'Well, you have done a very pertinent thing,' he replied, 'for good or
+evil. You have let the enemy know what he has to expect, and he is not
+one, I warn you, to be despised. But whether you have been very wise
+or very foolish in declaring open war remains to be seen.'
+
+'A week will show,' I answered.
+
+He turned and looked at me. 'You take it coolly,' he said.
+
+'I have been knocking about the world for forty years, marquis,' I
+rejoined.
+
+He muttered something about Rosny having a good eye, and then stopped
+to adjust his cloak. We were by this time in the street. Making me go
+hand in hand with him, he requested the other gentlemen to draw their
+swords; and the servants being likewise armed and numbering half a
+score or more, with pikes and torches, we made up a very formidable
+party, and caused, I think, more alarm as we passed, through the
+streets to Rambouillet's lodging than we had any reason to feel. Not
+that we had it all to ourselves, for the attendance at Court that
+evening being large, and the circle breaking up as I have described
+more abruptly than usual, the vicinity of the castle was in a ferment,
+and the streets leading from it were alive with the lights and
+laughter of parties similar to our own.
+
+At the door of the marquis's lodging I prepared to take leave of him
+with many expressions of gratitude, but he would have me enter and sit
+down with him to a light refection, which it was his habit to take
+before retiring. Two of his gentlemen sat down with us, and a valet,
+who was in his confidence, waiting on us, we made very merry over the
+scene in the presence. I learned that M. de Bruhl was far from popular
+at Court; but being known to possess some kind of hold over the king,
+and enjoying besides a great reputation for recklessness and skill
+with the sword, he had played a high part for a length of time, and
+attached to himself, especially since the death of Guise, a
+considerable number of followers.
+
+'The truth is,' one of the marquis's gentlemen, who was a little
+heated with wine, observed, 'there is nothing at this moment which a
+bold and unscrupulous man may not win in France!'
+
+'Nor a bold and Christian gentleman for France!' replied M. de
+Rambouillet with some asperity. 'By the way,' he continued, turning
+abruptly to the servant, 'where is M. François?'
+
+The valet answered that he had not returned with us from the castle.
+The Marquis expressed himself annoyed at this, and I gathered,
+firstly, that the missing man was his near kinsman, and, secondly,
+that he was also the young spark who had been so forward to quarrel
+with me earlier in the evening. Determining to refer the matter,
+should it become pressing, to Rambouillet for adjustment, I took leave
+of him, and attended by two of his servants, whom he kindly
+transferred to my service for the present, I started towards my
+lodging a little before midnight.
+
+The moon had risen while we were at supper, and its light, which
+whitened the gables on one side of the street, diffused a glimmer
+below sufficient to enable us to avoid the kennel. Seeing this, I bade
+the men put out our torch. Frost had set in, and a keen wind was
+blowing, so that we were glad to hurry on at a good pace; and the
+streets being quite deserted at this late hour, or haunted only by
+those who had come to dread the town marshal, we met no one and saw no
+lights. I fell to thinking, for my part, of the evening I had spent
+searching Blois for Mademoiselle, and of the difference between then
+and now. Nor did I fail while on this track to retrace it still
+farther to the evening of our arrival at my mother's; whence, as a
+source, such kindly and gentle thoughts welled up in my mind as were
+natural, and the unfailing affection of that gracious woman required.
+These, taking the place for the moment of the anxious calculations and
+stern purposes which had of late engrossed me, were only ousted by
+something which, happening under my eyes, brought me violently and
+abruptly to myself.
+
+This was the sudden appearance of three men, who issued one by one
+from an alley a score of yards in front of us, and after pausing a
+second to look back the way they had come, flitted on in single file
+along the street, disappearing, as far as the darkness permitted me to
+judge, round a second corner. I by no means liked their appearance,
+and as a scream and the clash of arms rang out next moment from the
+direction in which they had gone, I cried lustily to Simon Fleix to
+follow, and ran on, believing from the rascals' movements that they
+were after no good, but that rather some honest man was like to be
+sore beset.
+
+On reaching the lane down which they had plunged, however, I paused a
+moment, considering not so much its blackness, which was intense, the
+eaves nearly meeting overhead, as the small chance I had of
+distinguishing between attackers and attacked. But Simon and the men
+overtaking me, and the sounds of a sharp tussle still continuing, I
+decided to venture, and plunged into the alley, my left arm well
+advanced, with the skirt of my cloak thrown over it, and my sword
+drawn back. I shouted as I ran, thinking that the knaves might desist
+on hearing me; and this was what happened, for as I arrived on the
+scene of action--the farther end of the alley--two men took to their
+heels, while of two who remained, one lay at length in the kennel, and
+another rose slowly from his knees.
+
+'You are just in time, sir,' the latter said, breathing hard, but
+speaking with a preciseness which sounded familiar. 'I am obliged to
+you, sir, whoever you are. The villains had got me down, and in a few
+minutes more would have made my mother childless. By the way, you have
+no light, have you?' he continued, lisping like a woman.
+
+One of M. de Rambouillet's men, who had by this time come up, cried
+out that it was Monsieur François.
+
+'Yes, blockhead!' the young gentleman answered with the utmost
+coolness. 'But I asked for a light, not for my name.'
+
+'I trust you are not hurt, sir?' I said, putting up my sword.
+
+'Scratched only,' he answered, betraying no surprise on learning who
+it was had come up so opportunely; as he no doubt did learn from my
+voice, for he continued with a bow, 'A slight price to pay for the
+knowledge that M. de Marsac is as forward on the field as on the
+stairs.'
+
+I bowed my acknowledgments.
+
+'This fellow,' I said, 'is he much hurt?'
+
+'Tut, tut! I thought I had saved the marshal all trouble,' M. François
+replied. 'Is he not dead, Gil?'
+
+The poor wretch made answer for himself, crying out piteously and
+in a choking voice, for a priest to shrive him. At that moment Simon
+Fleix returned with our torch, which he had lighted at the nearest
+cross-streets, where there was a brazier, and we saw by this light
+that the man was coughing up blood, and might live perhaps half an
+hour.
+
+'Mordieu! That comes of thrusting too high!' M. François muttered,
+regretfully. 'An inch lower, and there would have been none of this
+trouble! I suppose somebody must fetch one. Gil,' he continued, 'run,
+man, to the sacristy in the Rue St. Denys, and get a Father. Or--stay!
+Help to lift him under the lee of the wall there. The wind cuts like a
+knife here.'
+
+The street being on the slope of the hill, the lower part of the house
+nearest us stood a few feet from the ground, on wooden piles, and the
+space underneath it, being enclosed at the back and sides, was used as
+a cart-house. The servants moved the dying man into this rude shelter,
+and I accompanied them, being unwilling to leave the young gentleman
+alone. Not wishing, however, to seem to interfere, I walked to the
+farther end, and sat down on the shaft of a cart, whence I idly
+admired the strange aspect of the group I had left, as the glare of
+the torch brought now one and now another into prominence, and
+sometimes shone on M. François' jewelled fingers toying with his tiny
+moustache, and sometimes on the writhing features of the man at his
+feet.
+
+On a sudden, and before Gil had started on his errand, I saw there was
+a priest among them. I had not seen him enter, nor had I any idea
+whence he came. My first impression was only that here was a priest,
+and that he was looking at me--not at the man craving his assistance
+on the floor, or at those who stood round him, but at me, who sat away
+in the shadow beyond the ring of light!
+
+This was surprising; but a second glance explained it, for then I saw
+that he was the Jacobin monk who had haunted my mother's dying hours.
+And, amazed as much at this strange _rencontre_, as at the man's
+boldness, I sprang up and strode forwards, forgetting, in an impulse
+of righteous anger, the office he came to do. And this the more as his
+face, still turned to me, seemed instinct to my eyes with triumphant
+malice. As I moved towards him, however, with a fierce exclamation on
+my lips, he suddenly dropped his eyes and knelt. Immediately M.
+François cried 'Hush!' and the men turned to me with scandalised
+faces. I fell back. Yet even then, whispering on his knees by the
+dying man, the knave was thinking, I felt sure, of me, glorying at
+once in his immunity and the power it gave him to tantalise me without
+fear.
+
+I determined, whatever the result, to intercept him when all was over;
+and on the man dying a few minutes later, I walked resolutely to the
+open side of the shed, thinking it likely he might try to slip away as
+mysteriously as he had come. He stood a moment speaking to M.
+François, however, and then, accompanied by him, advanced boldly to
+meet me, a lean smile on his face.
+
+'Father Antoine,' M. d'Agen said politely, 'tells me that he knows
+you, M. de Marsac, and desires to speak to you, _mal-à-propos_ as is
+the occasion.'
+
+'And I to him,' I answered, trembling with rage, and only restraining
+by an effort the impulse which would have had me dash my hand in the
+priest's pale, smirking face. 'I have waited I long for this moment,'
+I continued, eyeing him steadily, as M. François withdrew out of
+hearing, 'and had you tried to avoid me, I would have dragged you
+back, though all your tribe were here to protect you.'
+
+His presence so maddened me that I scarcely knew what I said. I
+felt my breath come quickly, I felt the blood surge to my head,
+and it was with difficulty I restrained myself when he answered with
+well-affected sanctity, 'Like mother, like son, I fear,' sir.
+Huguenots both.'
+
+I choked with rage. 'What!' I said, 'you dare to threaten me as you
+threatened my mother? Fool! know that only to-day for the purpose of
+discovering and punishing you I took the rooms in which my mother
+died.'
+
+'I know it,' he answered quietly. And then in a second, as by magic,
+he altered his demeanour completely, raising his head and looking me
+in the face. 'That, and so much besides, I know,' he continued, giving
+me, to my astonishment, frown for frown, 'that if you will listen to
+me for a moment, M. de Marsac, and listen quietly, I will convince you
+that the folly is not on my side.'
+
+Amazed at his new manner, in which there was none of the madness that
+had marked him at our first meeting, but a strange air of authority,
+unlike anything I had associated with him before, I signed to him to
+proceed.
+
+'You think that I am in your power?' he said, smiling.
+
+'I think,' I retorted swiftly, 'that, escaping me now, you will have
+at your heels henceforth a worse enemy than even your own sins.'
+
+'Just so,' he answered, nodding. 'Well, I am going to show you that
+the reverse is the case; and that you are as completely in my hands,
+to spare or to break, as this straw. In the first place, you are here
+in Blois, a Huguenot!'
+
+'Chut!' I exclaimed contemptuously, affecting a confidence I was far
+from feeling. 'A little while back that might have availed you. But we
+are in Blois, not Paris. It is not far to the Loire, and you have to
+deal with a man now, not with a woman. It is you who have cause to
+tremble, not I.'
+
+'You think to be protected,' he answered with a sour smile, 'even on
+this side of the Loire, I see. But one word to the Pope's Legate, or
+to the Duke of Nevers, and you would see the inside of a dungeon, if
+not worse. For the king----'
+
+'King or no king!' I answered, interrupting him with more assurance
+than I felt, seeing that I remembered only too well Henry's remark
+that Rosny must not look to him for protection, 'I fear you not a
+whit! And that reminds me. I have heard you talk treason--rank, black
+treason, priest, as ever sent man to rope, and I will give you up. By
+heaven I will!' I cried, my rage increasing, as I discerned, more and
+more clearly, the dangerous hold he had over me. 'You have threatened
+me! One word, and I will send you to the gallows!'
+
+'Sh!' he answered, indicating M. François by a gesture of the hand.
+'For your own sake, not mine. This is fine talking, but you have not
+yet heard all I know. Would you like to hear how you have spent the
+last month? Two days after Christmas, M. de Marsac, you left Chizé
+with a young lady--I can give you her name, if you please. Four days
+afterwards you reached Blois, and took her to your mother's lodging.
+Next morning she left you for M. de Bruhl. Two days later you tracked
+her to a house in the Ruelle d'Arcy, and freed her, but lost her in
+the moment of victory. Then you stayed in Blois until your mother's
+death, going a day or two later to M. de Rosny's house by Mantes,
+where mademoiselle still is. Yesterday you arrived in Blois with M. de
+Rosny; you went to his lodging; you----'
+
+'Proceed, sir,' I muttered, leaning forward. Under cover of my cloak I
+drew my dagger half-way from its sheath. 'Proceed, sir, I pray,' I
+repeated with dry lips.
+
+'You slept there,' he continued, holding his ground, but shuddering
+slightly, either from cold or because he perceived my movement and
+read my design in my eyes. 'This morning you remained here in
+attendance on M. de Rambouillet.'
+
+For the moment I breathed freely again, perceiving that though he knew
+much, the one thing on which M. de Rosny's design turned had escaped
+him. The secret interview with the king, which compromised alike Henry
+himself and M. de Rambouillet, had apparently passed unnoticed and
+unsuspected. With a sigh of intense relief I slid back the dagger,
+which I had fully made up my mind to use had he known all, and drew my
+cloak round me with a shrug of feigned indifference. I sweated to
+think what he did know, but our interview with the king having escaped
+him, I breathed again.
+
+'Well, sir,' I said curtly, 'I have listened. And now, what is the
+purpose of all this?'
+
+'My purpose?' he answered, his eyes glittering. 'To show you that you
+are in my power. You are the agent of M. de Rosny. I, the agent,
+however humble, of the Holy Catholic League. Of your movements I know
+all. What do you know of mine?'
+
+'Knowledge,' I made grim answer, 'is not everything, sir priest.'
+
+'It is more than it was,' he said, smiling his thin-lipped smile. 'It
+is going to be more than it is. And I know much--about you, M. de
+Marsac.'
+
+'You know too much!' I retorted, feeling his covert threats close
+round me like the folds of some great serpent. 'But you are imprudent,
+I think. Will you tell me what is to prevent me striking you through
+where you stand, and ridding myself at a blow of so much knowledge?'
+
+'The presence of three men, M. de Marsac,' he answered lightly, waving
+his hand towards M. François and the others, 'every one of whom would
+give you up to justice. You forget that you are north of the Loire,
+and that priests are not to be massacred here with impunity, as in
+your lawless south-country. However, enough. The night is cold, and M.
+d'Agen grows suspicious as well as impatient. We have, perhaps, spoken
+too long already. Permit me'--he bowed and drew back a step--'to
+resume this discussion to-morrow.'
+
+Despite his politeness and the hollow civility with which he thus
+sought to close the interview, the light of triumph which shone in his
+eyes, as the glare of the torch fell athwart them, no less than the
+assured tone of his voice, told me clearly that he knew his power. He
+seemed, indeed, transformed: no longer a slinking, peaceful clerk,
+preying on a woman's fears, but a bold and crafty schemer, skilled and
+unscrupulous, possessed of hidden knowledge and hidden resources; the
+personification of evil intellect. For a moment, knowing all I knew,
+and particularly the responsibilities which lay before me, and the
+interests committed to my hands, I quailed, confessing myself unequal
+to him. I forgot the righteous vengeance I owed him; I cried out
+helplessly against the ill-fortune which had brought him across my
+path. I saw myself enmeshed and fettered beyond hope of escape, and by
+an effort only controlled the despair I felt.
+
+'To-morrow?' I muttered hoarsely. 'At what time?'
+
+He shook his head with a cunning smile. 'A thousand thanks, but I will
+settle that myself!' he answered. 'Au revoir!' And muttering a word of
+leave-taking to M. François d'Agen, he blessed the two servants, and
+went out into the night.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                       THE OFFER OF THE LEAGUE.
+
+
+When the last sound of his footsteps died away, I awoke as from an
+evil dream, and becoming conscious of the presence of M. François and
+the servants, recollected mechanically that I owed the former an
+apology for my discourtesy in keeping him standing in the cold. I
+began to offer it; but my distress and confusion of mind were such
+that in the middle of a set phrase I broke off, and stood looking
+fixedly at him, my trouble so plain that he asked me civilly if
+anything ailed me.
+
+'No,' I answered, turning from him impatiently; 'nothing, nothing,
+sir. Or tell me,' I continued, with an abrupt change of mind, 'who is
+that who has just left us?'
+
+'Father Antoine, do you mean?'
+
+'Ay, Father Antoine, Father Judas, call him what you like,' I rejoined
+bitterly.
+
+'Then if you leave the choice to me,' M. François answered with grave
+politeness, 'I would rather call him something more pleasant, M. de
+Marsac--James or John, let us say. For there is little said here which
+does not come back to him. If walls have ears, the walls of Blois are
+in his pay. But I thought you knew him,' he continued. 'He is
+secretary, confidant, chaplain, what you will, to Cardinal Retz, and
+one of those whom--in your ear--greater men court and more powerful
+men lean on. If I had to choose between them, I would rather cross M.
+de Crillon.'
+
+'I am obliged to you,' I muttered, checked as much by his manner as
+his words.
+
+'Not at all,' he answered more lightly. 'Any information I have is at
+your disposal.'
+
+However, I saw the imprudence of venturing farther, and hastened to
+take leave of him, persuading him to allow one of M. de Rambouillet's
+servants to accompany him home. He said that he should call on me in
+the morning; and forcing myself to answer him in a suitable manner, I
+saw him depart one way, and myself, accompanied by Simon Fleix, went
+off another. My feet were frozen with long standing--I think the
+corpse we left was scarce colder--but my head was hot with feverish
+doubts and fears. The moon had sunk and the streets were dark. Our
+torch had burned out, and we had no light. But where my followers saw
+only blackness and vacancy, I saw an evil smile and a lean visage
+fraught with menace and exultation.
+
+For the more closely I directed my mind to the position in which I
+stood, the graver it seemed. Pitted against Bruhl alone, amid strange
+surroundings and in an atmosphere of Court intrigue, I had thought my
+task sufficiently difficult and the disadvantages under which I
+laboured sufficiently serious before this interview. Conscious of a
+certain rustiness and a distaste for finesse, with resources so
+inferior to Bruhl's that even M. de Rosny's liberality had not done
+much to make up the difference, I had accepted the post offered me
+rather readily than sanguinely; with joy, seeing that it held out the
+hope of high reward, but with no certain expectation of success.
+Still, matched with a man of violent and headstrong character, I had
+seen no reason to despair; nor any why I might not arrange the secret
+meeting between the king and mademoiselle with safety, and conduct to
+its end an intrigue simple and unsuspected, and requiring for its
+execution rather courage and caution than address or experience.
+
+Now, however, I found that Bruhl was not my only or my most dangerous
+antagonist. Another was in the field--or, to speak more correctly, was
+waiting outside the arena, ready to snatch the prize when we should
+have disabled one another. From a dream of Bruhl and myself as engaged
+in a competition for the king's favour, wherein neither could expose
+the other nor appeal even in the last resort to the joint-enemies of
+his Majesty and ourselves, I awoke to a very different state of
+things; I awoke to find those enemies the masters of the situation,
+possessed of the clue to our plans, and permitting them only as long
+as they seemed to threaten no serious peril to themselves.
+
+No discovery could be more mortifying or more fraught with terror. The
+perspiration stood on my brow as I recalled the warning which M. de
+Rosny had uttered against Cardinal Retz, or noted down the various
+points of knowledge which were in Father Antoine's possession. He knew
+every event of the last month, with one exception, and could tell, I
+verily believed, how many crowns I had in my pouch. Conceding this,
+and the secret sources of information he must possess, what hope had I
+of keeping my future movements from him? Mademoiselle's arrival would
+be known to him before she had well passed the gates; nor was it
+likely, or even possible, that I should again succeed in reaching the
+king's presence untraced and unsuspected. In fine, I saw myself,
+equally with Bruhl, a puppet in this man's hands, my goings out and my
+comings in watched and reported to him, his mercy the only bar between
+myself and destruction. At any moment I might be arrested as a
+Huguenot, the enterprise in which I was engaged ruined, and
+Mademoiselle de la Vire exposed to the violence of Bruhl or the
+equally dangerous intrigues of the League.
+
+Under these circumstances I fancied sleep impossible; but habit and
+weariness are strong persuaders, and when I reached my lodging I slept
+long and soundly, as became a man who had looked danger in the face
+more than once. The morning light too brought an accession both of
+courage and hope. I reflected on the misery of my condition at St.
+Jean d'Angely, without friends or resources, and driven to herd with
+such a man as Fresnoy. And telling myself that the gold crowns which
+M. de Rosny had lavished upon me were not for nothing, nor the more
+precious friendship with which he had honoured me a gift that called
+for no return, I rose with new spirit and a countenance which threw
+Simon Fleix--who had seen me lie down the picture of despair--into the
+utmost astonishment.
+
+'You have had good dreams,' he said, eyeing me jealously and with a
+disturbed air.
+
+'I had a very evil one last night,' I answered lightly, wondering a
+little why he looked at me so, and why he seemed to resent my return
+to hopefulness and courage. I might have followed this train of
+thought farther with advantage, since I possessed a clue to his state
+of mind; but at that moment a summons at the door called him away to
+it, and he presently ushered in M. d'Agen, who, saluting me with
+punctilious politeness, had not said fifty words before he introduced
+the subject of his toe--no longer, however, in a hostile spirit, but
+as the happy medium which had led him to recognise the worth and
+sterling qualities---so he was pleased to say--of his preserver.
+
+I was delighted to find him in this frame of mind, and told him
+frankly that the friendship with which his kinsman, M. de Rambouillet,
+honoured me would prevent me giving him satisfaction save in the last
+resort. He replied that the service I had done him was such as to
+render this immaterial, unless I had myself cause of offence; which I
+was forward to deny.
+
+We were paying one another compliments after this fashion, while I
+regarded him with the interest which the middle-aged bestow on the
+young and gallant in whom they see their own youth and hopes mirrored,
+when the door was again opened, and after a moment's pause admitted,
+equally, I think, to the disgust of M. François and myself, the form
+of Father Antoine.
+
+Seldom have two men more diverse stood, I believe, in a room together;
+seldom has any greater contrast been presented to a man's eyes than
+that opened to mine on this occasion. On the one side the gay young
+spark, with his short cloak, his fine suit of black-and-silver, his
+trim limbs and jewelled hilt and chased comfit-box; on the other, the
+tall, stooping monk, lean-jawed and bright-eyed, whose gown hung about
+him in coarse, ungainly folds. And M. François' sentiment on first
+seeing the other was certainly dislike. In spite of this, however, he
+bestowed a greeting on the new-comer which evidenced a secret awe, and
+in other ways showed so plain a desire to please that I felt my fears
+of the priest return in force. I reflected that the talents which in
+such a garb could win the respect of M. François d'Agen--a brilliant
+star among the younger courtiers, and one of a class much given to
+thinking scorn of their fathers' roughness--must be both great and
+formidable; and, so considering, I received the monk with a distant
+courtesy which I had once little thought to extend to him. I put aside
+for the moment the private grudge I bore him with so much justice, and
+remembered only the burden which lay on me in my contest with him.
+
+I conjectured without difficulty that he chose to come at this time,
+when M. François was with me, out of a cunning regard to his own
+safety; and I was not surprised when M. François, beginning to make
+his adieux, Father Antoine begged him to wait below, adding that he
+had something of importance to communicate. He advanced his request in
+terms of politeness bordering on humility; but I could clearly see
+that, in assenting to it, M. d'Agen bowed to a will stronger than his
+own, and would, had he dared to follow his own bent, have given a very
+different answer. As it was he retired--nominally to give an order to
+his lackey--with a species of impatient self-restraint which it was
+not difficult to construe.
+
+Left alone with me, and assured that we had no listeners, the monk was
+not slow in coming to the point.
+
+'You have thought over what I told you last night?' he said brusquely,
+dropping in a moment the suave manner which he had maintained in M.
+François's presence.
+
+I replied coldly that I had.
+
+'And you understand the position?' he continued quickly, looking at me
+from under his brows as he stood before me, with one clenched fist on
+the table. 'Or shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how poor and
+despised you were some weeks ago, M. de Marsac--you who now go in
+velvet, and have three men at your back? Or whose gold it is has
+brought you here, and made you this? Chut! Do not let us trifle. You
+are here as the secret agent of the King of Navarre. It is my business
+to learn your plans and his intentions, and I propose to do so.'
+
+'Well?' I said.
+
+'I am prepared to buy them,' he answered; and his eyes sparkled as he
+spoke, with a greed which set me yet more on my guard.
+
+'For whom?' I asked. Having made up my mind that I must use the same
+weapons as my adversary, I reflected that to express indignation, such
+as might become a young man new to the world, could help me not a
+whit. 'For whom?' I repeated, seeing that he hesitated.
+
+'That is my business,' he replied slowly.
+
+'You want to know too much and tell too little,' I retorted, yawning.
+
+'And you are playing with me,' he cried, looking at me suddenly, with
+so piercing a gaze and so dark a countenance that I checked a shudder
+with difficulty. 'So much the worse for you, so much the worse for
+you!' he continued fiercely. 'I am here to buy the information you
+hold, but if you will not sell, there is another way. At an hour's
+notice I can ruin your plans, and send you to a dungeon! You are like
+a fish caught in a net not yet drawn. It thrusts its nose this way and
+that, and touches the mesh, but is slow to take the alarm until the
+net is drawn--and then it is too late. So it is with you, and so it
+is,' he added, falling into the ecstatic mood which marked him at
+times, and left me in doubt whether he were all knave or in part
+enthusiast, 'with all those who set themselves against St. Peter and
+his Church!'
+
+'I have heard you say much the same of the King of France,' I said
+derisively.
+
+'You trust in him?' he retorted, his eyes gleaming. 'You have been up
+there, and seen his crowded chamber, and counted his forty-five
+gentlemen and his grey-coated Swiss? I tell you the splendour you saw
+was a dream, and will vanish as a dream. The man's strength and his
+glory shall go from him, and that soon. Have you no eyes to see that
+he is beside the question? There are but two powers in France--the
+Holy Union, which still prevails, and the accursed Huguenot; and
+between them is the battle.'
+
+'Now you are telling me more,' I said.
+
+He grew sober in a moment, looking at me with a vicious anger hard to
+describe.
+
+'Tut tut,' he said, showing his yellow teeth, 'the dead tell no tales.
+And for Henry of Valois, he so loves a monk that you might better
+accuse his mistress. But for you, I have only to cry "Ho! a Huguenot
+and a spy!" and though he loved you more than he loved Quélus or
+Maugiron, he dare not stretch out a finger to save you!'
+
+I knew that he spoke the truth, and with difficulty maintained the air
+of indifference with which I had entered on the interview.
+
+'But what if I leave Blois?' I ventured, merely to see what he would
+say.
+
+He laughed. 'You cannot,' he answered. 'The net is round you, M. de
+Marsac, and there are those at every gate who know you and have their
+instructions. I can destroy you, but I would fain have your
+information, and for that I will pay you five hundred crowns and let
+you go.'
+
+'To fall into the hands of the King of Navarre?'
+
+'He will disown you, in any case,' he answered eagerly. 'He had that
+in his mind, my friend, when he selected an agent so obscure. He will
+disown you. Ah, mon Dieu! had I been an hour quicker I had caught
+Rosny--Rosny himself!'
+
+'There is one thing lacking still,' I replied. 'How am I to be sure
+that, when I have told you what I know, you will pay me the money or
+let me go?'
+
+'I will swear to it!' he answered earnestly, deceived into thinking I
+was about to surrender. 'I will give you my oath, M. de Marsac!'
+
+'I would as soon have your shoe-lace!' I exclaimed, the indignation I
+could not entirely repress finding vent in that phrase. 'A Churchman's
+vow is worth a candle--or a candle and a half, is it?' I continued
+ironically. 'I must have some security a great deal more substantial
+than that, father.'
+
+'What?' he asked, looking at me gloomily.
+
+Seeing an opening, I cudgelled my brains to think of any condition
+which, being fulfilled, might turn the table on him and place him in
+my power. But his position was so strong, or my wits so weak, that
+nothing occurred to me at the time, and I sat looking at him, my mind
+gradually passing from the possibility of escape to the actual danger
+in which I stood, and which encompassed also Simon Fleix, and, in a
+degree, doubtless, M. de Rambouillet. In four or five days, too,
+Mademoiselle de la Vire would arrive. I wondered if I could send any
+warning to her; and then, again, I doubted the wisdom of interfering
+with M. de Rosny's plans, the more as Maignan, who had gone to fetch
+mademoiselle, was of a kind to disregard any orders save his master's.
+
+'Well!' said the monk, impatiently recalling me to myself, 'what
+security do you want?'
+
+'I am not quite sure at this moment,' I made answer slowly. 'I am in a
+difficult position. I must have some time to consider.'
+
+'And to rid yourself of me, if it be possible,' he said with irony. 'I
+quite understand. But I warn you that you are watched; and that
+wherever you go and whatever you do, eyes which are mine are upon
+you.'
+
+'I, too, understand,' I said coolly.
+
+He stood awhile uncertain, regarding me with mingled doubt and
+malevolence, tortured on the one hand by fear of losing the prize if
+he granted delay, on the other of failing as utterly if he exerted his
+power and did not succeed in subduing my resolution. I watched him,
+too, and gauging his eagerness and the value of the stake for which he
+was striving by the strength of his emotions, drew small comfort from
+the sight. More than once it had occurred to me, and now it occurred
+to me again, to extricate myself by a blow. But a natural reluctance
+to strike an unarmed man, however vile and knavish, and the belief
+that he had not trusted himself in my power without taking the fullest
+precautions, withheld me. When he grudgingly, and with many dark
+threats, proposed to wait three days--and not an hour more--for my
+answer, I accepted; for I saw no other alternative open. And on these
+terms, but not without some short discussion, we parted, and I heard
+his stealthy footstep go sneaking down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                         MEN CALL IT CHANCE.
+
+
+If I were telling more than the truth, or had it in my mind to
+embellish my adventures, I could, doubtless, by the exercise of a
+little ingenuity make it appear that I owed my escape from Father
+Antoine's meshes to my own craft; and tell, in fine, as pretty a story
+of plots and counterplots as M. de Brantôme has ever woven. Having no
+desire, however, to magnify myself, and, at this time of day, scarcely
+any reason, I am fain to confess that the reverse was the case; and
+that while no man ever did less to free himself than I did, my
+adversary retained his grasp to the end, and had surely, but for a
+strange interposition, effected my ruin. How relief came, and from
+what quarter, I might defy the most ingenious person, after reading my
+memoirs to this point, to say; and this not so much by reason of any
+subtle device, as because the hand of Providence was for once directly
+manifest.
+
+The three days of grace which the priest had granted I passed in
+anxious but futile search for some means of escape, every plan I
+conceived dying stillborn, and not the least of my miseries lying in
+the fact that I could discern no better course than still to sit and
+think, and seemed doomed to perpetual inaction. M. de Rambouillet
+being a strict Catholic, though in all other respects a patriotic man,
+I knew better than to have recourse to him; and the priest's influence
+over M. d'Agen I had myself witnessed. For similar reasons I rejected
+the idea of applying to the king; and this exhausting the list of
+those on whom I had any claim, I found myself thrown on my own
+resources, which seemed limited--my wits failing me at this pinch--to
+my sword and Simon Fleix.
+
+Assured that I must break out of Blois if I would save, not myself
+only, but others more precious because entrusted to my charge, I
+thought it no disgrace to appeal to Simon; describing in a lively
+fashion the danger which threatened us, and inciting the lad by every
+argument which I thought likely to have weight with him to devise some
+way of escape.
+
+'Now is the time, my friend,' I said, 'to show your wits, and prove
+that M. de Rosny, who said you had a cunning above the ordinary, was
+right. If your brain can ever save your head, now is the time! For I
+tell you plainly, if you cannot find some way to outman[oe]uvre this
+villain before to-morrow, I am spent. You can judge for yourself what
+chance you will have of going free.'
+
+I paused at that, waiting for him to make some suggestion. To my
+chagrin he remained silent, leaning his head on his hand, and studying
+the table with his eyes in a sullen fashion; so that I began to regret
+the condescension I had evinced in letting him be seated, and found it
+necessary to remind him that he had taken service with me, and must do
+my bidding.
+
+'Well,' he said morosely, and without looking up, 'I am ready to do
+it. But I do not like priests, and this one least of all. I know him,
+and I will not meddle with him!'
+
+'You will not meddle with him?' I cried, almost beside myself with
+dismay.
+
+'No, I won't,' he replied, retaining his listless attitude. 'I know
+him, and I am afraid of him. I am no match for him.'
+
+'Then M. de Rosny was wrong, was he?' I said, giving way to my anger.
+
+'If it please you,' he answered pertly.
+
+This was too much for me. My riding-switch lay handy, and I snatched
+it up. Before he knew what I would be at, I fell upon him, and gave
+him such a sound wholesome drubbing as speedily brought him to his
+senses. When he cried for mercy--which he did not for a good space,
+being still possessed by the peevish devil which had ridden him ever
+since his departure from Rosny--I put it to him again whether M. de
+Rosny was not right. When he at last admitted this, but not till then,
+I threw the whip away and let him go, but did not cease to reproach
+him as he deserved.
+
+'Did you think,' I said, 'that I was going to be ruined because you
+would not use your lazy brains? That I was going to sit still, and let
+you sulk, while mademoiselle walked blindfold into the toils? Not at
+all, my friend!'
+
+'Mademoiselle!' he exclaimed, looking at me with a sudden change of
+countenance, and ceasing to rub himself and scowl, as he had been
+doing. 'She is not here, and is in no danger.'
+
+'She will be here to-morrow, or the next day,' I said.
+
+'You did not tell me that!' he replied, his eyes glittering. 'Does
+Father Antoine know it?'
+
+'He will know it the moment she enters the town,' I answered.
+
+Noting the change which the introduction of mademoiselle's name into
+the affair had wrought in him, I felt something like humiliation. But
+at the moment I had no choice; it was my business to use such
+instruments as came to my hand, and not, mademoiselle's safety being
+at stake, to pick and choose too nicely. In a few minutes our
+positions were reversed. The lad had grown as hot as I cold, as keenly
+excited as I critical. When he presently came to a stand in front of
+me, I saw a strange likeness between his face and the priest's; nor
+was I astonished when he presently made just such a proposal as I
+should have expected from Father Antoine himself.
+
+'There is only one thing for it,' he muttered, trembling all over. 'He
+must be got rid of!'
+
+'Fine talking!' I said, contemptuously. 'If he were a soldier he might
+be brought to it. But he is a priest, my friend, and does not fight.'
+
+'Fight? Who wants him to fight?' the lad answered, his face dark, his
+hands moving restlessly. 'It is the easier done. A blow in the back,
+and he will trouble us no more.'
+
+'Who is to strike it?' I asked drily.
+
+Simon trembled and hesitated; but presently, heaving a deep sigh, he
+said, 'I will.'
+
+'It might not be difficult,' I muttered, thinking it over.
+
+'It would be easy,' he answered under his breath. His eyes shone, his
+lips were white, and his long dark hair hung wet over his forehead.
+
+I reflected; and the longer I did so the more feasible seemed the
+suggestion. A single word, and I might sweep from my path the man
+whose existence threatened mine; who would not meet me fairly, but,
+working against me darkly and treacherously, deserved no better
+treatment at my hands than that which a detected spy receives. He had
+wronged my mother; he would fain destroy my friends!
+
+And, doubtless, I shall be blamed by some and ridiculed by more for
+indulging in scruples at such a time. But I have all my life long been
+prejudiced against that form of underhand violence which I have heard
+old men contend came into fashion in our country in modern times, and
+which certainly seems to be alien from the French character. Without
+judging others too harshly, or saying that the poniard is never
+excusable--for then might some wrongs done to women and the helpless
+go without remedy--I have set my face against its use as unworthy of a
+soldier. At the time, moreover, of which I am now writing the extent
+to which our enemies had lately resorted to it tended to fix this
+feeling with peculiar firmness in my mind; and, but for the very
+desperate dilemma in which I stood at the moment--and not I alone--I
+do not think that I should have entertained Simon's proposal for a
+minute.
+
+As it was, I presently answered him in a way which left him in no
+doubt of my sentiments. 'Simon, my friend,' I said--and I remember I
+was a little moved--'you have something still to learn, both as a
+soldier and a Huguenot. Neither the one nor the other strikes at the
+back.'
+
+'But if he will not fight?' the lad retorted rebelliously. 'What
+then?'
+
+It was so clear that our adversary gained an unfair advantage in this
+way that I could not answer the question. I let it pass, therefore,
+and merely repeating my former injunction, bade Simon think out
+another way.
+
+He promised reluctantly to do so, and, after spending some moments in
+thought, went out to learn whether the house was being watched.
+
+When he returned, his countenance wore so new an expression that I saw
+at once that something had happened. He did not meet my eye, however,
+and did not explain, but made as if he would go out again, with
+something of confusion in his manner. Before finally disappearing,
+however, he seemed to change his mind once more; for, marching up to
+me where I stood eyeing him with the utmost astonishment, he stopped
+before me, and suddenly drawing out his hand, thrust something into
+mine.
+
+'What is it, man?' I said mechanically.
+
+'Look!' he answered rudely, breaking silence for the first time. 'You
+should know. Why ask me? What have I to do with it?'
+
+I looked then, and saw that he had given me a knot of velvet precisely
+similar in shape, size, and material to that well-remembered one which
+had aided me so opportunely in my search for mademoiselle. This
+differed from that a little in colour, but in nothing else, the
+fashion of the bow being the same, and one lappet bearing the initials
+'C. d. l. V.,' while the other had the words, 'A moi.' I gazed at it
+in wonder. 'But, Simon,' I said, 'what does it mean? Where did you get
+it?'
+
+'Where should I get it?' he answered jealously. Then, seeming to
+recollect himself, he changed his tone. 'A woman gave it to me in the
+street,' he said.
+
+I asked him what woman.
+
+'How should I know?' he answered, his eyes gleaming with anger. 'It
+was a woman in a mask.'
+
+'Was it Fanchette?' I said sternly.
+
+'It might have been. I do not know,' he responded.
+
+I concluded at first that mademoiselle and her escort had arrived in
+the outskirts of the city, and that Maignan had justified his
+reputation for discretion by sending in to learn from me whether the
+way was clear before he entered. In this notion I was partly confirmed
+and partly shaken by the accompanying message; which Simon, from whom
+every scrap of information had to be dragged as blood from a stone,
+presently delivered.
+
+'You are to meet the sender half an hour after sunset to-morrow
+evening,' he said, 'on the Parvis at the north-east corner of the
+cathedral.'
+
+'To-morrow evening?'
+
+'Yes, when else?' the lad answered ungraciously. 'I said to-morrow
+evening.'
+
+I thought this strange. I could understand why Maignan should prefer
+to keep his charge outside the walls until he heard from me, but not
+why he should postpone a meeting so long. The message, too, seemed
+unnecessarily meagre, and I began to think Simon was still withholding
+something.
+
+'Was that all?' I asked him.
+
+'Yes, all,' he answered, 'except----'
+
+'Except what?' I said sternly.
+
+'Except that the woman showed me the gold token Mademoiselle de la
+Vire used to carry,' he answered reluctantly, 'and said, if you wanted
+further assurance that would satisfy you.'
+
+'Did you see the coin?' I cried eagerly.
+
+'To be sure,' he answered.
+
+'Then, mon dieu!' I retorted, 'either you are deceiving me, or the
+woman you saw deceived you. For mademoiselle has not got the token! I
+have it; here, in my possession! Now, do you still say you saw it,
+man?'
+
+'I saw one like it,' he answered, trembling, his face damp. 'That I
+will swear. And the woman told me what I have told you. And no more.'
+
+'Then it is clear,' I answered, 'that mademoiselle has nothing to do
+with this, and is doubtless many a league away. This is one of M. de
+Bruhl's tricks. Fresnoy gave him the token he stole from me. And I
+told him the story of the velvet knot myself. This is a trap; and had
+I fallen into it, and gone to the Parvis to-morrow evening, I had
+never kept another assignation, my lad.'
+
+Simon looked thoughtful. Presently he said, with a crestfallen air,
+'You were to go alone. The woman said that.'
+
+Though I knew well why he had suppressed this item, I forbore to blame
+him. 'What was the woman like?' I said.
+
+'She had very much of Fanchette's figure,' he answered. He could not
+go beyond that. Blinded by the idea that the woman was mademoiselle's
+attendant, and no one else, he had taken little heed of her, and could
+not even say for certain that she was not a man in woman's clothes.
+
+I thought the matter over and discussed it with him; and was heartily
+minded to punish M. de Bruhl, if I could discover a way of turning his
+treacherous plot against himself. But the lack of any precise
+knowledge of his plans prevented me stirring in the matter; the more
+as I felt no certainty that I should be master of my actions when the
+time came.
+
+Strange to say the discovery of this movement on the part of Bruhl,
+who had sedulously kept himself in the background since the scene in
+the king's presence, far from increasing my anxieties, had the effect
+of administering a fillip to my spirits; which the cold and unyielding
+pressure of the Jacobin had reduced to a low point. Here was something
+I could understand, resist, and guard against. The feeling that I had
+once more to do with a man of like aims and passions with myself
+quickly restored me to the use of my faculties; as I have heard that a
+swordsman opposed to the powers of evil regains his vigour on finding
+himself engaged with a mortal foe. Though I knew that the hours of
+grace were fast running to a close, and that on the morrow the priest
+would call for an answer, I experienced that evening an unreasonable
+lightness and cheerfulness. I retired to rest with confidence, and
+slept in comfort, supported in part, perhaps, by the assurance that in
+that room where my mother died her persecutor could have no power to
+harm me.
+
+Upon Simon Fleix, on the other hand, the discovery that Bruhl was
+moving, and that consequently peril threatened us from a new quarter,
+had a different effect. He fell into a state of extreme excitement,
+and spent the evening and a great part of the night in walking
+restlessly up and down the room, wrestling with the fears and
+anxieties which beset us, and now talking fast to himself, now biting
+his nails in an agony of impatience. In vain I adjured him not to meet
+troubles halfway; or, pointing to the pallet which he occupied at the
+foot of my couch, bade him, if he could not devise a way of escape, at
+least to let the matter rest until morning. He had no power to obey,
+but, tortured by the vivid anticipations which it was his nature to
+entertain, he continued to ramble to and fro in a fever of the nerves,
+and had no sooner lain down than he was up again. Remembering,
+however, how well he had borne himself on the night of mademoiselle's
+escape from Blois, I refrained from calling him a coward; and
+contented myself instead with the reflection that nothing sits worse
+on a fighting-man than too much knowledge--except, perhaps, a lively
+imagination.
+
+I thought it possible that mademoiselle might arrive next day before
+Father Antoine called to receive his answer. In this event I hoped to
+have the support of Maignan's experience. But the party did not
+arrive. I had to rely on myself and my own resources, and, this being
+so, determined to refuse the priest's offer, but in all other things
+to be guided by circumstances.
+
+About noon he came, attended, as was his practice, by two friends,
+whom he left outside. He looked paler and more shadowy than before, I
+thought, his hands thinner, and his cheeks more transparent. I could
+draw no good augury, however, from these signs of frailty, for the
+brightness of his eyes and the unusual elation of his manner told
+plainly of a spirit assured of the mastery. He entered the room with
+an air of confidence, and addressed me in a tone of patronage which
+left me in no doubt of his intentions; the frankness with which he now
+laid bare his plans going far to prove that already he considered me
+no better than his tool.
+
+I did not at once undeceive him, but allowed him to proceed, and even
+to bring out the five hundred crowns which he had promised me, and the
+sight of which he doubtless supposed would clench the matter.
+
+Seeing this he became still less reticent, and spoke so largely that I
+presently felt myself impelled to ask him if he would answer a
+question.
+
+'That is as may be, M. de Marsac,' he answered lightly. 'You may ask
+it.'
+
+'You hint at great schemes which you have in hand, father,' I said.
+'You speak of France and Spain and Navarre, and kings and Leagues and
+cardinals! You talk of secret strings, and would have me believe that
+if I comply with your wishes I shall find you as powerful a patron as
+M. de Rosny. But--one moment, if you please,' I continued hastily,
+seeing that he was about to interrupt me with such eager assurances as
+I had already heard; 'tell me this. With so many irons in the fire,
+why did you interfere with one old gentlewoman--for the sake of a few
+crowns?'
+
+'I will tell you even that,' he answered, his face flushing at my
+tone. 'Have you ever heard of an elephant? Yes. Well, it has a trunk,
+you know, with which it can either drag an oak from the earth or lift
+a groat from the ground. It is so with me. But again you ask,' he
+continued with an airy grimace, 'why I wanted a few crowns. Enough
+that I did. There are going to be two things in the world, and two
+only, M. de Marsac: brains and money. The former I have, and had: the
+latter I needed--and took.'
+
+'Money and brains?' I said, looking at him thoughtfully.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, his eyes sparkling, his thin nostrils beginning to
+dilate. 'Give me these two, and I will rule France!'
+
+'You will rule France?' I exclaimed, amazed beyond measure by his
+audacity. 'You, man?'
+
+'Yes, I,' he answered, with abominable coolness. 'I, priest, monk,
+Churchman, clerk. You look surprised, but mark you, sir, there is a
+change going on. Our time is coming, and yours is going. What hampers
+our lord the king and shuts him up in Blois, while rebellions stalk
+through France? Lack of men? No; but lack of money. Who can get the
+money for him--you the soldier, or I the clerk? A thousand times, I!
+Therefore, my time is coining, and before you die you will see a
+priest rule France.'
+
+'God forbid it should be you,' I answered scornfully.
+
+'As you please,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders, and assuming in
+a breath a mask of humility which sat as ill on his monstrous conceit
+as ever nun's veil on a trooper. 'Yet it may even be I; by the favour
+of the Holy Catholic Church, whose humble minister I am.'
+
+I sprang up with a great oath at that, having no stomach for more of
+the strange transformations, in which this man delighted, and whereof
+the last had ever the air of being the most hateful. 'You villain!' I
+cried, twisting my moustaches, a habit I have when enraged. 'And so
+you would make me a stepping-stone to your greatness. You would bribe
+me--a soldier and a gentleman. Go, before I do you a mischief. That is
+all I have to say to you. Go! You have your answer. I will tell you
+nothing--not a jot or a tittle. Begone from my room!'
+
+He fell back a step in his surprise, and stood against the table
+biting his nails and scowling at me, fear and chagrin contending with
+half a dozen devils for the possession of his face. 'So you have been
+deceiving me,' he said slowly, and at last.
+
+'I have let you deceive yourself,' I answered, looking at him with
+scorn, but with none of the fear with which he had for a while
+inspired me. 'Begone, and do your worst.'
+
+'You know what you are doing,' he said. 'I have that will hang you, M.
+de Marsac--or worse.'
+
+'Go!' I cried.
+
+'You have thought of your friends,' he continued mockingly.
+
+'Go!' I said.
+
+'Of Mademoiselle de la Vire, if by any chance she fall into my hands?
+It will not be hanging for her. You remember the two Foucauds?'--and
+he laughed.
+
+The vile threat, which I knew he had used to my mother, so worked upon
+me that I strode forward unable to control myself longer. In another
+moment I had certainly taken him by the throat and squeezed the life
+out of his miserable carcase, had not Providence in its goodness
+intervened to save me. The door, on which he had already laid his hand
+in terror, opened suddenly. It admitted Simon, who, closing it behind
+him, stood looking from one to the other of us in nervous doubt;
+divided between that respect for the priest which a training at the
+Sorbonne had instilled into him, and the rage which despair arouses in
+the weakest.
+
+His presence, while it checked me in my purpose, seemed to give Father
+Antoine courage, for the priest stood his ground, and even turned to
+me a second time, his face dark with spite and disappointment. 'Good,'
+he said hoarsely. 'Destroy yourself if you will! I advise you to bar
+your door, for in an hour the guards will be here to fetch you to the
+question.'
+
+Simon cried out at the threat, so that I turned and looked at the lad.
+His knees were shaking, his hair stood on end.
+
+The priest saw his terror and his own opportunity. 'Ay, in an hour,'
+he continued slowly, looking at him with cruel eyes. 'In an hour, lad!
+You must be fond of pain to court it, and out of humour with life to
+throw it away. Or stay,' he continued abruptly, after considering
+Simon's agony for a moment, and doubtless deducing from it a last
+hope, 'I will be merciful. I will give you one more chance.'
+
+'And yourself?' I said with a sneer.
+
+'As you please,' he answered, declining to be diverted from the
+trembling lad, whom his gaze seemed to fascinate. 'I will give you
+until half an hour after sunset this evening to reconsider the matter.
+If you make up your minds to accept my terms, meet me then. I leave
+to-night for Paris, and I will give you until the last moment. But,'
+he continued grimly, 'if you do not meet me, or, meeting me, remain
+obstinate--God do so to me, and more also, if you see the sun rise
+thrice.'
+
+Some impulse, I know not what, seeing that I had no thought of
+accepting his terms or meeting him, led me to ask briefly, 'Where?'
+
+'On the Parvis of the Cathedral,' he answered after a moment's
+calculation. 'At the north-east corner, half an hour after sunset. It
+is a quiet spot.'
+
+Simon uttered a stifled exclamation. And then for a moment there was
+silence in the room, while the lad breathed hard and irregularly, and
+I stood rooted to the spot, looking so long and so strangely at the
+priest that Father Antoine laid his hand again on the door and glanced
+uneasily behind him. Nor was he content until he had hit on, as he
+fancied, the cause of my strange regard.
+
+'Ha!' he said, his thin lip curling in conceit at his astuteness, 'I
+understand. You think to kill me to-night? Let me tell you, this house
+is watched. If you leave here to meet me with any companion--unless it
+be M. d'Agen, whom I can trust--I shall be warned, and be gone before
+you reach the rendezvous. And gone, mind you,' he added, with a grim
+smile, 'to sign your death-warrant.'
+
+He went out with that, closing the door behind him; and we heard his
+step go softly down the staircase. I gazed at Simon, and he at me,
+with all the astonishment and awe which it was natural we should feel
+in presence of so remarkable a coincidence.
+
+For by a marvel the priest had named the same spot and the same time
+as the sender of the velvet knot!
+
+'He will go,' Simon said, his face flushed and his voice trembling,
+'and they will go.'
+
+'And in the dark they will not know him,' I muttered. 'He is about my
+height. They will take him for me!'
+
+'And kill him!' Simon cried hysterically. 'They will kill him! He goes
+to his death, monsieur. It is the finger of God.'
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                           THE KING'S FACE.
+
+
+It seemed so necessary to bring home the crime to Bruhl should the
+priest really perish in the trap laid for me, that I came near to
+falling into one of those mistakes to which men of action are prone.
+For my first impulse was to follow the priest to the Parvis, closely
+enough, if possible, to detect the assassins in the act, and with
+sufficient force, if I could muster it, to arrest them. The credit of
+dissuading me from this course lies with Simon, who pointed out its
+dangers in so convincing a manner that I was brought with little
+difficulty to relinquish it.
+
+Instead, acting on his advice, I sent him to M. d'Agen's lodging, to
+beg that young gentleman to call upon me before evening. After
+searching the lodging and other places in vain, Simon found M. d'Agen
+in the tennis-court at the Castle, and, inventing a crafty excuse,
+brought him to my lodging a full hour before the time.
+
+My visitor was naturally surprised to find that I had nothing
+particular to say to him. I dared not tell him what occupied my
+thoughts, and for the rest invention failed me. But his gaiety and
+those pretty affectations on which he spent an infinity of pains, for
+the purpose, apparently, of hiding the sterling worth of a character
+deficient neither in courage nor backbone, were united to much good
+nature. Believing at last that I had sent for him in a fit of the
+vapours, he devoted himself to amusing me and abusing Bruhl--a very
+favourite pastime with him. And in this way he made out a call of two
+hours.
+
+I had not long to wait for proof of Simon's wisdom in taking this
+precaution. We thought it prudent to keep within doors after our
+guest's departure, and so passed the night in ignorance whether
+anything had happened or not. But about seven next morning one of the
+Marquis's servants, despatched by M. d'Agen, burst in upon us with the
+news--which was no news from the moment his hurried footstep sounded
+on the stairs--that Father Antoine had been set upon and killed the
+previous evening!
+
+I heard this confirmation of my hopes with grave thankfulness; Simon
+with so much emotion that when the messenger was gone he sat down on a
+stool and began to sob and tremble as if he had lost his mother,
+instead of a mortal foe. I took advantage of the occasion to read him
+a sermon on the end of crooked courses; nor could I myself recall
+without a shudder the man's last words to me; or the lawless and evil
+designs in which he had rejoiced, while standing on the very brink of
+the pit which was to swallow up both him and them in everlasting
+darkness.
+
+Naturally, the uppermost feeling in my mind was relief. I was free
+once more. In all probability the priest had kept his knowledge to
+himself, and without him his agents would be powerless. Simon, it is
+true, heard that the town was much excited by the event; and that many
+attributed it to the Huguenots. But we did not suffer ourselves to be
+depressed by this, nor had I any foreboding until the sound of a
+second hurried footstep mounting the stairs reached our ears.
+
+I knew the step in a moment for M. d'Agen's, and something ominous in
+its ring brought me to my feet before he opened the door. Significant
+as was his first hasty look round the room, he recovered at sight of
+me all his habitual _sang-froid_. He saluted me, and spoke coolly,
+though rapidly. But he panted, and I noticed in a moment that he had
+lost his lisp.
+
+'I am happy in finding you,' he said, closing the door carefully
+behind him, 'for I am the bearer of ill news, and there is not a
+moment to be lost. The king has signed an order for your instant
+consignment to prison, M. de Marsac, and, once there, it is difficult
+to say what may not happen.'
+
+'My consignment?' I exclaimed. I may be pardoned if the news for a
+moment found me unprepared.
+
+'Yes,' he replied quickly. 'The king has signed it at the instance of
+Marshal Retz.'
+
+'But for what?' I cried in amazement.
+
+'The murder of Father Antoine. You will pardon me,' he continued
+urgently, 'but this is no time for words. The Provost-Marshal is even
+now on his way to arrest you. Your only hope is to evade him, and gain
+an audience of the king. I have persuaded my uncle to go with you, and
+he is waiting at his lodgings. There is not a moment to be lost,
+however, if you would reach the king's presence before you are
+arrested.'
+
+'But I am innocent!' I cried.
+
+'I know it,' M. d'Agen answered, 'and can prove it. But if you cannot
+get speech of the king innocence will avail you nothing. You have
+powerful enemies. Come without more ado, M. de Marsac, I pray,' he
+added.
+
+His manner, even more than his words, impressed me with a sense of
+urgency; and postponing for a time my own judgment, I hurriedly
+thanked him for his friendly offices. Snatching up my sword, which lay
+on a chair, I buckled it on; for Simon's fingers trembled so violently
+he could give me no help. This done I nodded to M. d'Agen to go first,
+and followed him from the room, Simon attending us of his own motion.
+It would be then about eleven o'clock in the forenoon.
+
+My companion ran down the stairs without ceremony, and so quickly it
+was all I could do to keep up with him. At the outer door he signed me
+to stand, and darting himself into the street, he looked anxiously in
+the direction of the Rue St. Denys. Fortunately the coast was still
+clear, and he beckoned to me to follow him. I did so and starting to
+walk in the opposite direction as fast as we could, in less than a
+minute we had put a corner between us and the house.
+
+Our hopes of escaping unseen, however, were promptly dashed. The
+house, I have said, stood in a quiet by-street, which was bounded on
+the farther side by a garden-wall buttressed at intervals. We had
+scarcely gone a dozen paces from my door when a man slipped from the
+shelter of one of these buttresses, and after a single glance at us,
+set off to run towards the Rue St. Denys.
+
+M. d'Agen looked back and nodded. 'There goes the news,' he said.
+'They will try to cut us off, but I think we have the start of them.'
+
+I made no reply, feeling that I had resigned myself entirely into his
+hands. But as we passed through the Rue de Valois, in part of which a
+market was held at this hour, attracting a considerable concourse of
+peasants and others, I fancied I detected signs of unusual bustle and
+excitement. It seemed unlikely that news of the priest's murder should
+affect so many people and to such a degree, and I asked M. d'Agen what
+it meant.
+
+'There is a rumour abroad,' he answered, without slackening speed,
+'that the king intends to move south to Tours at once.'
+
+I muttered my surprise and satisfaction. 'He will come to terms with
+the Huguenots then?' I said.
+
+'It looks like it,' M. d'Agen rejoined. 'Retz's party are in an
+ill-humour on that account, and will wreak it on you if they get a
+chance. On guard!' he added abruptly. 'Here are two of them!'
+
+As he spoke we emerged from the crowd, and I saw, half a dozen paces
+in front of us, and coming to meet us, a couple of Court gallants,
+attended by as many servants. They espied us at the same moment, and
+came across the street, which was tolerably wide at that part, with
+the evident intention of stopping us. Simultaneously, however, we
+crossed to take their side, and so met them face to face in the middle
+of the way.
+
+'M. d'Agen,' the foremost exclaimed, speaking in a haughty tone, and
+with a dark side glance at me, 'I am sorry to see you in such company!
+Doubtless you are not aware that this gentleman is the subject of an
+order which has even now been issued to the Provost-Marshal.'
+
+'And if so, sir? What of that?' my companion lisped in his silkiest
+tone.
+
+'What of that?' the other cried, frowning, and pushing slightly
+forward.
+
+'Precisely,' M. d'Agen repeated, laying his hand on his hilt and
+declining to give back. 'I am not aware that his Majesty has appointed
+you Provost-Marshal, or that you have any warrant, M. Villequier,
+empowering you to stop gentlemen in the public streets.'
+
+M. Villequier reddened with anger. 'You are young, M. d'Agen,' he
+said, his voice quivering, 'or I would make you pay dearly for that!'
+
+'My friend is not young,' M. d'Agen retorted, bowing. He is a
+gentleman of birth, M. Villequier; by repute, as I learned yesterday,
+one of the best swordsmen in France, and no Gascon. If you feel
+inclined to arrest him, do so, I pray. And I will have the honour of
+engaging your son.'
+
+As we had all by this time our hands on our swords, there needed but a
+blow to bring about one of those street brawls which were more common
+then than now. A number of market-people, drawn to the spot by our
+raised voices, had gathered round, and were waiting eagerly to see
+what would happen. But Villequier, as my companion perhaps knew, was a
+Gascon in heart as well as by birth, and seeing our determined
+aspects, thought better of it. Shrugging his shoulders with an
+affectation of disdain which imposed on no one, he signalled to his
+servants to go on, and himself stood aside.
+
+'I thank you for your polite offer,' he said with an evil smile, 'and
+will remember it. But as you say, sir, I am not the Provost-Marshal.'
+
+Paying little heed to his words, we bowed, passed him, and hurried on.
+But the peril was not over. Not only had the _rencontre_ cost us some
+precious minutes, but the Gascon, after letting us proceed a little
+way, followed us. And word being passed by his servants, as we
+supposed, that one of us was the murderer of Father Antoine, the
+rumour spread through the crowd like wildfire, and in a few moments we
+found ourselves attended by a troop of _canaille_ who, hanging on our
+skirts, caused Simon Fleix no little apprehension. Notwithstanding the
+contempt which M. d'Agen, whose bearing throughout was admirable,
+expressed for them, we might have found it necessary to turn and teach
+them a lesson had we not reached M. de Rambouillet's in the nick of
+time; where we found the door surrounded by half a dozen armed
+servants, at sight of whom our persecutors fell back with the
+cowardice which is usually found in that class.
+
+If I had been tempted of late to think M. de Rambouillet fickle, I had
+no reason to complain now; whether his attitude was due to M. d'Agen's
+representations, or to the reflection that without me the plans he had
+at heart must miscarry. I found him waiting within, attended by three
+gentlemen, all cloaked and ready for the road; while the air of
+purpose which sat on his brow indicated that he thought the crisis no
+common one. Not a moment was lost, even in explanations. Waving me to
+the door again, and exchanging a few sentences with his nephew, he
+gave the word to start, and we issued from the house in a body.
+Doubtless the fact that those who sought to ruin me were his political
+enemies had some weight with him; for I saw his face harden as his
+eyes met those of M. de Villequier, who passed slowly before the door
+as we came out. The Gascon, however, was not the man to interfere with
+so large a party, and dropped back; while M. de Rambouillet, after
+exchanging a cold salute with him, led the way towards the Castle at a
+round pace. His nephew and I walked one on either side of him, and the
+others, to the number of ten or eleven, pressed on behind in a compact
+body, our cortège presenting so determined a front that the crowd,
+which had remained hanging about the door, fled every way. Even some
+peaceable folk who found themselves in our road took the precaution of
+slipping into doorways, or stood aside to give us the full width of
+the street.
+
+I remarked--and I think it increased my anxiety--that our leader was
+dressed with more than usual care and richness, but, unlike his
+attendants, wore no arms. He took occasion, as we hurried along, to
+give me a word of advice. 'M. de Marsac,' he said, looking at me
+suddenly, 'my nephew has given me to understand that you place
+yourself entirely in my hands.'
+
+I replied that I asked for no better fortune, and, whatever the event,
+thanked him from the bottom of my heart.
+
+'Be pleased then to keep silence until I bid you speak,' he replied
+sharply, for he was one of those whom a sudden stress sours and
+exacerbates. 'And, above all, no violence without my orders. We are
+about to fight a battle, and a critical one, but it must be won with
+our heads. If we can we will keep you out of the Provost-Marshal's
+hands.'
+
+And if not? I remembered the threats Father Antoine had used, and in a
+moment I lost sight of the street with all its light and life and
+movement. I felt no longer the wholesome stinging of the wind. I
+tasted instead a fetid air, and saw round me a narrow cell and masked
+figures, and in particular a swathy man in a leather apron leaning
+over a brazier, from whim came lurid flames. And I was bound. I
+experienced that utter helplessness which is the last test of courage.
+The man came forward, and then--then, thank God! the vision passed
+away. An exclamation to which M. d'Agen gave vent, brought me back to
+the present, and to the blessed knowledge that the fight was not yet
+over.
+
+We were within a score of paces, I found, of the Castle gates: but so
+were also a second party, who had just debouched from a side-street,
+and now hurried on, pace for pace, with us, with the evident intention
+of forestalling us. The race ended in both companies reaching the
+entrance at the same time, with the consequence of some jostling
+taking place amongst the servants. This must have led to blows but for
+the strenuous commands which M. de Rambouillet had laid upon his
+followers. I found myself in a moment confronted by a row of scowling
+faces, while a dozen threatening hands were stretched out towards me,
+and as many voices, among which I recognised Fresnoy's, cried out
+tumultuously, 'That is he! That is the one!'
+
+An elderly man in a quaint dress stepped forward, a paper in his hand,
+and, backed as he was by half a dozen halberdiers, would in a moment
+have laid hands on me if M. de Rambouillet had not intervened with a
+negligent air of authority, which sat on him the more gracefully as he
+held nothing but a riding-switch in his hands. 'Tut, tut! What is
+this?' he said lightly. 'I am not wont to have my people interfered
+with, M. Provost, without my leave. You know me, I suppose?'
+
+'Perfectly, M. le Marquis,' the man answered with dogged respect; 'but
+this is by the king's special command.'
+
+'Very good,' my patron answered, quietly eyeing the faces behind the
+Provost-Marshal, as if he were making a note of them; which caused
+some of the gentlemen manifest uneasiness. 'That is soon seen, for we
+are even now about to seek speech with his Majesty.'
+
+'Not this gentleman,' the Provost-Marshal answered firmly, raising his
+hand again. 'I can not let him pass.'
+
+'Yes, this gentleman too, by your leave,' the Marquis retorted,
+lightly putting the hand aside with his cane.
+
+'Sir,' said the other, retreating a step and speaking with some heat,
+'this is no jest with all respect. I hold the king's own order, and it
+may not be resisted.'
+
+The nobleman tapped his silver comfit-box and smiled. 'I shall be the
+last to resist it--if you have it,' he said languidly.
+
+'You may read it for yourself,' the Provost-Marshal answered, his
+patience exhausted.
+
+M. de Rambouillet took the parchment with the ends of his fingers,
+glanced at it, and gave it back. 'As I thought,' he said, 'a manifest
+forgery.'
+
+'A forgery!' cried the officer, crimson with indignation. 'And I had
+it from the hands of the king's own secretary!' At this those behind
+murmured, some 'shame,' and some one thing, and some another--all with
+an air so threatening that the  Marquis's gentlemen closed up behind
+him, and M. d'Agen laughed rudely.
+
+But M. de Rambouillet remained unmoved. 'You may have had it from whom
+you please, sir,' he said. 'It is a forgery, and I shall resist its
+execution. If you choose to await me here, I will give you my word to
+render this gentleman to you within an hour, should the order hold
+good. If you will not wait, I shall command my servants to clear the
+way, and if ill happen, then the responsibility will lie with you.'
+
+He spoke in so resolute a manner it was not difficult to see that
+something more was at stake than the arrest of a single man. This was
+so; the real issue was whether the king, with whose instability it was
+difficult to cope, should fall back into the hands of his old advisers
+or not. My arrest was a move in the game intended as a counterblast to
+the victory which M. de Rambouillet had gained when he persuaded the
+king to move to Tours; a city in the neighbourhood of the Huguenots,
+and a place of arms whence union with them would be easy.
+
+The Provost-Marshal could, no doubt, make a shrewd guess at these
+things. He knew that the order he had would be held valid or not
+according as one party or the other gained the mastery; and, seeing M.
+de Rambouillet's resolute demeanour, he gave way. Rudely interrupted
+more than once by his attendants, among whom were some of Bruhl's men,
+he muttered an ungracious assent to our proposal; on which, and
+without a moment's delay, the Marquis took me by the arm and hurried
+me across the courtyard.
+
+And so far, well. My heart began to rise. But, for the Marquis, as we
+mounted the staircase the anxiety he had dissembled while we faced the
+Provost-Marshal, broke out in angry mutterings; from which I gathered
+that the crisis was yet to come. I was not surprised, therefore, when
+an usher rose on our appearance in the antechamber, and, quickly
+crossing the floor, interposed between us and the door of the chamber,
+informing the Marquis with a low obeisance that his Majesty was
+engaged.
+
+'He will see me,' M. de Rambouillet cried, looking haughtily round on
+the sneering pages and lounging courtiers, who grew civil under his
+eye.
+
+'I have particular orders, sir, to admit no one,' the man answered.
+
+'Tut, tut, they do not apply to me,' my companion retorted, nothing
+daunted. 'I know the business on which the king is engaged, and I am
+here to assist him.' And raising his hand he thrust the startled
+official aside, and hardily pushed the doors of the chamber open.
+
+The king, surrounded by half a dozen persons, was in the act of
+putting on his riding-boots. On hearing us, he turned his head with a
+startled air, and dropped in his confusion one of the ivory cylinders
+he was using; while his aspect, and that of the persons who stood
+round him, reminded me irresistibly of a party of schoolboys detected
+in a fault.
+
+He recovered himself, it is true, almost immediately; and turning his
+back to us, continued to talk to the persons round him on such
+trifling subjects as commonly engaged him. He carried on this
+conversation in a very free way, studiously ignoring our presence; but
+it was plain he remained aware of it, and even that he was uneasy
+under the cold and severe gaze which the Marquis, who seemed in nowise
+affrighted by his reception, bent upon him.
+
+I, for my part, had no longer any confidence. Nay, I came near to
+regretting that I had persevered in an attempt so useless. The warrant
+which awaited me at the gates seemed less formidable than his
+Majesty's growing displeasure; which I saw I was incurring by
+remaining where I was. It needed not the insolent glance of Marshal
+Retz, who lounged smiling by the king's hand, or the laughter of a
+couple of pages who stood at the head of the chamber, to deprive me of
+my last hope; while some things which might have cheered me--the
+uneasiness of some about the king, and the disquietude which underlay
+Marshal Retz's manner--escaped my notice altogether.
+
+What I did see clearly was that the king's embarrassment was fast
+changing to anger. The paint which reddened his cheeks prevented any
+alteration in his colour being visible, but his frown and the nervous
+manner in which he kept taking off and putting on his jewelled cap
+betrayed him. At length, signing to one of his companions to follow,
+he moved a little aside to a window, whence, after a few moments, the
+gentleman came to us.
+
+'M. de Rambouillet,' he said, speaking coldly and formally, 'his
+Majesty is displeased by this gentleman's presence, and requires him
+to withdraw forthwith.'
+
+'His Majesty's word is law,' my patron answered, bowing low, and
+speaking in a clear voice audible throughout the chamber, 'but the
+matter which brings this gentleman here is of the utmost importance,
+and touches his Majesty's person.'
+
+M. de Retz laughed jeeringly. The other courtiers looked grave. The
+king shrugged his shoulders with a peevish gesture, but after a
+moment's hesitation, during which he looked first at Retz and then at
+M. de Rambouillet, he signed to the Marquis to approach.
+
+'Why have you brought him here?' he muttered sharply, looking askance
+at me. 'He should have been bestowed according to my orders.'
+
+'He has information for your Majesty's private ear,' Rambouillet
+answered. And he looked so meaningly at the king that Henry, I think,
+remembered on a sudden his compact with Rosny, and my part in it; for
+he started with the air of a man suddenly awakened. 'To prevent that
+information reaching you, sire,' my patron continued, 'his enemies
+have practised on your Majesty's well-known sense of justice.'
+
+'Oh, but stay, stay!' the king cried, hitching forward the scanty
+cloak he wore, which barely came down to his waist. 'The man has
+killed a priest! He has killed a priest, man!' he repeated with
+confidence, as if he had now got hold of the right argument.
+
+'That is not so, sire, craving your Majesty's pardon,' M. de
+Rambouillet replied with the utmost coolness.
+
+'Tut! Tut! The evidence is clear,' the king said peevishly.
+
+'As to that, sire,' my companion rejoined, 'if it is of the murder of
+Father Antoine he is accused, I say boldly that there is none.'
+
+'Then there you are mistaken!' the king answered. 'I heard it with my
+own ears this morning.'
+
+'Will you deign, sire, to tell me its nature?' M. de Rambouillet
+persisted.
+
+But on that Marshal Retz thought it necessary to intervene. 'Need we
+turn his Majesty's chamber into a court of justice?' he said smoothly.
+Hitherto he had not spoken; trusting, perhaps, to the impression he
+had already made upon the king.
+
+M. de Rambouillet took no notice of him.
+
+'But Bruhl,' said the king, 'you see, Bruhl says----'
+
+'Bruhl!' my companion replied, with so much contempt that Henry
+started. 'Surely your Majesty has not taken his word against this
+gentleman, of all people?'
+
+Thus reminded, a second time, of the interests entrusted to me, and of
+the advantage which Bruhl would gain by my disappearance, the king
+looked first confused, and then angry. He vented his passion in one or
+two profane oaths, with the childish addition that we were all a set
+of traitors, and that he had no one whom he could trust. But my
+companion had touched the right chord at last; for when the king grew
+more composed, he waved aside Marshal Retz's protestations, and
+sullenly bade Rambouillet say what he had to say.
+
+'The monk was killed, sire, about sunset,' he answered. 'Now my
+nephew, M. d'Agen, is without, and will tell your Majesty that he was
+with this gentleman at his lodgings from about an hour before sunset
+last evening until a full hour after. Consequently, M. de Marsac can
+hardly be the assassin, and M. le Marechal must look elsewhere if he
+wants vengeance.'
+
+'Justice, sir, not vengeance,' Marshal Retz said with a dark glance.
+His keen Italian face hid his trouble well, but a little pulse of
+passion beating in his olive cheek betrayed the secret to those who
+knew him. He had a harder part to play than his opponent; for while
+Rambouillet's hands were clean, Retz knew himself a traitor, and
+liable at any moment to discovery and punishment.
+
+'Let M. d'Agen be called,' Henry said curtly.
+
+'And if your Majesty pleases,' Retz added, 'M. de Bruhl also. If you
+really intend, sire, that is, to reopen a matter which I thought had
+been settled.'
+
+The king nodded obstinately, his face furrowed with ill-temper. He
+kept his shifty eyes, which seldom met those of the person he
+addressed, on the floor; and this accentuated the awkward stooping
+carriage which was natural to him. There were seven or eight dogs of
+exceeding smallness in the room, and while we waited for the persons
+who had been summoned, he kicked, now one and now another of the
+baskets which held them, as if he found in this some vent for his
+ill-humour.
+
+The witnesses presently appeared, followed by several persons, among
+whom were the Dukes of Nevers and Merc[oe]ur, who came to ride out
+with the king, and M. de Crillon; so that the chamber grew passably
+full. The two dukes nodded formally to the Marquis, as they passed
+him, but entered into a muttered conversation with Retz, who appeared
+to be urging them to press his cause. They seemed to decline, however,
+shrugging their short cloaks as if the matter were too insignificant.
+Crillon on his part cried audibly, and with an oath, to know what the
+matter was; and being informed, asked whether all this fuss was being
+made about a damned shaveling monk.
+
+Henry, whose tenderness for the cowl was well known, darted an angry
+glance at him, but contented himself with saying sharply to M. d'Agen,
+'Now, sir, what do you know about the matter?'
+
+'One moment, sire,' M. Rambouillet cried, interposing before François
+could answer. 'Craving your Majesty's pardon, you have heard M. de
+Bruhl's account. May I, as a favour to myself, beg you, sire, to
+permit us also to hear it?'
+
+'What?' Marshal Retz exclaimed angrily, 'are we to be the judges,
+then, or his Majesty? Arnidieu!' he continued hotly, 'what, in the
+fiend's name, have we to do with it? I protest 'fore Heaven----'
+
+'Ay, sir, and what do you protest?' my champion retorted, turning to
+him with stern disdain.
+
+'Silence!' cried the king, who had listened almost bewildered.
+'Silence! By God, gentlemen,' he continued, his eye travelling round
+the circle with a sparkle of royal anger in it not unworthy of his
+crown, 'you forget yourselves. I will have none of this quarrelling in
+my presence or out of it. I lost Quélus and Maugiron that way, and
+loss enough, and I will have none of it, I say! M. de Bruhl,' he
+added, standing erect, and looking for the moment, with all his paint
+and frippery, a king, 'M. de Bruhl, repeat your story.'
+
+The feelings with which I listened to this controversy may be
+imagined. Devoured in turn by hope and fear as now one side and now
+the other seemed likely to prevail, I confronted at one moment the
+gloom of the dungeon, and at another tasted the air of freedom, which
+had never seemed so sweet before. Strong as these feelings were,
+however, they gave way to curiosity at this point; when I heard Bruhl
+called, and saw him come forward at the king's command. Knowing this
+man to be himself guilty, I marvelled with what face he would present
+himself before all those eyes, and from what depths of impudence he
+could draw supplies in such an emergency.
+
+I need not have troubled myself, however, for he was fully equal to
+the occasion. His high colour and piercing black eyes met the gaze of
+friend and foe alike without flinching. Dressed well and elegantly, he
+wore his raven hair curled in the mode, and looked alike gay,
+handsome, and imperturbable. If there was a suspicion of coarseness
+about his bulkier figure, as he stood beside M. d'Agen, who was the
+courtier perfect and point devise, it went to the scale of sincerity,
+seeing that men naturally associate truth with strength.
+
+'I know no more than this, sire,' he said easily; 'that, happening to
+cross the Parvis at the moment of the murder, I heard Father Antoine
+scream. He uttered four words only, in the tone of a man in mortal
+peril. They were'--and here the speaker looked for an instant at
+me--'Ha! Marsac! A moi!'
+
+'Indeed!' M. de Rambouillet said, after looking to the king for
+permission. 'And that was all? You saw nothing?'
+
+Bruhl shook his head. 'It was too dark,' he said.
+
+'And heard no more?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Do I understand, then,' the Marquis continued slowly, 'that M. de
+Marsac is arrested because the priest--God rest his soul!--cried to
+him for help?'
+
+'For help?' M. de Retz exclaimed fiercely.
+
+'For help?' said the king, surprised. And at that the most ludicrous
+change fell upon the faces of all. The king looked puzzled, the Duke
+of Nevers smiled, the Duke of Merc[oe]ur laughed aloud. Crillon cried
+boisterously, 'Good hit!' and the majority, who wished no better than
+to divine the winning party, grinned broadly, whether they would or
+no.
+
+To Marshal Retz, however, and Bruhl, that which to everyone else
+seemed an amusing retort had a totally different aspect; while the
+former turned yellow with chagrin and came near to choking, the latter
+looked as chapfallen and startled as if his guilt had been that moment
+brought home to him. Assured by the tone of the monk's voice--which
+must, indeed, have thundered in his ears--that my name was uttered in
+denunciation by one who thought me his assailant, he had chosen to
+tell the truth without reflecting that words, so plain to him, might
+bear a different construction when repeated.
+
+'Certainly the words seem ambiguous,' Henry muttered.
+
+'But it was Marsac killed him,' Retz cried in a rage.
+
+'It is for some evidence of that we are waiting,' my champion answered
+suavely.
+
+The Marshal looked helplessly at Nevers and Merc[oe]ur, who commonly
+took part with him; but apparently those noblemen had not been primed
+for this occasion. They merely shook their heads and smiled. In the
+momentary silence which followed, while all looked curiously at Bruhl,
+who could not conceal his mortification, M. d'Agen stepped forward.
+
+'If your Majesty will permit me,' he said, a malicious simper crossing
+his handsome face--I had often remarked his extreme dislike for Bruhl
+without understanding it--'I think I can furnish some evidence more to
+the point than that to which M. de Bruhl has with so much fairness
+restricted himself.' He then went on to state that he had had the
+honour of being in my company at the time of the murder; and he added,
+besides, so many details as to exculpate me to the satisfaction of any
+candid person.
+
+The king nodded. 'That settles the matter,' he said, with a sigh of
+relief. 'You think so, Merc[oe]ur, do you not? Precisely. Villequier,
+see that the order respecting M. de Marsac is cancelled.'
+
+M. de Retz could not control his wrath on hearing this direction
+given. 'At this rate,' he cried recklessly, 'we shall have few priests
+left here! We have got a bad name at Blois, as it is!'
+
+For a moment all in the circle held their breath, while the king's
+eyes flashed fire at this daring allusion to the murder of the Duke de
+Guise, and his brother the Cardinal. But it was Henry's misfortune to
+be ever indulgent in the wrong place, and severe when severity was
+either unjust or impolitic. He recovered himself with an effort, and
+revenged himself only by omitting to invite the Marshal, who was now
+trembling in his shoes, to join his riding-party.
+
+The circle broke up amid some excitement. I stood on one side with M.
+d'Agen, while the king and his immediate following passed out, and,
+greatly embarrassed as I was by the civil congratulating of many who
+would have seen me hang with equal goodwill, I was sharp enough to see
+that something was brewing between Bruhl and Marshal Retz, who stood
+back conversing in low tones. I was not surprised, therefore, when the
+former made his way towards me through the press which filled the
+antechamber, and with a lowering brow requested a word with me.
+
+'Certainly,' I said, watching him narrowly, for I knew him to be both
+treacherous and a bully. 'Speak on, sir.'
+
+'You have baulked me once and again,' he rejoined, in a voice which
+shook a little, as did the fingers with which he stroked his waxed
+moustache. 'There is no need of words between us. I, with one sword
+besides, will to-morrow at noon keep the bridge at Chaverny, a league
+from here. It is an open country. Possibly your pleasure may lead you
+to ride that way with a friend?'
+
+'You may depend upon me, sir,' I answered, bowing low, and feeling
+thankful that the matter was at length to be brought to a fair and
+open arbitration. 'I will be there--and in person. For my deputy last
+night,' I added, searching his face with a steadfast eye, 'seems to
+have been somewhat unlucky.'
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                              TWO WOMEN.
+
+
+Out of compliment, and to show my gratitude, I attended M. de
+Rambouillet home to his lodging, and found him as much pleased with
+himself, and consequently with me, as I was with him. For the time,
+indeed, I came near to loving him; and, certainly, he was a man of
+high and patriotic feeling, and of skill and conduct to match. But he
+lacked that touch of nature and that power of sympathising with others
+which gave to such men as M. de Rosny and the king, my master, their
+peculiar charm; though after what I have related of him in the last
+chapter it does not lie in my mouth to speak ill of him. And, indeed,
+he was a good man.
+
+When I at last reached my lodging, I found a surprise awaiting me in
+the shape of a note which had just arrived no one knew how. If the
+manner of its delivery was mysterious, however, its contents were
+brief and sufficiently explicit; for it ran thus: '_Sir, by meeting me
+three hours after noon in the square before the House of the Little
+Sisters you will do a service at once to yourself and to the
+undersigned, Marie de Bruhl_.'
+
+That was all, written in a feminine character, yet it was enough to
+perplex me. Simon, who had manifested the liveliest joy at my escape,
+would have had me treat it as I had treated the invitation to the
+Parvis of the Cathedral; ignore it altogether I mean. But I was of a
+different mind, and this for three reasons, among others: that the
+request was straightforward, the time early, and the place
+sufficiently public to be an unlikely theatre for violence, though
+well fitted for an interview to which the world at large was not
+invited. Then, too, the square lay little more than a bowshot from my
+lodging, though on the farther side of the Rue St. Denys.
+
+Besides, I could conceive many grounds which Madame de Bruhl might
+have for seeing me; of which some touched me nearly. I disregarded
+Simon's warnings, therefore, and repaired at the time appointed to the
+place--a clean, paved square a little off the Rue St. Denys, and
+entered from the latter by a narrow passage. It was a spot pleasantly
+convenient for meditation, but overlooked on one side by the House of
+the Little Sisters; in which, as I guessed afterwards, madame must
+have awaited me, for the square when I entered it was empty, yet in a
+moment, though no one came in from the street, she stood beside me.
+She wore a mask and long cloak. The beautiful hair and perfect
+complexion, which had filled me with so much admiration at our first
+meeting in her house, were hidden, but I saw enough of her figure and
+carriage to be sure that it was Madame de Bruhl and no other.
+
+She began by addressing me in a tone of bitterness, for which I was
+not altogether unprepared.
+
+'Well, sir,' she exclaimed, her voice trembling with anger, 'you are
+satisfied, I hope, with your work?'
+
+I expected this and had my answer ready. 'I am not aware, madame,' I
+said, 'that I have cause to reproach myself. But, however that may be,
+I trust you have summoned me for some better purpose than to chide me
+for another's fault; though it was my voice which brought it to
+light.'
+
+'Why did you shame me publicly?' she retorted, thrusting her
+handkerchief to her lips and withdrawing it again with a passionate
+gesture.
+
+'Madame,' I answered patiently--I was full of pity for her, 'consider
+for a moment the wrong your husband did me, and how small and
+inadequate was the thing I did to him in return.'
+
+'To him!' she ejaculated so fiercely that I started. 'It was to me--to
+me you did it! What had I done that you should expose me to the
+ridicule of those who know no pity, and the anger of one as merciless?
+What had I done, sir?'
+
+I shook my head sorrowfully. 'So far, madame,' I answered, 'I allow I
+owe you reparation, and I will make it should it ever be in my power.
+Nay, I will say more,' I continued, for the tone in which she spoke
+had wrung my heart. 'In one point I strained the case against your
+husband. To the best of my belief he abducted the lady who was in my
+charge, not for the love of her, but for political reasons, and as the
+agent of another.'
+
+She gasped. 'What?' she cried. 'Say that again!'
+
+As I complied she tore off her mask and gazed into my face with
+straining eyes and parted lips. I saw then how much she was changed,
+even in these few days--how pale and worn were her cheeks, how dark
+the circles round her eyes. 'Will you swear to it?' she said at last,
+speaking with uncontrollable eagerness, while she laid a hand which
+shook with excitement on my arm. 'Will you swear to it, sir?'
+
+'It is true,' I answered steadfastly. I might have added that after
+the event her husband had so treated mademoiselle as to lead her to
+fear the worst. But I refrained, feeling that it was no part of my
+duty to come between husband and wife.
+
+She clasped her hands, and for a moment looked passionately upwards,
+as though she were giving thanks to Heaven; while the flush of health
+and loveliness which I had so much admired returned, and illumined her
+face in a wonderful manner. She seemed, in truth and for the moment,
+transformed. Her blue eyes filled with tears, her lips moved; nor have
+I ever seen anything bear so near a resemblance to those pictures of
+the Virgin Mary which Romans worship as madame did then.
+
+The change, however, was as evanescent as it was admirable. In an
+instant she seemed to collapse. She struck her hands to her face and
+moaned, and I saw tears, which she vainly strove to restrain, dropping
+through her fingers. 'Too late!' she murmured, in a tone of anguish
+which wrung my heart. 'Alas, you robbed me of one man, you give me
+back another. I know him now for what he is. If he did not love her
+then, he does now. It is too late!'
+
+She seemed so much overcome that I assisted her to reach a bench which
+stood against the wall a few paces away; nor, I confess, was it
+without difficulty and much self-reproach that I limited myself to
+those prudent offices only which her state and my duty required. To
+console her on the subject of her husband was impossible; to ignore
+him, and so to console her, a task which neither my discretion nor my
+sense of honour, though sorely tried, permitted me to undertake.
+
+She presently recovered and, putting on her mask again, said hurriedly
+that she had still a word to say to me. 'You have treated me
+honestly,' she continued, 'and, though I have no cause to do anything
+but hate you, I say in return, look to yourself! You escaped last
+night--I know all, for it was my velvet knot--which I had made
+thinking to send it to you to procure this meeting--that he used as a
+lure. But he is not yet at the end of his resources. Look to yourself,
+therefore.'
+
+I thought of the appointment I had made with him for the morrow, but I
+confined myself to thanking her, merely saying, as I bowed over the
+hand she resigned to me in token of farewell, 'Madame, I am grateful.
+I am obliged to you both for your warning and your forgiveness.'
+
+Bending her head coldly she drew away her hand. At that moment, as I
+lifted my eyes, I saw something which for an instant rooted me to the
+spot with astonishment. In the entrance of the passage which led to
+the Rue St. Denys two people were standing, watching us. The one was
+Simon Fleix, and the other, a masked woman, a trifle below the middle
+height, and clad in a riding-coat, was Mademoiselle de la Vire!
+
+I knew her in a moment. But the relief I experienced on seeing her
+safe and in Blois was not unmixed with annoyance that Simon Fleix
+should have been so imprudent as to parade her unnecessarily in the
+street. I felt something of confusion also on my own account; for I
+could not tell how long she and her escort had been watching me. And
+these two feelings were augmented when, after turning to pay a final
+salute to Madame de Bruhl, I looked again towards the passage and
+discovered that mademoiselle and her squire were gone.
+
+Impatient as I was, I would not seem to leave madame rudely or without
+feeling, after the consideration she had shown me in her own sorrow;
+and accordingly I waited uncovered until she disappeared within the
+'Little Sisters.' Then I started eagerly towards my lodging, thinking
+I might yet overtake mademoiselle before she entered. I was destined
+to meet, however, with another though very pertinent hindrance. As I
+passed from the Rue St. Denys into the quiet of my street I heard a
+voice calling my name, and, looking back, saw M. de Rambouillet's
+equerry, a man deep in his confidence, running after me. He brought a
+message from his master, which he begged me to consider of the first
+importance.
+
+'The Marquis would not trust it to writing, sir,' he continued,
+drawing me aside into a corner where we were conveniently retired,
+'but he made me learn it by heart. "Tell M. de Marsac," said he, "that
+that which he was left in Blois to do must be done quickly, or not at
+all. There is something afoot in the other camp, I am not sure what.
+But now is the time to knock in the nail. I know his zeal, and I
+depend upon him."
+
+An hour before I should have listened to this message with serious
+doubts and misgivings. Now, acquainted with mademoiselle's arrival, I
+returned M. de Rambouillet an answer in the same strain, and parting
+civilly from Bertram, who was a man I much esteemed, I hastened on to
+my lodgings, exulting in the thought that the hour and the woman were
+come at last, and that before the dawn of another day I might hope,
+all being well, to accomplish with honour to myself and advantage to
+others the commission which M. de Rosny had entrusted to me.
+
+I must not deny that, mingled with this, was some excitement at the
+prospect of seeing mademoiselle again. I strove to conjure up before
+me as I mounted the stairs the exact expression of her face as I had
+last seen it bending from the window at Rosny; to the end that I might
+have some guide for my future conduct, and might be less likely to
+fall into the snare of a young girl's coquetry. But I could come now,
+as then, to no satisfactory or safe conclusion, and only felt anew the
+vexation I had experienced on losing the velvet knot, which she had
+given me on that occasion.
+
+I knocked at the door of the rooms which I had reserved for her, and
+which were on the floor below my own; but I got no answer. Supposing
+that Simon had taken her upstairs, I mounted quickly, not doubting I
+should find her there. Judge of my surprise and dismay when I found
+that room also empty, save for the lackey, whom M. de Rambouillet had
+lent me!
+
+'Where are they?' I asked the man, speaking sharply, and standing with
+my hand on the door.
+
+'The lady and her woman, sir?' he answered, coming forward.
+
+'Yes, yes!' I cried impatiently, a sudden fear at my heart.
+
+'She went out immediately after her arrival with Simon Fleix, sir, and
+has not yet returned,' he answered.
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth before I heard several
+persons enter the passage below and begin to ascend the stairs. I did
+not doubt that mademoiselle and the lad had come home another way and
+been somehow detained; and I turned with a sigh of relief to receive
+them. But when the persons whose steps I had heard appeared, they
+proved to be only M. de Rosny's equerry, stout, burly, and bright-eyed
+as ever, and two armed servants.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                         'LA FEMME DISPOSE.'
+
+
+The moment the equerry's foot touched the uppermost stair I advanced
+upon him. 'Where is your mistress, man?' I said. 'Where is
+Mademoiselle de la Vire? Be quick, tell me what you have done with
+her.'
+
+His face fell amazingly. 'Where is she?' he answered, faltering
+between surprise and alarm at my sudden onslaught. 'Here, she should
+be. I left her here not an hour ago. Mon Dieu! Is she not here now?'
+
+His alarm increased mine tenfold. 'No!' I retorted, 'she is not! She
+is gone! And you--what business had you, in the fiend's name, to leave
+her here, alone and unprotected? Tell me that!'
+
+He leaned against the balustrade, making no attempt to defend himself,
+and seemed, in his sudden terror, anything but the bold, alert fellow
+who had ascended the stairs two minutes before. 'I was a fool,' he
+groaned. 'I saw your man Simon here; and Fauchette, who is as good as
+a man, was with her mistress. And I went to stable the horses. I
+thought no evil. And now--My God!' he added, suddenly straightening
+himself, while his face grew hard and grim, 'I am undone! My master
+will never forgive me!'
+
+'Did you come straight here?' I said, considering that, after all, he
+was no more in fault than I had been on a former occasion.
+
+'We went first to M. de Rosny's lodging,' he answered, 'where we found
+your message telling us to come here. We came on without dismounting.'
+
+'Mademoiselle may have gone back, and be there,' I said. 'It is
+possible. Do you stay here and keep a good look-out, and I will go and
+see. Let one of your men come with me.'
+
+He uttered a brief assent; being a man as ready to take as to give
+orders, and thankful now for any suggestion which held out a hope of
+mademoiselle's safety. Followed by the servant he selected, I ran down
+the stairs, and in a moment was hurrying along the Rue St. Denys. The
+day was waning. The narrow streets and alleys were already dark, but
+the air of excitement which I had noticed in the morning still marked
+the townsfolk, of whom a great number were strolling abroad, or
+standing in doorways talking to their gossips. Feverishly anxious as I
+was, I remarked the gloom which dwelt on all faces; but as I set it
+down to the king's approaching departure, and besides was intent on
+seeing that those we sought did not by any chance pass us in the
+crowd, I thought little of it. Five minutes' walking brought us to M.
+de Rosny's lodging. There I knocked at the door; impatiently, I
+confess, and with little hope of success. But, to my surprise, barely
+an instant elapsed before the door opened, and I saw before me Simon
+Fleix!
+
+Discovering who it was, he cowered back, with a terrified face, and
+retreated to the wall with his arm raised.
+
+'You scoundrel!' I exclaimed, restraining myself with difficulty.
+'Tell me this moment where Mademoiselle de la Vire is! Or, by Heaven,
+I shall forget what my mother owed to you, and do you a mischief!'
+
+For an instant he glared at me viciously, with all his teeth exposed,
+as though he meant to refuse--and more. Then he thought better of it,
+and, raising his hand, pointed sulkily upwards.
+
+'Go before me and knock at the door,' I said, tapping the hilt of my
+dagger with meaning.
+
+Cowed by my manner, he obeyed, and led the way to the room in which M.
+de Rambouillet had surprised us on a former occasion. Here he stopped
+at the door and knocked gently; on which a sharp voice inside bade us
+enter. I raised the latch and did so, closing the door behind me.
+
+Mademoiselle, still wearing her riding-coat, sat in a chair before the
+hearth, on which a newly kindled fire sputtered and smoked. She had
+her back to me, and did not turn on my entrance, but continued to toy
+in an absent manner with the strings of the mask which lay in her lap.
+Fanchette stood bolt upright behind her, with her elbows squared and
+her hands clasped; in such an attitude that I guessed the maid had
+been expressing her strong dissatisfaction with this latest whim of
+her mistress, and particularly with mademoiselle's imprudence in
+wantonly exposing herself, with so inadequate a guard as Simon, in a
+place where she had already suffered so much. I was confirmed in this
+notion on seeing the woman's harsh countenance clear at sight of me;
+though the churlish nod, which was all the greeting she bestowed on
+me, seemed to betoken anything but favour or good-will. She touched
+her mistress on the shoulder, however, and said, 'M. de Marsac is
+here.'
+
+Mademoiselle turned her head and looked at me languidly, without
+stirring in her chair or removing the foot she was warming. 'Good
+evening,' she said.
+
+The greeting seemed so brief and so commonplace, ignoring, as it did,
+both the pains and anxiety to which she had just put me and the great
+purpose for which we were here--to say nothing of that ambiguous
+parting which she must surely remember as well as I--that the words I
+had prepared died on my lips, and I looked at her in honest confusion.
+All her small face was pale except her lips. Her brow was dark, her
+eyes were hard as well as weary. And not words only failed me as I
+looked at her, but anger; having mounted the stairs hot foot to chide,
+I felt on a sudden--despite my new cloak and scabbard, my appointment,
+and the name I had made at Court--the same consciousness of age and
+shabbiness and poverty which had possessed me in her presence from the
+beginning. I muttered, 'Good evening, mademoiselle,' and that was all
+I could say--I who had frightened the burly Maignan a few minutes
+before!
+
+Seeing, I have no doubt, the effect she produced on me, she maintained
+for some time an embarrassing silence. At length she said, frigidly,
+'Perhaps M. de Marsac will sit, Fanchette. Place a chair for him. I am
+afraid, however, that after his successes at Court he may find our
+reception somewhat cold. But we are only from the country,' she added,
+looking at me askance, with a gleam of anger in her eyes.
+
+I thanked her huskily, saying that I would not sit, as I could not
+stay. 'Simon Fleix,' I continued, finding my voice with difficulty,
+'has, I am afraid, caused you some trouble by bringing you to this
+house instead of telling you that I had made preparation for you at my
+lodgings.'
+
+'It was not Simon Fleix's fault,' she replied curtly. 'I prefer these
+rooms. They are more convenient.'
+
+'They are, perhaps, more convenient,' I rejoined humbly, 'but I have
+to think of safety, mademoiselle, as you know. At my house I have a
+competent guard, and can answer for your being unmolested.'
+
+'You can send your guard here,' she said with a royal air.
+
+'But, mademoiselle----'
+
+'Is it not enough that I have said that I prefer these rooms?' she
+replied sharply, dropping her mask on her lap and looking round at me
+in undisguised displeasure. 'Are you deaf, sir? Let me tell you, I am
+in no mood for argument. I am tired with riding. I prefer these rooms,
+and that is enough!'
+
+Nothing could exceed the determination with which she said these
+words, unless it were the malicious pleasure in thwarting my wishes
+which made itself seen through the veil of assumed indifference. I
+felt myself brought up with a vengeance, and in a manner the most
+provoking that could be conceived. But opposition so childish, so
+utterly wanton, by exciting my indignation, had presently the effect
+of banishing the peculiar bashfulness I felt in her presence, and
+recalling me to my duty.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' I said firmly, looking at her with a fixed
+countenance, 'pardon me if I speak plainly. This is no time for
+playing with straws. The men from whom you escaped once are as
+determined and more desperate now. By this time they probably know of
+your arrival. Do, then, as I ask, I pray and beseech you. Or this time
+I may lack the power, though never the will, to save you.'
+
+Wholly ignoring my appeal, she looked into my face--for by this time I
+had advanced to her side--with a whimsical smile. 'You are really much
+improved in manner since I last saw you,' she said.
+
+'Mademoiselle!' I replied, baffled and repelled. 'What do you mean?'
+
+'What I say,' she answered, flippantly. 'But it was to be expected.'
+
+'For shame!' I cried, provoked almost beyond bearing by her ill-timed
+raillery, 'will you never be serious until you have ruined us and
+yourself? I tell you this house is not safe for you! It is not safe
+for me! I cannot bring my men to it, for there is not room for them.
+If you have any spark of consideration, of gratitude, therefore----'
+
+'Gratitude!' she exclaimed, swinging her mask slowly to and fro by a
+ribbon, while she looked up at me as though my excitement amused her.
+'Gratitude--'tis a very pretty phrase, and means much; but it is for
+those who serve us faithfully, M. de Marsac, and not for others. You
+receive so many favours, I am told, and are so successful at Court,
+that I should not be justified in monopolising your services.'
+
+'But, mademoiselle--' I said in a low tone. And there I stopped. I
+dared not proceed.
+
+'Well, sir,' she answered, looking up at me after a moment's silence,
+and ceasing on a sudden to play with her toy, 'what is it?'
+
+'You spoke of favours,' I continued, with an effort. 'I never received
+but one from a lady. That was at Rosny, and from your hand.'
+
+'From my hand?' she answered, with an air of cold surprise.
+
+'It was so, mademoiselle.'
+
+'You have fallen into some strange mistake, sir,' she replied, rousing
+herself, and looking at me indifferently. 'I never gave you a favour.'
+
+I bowed low. 'If you say you did not, mademoiselle, that is enough,' I
+answered.
+
+'Nay, but do not let me do you an injustice, M. de Marsac,' she
+rejoined, speaking more quickly and in an altered tone. 'If you can
+show me the favour I gave you, I shall, of course, be convinced.
+Seeing is believing, you know,' she added, with a light nervous laugh,
+and a gesture of something like shyness.
+
+If I had not sufficiently regretted my carelessness, and loss of the
+bow at the time, I did so now. I looked at her in silence, and saw her
+face, that had for a moment shown signs of feeling, almost of shame,
+grow slowly hard again.
+
+'Well, sir?' she said impatiently. 'The proof is easy.'
+
+'It was taken from me; I believe, by M. de Rosny,' I answered lamely,
+wondering what ill-luck had led her to put the question and press it
+to this point.
+
+'It was taken from you!' she exclaimed, rising and confronting me with
+the utmost suddenness, while her eyes flashed, and her little hand
+crumpled the mask beyond future usefulness. 'It was taken from you,
+sir!' she repeated, her voice and her whole frame trembling with anger
+and disdain. 'Then I thank you, I prefer my version. Yours is
+impossible. For let me tell you, when Mademoiselle de la Vire does
+confer a favour, it will be on a man with the power and the wit--and
+the constancy, to keep it, even from M. de Rosny!'
+
+Her scorn hurt, though it did not anger me. I felt it to be in a
+measure deserved, and raged against myself rather than against her.
+But aware through all of the supreme importance of placing her in
+safety, I subjected my immediate feelings to the exigencies of the
+moment and stooped to an argument which would, I thought, have weight
+though private pleading failed.
+
+'Putting myself aside, mademoiselle,' I said, with more formality than
+I had yet used, 'there is one consideration which must weigh with you.
+The king----'
+
+'The king!' she cried, interrupting me violently, her face hot with
+passion and her whole person instinct with stubborn self-will. 'I
+shall not see the king!'
+
+'You will not see the king?' I repeated in amazement.
+
+'No, I will not!' she answered, in a whirl of anger, scorn, and
+impetuosity. 'There! I will not! I have been made a toy and a tool
+long enough, M. de Marsac,' she continued, 'and I will serve others'
+ends no more. I have made up my mind. Do not talk to me; you will do
+no good, sir. I would to Heaven,' she added bitterly, 'I had stayed at
+Chizé and never seen this place!'
+
+'But, mademoiselle,' I said, 'you have not thought----'
+
+'Thought!' she exclaimed, shutting her small white teeth so viciously
+I all but recoiled. 'I have thought enough. I am sick of thought. I am
+going to act now. I will be a puppet no longer. You may take me to the
+castle by force if you will; but you cannot make me speak.'
+
+I looked at her in the utmost dismay and astonishment; being unable at
+first to believe that a woman who had gone through so much, had run so
+many risks, and ridden so many miles for a purpose, would, when all
+was done and the hour come, decline to carry out her plan. I could not
+believe it, I say, at first; and I tried arguments and entreaties
+without stint, thinking that she only asked to be entreated or coaxed.
+
+But I found prayers and even threats breath wasted upon her; and
+beyond these I would not go. I know I have been blamed by some and
+ridiculed by others for not pushing the matter farther; but those who
+have stood face to face with a woman of spirit--a woman whose very
+frailty and weakness fought for her--will better understand the
+difficulties with which I had to contend and the manner in which
+conviction was at last borne in on my mind. I had never before
+confronted stubbornness of this kind. As mademoiselle said again and
+again, I might force her to Court, but I could not make her speak.
+
+When I had tried every means of persuasion, and still found no way of
+overcoming her resolution--the while Fanchette looked on with a face
+of wood, neither aiding me nor taking part against me--I lost, I
+confess, in the chagrin of the moment that sense of duty which had
+hitherto animated me; and though my relation to mademoiselle should
+have made me as careful as ever of her safety, even in her own
+despite, I left her at last in anger and went out without saying
+another word about removing her--a thing which was still in my power.
+I believe a very brief reflection would have recalled me to myself and
+my duty; but the opportunity was not given me, for I had scarcely
+reached the head of the stairs before Fanchette came after me, and
+called to me in a whisper to stop.
+
+She held a taper in her hand, and this she raised to my face, smiling
+at the disorder which she doubtless read there. 'Do you say that this
+house is not safe?' she asked abruptly, lowering the light as she
+spoke.
+
+'You have tried a house in Blois before?' I replied with the same
+bluntness. 'You should know as well as I, woman.'
+
+'She must be taken from here, then,' she answered, nodding her head,
+cunningly. 'I can persuade her. Do you send for your people, and be
+here in half an hour. It may take me that time to wheedle her. But I
+shall do it.'
+
+'Then listen,' I said eagerly, seizing the opportunity and her sleeve
+and drawing her farther from the door. 'If you can persuade her to
+that, you can persuade to all I wish. Listen, my friend,' I continued,
+sinking my voice still lower. 'If she will see the king for only ten
+minutes, and tell him what she knows, I will give you----'
+
+'What?' the woman asked suddenly and harshly, drawing at the same time
+her sleeve from my hand.
+
+'Fifty crowns,' I replied, naming in my desperation a sum which would
+seem a fortune to a person in her position. 'Fifty crowns down, the
+moment the interview is over.'
+
+'And for that you would have me sell her!' the woman cried with a rude
+intensity of passion which struck me like a blow. 'For shame! For
+shame, man! You persuaded her to leave her home and her friends, and
+the country where she was known; and now you would have me sell her!
+Shame on you! Go!' she added scornfully. 'Go this instant and get your
+men. The king, say you? The king! I tell you I would not have her
+finger ache to save all your kings!'
+
+She flounced away with that, and I retired crestfallen; wondering much
+at the fidelity which Providence, doubtless for the well-being of the
+gentle, possibly for the good of all, has implanted in the humble.
+Finding Simon, to whom I had scarce patience to speak, waiting on the
+stairs below, I despatched him to Maignan, to bid him come to me with
+his men. Meanwhile I watched the house myself until their arrival, and
+then, going up, found that Fanchette had been as good as her word.
+Mademoiselle, with a sullen mien, and a red spot on either cheek,
+consented to descend, and, preceded by a couple of links, which
+Maignan had thoughtfully provided, was escorted safely to my lodgings;
+where I bestowed her in the rooms below my own, which I had designed
+for her.
+
+At the door she turned and bowed to me, her face on fire.
+
+'So far, sir, you have got your way,' she said, breathing quickly. 'Do
+not flatter yourself, however, that you will get it farther--even by
+bribing my woman!'
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                           THE LAST VALOIS.
+
+
+I stood for a few moments on the stairs, wondering what I should do in
+an emergency to which the Marquis's message of the afternoon attached
+so pressing a character. Had it not been for that I might have waited
+until morning, and felt tolerably certain of finding mademoiselle in a
+more reasonable mood then. But as it was I dared not wait. I dared not
+risk the delay, and I came quickly to the conclusion that the only
+course open to me was to go at once to M. de Rambouillet, and tell him
+frankly how the matter stood.
+
+Maignan had posted one of his men at the open doorway leading into the
+street, and fixed his own quarters on the landing at the top, whence
+he could overlook an intruder without being seen himself. Satisfied
+with the arrangement, I left Rambouillet's man to reinforce him, and
+took with me Simon Fleix, of whose conduct in regard to mademoiselle I
+entertained the gravest doubts.
+
+The night, I found on reaching the street, was cold, the sky where it
+was visible between the eaves being bright with stars. A sharp wind
+was blowing, too, compelling us to wrap our cloaks round us and hurry
+on at a pace which agreed well with the excitement of my thoughts.
+Assured that had mademoiselle been complaisant I might have seen my
+mission accomplished within the hour, it was impossible I should not
+feel impatient with one who, to gratify a whim, played with the
+secrets of a kingdom as if they were counters, and risked in passing
+ill-humour the results of weeks of preparation. And I was impatient,
+and with her. But my resentment fell so far short of the occasion that
+I wondered uneasily at my own easiness, and felt more annoyed with
+myself for failing to be properly annoyed with her, than inclined to
+lay the blame where it was due. It was in vain I told myself
+contemptuously that she was a woman, and that women were not
+accountable. I felt that the real secret and motive of my indulgence
+lay, not in this, but in the suspicion, which her reference to the
+favour given me on my departure from Rosny had converted almost into a
+certainty, that I was myself the cause of her sudden ill-humour.
+
+I might have followed this train of thought farther, and to very
+pertinent conclusions. But on reaching M. de Rambouillet's lodging I
+was diverted from it by the abnormally quiet aspect of the house, on
+the steps of which half a dozen servants might commonly be seen
+lounging. Now the doors were closed, no lights shone through the
+windows, and the hall sounded empty and desolate when I knocked. Not a
+lackey hurried to receive me even then; but the slipshod tread of the
+old porter, as he came with a lantern to open, alone broke the
+silence. I waited eagerly wondering what all this could mean; and when
+the man at last opened, and, recognising my face, begged my pardon if
+he had kept me waiting I asked him impatiently what was the matter.
+
+'And where is the Marquis?' I added, stepping inside to be out of the
+wind, and loosening my cloak.
+
+'Have you not heard, sir?' the man asked, holding up his lantern to my
+face. He was an old, wizened, lean fellow. 'It is a break-up, sir, I
+am afraid, this time.'
+
+'A break-up?' I rejoined, peevishly. 'Speak out, man! What is the
+matter? I hate mysteries.'
+
+'You have not heard the news, sir? That the Duke of Merc[oe]ur and
+Marshal Retz, with all their people, left Blois this afternoon?'
+
+'No?' I answered, somewhat startled. 'Whither are they gone?'
+
+'To Paris, it is said, sir,--to join the League.'
+
+'But do you mean that they have deserted the king?' I asked.
+
+'For certain, sir!' he answered.
+
+'Not the Duke of Merc[oe]ur?' I exclaimed. 'Why, man, he is the king's
+brother-in-law. He owes everything to him.'
+
+'Well, he is gone, sir,' the old man answered positively. 'The news
+was brought to M. le Marquis about four o'clock or a little after. He
+got his people together, and started after them to try and persuade
+them to return. Or, so it is said.'
+
+As quickly as I could, I reviewed the situation in my mind. If this
+strange news were true, and men like Merc[oe]ur, who had every reason
+to stand by the king, as well as men like Retz, who had long been
+suspected of disaffection, were abandoning the Court, the danger must
+be coming close indeed. The king must feel his throne already
+tottering, and be eager to grasp at any means of supporting it.
+Under such circumstances it seemed to be my paramount duty to reach
+him; to gain his ear if possible, and at all risks; that I and
+not Bruhl, Navarre not Turenne, might profit by the first impulse of
+self-preservation.
+
+Bidding the porter shut his door and keep close, I hurried to the
+Castle, and was presently more than confirmed in my resolution. For to
+my surprise I found the Court in much the same state as M. de
+Rambouillet's house. There were double guards indeed at the gates, who
+let me pass after scrutinising me narrowly; but the courtyard, which
+should have been at this hour ablaze with torches and crowded with
+lackeys and grooms, was a dark wilderness, in which half a dozen links
+trembled mournfully. Passing through the doors I found things within
+in the same state: the hall ill lit and desolate; the staircase manned
+only by a few whispering groups, who scanned me as I passed; the
+antechambers almost empty, or occupied by the grey uniforms of the
+Switzer guards. Where I had looked to see courtiers assembling to meet
+their sovereign and assure him of their fidelity, I found only gloomy
+faces, watchful eyes, and mouths ominously closed. An air of
+constraint and fore, boding rested on all. A single footstep sounded
+hollowly. The long corridors, which had so lately rung with laughter
+and the rattle of dice, seemed already devoted to the silence and
+desolation which awaited them when the Court should depart. Where any
+spoke I caught the name of Guise; and I could have fancied that his
+mighty shadow lay upon the place and cursed it.
+
+Entering the chamber, I found matters little better there. His Majesty
+was not present, nor were any of the Court ladies; but half a dozen
+gentlemen, among whom I recognised Revol, one of the king's
+secretaries, stood near the alcove. They looked up on my entrance, as
+though expecting news, and then, seeing who it was, looked away again
+impatiently. The Duke of Nevers was walking moodily to and fro before
+one of the windows, his hands clasped behind his back: while Biron and
+Crillon, reconciled by the common peril, talked loudly on the hearth.
+I hesitated a moment, uncertain how to proceed, for I was not yet so
+old at Court as to feel at home there. But, at last making up my mind,
+I walked boldly up to Crillon and requested his good offices to
+procure me an immediate audience of the king.
+
+'An audience? Do you mean you want to see him alone?' he said, raising
+his eyebrows and looking whimsically at Biron.
+
+'That is my petition, M. de Crillon,' I answered firmly, though my
+heart sank. 'I am here on M. de Rambouillet's business, and I need to
+see his Majesty forthwith.'
+
+'Well, that is straightforward,' he replied, clapping me on the
+shoulder. 'And you shall see him. In coming to Crillon you have come
+to the right man. Revol,' he continued, turning to the secretary,
+'this gentleman bears a message from M. de Rambouillet to the king.
+Take him to the closet without delay, my friend, and announce him. I
+will be answerable for him.'
+
+But the secretary shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. 'It is quite
+impossible, M. de Crillon,' he said gravely. 'Quite impossible at
+present.'
+
+'Impossible! Chut! I do not know the word,' Crillon retorted rudely.
+'Come, take him at once, and blame me if ill comes of it. Do you
+hear?'
+
+'But his Majesty----'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Is at his devotions,' the secretary said stiffly.
+
+'His Majesty's devotions be hanged!' Crillon rejoined--so loudly that
+there was a general titter, and M. de Nevers laughed grimly. 'Do you
+hear?' the Avennais continued, his face growing redder and his voice
+higher, 'or must I pull your ears, my friend? Take this gentleman to
+the closet, I say, and if his Majesty be angry, tell him it was by my
+order. I tell you he comes from Rambouillet.'
+
+I do not know whether it was the threat, or the mention of M. de
+Rambouillet's name, which convinced the secretary. But at any rate,
+after a moment's hesitation, he acquiesced.
+
+He nodded sullenly to me to follow him, and led the way to a curtain
+which masked the door of the closet. I followed him across the
+chamber, after muttering a hasty word of acknowledgment to Crillon;
+and I had as nearly as possible reached the door when the bustle of
+some one entering the chamber caught my ear. I had just time to turn
+and see that this was Bruhl, just time to intercept the dark look of
+chagrin and surprise which he fixed on me, and then Revol, holding up
+the curtain, signed to me to enter.
+
+I expected to pass at once into the presence of the king, and had my
+reverence ready. Instead, I found myself to my surprise in a small
+chamber, or rather passage, curtained at both ends, and occupied
+by a couple of guardsmen--members, doubtless, of the Band of the
+Forty-Five--who rose at my entrance and looked at me dubiously. Their
+guard-room, dimly illumined by a lamp of red glass, seemed to me, in
+spite of its curtains and velvet bench, and the thick tapestry which
+kept out every breath of wholesome air, the most sombre I could
+imagine. And the most ill-omened. But I had no time to make any long
+observation; for Revol, passing me brusquely, raised the curtain at
+the other end, and, with his finger on his lip, bade me by signs to
+enter.
+
+I did so as silently, the heavy scent of perfumes striking me in the
+face as I raised a second curtain, and stopped short a pace beyond it;
+partly in reverence--because kings love their subjects best at a
+distance--and partly in surprise. For the room, or rather that portion
+of it in which I stood, was in darkness; only the farther end being
+illumined by a cold pale flood of moonlight, which, passing through a
+high, straight window, lay in a silvery sheet on the floor. For an
+instant I thought I was alone; then I saw, resting against this
+window, with a hand on either mullion, a tall figure, having something
+strange about the head. This peculiarity presently resolved itself
+into the turban in which I had once before seen his Majesty. The
+king--for he it was--was talking to himself. He had not heard me
+enter, and having his back to me remained unconscious of my presence.
+
+I paused in doubt, afraid to advance, anxious to withdraw; yet
+uncertain whether I could move again unheard. At this moment while I
+stood hesitating, he raised his voice, and his words, reaching my
+ears, riveted my attention, so strange and eerie were both they and
+his tone. 'They say there is ill-luck in thirteen,' he muttered.
+'Thirteen Valois and last!' He paused to laugh a wicked, mirthless
+laugh. 'Ay,--Thirteenth! And it is thirteen years since I entered
+Paris, a crowned King! There were Quélus and Maugiron and St. Mégrin
+and I--and _he_, I remember. Ah, those days, those nights! I would
+sell my soul to live them again; had I not sold it long ago in the
+living them once! We were young then, and rich, and I was king;
+and Quélus was an Apollo! He died calling on me to save him. And
+Maugiron died, blaspheming God and the saints. And St. Mégrin, he had
+thirty-four wounds. And _he_--he is dead too, curse him! They are all
+dead, all dead, and it is all over! My God! it is all over, it is all
+over, it is all over!'
+
+He repeated the last four words more than a dozen times, rocking
+himself to and fro by his hold on the mullions. I trembled as I
+listened, partly through fear on my own account should I be
+discovered, and partly by reason of the horror of despair and
+remorse--no, not remorse, regret--which spoke in his monotonous voice.
+I guessed that some impulse had led him to draw the curtain from the
+window and shade the lamp; and that then, as he looked down on the
+moonlit country, the contrast between it and the vicious, heated
+atmosphere, heavy with intrigue and worse, in which he had spent his
+strength, had forced itself upon his mind. For he presently went on.
+
+'France! There it lies! And what will they do with it? Will they
+cut it up into pieces, as it was before old Louis XI.? Will
+Merc[oe]ur--curse him!--be the most Christian Duke of Brittany? And
+Mayenne, by the grace of God, Prince of Paris and the Upper Seine? Or
+will the little Prince of Béarn beat them, and be Henry IV., King of
+France and Navarre, Protector of the Churches? Curse him too! He is
+thirty-six. He is my age. But he is young and strong, and has all
+before him. While I--I--oh, my God, have mercy on me! Have mercy on
+me, O God in Heaven!'
+
+With the last word he fell on his knees on the step before the window,
+and burst into such an agony of unmanly tears and sobbings as I had
+never dreamed of or imagined, and least of all in the King of France.
+Hardly knowing whether to be more ashamed or terrified, I turned at
+all risks, and stealthily lifting the curtain, crept out with infinite
+care; and happily with so much good fortune as to escape detection.
+There was space enough between the two curtains to admit my body and
+no more; and here I stood a short while to collect my thoughts. Then,
+striking my scabbard against the wall, as though by accident, and
+coughing loudly at the same moment, I twitched the curtain aside with
+some violence and re-entered, thinking that by these means I had given
+him warning enough.
+
+But I had not reckoned on the darkness in which the room lay, or the
+excitable state in which I had left him. He heard me, indeed, but
+being able to see only a tall, indistinct figure approaching him, he
+took fright, and falling back against the moonlit window, as though he
+saw a ghost, thrust out his hand, gasping at the same time two words,
+which sounded to me like 'Ha! Guise!'
+
+The next instant, discerning that I fell on my knee where I stood, and
+came no nearer, he recovered himself. With an effort, which his
+breathing made very apparent, he asked in an unsteady voice who it
+was.
+
+'One of your Majesty's most faithful servants,' I answered, remaining
+on my knee, and affecting to see nothing.
+
+Keeping his face towards me, he sidled to the lamp and strove to
+withdraw the shade. But his fingers trembled so violently that it was
+some time before he succeeded, and set free the cheerful beams, which,
+suddenly filling the room with radiance, disclosed to my wondering
+eyes, instead of darkness and the cold gleam of the moon, a profusion
+of riches, of red stuffs and gemmed trifles and gilded arms crowded
+together in reckless disorder. A monkey chained in one corner began to
+gibber and mow at me. A cloak of strange cut, stretched on a wooden
+stand, deceived me for an instant into thinking that there was a third
+person present; while the table, heaped with dolls and powder-puffs,
+dog-collars and sweet-meats, a mask, a woman's slipper, a pair of
+pistols, some potions, a scourge, and an immense quantity of like
+litter, had as melancholy an appearance in my eyes as the king
+himself, whose disorder the light disclosed without mercy. His turban
+was awry, and betrayed the premature baldness of his scalp. The paint
+on his cheeks was cracked and stained, and had soiled the gloves he
+wore. He looked fifty years old; and in his excitement he had tugged
+his sword to the front, whence it refused to be thrust back.
+
+'Who sent you here?' he asked, when he had so far recovered his senses
+as to recognise me, which he did with great surprise.
+
+'I am here, sire,' I answered evasively, 'to place myself at your
+Majesty's service.'
+
+'Such loyalty is rare,' he answered, with a bitter sneer. 'But stand
+up, sir. I suppose I must be thankful for small mercies, and, losing a
+Merc[oe]ur, be glad to receive a Marsac.'
+
+'By your leave, sire,' I rejoined hardily, 'the exchange is not so
+adverse. Your Majesty may make another duke when you will. But honest
+men are not so easily come by.'
+
+'So! so!' he answered, looking at me with a fierce light in his eyes.
+'You remind me in season. I may still make and unmake! I am still King
+of France? That is so, sirrah, is it not?'
+
+'God forbid that it should be otherwise!' I answered earnestly. 'It is
+to lay before your Majesty certain means by which you may give fuller
+effect to your wishes that I am here. The King of Navarre desires
+only, sire----'
+
+'Tut, tut!' he exclaimed impatiently, and with some displeasure, 'I
+know his will better than you, man. But you see,' he continued
+cunningly, forgetting my inferior position as quickly as he had
+remembered it, 'Turenne promises well, too. And Turenne--it is true he
+may play the Lorrainer. But if I trust Henry of Navarre, and he prove
+false to me----'
+
+He did not complete the sentence, but strode to and fro a time or two,
+his mind, which had a natural inclination towards crooked courses,
+bent on some scheme by which he might play off the one party against
+the other. Apparently he was not very successful in finding one,
+however; or else the ill-luck with which he had supported the League
+against the Huguenots recurred to his mind. For he presently stopped,
+with a sigh, and came back to the point.
+
+'If I knew that Turenne were lying,' he muttered, 'then indeed----.
+But Rosny promised evidence, and he has sent me none.'
+
+'It is at hand, sire,' I answered, my heart beginning to beat. 'Your
+Majesty will remember that M. de Rosny honoured me with the task of
+introducing it to you.'
+
+'To be sure,' he replied, awaking as from a dream, and looking and
+speaking eagerly. 'Matters to-day have driven everything out of my
+head. Where is your witness, man? Convince me, and we will act
+promptly. We will give them Jarnac and Moncontour over again. Is he
+outside?'
+
+'It is a woman, sire,' I made answer, dashed somewhat by his sudden
+and feverish alacrity.
+
+'A woman, eh? You have her here?'
+
+'No, sire,' I replied, wondering what he would say to my next piece of
+information. 'She is in Blois, she has arrived, but the truth is--I
+humbly crave your Majesty's indulgence--she refuses to come or speak.
+I cannot well bring her here by force, and I have sought you, sire,
+for the purpose of taking your commands in the matter.'
+
+He stared at me in the utmost astonishment.
+
+'Is she young?' he asked after a long pause.
+
+'Yes, sire,' I answered. 'She is maid of honour to the Princess of
+Navarre, and a ward also of the Vicomte de Turenne.'
+
+'Gad! then she is worth hearing, the little rebel!' he replied. 'A
+ward of Turenne's is she? Ho! ho! And now she will not speak? My
+cousin of Navarre now would know how to bring her to her senses, but I
+have eschewed these vanities. I might send and have her brought, it is
+true; but a very little thing would cause a barricade to-night.'
+
+'And besides, sire,' I ventured to add, 'she is known to Turenne's
+people here, who have once stolen her away. Were she brought to your
+Majesty with any degree of openness, they would learn it, and know
+that the game was lost.'
+
+'Which would not suit me,' he answered, nodding and looking at me
+gloomily. 'They might anticipate our Jarnac; and until we have settled
+matters with one or the other our person is not too secure. You must
+go and fetch her. She is at your lodging. She must be brought, man.'
+
+'I will do what you command, sire,' I answered. 'But I am greatly
+afraid that she will not come.'
+
+He lost his temper at that. 'Then why, in the devil's name, have
+you troubled me with the matter?' he cried savagely. 'God knows--I
+don't--why Rosny employed such a man and such a woman. He might have
+seen from the cut of your cloak, sir, which is full six months behind
+the fashion, that you could not manage a woman! Was ever such damnable
+folly heard of in this world? But it is Navarre's loss, not mine. It
+is his loss. And I hope to Heaven it may be yours too!' he added
+fiercely.
+
+There was so much in what he said that I bent before the storm, and
+accepted with humility blame which was as natural on his part as it
+was undeserved on mine. Indeed I could not wonder at his Majesty's
+anger; nor should I have wondered at it in a greater man. I knew that
+but for reasons, on which I did not wish to dwell, I should have
+shared it to the full, and spoken quite as strongly of the caprice
+which ruined hopes and lives for a whim.
+
+The king continued for some time to say to me all the hard things he
+could think of. Wearied at last by my patience, he paused, and cried
+angrily. 'Well, have you nothing to say for yourself? Can you suggest
+nothing?'
+
+'I dare not mention to your Majesty,' I said humbly, 'what seems to me
+to be the only alternative.'
+
+'You mean that I should go to the wench!' he answered--for he did not
+lack quickness. '"_Se no va el otero a Mahoma, vaya Mahoma al otero_,"
+as Mendoza says. But the saucy quean, to force me to go to her! Did my
+wife guess--but there, I will go. By God I will go!' he added abruptly
+and fiercely. 'I will live to ruin Retz yet! Where is your lodging?'
+
+I told him, wondering much at this flash of the old spirit, which
+twenty years before had won him a reputation his later life did
+nothing to sustain.
+
+'Do you know,' he asked, speaking with sustained energy and clearness,
+'the door by which M. de Rosny entered to talk with me? Can you find
+it in the dark?'
+
+'Yes, sire,' I answered, my heart beating high.
+
+'Then be in waiting there two hours before midnight,' he replied. 'Be
+well armed, but alone. I shall know how to make the girl speak. I can
+trust you, I suppose?' he added suddenly, stepping nearer to me and
+looking fixedly into my eyes.
+
+'I will answer for your Majesty's life with my own,' I replied,
+sinking on one knee.
+
+'I believe you, sir,' he answered gravely, giving me his hand to kiss,
+and then turning away. 'So be it. Now leave me. You have been here too
+long already. Not a word to any one as you value your life.'
+
+I made fitting answer and was leaving him; but when I had my hand
+already on the curtain, he called me back. 'In Heaven's name get a new
+cloak!' he said peevishly, eyeing me all over with his face puckered
+up. 'Get a new cloak, man, the first thing in the morning. It is worse
+seen from the side than the front. It would ruin the cleverest
+courtier of them all!'
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                            A ROYAL PERIL.
+
+
+The elation with which I had heard the king announce his resolution
+quickly diminished on cooler reflection. It stood in particular at a
+very low ebb as I waited, an hour later, at the little north postern
+of the Castle, and, cowering within the shelter of the arch to escape
+the wind, debated whether his Majesty's energy would sustain him to
+the point of action, or whether he might not, in one of those fits of
+treacherous vacillation which had again and again marred his plans,
+send those to keep the appointment who would give a final account of
+me. The longer I considered his character the more dubious I grew. The
+loneliness of the situation, the darkness, the black front, unbroken
+by any glimmer of light, which the Castle presented on this side, and
+the unusual and gloomy stillness which lay upon the town, all
+contributed to increase my uneasiness. It was with apprehension as
+well as relief that I caught at last the sound of footsteps on the
+stone staircase, and, standing a little to one side, saw a streak of
+light appear at the foot of the door.
+
+On the latter being partially opened a voice cried my name. I advanced
+with caution and showed myself. A brief conversation ensued between
+two or three persons who stood within; but in the end, a masked
+figure, which I had no difficulty in identifying as the king, stepped
+briskly out.
+
+'You are armed?' he said, pausing a second opposite me.
+
+I put back my cloak and showed him, by the light which streamed from
+the doorway, that I carried pistols as well as a sword.
+
+'Good!' he answered briefly; 'then let us go. Do you walk on my left
+hand, my friend. It is a dark night, is it not?'
+
+'Very dark, sire,' I said.
+
+He made no answer to this, and we started, proceeding with caution
+until we had crossed the narrow bridge, and then with greater freedom
+and at a better pace. The slenderness of the attendance at Court that
+evening, and the cold wind, which swept even the narrowest streets and
+drove roisterers indoors, rendered it unlikely that we should be
+stopped or molested by any except professed thieves; and for these I
+was prepared. The king showed no inclination to talk; and keeping
+silence myself out of respect, I had time to calculate the chances and
+to consider whether his Majesty would succeed where I had failed.
+
+This calculation, which was not inconsistent with the keenest
+watchfulness on my part whenever we turned a corner or passed the
+mouth of an alley, was brought to an end by our safe arrival at the
+house. Briefly apologising to the king for the meanness and darkness
+of the staircase, I begged leave to precede him, and rapidly mounted
+until I met Maignan. Whispering to him that all was well, I did not
+wait to hear his answer, but, bidding him be on the watch, I led the
+king on with as much deference as was possible until we stood at the
+door of mademoiselle's apartment, which I have elsewhere stated to
+consist of an outer and inner room. The door was opened by Simon
+Fleix, and him I promptly sent out. Then, standing aside and
+uncovering, I begged the king to enter.
+
+He did so, still wearing his hat and mask, and I followed and secured
+the door. A lamp hanging from the ceiling diffused an imperfect light
+through the room, which was smaller but more comfortable in appearance
+than that which I rented overhead. I observed that Fanchette, whose
+harsh countenance looked more forbidding than usual, occupied a stool
+which she had set in a strange fashion against the inner door; but I
+thought no more of this at the moment, my attention passing quickly to
+mademoiselle, who sat crouching before the fire, enveloped in a large
+outdoor cloak, as if she felt the cold. Her back was towards us, and
+she was, or pretended to be, still ignorant of our presence. With a
+muttered word I pointed her out to the king, and went towards her with
+him.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' I said in a low voice, 'Mademoiselle de la Vire! I
+have the honour----'
+
+She would not turn, and I stopped. Clearly she heard, but she betrayed
+that she did so only by drawing her cloak more closely round her.
+Primed by my respect for the king, I touched her lightly on the
+shoulder. 'Mademoiselle!' I said impatiently, 'you are not aware of
+it, but----'
+
+She shook herself free from my hand with so rude a gesture that I
+broke off, and stood gaping foolishly at her. The king smiled, and
+nodding to me to step back a pace, took the task on himself.
+'Mademoiselle,' he said with dignity, 'I am not accustomed----'
+
+His voice had a magical effect. Before he could add another word she
+sprang up as if she had been struck, and faced us, a cry of alarm on
+her lips. Simultaneously we both cried out too, for it was not
+mademoiselle at all. The woman who confronted us, her hand on her
+mask, her eyes glittering through the slits, was of a taller and
+fuller figure. We stared at her. Then a lock of bright golden hair
+which had escaped from the hood of her cloak gave us the clue.
+'Madame!' the king cried.
+
+'Madame de Bruhl!' I echoed, my astonishment greater than his.
+
+Seeing herself known, she began with trembling fingers to undo the
+fastenings of her mask; but the king, who had hitherto displayed a
+trustfulness I had not expected in him, had taken alarm at sight of
+her, as at a thing unlocked for, and of which I had not warned him.
+'How is this?' he said harshly, drawing back a pace from her and
+regarding me with anger and distrust. 'Is this some pretty arrangement
+of yours, sir? Am I an intruder at an assignation, or is this a trap
+with M. de Bruhl in the background? Answer, sirrah!' he continued,
+working himself rapidly into a passion. 'Which am I to understand is
+the case?'
+
+'Neither, sire,' I answered with as much dignity as I could assume,
+utterly surprised and mystified as I was by Madame's presence. 'Your
+Majesty wrongs Madame de Bruhl as much by the one suspicion as you
+injure me by the other. I am equally in the dark with you, sire, and
+as little expected to see madame here.'
+
+'I came, sire,' she said proudly, addressing herself to the king, and
+ignoring me, 'out of no love to M. de Marsac, but as any person
+bearing a message to him might come. Nor can you, sire,' she added
+with spirit, 'feel half as much surprise at seeing me here, as I at
+seeing your Majesty.'
+
+'I can believe that,' the king answered drily. 'I would you had not
+seen me.'
+
+'The King of France is seen only when he chooses,' she replied,
+curtseying to the ground.
+
+'Good,' he answered. 'Let it be so, and you will oblige the King of
+France, madame. But enough,' he continued, turning from her to me;
+'since this is not the lady I came to see, M. de Marsac, where is
+she?'
+
+'In the inner room, sire, I opine,' I said, advancing to Fanchette
+with more misgiving at heart than my manner evinced. 'Your mistress is
+here, is she not?' I continued, addressing the woman sharply.
+
+'Ay, and will not come out,' she rejoined, sturdily keeping her place.
+
+'Nonsense!' I said. 'Tell her----'
+
+'You may tell her what you please,' she replied, refusing to budge an
+inch. 'She can hear.'
+
+'But, woman!' I cried impatiently, 'you do not understand. I _must_
+speak with her. I must speak with her at once! On business of the
+highest importance.'
+
+'As you please,' she said rudely, still keeping her seat. 'I have told
+you you can speak.'
+
+Perhaps I felt as foolish on this occasion as ever in my life; and
+surely never was man placed in a more ridiculous position. After
+overcoming numberless obstacles, and escaping as many perils, I had
+brought the king here, a feat beyond my highest hopes--only to be
+baffled and defeated by a waiting-woman! I stood irresolute; witless
+and confused; while the king waited half angry and half amused, and
+madame kept her place by the entrance, to which she had retreated.
+
+I was delivered from my dilemma by the curiosity which is,
+providentially perhaps, a part of woman's character, and which led
+mademoiselle to interfere herself. Keenly on the watch inside, she had
+heard part of what passed between us, and been rendered inquisitive by
+the sound of a strange man's voice, and by the deference which she
+could discern I paid to the visitor. At this moment, she cried out,
+accordingly, to know who was there; and Fanchette, seeming to take
+this as a command, rose and dragged her stool aside, saying peevishly
+and without any increase of respect, 'There, I told you she could
+hear.'
+
+'Who is it?' mademoiselle asked again, in a raised voice.
+
+I was about to answer when the king signed to me to stand back, and,
+advancing himself, knocked gently on the door. 'Open, I pray you,
+mademoiselle,' he said courteously.
+
+'Who is there?' she cried again, her voice trembling.
+
+'It is I, the king,' he answered softly; but in that tone of majesty
+which belongs not to the man, but to the descendant, and seems to be
+the outcome of centuries of command.
+
+She uttered an exclamation and slowly, and with seeming reluctance,
+turned the key in the lock. It grated, and the door opened. I caught a
+glimpse for an instant of her pale face and bright eyes, and then his
+Majesty, removing his hat, passed in and closed the door; and I
+withdrew to the farther end of the room, where madame continued to
+stand by the entrance.
+
+I entertained a suspicion, I remember, and not unnaturally, that she
+had come to my lodging as her husband's spy; but her first words when
+I joined her dispelled this. 'Quick!' she said with an imperious
+gesture. 'Hear me and let me go! I have waited long enough for you,
+and suffered enough through you. As for that woman in there, she is
+mad, and her servant too! Now, listen to me. You spoke to me honestly
+to-day, and I have come to repay you. You have an appointment with my
+husband to-morrow at Chaverny. Is it not so?' she added impatiently.
+
+I replied that it was so.
+
+'You are to go with one friend,' she went on, tearing the glove she
+had taken off, to strips in her excitement. 'He is to meet you with
+one also?'
+
+'Yes,' I assented reluctantly, 'at the bridge, madame.'
+
+'Then do not go,' she rejoined emphatically. 'Shame on me that I
+should betray my husband; but it were worse to send an innocent man to
+his death. He will meet you with one sword only, according to his
+challenge, but there will be those under the bridge who will make
+certain work. There, I have betrayed him now!' she continued bitterly.
+'It is done. Let me go!'
+
+'Nay, but, madame,' I said, feeling more concerned for her, on whom
+from the first moment of meeting her I had brought nothing but
+misfortune, than surprised by this new treachery on his part, 'will
+you not run some risk in returning to him? Is there nothing I can do
+for you--no step I can take for your protection?'
+
+'None!' she said repellently and almost rudely, 'except to speed my
+going.'
+
+'But you will not pass through the streets alone?'
+
+She laughed so bitterly my heart ached for her. 'The unhappy are
+always safe,' she said.
+
+Remembering how short a time it was since I had surprised her in the
+first happiness of wedded love, I felt for her all the pity it was
+natural I should feel. But the responsibility under which his
+Majesty's presence and the charge of mademoiselle laid me forbade me
+to indulge in the luxury of evincing my gratitude. Gladly would I have
+escorted her back to her home--even if I could not make that home
+again what it had been, or restore her husband to the pinnacle from
+which I had dashed him--but I dared not do this. I was forced to
+content myself with less, and was about to offer to send one of my men
+with her, when a hurried knocking at the outer door arrested the words
+on my lips.
+
+Signing to her to stand still, I listened. The knocking was repeated,
+and grew each moment more urgent. There was a little grille, strongly
+wired, in the upper part of the door, and this I was about to open in
+order to learn what was amiss, when Simon's voice reached me from the
+farther side imploring me to open the door quickly. Doubting the lad's
+prudence, yet afraid to refuse lest I should lose some warning he had
+to give, I paused a second, and then undid the fastenings. The moment
+the door gave way he fell in bodily, crying out to me to bar it behind
+him. I caught a glimpse through the gap of a glare as of torches, and
+saw by this light half a dozen flushed faces in the act of rising
+above the edge of the landing. The men who owned them raised a shout
+of triumph at sight of me, and, clearing the upper steps at a bound,
+made a rush for the door. But in vain. We had just time to close it
+and drop the two stout bars. In a moment, in a second, the fierce
+outcry fell to a dull roar; and safe for the time, we had leisure to
+look in one another's faces and learn the different aspects of alarm.
+Madame was white to the lips, while Simon's eyes seemed starting from
+his head, and he shook in every limb with terror.
+
+At first, on my asking him what it meant, he could not speak. But that
+would not do, and I was in the act of seizing him by the collar to
+force an answer from him when the inner door opened, and the king came
+out, his face wearing an air of so much cheerfulness as proved both
+his satisfaction with mademoiselle's story and his ignorance of all we
+were about. In a word he had not yet taken the least alarm; but seeing
+Simon in my hands, and madame leaning against the wall by the door
+like one deprived of life, he stood and cried out in surprise to know
+what it was.
+
+'I fear we are besieged, sire,' I answered desperately, feeling my
+anxieties increased a hundredfold by his appearance--'but by whom I
+cannot say. This lad knows, however,' I continued, giving Simon a
+vicious shake, 'and he shall speak. Now, trembler,' I said to him,
+'tell your tale?'
+
+'The Provost-Marshal!' he stammered, terrified afresh by the king's
+presence: for Henry had removed his mask. 'I was on guard below. I had
+come up a few steps to be out of the cold, when I heard them enter.
+There are a round score of them.'
+
+I cried out a great oath, asking him why he had not gone up and warned
+Maignan, who with his men was now cut off from us in the rooms above.
+'You fool!' I continued, almost beside myself with rage, 'if you had
+not come to this door they would have mounted to my rooms and beset
+them! What is this folly about the Provost-Marshal?'
+
+'He is there,' Simon answered, cowering away from me, his face
+working.
+
+I thought he was lying, and had merely fancied this in his fright. But
+the assailants at this moment began to hail blows on the door, calling
+on us to open, and using such volleys of threats as penetrated even
+the thickness of the oak; driving the blood from the women's cheeks,
+and arresting the king's step in a manner which did not escape me.
+Among their cries I could plainly distinguish the words, 'In the
+king's name!' which bore out Simon's statement.
+
+At the moment I drew comfort from this; for if we had merely to deal
+with the law we had that on our side which was above it. And I
+speedily made up my mind what to do. 'I think the lad speaks the
+truth, sire,' I said coolly. 'This is only your Majesty's
+Provost-Marshal. The worst to be feared, therefore, is that he may
+learn your presence here before you would have it known. It should not
+be a matter of great difficulty, however, to bind him to silence, and
+if you will please to mask, I will open the grille and speak with
+him.'
+
+The king, who had taken his stand in the middle of the room, and
+seemed dazed and confused by the suddenness of the alarm and the
+uproar, assented with a brief word. Accordingly I was preparing to
+open the grille when Madame de Bruhl seized my arm, and forcibly
+pushed me back from it.
+
+'What would you do?' she cried, her face full of terror. 'Do you not
+hear? He is there.'
+
+'Who is there?' I said, startled more by her manner than her words.
+
+'Who?' she answered; 'who should be there? My husband! I hear his
+voice, I tell you! He has tracked me here! He has found me, and will
+kill me!'
+
+'God forbid!' I said, doubting if she had really heard his voice. To
+make sure, I asked Simon if he had seen him; and my heart sank when I
+heard from him too that Bruhl was of the party. For the first time I
+became fully sensible of the danger which threatened us. For the first
+time, looking round the ill-lit room on the women's terrified faces,
+and the king's masked figure instinct with ill-repressed nervousness,
+I recognised how hopelessly we were enmeshed. Fortune had served Bruhl
+so well that, whether he knew it or not, he had us all trapped--alike
+the king whom he desired to compromise, and his wife whom he hated,
+mademoiselle who had once escaped him, and me who had twice thwarted
+him. It was little to be wondered at if my courage sank as I looked
+from one to another, and listened to the ominous creaking of the door,
+as the stout panels complained under the blows rained upon them. For
+my first duty, and that which took the _pas_ of all others, was to the
+king--to save him harmless. How, then, was I to be answerable for
+mademoiselle, how protect Madame de Bruhl?--how, in a word, redeem all
+those pledges in which my honour was concerned?
+
+It was the thought of the Provost-Marshal which at this moment rallied
+my failing spirits. I remembered that until the mystery of his
+presence here in alliance with Bruhl was explained there was no need
+to despair; and turning briskly to the king I begged him to favour me
+by standing with the women in a corner which was not visible from the
+door. He complied mechanically, and in a manner which I did not like;
+but lacking time to weigh trifles, I turned to the grille and opened
+it without more ado.
+
+The appearance of my face at the trap was greeted with a savage cry of
+recognition, which subsided as quickly into silence. It was followed
+by a momentary pushing to and fro among the crowd outside, which in
+its turn ended in the Provost-Marshal coming to the front. 'In the
+king's name!' he said fussily.
+
+'What is it?' I replied, eyeing rather the flushed, eager faces which
+scowled over his shoulders than himself. The light of two links, borne
+by some of the party, shone ruddily on the heads of the halberds, and,
+flaring up from time to time, filled all the place with wavering,
+smoky light. 'What do you want?' I continued, 'rousing my lodging at
+this time of night?'
+
+'I hold a warrant for your arrest,' he replied bluntly. 'Resistance
+will be vain. If you do not surrender I shall send for a ram to break
+in the door.'
+
+'Where is your order?' I said sharply. 'The one you held this morning
+was cancelled by the king himself.'
+
+'Suspended only,' he answered. 'Suspended only. It was given out to me
+again this evening for instant execution. And I am here in pursuance
+of it, and call on you to surrender.'
+
+'Who delivered it to you?' I retorted.
+
+'M. de Villequier, 'he answered readily. 'And here it is. Now, come,
+sir,' he continued, 'you are only making matters worse. Open to us.'
+
+'Before I do so,' I said drily, 'I should like to know what part in
+the pageant my friend M. de Bruhl, whom I see on the stairs yonder,
+proposes to play. And there is my old friend Fresnoy,' I added. 'And I
+see one or two others whom I know, M. Provost. Before I surrender I
+must know among other things what M. de Bruhl's business is here.'
+
+'It is the business of every loyal man to execute the king's warrant,'
+the Provost answered evasively. 'It is yours to surrender, and mine to
+lodge you in the Castle. But I am loth to have a disturbance. I will
+give you until that torch goes out, if you like, to make up your mind.
+At the end of that time, if you do not surrender, I shall batter down
+the door.'
+
+'You will give the torch fair play?' I said, noting its condition.
+
+He assented; and thanking him sternly for this indulgence, I closed
+the grille.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                         TERMS OF SURRENDER.
+
+
+I still had my hand on the trap when a touch on the shoulder caused me
+to turn, and in a moment apprised me of the imminence of a new peril;
+a peril of such a kind that, summoning all my resolution, I could
+scarcely hope to cope with it. Henry was at my elbow. He had taken off
+his mask, and a single glance at his countenance warned me that that
+had happened of which I had already felt some fear. The glitter of
+intense excitement shone in his eyes. His face, darkly-flushed and wet
+with sweat, betrayed overmastering emotion, while his teeth, tight
+clenched in the effort to restrain the fit of trembling which
+possessed him, showed between his lips like those of a corpse. The
+novelty of the danger which menaced him, the absence of his gentlemen,
+and of all the familiar faces and surroundings without which he never
+moved, the hour, the mean house, and his isolation among strangers,
+had proved too much for nerves long weakened by his course of living,
+and for a courage, proved indeed in the field, but unequal to a sudden
+stress. Though he still strove to preserve his dignity, it was
+alarmingly plain to my eyes that he was on the point of losing, if he
+had not already lost, all self-command.
+
+'Open!' he muttered between his teeth, pointing impatiently to the
+trap with the hand with which he had already touched me. 'Open, I say,
+sir!'
+
+I stared at him, startled and confounded. 'But your Majesty,' I
+ventured to stammer, 'forgets that I have not yet----'
+
+'Open, I say!' he repeated passionately. 'Do you hear me, sir? I
+desire that this door be opened.' His lean hand shook as with the
+palsy, so that the gems on it twinkled in the light and rattled as he
+spoke.
+
+I looked helplessly from him to the women and back again, seeing in a
+flash all the dangers which might follow from the discovery of his
+presence there--dangers which I had not before formulated to myself,
+but which seemed in a moment to range themselves with the utmost
+clearness before my eyes. At the same time I saw what seemed to me to
+be a way of escape; and emboldened by the one and the other, I kept my
+hand on the trap and strove to parley with him.
+
+'Nay, but, sire,' I said hurriedly, yet still with as much deference
+as I could command, 'I beg you to permit me first to repeat what I
+have seen. M. de Bruhl is without, and I counted six men whom I
+believe to be his following. They are ruffians ripe for any crime; and
+I implore your Majesty rather to submit to a short imprisonment----'
+
+I paused struck dumb on that word, confounded by the passion which
+lightened in the king's face. My ill-chosen expression had indeed
+applied the spark to his wrath. Predisposed to suspicion by a hundred
+treacheries, he forgot the perils outside in the one idea which on the
+instant possessed his mind; that I would confine his person, and had
+brought him hither for no other purpose. He glared round him with eyes
+full of rage and fear, and his trembling lips breathed rather than
+spoke the word 'Imprison?'
+
+Unluckily, a trifling occurrence added at this moment to his disorder,
+and converted it into frenzy. Someone outside fell heavily against the
+door; this, causing madame to utter a low shriek, seemed to shatter
+the last remnant of the king's self-control. Stamping his foot on the
+floor, he cried to me with the utmost wildness to open the door--by
+which I had hitherto kept my place.
+
+But, wrongly or rightly, I was still determined to put off opening it;
+and I raised my hands with the intention of making a last appeal to
+him. He misread the gesture, and retreating a step, with the greatest
+suddenness whipped out his sword, and in a moment had the point at my
+breast, and his wrist drawn back to thrust.
+
+It has always been my belief that he would not have dealt the blow,
+but that the mere touch of the hilt, awaking the courage which he
+undoubtedly possessed, and which did not desert him in his last
+moments, would have recalled him to himself. But the opportunity was
+not given him, for while the blade yet quivered, and I stood
+motionless, controlling myself by an effort, my knee half bent and my
+eyes on his, Mademoiselle de la Vire sprang forward at his back, and
+with a loud scream clutched his elbow. The king, surprised, and
+ignorant who held him, flung up his point wildly, and striking the
+lamp above his head with his blade, shattered it in an instant,
+bringing down the pottery with a crash and reducing the room to
+darkness; while the screams of the women, and the knowledge that we
+had a madman among us, peopled the blackness with a hundred horrors.
+
+Fearing above all for mademoiselle, I made my way as soon as I could
+recover my wits to the embers of the fire, and regardless of the
+king's sword, which I had a vague idea was darting about in the
+darkness, I searched for and found a half-burnt stick, which I blew
+into a blaze. With this, still keeping my back to the room, I
+contrived to light a taper that I had noticed standing by the hearth;
+and then, and then only, I turned to see what I had to confront.
+
+Mademoiselle de la Vire stood in a corner, half-fierce,
+half-terrified, and wholly flushed. She had her hand wrapped up in a
+'kerchief already stained with blood; and from this I gathered that
+the king in his frenzy had wounded her slightly. Standing before her
+mistress, with her hair bristling, like a wild-cat's fur, and her arms
+akimbo, was Fanchette, her harsh face and square form instinct with
+fury and defiance. Madame de Bruhl and Simon cowered against the wall
+not far from them; and in a chair, into which he had apparently just
+thrown himself, sat the king, huddled up and collapsed, the point of
+his sword trailing on the ground beside him, and his nerveless hand
+scarce retaining force to grip the pommel.
+
+In a moment I made up my mind what to do, and going to him in silence,
+I laid my pistols, sword, and dagger on a stool by his side. Then I
+knelt.
+
+'The door, sire,' I said, 'is there. It is for your Majesty to open it
+when you please. Here, too, sire, are my weapons. I am your prisoner,
+the Provost-Marshal is outside, and you can at a word deliver me to
+him. Only one thing I beg, sire,' I continued earnestly, 'that your
+Majesty will treat as a delusion the idea that I meditated for a
+moment disrespect or violence to your person.'
+
+He looked at me dully, his face pale, his eyes fish-like. 'Sanctus,
+man!' he muttered, 'why did you raise your hand?'
+
+'Only to implore your Majesty to pause a moment,' I answered, watching
+the intelligence return slowly to his face. 'If you will deign to
+listen I can explain in half a dozen words, sire. M. de Bruhl's men
+are six or seven, the Provost has eight or nine; but the former are
+the wilder blades, and if M. de Bruhl find your Majesty in my lodging,
+and infer his own defeat, he will be capable of any desperate stroke.
+Your person would hardly be safe in his company through the streets.
+And there is another consideration,' I went on, observing with joy
+that the king listened, and was gradually regaining his composure.
+'That is, the secrecy you desired to preserve, sire, until this matter
+should be well advanced. M. de Rosny laid the strictest injunctions on
+me in that respect, fearing an _émeute_ in Blois should your Majesty's
+plans become known.'
+
+'You speak fairly,' the king answered with returning energy, though he
+avoided looking at the women. 'Bruhl is likely enough to raise one.
+But how am I to get out, sir?' he continued, querulously. 'I cannot
+remain here. I shall be missed, man! I am not a hedge-captain, neither
+sought nor wanted!'
+
+'If your Majesty would trust me?' I said slowly and with hesitation.
+
+'Trust you!' he retorted peevishly, holding up his hands and gazing
+intently at his nails, of the shape and whiteness of which he was
+prouder than any woman. 'Have I not trusted you? If I had not trusted
+you, should I have been here? But that you were a Huguenot--God
+forgive me for saying it!--I would have seen you in hell before I
+would have come here with you!'
+
+I confess to having heard this testimony to the Religion with a pride
+which made me forget for a moment the immediate circumstances--the
+peril in which we stood, the gloomy room darkly lighted by a single
+candle, the scared faces in the background, even the king's huddled
+figure, in which dejection and pride struggled for expression. For a
+moment only; then I hastened to reply, saying that I doubted not I
+could still extricate his Majesty without discovery.
+
+'In Heaven's name do it, then!' he answered sharply. 'Do what you
+like, man! Only get me back into the castle, and it shall not be a
+Huguenot will entice me out again. I am over old for these
+adventures!'
+
+A fresh attack on the door taking place as he said this induced me to
+lose no time in explaining my plan, which he was good enough to
+approve, after again upbraiding me for bringing him into such a
+dilemma. Fearing lest the door should give way prematurely,
+notwithstanding the bars I had provided for it, and goaded on by
+Madame de Bruhl's face, which evinced the utmost terror, I took the
+candle and attended his Majesty into the inner room; where I placed my
+pistols beside him, but silently resumed my sword and dagger. I then
+returned for the women, and indicating by signs that they were to
+enter, held the door open for them.
+
+Mademoiselle, whose bandaged hand I could not regard without emotion,
+though the king's presence and the respect I owed him forbade me to
+utter so much as a word, advanced readily until she reached the
+doorway abreast of me. There, however, looking back, and seeing Madame
+de Bruhl following her, she stopped short, and darting a haughty
+glance at me, muttered, 'And--that lady? Are we to be shut up
+together, sir?'
+
+'Mademoiselle,' I answered quickly in the low tone she had used
+herself, 'have I ever asked anything dishonourable of you?'
+
+She seemed by a slight movement of the head to answer in the negative.
+
+'Nor do I now,' I replied with earnestness. 'I entrust to your care a
+lady who has risked great peril for us; and the rest I leave to you.'
+
+She looked me very keenly in the face for a second, and then, without
+answering, she passed on, Madame and Fanchette following her in that
+order. I closed the door and turned to Simon; who by my direction had
+blown the embers of the fire into a blaze so as to partially illumine
+the room, in which only he and I now remained. The lad seemed afraid
+to meet my eye, and owing to the scene at which he had just assisted,
+or to the onslaught on the door, which grew each moment more furious,
+betrayed greater restlessness than I had lately observed in him. I did
+not doubt his fidelity, however, or his devotion to mademoiselle; and
+the orders I had to give him were simple enough.
+
+'This is what you have got to do,' I said, my hand already on the
+bars. 'The moment I am outside secure this door. After that, open to
+no one except Maignan. When he applies, let him in with caution, and
+bid him, as he loves M. de Rosny, take his men as soon as the coast is
+clear, and guard the King of France to the castle. Charge him to be
+brave and wary, for his life will answer for the king's.'
+
+Twice I repeated this; then fearing lest the Provost-Marshal should
+make good his word and apply a ram to the door, I opened the trap. A
+dozen angry voices hailed my appearance, and this with so much
+violence and impatience that it was some time before I could get a
+hearing; the knaves threatening me if I would not instantly open, and
+persisting that I should do so without more words. Their leader at
+length quieted them, but it was plain that his patience too was worn
+out. 'Do you surrender or do you not?' he said. 'I am not going to
+stay out of my bed all night for you!'
+
+'I warn you,' I answered, 'that the order you have there has been
+cancelled by the king!'
+
+'That is not my business,' he rejoined hardily.
+
+'No, but it will be when the king sends for you to-morrow morning, 'I
+retorted; at which he looked somewhat moved. 'However, I will
+surrender to you on two conditions,' I continued, keenly observing the
+coarse faces of his following. 'First, that you let me keep my arms
+until we reach the gate-house, I giving you my parole to come with you
+quietly. That is number one.'
+
+'Well,' the Provost-Marshal said more civilly, 'I have no objection to
+that.'
+
+'Secondly, that you do not allow your men to break into my lodgings. I
+will come out quietly, and so an end. Your order does not direct you
+to sack my goods.'
+
+^Tut, tut!' he replied; 'I want you to come out. I do not want to go
+in.'
+
+'Then draw your men back to the stairs,' I said. 'And if you keep
+terms with me, I will uphold you to-morrow. For your orders will
+certainly bring you into trouble. M. de Retz, who procured it this
+morning, is away, you know. M. de Villequier may be gone to-morrow.
+But depend upon it, M. de Rambouillet will be here!'
+
+The remark was well timed and to the point. It startled the man as
+much as I had hoped it would. Without raising any objection he ordered
+his men to fall back and guard the stairs; and I on my side began to
+undo the fastenings of the door.
+
+The matter was not to be so easily concluded, however; for Bruhl's
+rascals, in obedience, no doubt, to a sign given by their leader, who
+stood with Fresnoy on the upper flight of stairs, refused to withdraw;
+and even hustled the Provost-Marshal's men when the latter would have
+obeyed the order. The officer, already heated by delay, replied by
+laying about him with his staff, and in a twinkling there seemed to be
+every prospect of a very pretty _mêlée_, the end of which it was
+impossible to foresee.
+
+Reflecting, however, that if Bruhl's men routed their opponents our
+position might be made worse rather than better, I did not act on my
+first impulse, which was to see the matter out where I was. Instead, I
+seized the opportunity to let myself out, while Simon fastened the
+door behind me. The Provost-Marshal was engaged at the moment in a
+wordy dispute with Fresnoy; whose villainous countenance, scarred by
+the wound which I had given him at Chizé, and flushed with passion,
+looked its worst by the light of the single torch which remained. In
+one respect the villain had profited by his present patronage, for he
+was decked out in a style of tawdry magnificence. But I have always
+remarked this about dress, that while a shabby exterior does not
+entirely obscure a gentleman, the extreme of fashion is powerless to
+gild a knave.
+
+Seeing me on a sudden at the Provost's elbow, he recoiled with a
+change of countenance so ludicrous that that officer was himself
+startled, and only held his ground on my saluting him civilly and
+declaring myself his prisoner. I added a warning that he should look
+to the torch which remained; seeing that if it failed we were both
+like to have our throats cut in the confusion.
+
+He took the hint promptly, and calling the link-man to his side
+prepared to descend, bidding Fresnoy and his men, who remained clumped
+at the head of the stairs, make way for us without ado. They seemed
+much inclined, however, to dispute our passage, and replying to his
+invectives with rough taunts, displayed so hostile a demeanour that
+the Provost, between regard for his own importance and respect for
+Bruhl, appeared for a moment at a loss what to do; and seemed rather
+relieved than annoyed when I begged leave to say a word to M. de
+Bruhl.
+
+'If you can bring his men to reason,' he replied testily, 'speak your
+fill to him!'
+
+Stepping to the foot of the upper flight, on which Bruhl retained his
+position, I saluted him formally. He returned my greeting with a
+surly, watchful look only, and drawing his cloak more tightly round
+him affected to gaze down at me with disdain; which ill concealed,
+however, both the triumph he felt and the hopes of vengeance he
+entertained. I was especially anxious to learn whether he had tracked
+his wife hither, or was merely here in pursuance of his general
+schemes against me, and to this end I asked him with as much irony as
+I could compass to what I was to attribute his presence. 'I am afraid
+I cannot stay to offer you hospitality,' I continued; 'but for that
+you have only your friend M. Villequier to thank!'
+
+'I am greatly obliged to you,' he answered with a devilish smile, 'but
+do not let that affect you. When you are gone I propose to help
+myself, my friend, to whatever takes my taste.'
+
+'Do you?' I retorted coolly--not that I was unaffected by the threat
+and the villainous hint which underlay the words, but that, fully
+expecting them, I was ready with my answer. 'We will see about that.'
+And therewith I raised my fingers to my lips, and, whistling shrilly,
+cried 'Maignan! Maignan!' in a clear voice.
+
+I had no need to cry the name a third time, for before the
+Provost-Marshal could do more than start at this unexpected action,
+the landing above us rang under a heavy tread, and the man I called,
+descending the stairs swiftly, appeared on a sudden within arm's
+length of M. de Bruhl; who, turning with an oath, saw him, and
+involuntarily recoiled. At all times Maignan's hardy and confident
+bearing was of a kind to impress the strong; but on this occasion
+there was an added dash of recklessness in his manner which was not
+without its effect on the spectators. As he stood there smiling darkly
+over Bruhl's head, while his hand toyed carelessly with his dagger,
+and the torch shone ruddily on his burly figure, he was so clearly an
+antagonist in a thousand that, had I sought through Blois, I might not
+have found his fellow for strength and _sang-froid_. He let his black
+eyes rove from one to the other, but took heed of me only, saluting me
+with effusion and a touch of the Gascon which was in place here, if
+ever.
+
+I knew how M. de Rosny dealt with him, and followed the pattern as far
+as I could. 'Maignan!' I said curtly, 'I have taken a lodging for
+to-night elsewhere. When I am gone you will call out your men and
+watch this door. If anyone tries to force an entrance you will do your
+duty.'
+
+'You may consider it done,' he replied.
+
+'Even if the person be M. de Bruhl here,' I continued.
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'You will remain on guard,' I went on, 'until to-morrow morning if M.
+de Bruhl remains here; but whenever he leaves you will take your
+orders from the persons inside, and follow them implicitly.'
+
+'Your Excellency's mind may be easy,' he answered, handling his
+dagger.
+
+Dismissing him with a nod, I turned with a smile to M. de Bruhl, and
+saw that between rage at this unexpected check and chagrin at the
+insult put upon him, his discomfiture was as complete as I could wish.
+As for Fresnoy, if he had seriously intended to dispute our passage,
+he was no longer in the mood for the attempt. Yet I did not let his
+master off without one more prick. 'That being settled, M. de Bruhl,'
+I said pleasantly, 'I may bid you good evening. You will doubtless
+honour me at Chaverny tomorrow. But we will first let Maignan look
+under the bridge!'
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                             MEDITATIONS.
+
+
+Either the small respect I had paid M. de Bruhl, or the words I had
+let fall respecting the possible disappearance of M. Villequier, had
+had so admirable an effect on the Provost-Marshal's mind that from the
+moment of leaving my lodgings he treated me with the utmost civility;
+permitting me even to retain my sword, and assigning me a
+sleeping-place for the night in his own apartments at the Gate-house.
+
+Late as it was, I could not allow so much politeness to pass
+unacknowledged. I begged leave, therefore, to distribute a small
+gratuity among his attendants, and requested him to do me the honour
+of drinking a bottle of wine with me. This being speedily procured, at
+such an expense as is usual in these places, where prisoners pay,
+according as they are rich or poor, in purse or person, kept us
+sitting for an hour, and finally sent us to our pallets perfectly
+satisfied with one another.
+
+The events of the day, however, and particularly one matter, on which
+I have not dwelt at length, proved as effectual to prevent my sleeping
+as if I had been placed in the dampest cell below the castle. So much
+had been crowded into a time so short that it seemed as if I had had
+until now no opportunity of considering whither I was being hurried,
+or what fortune awaited me at the end of this turmoil. From the first
+appearance of M. d'Agen in the morning, with the startling news that
+the Provost-Marshal was seeking me, to my final surrender and
+encounter with Bruhl on the stairs, the chain of events had run out so
+swiftly that I had scarcely had time at any particular period to
+consider how I stood, or the full import of the latest check or
+victory. Now that I had leisure I lived the day over again, and,
+recalling its dangers and disappointments, felt thankful that all had
+ended so fairly.
+
+I had the most perfect confidence in Maignan, and did not doubt that
+Bruhl would soon weary, if he had not already wearied, of a profitless
+siege. In an hour at most--and it was not yet midnight--the king would
+be free to go home; and with that would end, as far as he was
+concerned, the mission with which M. de Rosny had honoured me. The
+task of communicating his Majesty's decision to the King of Navarre
+would doubtless be entrusted to M. de Rambouillet, or some person of
+similar position and influence; and in the same hands would rest the
+honour and responsibility of the treaty which, as we all know now,
+gave after a brief interval and some bloodshed, and one great
+providence, a lasting peace to France. But it must ever be--and I
+recognised this that night with a bounding heart, which told of some
+store of youth yet unexhausted--a matter of lasting pride to me that
+I, whose career but now seemed closed in failure, had proved the means
+of conferring so especial a benefit on my country and religion.
+
+Remembering, however, the King of Navarre's warning that I must not
+look to him for reward, I felt greatly doubtful in what direction the
+scene would next open to me; my main dependence being upon M. de
+Rosny's promise that he would make my fortune his own care. Tired of
+the Court at Blois, and the atmosphere of intrigue and treachery which
+pervaded it, and with which I hoped I had now done, I was still at a
+loss to see how I could recross the Loire in face of the Vicomte de
+Turenne's enmity. I might have troubled myself much more with
+speculating upon this point had I not found--in close connection with
+it--other and more engrossing food for thought in the capricious
+behaviour of Mademoiselle de la Vire.
+
+To that behaviour it seemed to me that I now held the clue. I
+suspected with as much surprise as pleasure that only one construction
+could be placed upon it--a construction which had strongly occurred to
+me on catching sight of her face when she intervened between me and
+the king.
+
+Tracing the matter back to the moment of our meeting in the
+antechamber at St. Jean d'Angely, I remembered the jest which
+Mathurine had uttered at our joint expense. Doubtless it had dwelt in
+mademoiselle's mind, and exciting her animosity against me had
+prepared her to treat me with contumely when, contrary to all
+probability, we met again, and she found herself placed in a manner in
+my hands. It had inspired her harsh words and harsher looks on our
+journey northwards, and contributed with her native pride to the low
+opinion I had formed of her when I contrasted her with my honoured
+mother.
+
+But I began to think it possible that the jest had worked in another
+way as well, by keeping me before her mind and impressing upon her the
+idea--after my re-appearance at Chizé more particularly--that our
+fates were in some way linked. Assuming this, it was not hard to
+understand her manner at Rosny when, apprised that I was no impostor,
+and regretting her former treatment of me, she still recoiled from the
+feelings which she began to recognise in her own breast. From that
+time, and with this clue, I had no difficulty in tracing her motives,
+always supposing that this suspicion, upon which I dwelt with feelings
+of wonder and delight, were well founded.
+
+Middle-aged and grizzled, with the best of my life behind me, I had
+never dared to think of her in this way before. Poor and comparatively
+obscure, I had never raised my eyes to the wide possessions said to be
+hers. Even now I felt myself dazzled and bewildered by the prospect so
+suddenly unveiled. I could scarcely, without vertigo, recall her as I
+had last seen her, with her hand wounded in my defence; nor, without
+emotions painful in their intensity, fancy myself restored to the
+youth of which I had taken leave, and to the rosy hopes and plannings
+which visit most men once only, and then in early years. Hitherto I
+had deemed such things the lot of others.
+
+Daylight found me--and no wonder--still diverting myself with these
+charming speculations; which had for me, be it remembered, all the
+force of novelty. The sun chanced to rise that morning in a clear sky,
+and brilliantly for the time of year; and words fail me when I look
+back, and try to describe how delicately this simple fact enhanced my
+pleasure! I sunned myself in the beams, which penetrated my barred
+window; and tasting the early freshness with a keen and insatiable
+appetite, I experienced to the full that peculiar aspiration after
+goodness which Providence allows such moments to awaken in us in
+youth; but rarely when time and the camp have blunted the
+sensibilities.
+
+I had not yet arrived at the stage at which difficulties have to be
+reckoned up, and the chief drawback to the tumult of joy I felt took
+the shape of regret that my mother no longer lived to feel the
+emotions proper to the time, and to share in the prosperity which she
+had so often and so fondly imagined. Nevertheless, I felt myself drawn
+closer to her. I recalled with the most tender feelings, and at
+greater leisure than had before been the case, her last days and
+words, and particularly the appeal she had uttered on mademoiselle's
+behalf. And I vowed, if it were possible, to pay a visit to her grave
+before leaving the neighbourhood, that I might there devote a few
+moments to the thought of the affection which had consecrated all
+women in my eyes.
+
+I was presently interrupted in these reflections by a circumstance
+which proved in the end diverting enough, though far from reassuring
+at the first blush. It began in a dismal rattling of chains in the
+passage below and on the stairs outside my room; which were paved,
+like the rest of the building, with stone. I waited with impatience
+and some uneasiness to see what would come of this; and my surprise
+may be imagined when, the door being unlocked, gave entrance to a man
+in whom I recognised on the instant deaf Matthew--the villain whom I
+had last seen with Fresnoy in the house in the Rue Valois. Amazed at
+seeing him here, I sprang to my feet in fear of some treachery, and
+for a moment apprehended that the Provost-Marshal had basely given me
+over to Bruhl's custody. But a second glance informing me that the man
+was in irons--hence the noise I had heard--I sat down again to see
+what would happen.
+
+It then appeared that he merely brought me my breakfast, and was a
+prisoner in less fortunate circumstances than myself; but as he
+pretended not to recognise me, and placed the things before me in
+obdurate silence, and I had no power to make him hear, I failed to
+learn how he came to be in durance. The Provost-Marshal, however,
+came presently to visit me, and brought me in token that the
+good-fellowship of the evening still existed a pouch of the Queen's
+herb; which I accepted for politeness' sake rather than from any
+virtue I found in it. And from him I learned how the rascal came to be
+in his charge.
+
+It appeared that Fresnoy, having no mind to be hampered with a wounded
+man, had deposited him on the night of our _mêlée_ at the door of a
+hospital attached to a religious house in that part or the town. The
+Fathers had opened to him, but before taking him in put, according to
+their custom, certain questions. Matthew had been primed with the
+right answers to these questions, which were commonly a form; but,
+unhappily for him, the Superior by chance or mistake began with the
+wrong one.
+
+'You are not a Huguenot, my son?' he said.
+
+'In God's name, I am!' Matthew replied with simplicity, believing he
+was asked if he was a Catholic.
+
+'What?' the scandalised Prior ejaculated, crossing himself in doubt,
+'are you not a true son of the Church?'
+
+'Never!' quoth our deaf friend--thinking all went well.
+
+'A heretic!' cried the monk.
+
+'Amen to that!' replied Matthew innocently; never doubting but that he
+was asked the third question, which was, commonly, whether he needed
+aid.
+
+Naturally after this there was a very pretty commotion, and Matthew,
+vainly protesting that he was deaf, was hurried off to the
+Provost-Marshal's custody. Asked how he communicated with him, the
+Provost answered that he could not, but that his little godchild, a
+girl only eight years old, had taken a strange fancy to the rogue, and
+was never so happy as when talking to him by means of signs, of which
+she had invented a great number. I thought this strange at the time,
+but I had proof before the morning was out that it was true enough,
+and that the two were seldom apart, the little child governing this
+grim cut-throat with unquestioned authority.
+
+After the Provost was gone I heard the man's fetters clanking again.
+This time he entered to remove my cup and plate, and surprised me by
+speaking to me. Maintaining his former sullenness, and scarcely
+looking at me, he said abruptly: 'You are going out again?'
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+'Do you remember a bald-faced bay horse that fell with you?' he
+muttered, keeping his dogged glance on the floor.
+
+I nodded again.
+
+'I want to sell the horse,' he said. 'There is not such another in
+Blois, no, nor in Paris! Touch it on the near hip with the whip and it
+will go down as if shot. At other times a child might ride it. It is
+in a stable, the third from the Three Pigeons, in the Ruelle Amancy.
+Fresnoy does not know where it is. He sent to ask yesterday, but I
+would not tell him.'
+
+Some spark of human feeling which appeared in his lowering, brutal
+visage as he spoke of the horse led me to desire further information.
+Fortunately the little girl appeared at that moment at the door in
+search of her playfellow; and through her I learned that the man's
+motive for seeking to sell the horse was fear lest the dealer in whose
+charge it stood should dispose of it to repay himself for its keep,
+and he, Matthew, lose it without return.
+
+Still I did not understand why he applied to me, but I was well
+pleased when I learned the truth. Base as the knave was, he had an
+affection for the bay, which had been his only property for six years.
+Having this in his mind, he had conceived the idea that I should treat
+it well, and should not, because he was in prison and powerless, cheat
+him of the price.
+
+In the end I agreed to buy the horse for ten crowns, paying as well
+what was due at the stable. I had it in my head to do something also
+for the man, being moved to this partly by an idea that there was good
+in him, and partly by the confidence he had seen fit to place in me,
+which seemed to deserve some return. But a noise below stairs diverted
+my attention. I heard myself named, and for the moment forgot the
+matter.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                          TO ME, MY FRIENDS!
+
+
+I was impatient to learn who had come, and what was their errand with
+me; and being still in that state of exaltation in which we seem to
+hear and see more than at other times, I remarked a peculiar lagging
+in the ascending footsteps, and a lack of buoyancy, which was quick to
+communicate itself to my mind. A vague dread fell upon me as I stood
+listening. Before the door opened I had already conceived a score of
+disasters. I wondered that I had not inquired earlier concerning the
+king's safety, and in fine I experienced in a moment that complete
+reaction of the spirits which is too frequently consequent upon an
+excessive flow of gaiety.
+
+I was prepared, therefore, for heavy looks, but not for the persons
+who wore them nor the strange bearing the latter displayed on
+entering. My visitors proved to be M. d'Agen and Simon Fleix. And so
+far well. But the former, instead of coming forward to greet me with
+the punctilious politeness which always characterised him, and which I
+had thought to be proof against every kind of surprise and peril, met
+me with downcast eyes and a countenance so gloomy as to augment my
+fears a hundredfold; since it suggested all those vague and formidable
+pains which M. de Rambouillet had hinted might await me in a prison. I
+thought nothing more probable than the entrance after them of a gaoler
+laden with gyves and handcuffs; and saluting M. François with a face
+which, do what I would, fashioned itself upon his, I had scarce
+composure sufficient to place the poor accommodation of my room at his
+disposal.
+
+He thanked me; but he did it with so much gloom and so little
+naturalness that I grew more impatient with each laboured syllable.
+Simon Fleix had slunk to the window and turned his back on us. Neither
+seemed to have anything to say. But a state of suspense was one which
+I could least endure to suffer; and impatient of the constraint which
+my friend's manner was fast imparting to mine, I asked him at once and
+abruptly if his uncle had returned.
+
+'He rode in about midnight,' he answered, tracing a pattern on the
+floor with the point of his riding-switch.
+
+I felt some surprise on hearing this, since d'Agen was still dressed
+and armed for the road, and was without all those prettinesses which
+commonly marked his attire. But as he volunteered no further
+information, and did not even refer to the place in which he found me,
+or question me as to the adventures which had lodged me there, I let
+it pass, and asked him if his party had overtaken the deserters.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, 'with no result.'
+
+'And the king?'
+
+'M. de Rambouillet is with him now,' he rejoined, still bending over
+his tracing.
+
+This answer relieved the worst of my anxieties, but the manner of the
+speaker was so distrait and so much at variance with the studied
+_insouciance_ which he usually affected, that I only grew more
+alarmed. I glanced at Simon Fleix, but he kept his face averted, and I
+could gather nothing from it; though I observed that he, too, was
+dressed for the road, and wore his arms. I listened, but I could hear
+no sounds which indicated that the Provost-Marshal was approaching.
+Then on a sudden I thought of Mademoiselle de la Vire. Could it be
+that Maignan had proved unequal to his task?
+
+I started impetuously from my stool under the influence of the emotion
+which this thought naturally aroused, and seized M. d'Agen by the arm.
+'What has happened?' I exclaimed. 'Is it Bruhl? Did he break into my
+lodgings last night? What!' I continued, staggering back as I read the
+confirmation of my fears in his face. 'He did?'
+
+M. d'Agen, who had risen also, pressed my hand with convulsive energy.
+Gazing into my face, he held me a moment thus embraced, his manner a
+strange mixture of fierceness and emotion. 'Alas, yes,' he answered,
+'he did, and took away those whom he found there! Those whom he found
+there, you understand! But M. de Rambouillet is on his way here, and
+in a few minutes you will be free. We will follow together. If we
+overtake them--well. If not, it will be time to talk.'
+
+He broke off, and I stood looking at him, stunned by the blow, yet in
+the midst of my own horror and surprise retaining sense enough to
+wonder at the gloom on his brow and the passion which trembled in his
+words. What had this to do with him? 'But Bruhl?' I said at last,
+recovering myself with an effort--'how did he gain access to the room?
+I left it guarded.'
+
+'By a ruse, while Maignan and his men were away,' was the answer.
+'Only this lad of yours was there. Bruhl's men overpowered him.'
+
+'Which way has Bruhl gone?' I muttered, my throat dry, my heart
+beating wildly.
+
+He shook his head. 'All we know is that he passed through the south
+gate with eleven horsemen, two women, and six led horses, at daybreak
+this morning,' he answered. 'Maignan came to my uncle with the news,
+and M. de Rambouillet went at once, early as it was, to the king to
+procure your release. He should be here now.'
+
+I looked at the barred window, the most horrible fears at my heart;
+from it to Simon Fleix, who stood beside it, his attitude expressing
+the utmost dejection. I went towards him. 'You hound!' I said in a low
+voice, 'how did it happen?'
+
+To my surprise he fell in a moment on his knees, and raised his arm as
+though to ward off a blow. 'They imitated Maignan's voice,' he
+muttered hoarsely. 'We opened.'
+
+'And you dare to come here and tell me!' I cried, scarcely restraining
+my passion. 'You, to whom I. entrusted her. You, whom I thought
+devoted to her. You have destroyed her, man!'
+
+He rose as suddenly as he had cowered down. His thin, nervous face
+underwent a startling change; growing on a sudden hard and rigid,
+while his eyes began to glitter with excitement. 'I--I have destroyed
+her? Ay, mon dieu! I _have_,' he cried, speaking to my face, and no
+longer flinching or avoiding my eye. 'You may kill me, if you like.
+You do not know all. It was I who stole the favour she gave you from
+your doublet, and then said M. de Rosny had taken it! It was I who
+told her you had given it away! It was I who brought her to the Little
+Sisters', that she might see you with Madame de Bruhl! It was I who
+did all, and destroyed her! Now you know! Do with me what you like!'
+
+He opened his arms as though to receive a blow, while I stood before
+him astounded beyond measure by a disclosure so unexpected; full of
+righteous wrath and indignation, and yet uncertain what I ought to do.
+'Did you also let Bruhl into the room on purpose?' I cried at last.
+
+'I?' he exclaimed, with a sudden flash of rage in his eyes. 'I would
+have died first!'
+
+I do not know how I might have taken this confession; but at the
+moment there was a trampling of horses outside, and before I could
+answer him I heard M. de Rambouillet speaking in haughty tones, at the
+door below. The Provost-Marshal was with him, but his lower notes were
+lost in the ring of bridles and the stamping of impatient hoofs. I
+looked towards the door of my room, which stood ajar, and presently
+the two entered, the Marquis listening with an air of contemptuous
+indifference to the apologies which the other, who attended at his
+elbow, was pouring forth. M. de Rambouillet's face reflected none of
+the gloom and despondency which M. d'Agen's exhibited in so marked a
+degree. He seemed, on the contrary, full of gaiety and good-humour,
+and, coming forward and seeing me, embraced me with the utmost
+kindness and condescension.
+
+'Ha! my friend,' he said cheerfully, 'so I find you here after all!
+But never fear. I am this moment from the king with an order for your
+release. His Majesty has told me all, making me thereby your lasting
+friend and debtor. As for this gentleman,' he continued, turning with
+a cold smile to the Provost-Marshal, who seemed to be trembling in his
+boots, 'he may expect an immediate order also. M. de Villequier has
+wisely gone a-hunting, and will not be back for a day or two.'
+
+Racked as I was by suspense and anxiety, I could not assail him with
+immediate petitions. It behoved me first to thank him for his prompt
+intervention, and this in terms as warm as I could invent. Nor could I
+in justice fail to commend the Provost to him, representing the
+officer's conduct to me, and lauding his ability. All this, though my
+heart was sick with thought and fear and disappointment, and every
+minute seemed an age.
+
+'Well, well,' the Marquis said with stately good-nature, we will lay
+the blame on Villequier then. He is an old fox, however, and ten to
+one he will go scot-free. It is not the first time he has played this
+trick. But I have not yet come to the end of my commission,' he
+continued pleasantly. 'His Majesty sends you this, M. de Marsac, and
+bade me say that he had loaded it for you.'
+
+He drew from under his cloak as he spoke the pistol which I had left
+with the king, and which happened to be the same M. de Rosny had given
+me. I took it, marvelling impatiently at the careful manner in which
+he handled it; but in a moment I understood, for I found it loaded to
+the muzzle with gold-pieces, of which two or three fell and rolled
+upon the floor. Much moved by this substantial mark of the king's
+gratitude, I was nevertheless for pocketing them in haste; but the
+Marquis, to satisfy a little curiosity on his part, would have me
+count them, and brought the tale to a little over two thousand livres,
+without counting a ring set with precious stones which I found among
+them. This handsome present diverted my thoughts from Simon Fleix, but
+could not relieve the anxiety I felt on mademoiselle's account. The
+thought of her position so tortured me that M. de Rambouillet began to
+perceive my state of mind, and hastened to assure me that before going
+to the Court he had already issued orders calculated to assist me.
+
+'You desire to follow this lady, I understand?' he said. 'What with
+the king, who is enraged beyond the ordinary by this outrage, and
+François there, who seemed beside himself when he heard the news, I
+have not got any very clear idea of the position.'
+
+'She was entrusted to me by--by one, sir, well known to you,' I
+answered hoarsely. 'My honour is engaged to him and to her. If I
+follow on my feet and alone, I must follow. If I cannot save her, I
+can at least punish the villains who have wronged her.'
+
+'But the man's wife is with them,' he said in some wonder.
+
+'That goes for nothing,' I answered.
+
+He saw the strong emotion under which I laboured, and which scarcely
+suffered me to answer him with patience; and he looked at me
+curiously, but not unkindly. 'The sooner you are off, the better
+then,' he said, nodding. 'I gathered as much. The man Maignan will
+have his fellows at the south gate an hour before noon, I understand.
+François has two lackeys, and he is wild to go. With yourself and the
+lad there you will muster nine swords. I will lend you two. I can
+spare no more, for we may have an _émeute_ at any moment. You will
+take the road, therefore, eleven in all, and should overtake them some
+time to-night if your horses are in condition.'
+
+I thanked him warmly, without regarding his kindly statement that my
+conduct on the previous day had laid him under lasting obligations to
+me. We went down together, and he transferred two of his fellows to me
+there and then, bidding them change their horses for fresh ones and
+meet me at the south gate. He sent also a man to my stable--Simon
+Fleix having disappeared in the confusion--for the Cid, and was in the
+act of inquiring whether I needed anything else, when a woman slipped
+through the knot of horsemen who surrounded us as we stood in the
+doorway of the house, and, throwing herself upon me, grasped me by the
+arm. It was Fanchette. Her harsh features were distorted with grief,
+her cheeks were mottled with the violent weeping in which such persons
+vent their sorrow. Her hair hung in long wisps on her neck. Her dress
+was torn and draggled, and there was a great bruise over her eye. She
+had the air of one frantic with despair and misery.
+
+She caught me by the cloak, and shook me so that I staggered. 'I have
+found you at last!' she cried joyfully. 'You will take me with you!
+You will take me to her!'
+
+Though her words tried my composure, and my heart went out to her, I
+strove to answer her according to the sense of the matter. 'It is
+impossible,' I said sternly. 'This is a man's errand. We shall have to
+ride day and night, my good woman.'
+
+'But I will ride day and night too!' she replied passionately,
+flinging the hair from her eyes, and looking wildly from me to M. de
+Rambouillet. 'What would I not do for her? I am as strong as a man,
+and stronger. Take me, take me, I say, and when I meet that villain I
+will tear him limb from limb!'
+
+I shuddered, listening to her; but remembering that, being country
+bred, she was really as strong as she said, and that likely enough
+some advantage might accrue to us from her perfect fidelity and
+devotion to her mistress, I gave a reluctant consent. I sent one of M.
+de Rambouillet's men to the stable where the deaf man's bay was
+standing, bidding him pay whatever was due to the dealer, and bring
+the horse to the south gate; my intention being to mount one of my men
+on it, and furnish the woman with a less tricky steed.
+
+The briskness of these and the like preparations, which even for one
+of my age and in my state of anxiety were not devoid of pleasure,
+prevented my thoughts dwelling on the future. Content to have M.
+François' assistance without following up too keenly the train of
+ideas which his readiness suggested, I was satisfied also to make use
+of Simon without calling him to instant account for his treachery. The
+bustle of the streets, which the confirmation of the king's speedy
+departure had filled with surly, murmuring crowds, tended still
+further to keep my fears at bay; while the contrast between my
+present circumstances, as I rode through them well-appointed and
+well-attended, with the Marquis by my side, and the poor appearance I
+had exhibited on my first arrival in Blois, could not fail to inspire
+me with hope that I might surmount this danger also, and in the event
+find Mademoiselle safe and uninjured. I took leave of M. de
+Rambouillet with many expressions of esteem on both sides, and a few
+minutes before eleven reached the rendezvous outside the south gate.
+
+M. d'Agen and Maignan advanced to meet me, the former still presenting
+an exterior so stern and grave that I wondered to see him, and could
+scarcely believe he was the same gay spark whose elegant affectations
+had more than once caused me to smile. He saluted me in silence;
+Maignan with a sheepish air, which ill-concealed the savage temper
+defeat had roused in him. Counting my men, I found we mustered ten
+only, but the equerry explained that he had despatched a rider ahead
+to make inquiries and leave word for us at convenient points; to the
+end that we might follow the trail with as few delays as possible.
+Highly commending Maignan for his forethought in this, I gave the word
+to start, and crossing the river by the St. Gervais Bridge, we took
+the road for Selles at a smart trot.
+
+The weather had changed much in the last twenty-four hours. The sun
+shone brightly, with a warm west wind, and the country already showed
+signs of the early spring which marked that year. If, the first hurry
+of departure over, I had now leisure to feel the gnawing of anxiety
+and the tortures inflicted by an imagination which, far outstripping
+us, rode with those whom we pursued and shared their perils, I found
+two sources of comfort still open to me. No man who has seen service
+can look on a little band of well-appointed horsemen without pleasure.
+I reviewed the stalwart forms and stern faces which moved beside me,
+and comparing their decent order and sound equipments with the scurvy
+foulness of the men who had ridden north with me, thanked God, and
+ceased to wonder at the indignation which Matthew and his fellows had
+aroused in mademoiselle's mind. My other source of satisfaction, the
+regular beat of hoofs and ring of bridles continually augmented. Every
+step took us farther from Blois--farther from the close town and
+reeking streets and the Court; which, if it no longer seemed to me a
+shambles, befouled by one great deed of blood--experience had removed
+that impression--retained an appearance infinitely mean and miserable
+in my eyes. I hated and loathed its intrigues and its jealousies, the
+folly which trifled in a closet while rebellion mastered France, and
+the pettiness which recognised no wisdom save that of balancing party
+and party. I thanked God that my work there was done, and could have
+welcomed any other occasion that forced me to turn my back on it, and
+sent me at large over the pure heaths, through the woods, and under
+the wide heaven, speckled with moving clouds.
+
+But such springs of comfort soon ran dry. M. d'Agen's gloomy rage and
+the fiery gleam in Maignan's eye would have reminded me, had I been in
+any danger of forgetting the errand on which we were bound, and the
+need, exceeding all other needs, which compelled us to lose no moment
+that might be used. Those whom we followed had five hours' start. The
+thought of what might happen in those five hours to the two helpless
+women whom I had sworn to protect burned itself into my mind; so that
+to refrain from putting spurs to my horse and riding recklessly
+forward taxed at times all my self-control. The horses seemed to
+crawl. The men rising and falling listlessly in their saddles maddened
+me. Though I could not hope to come upon any trace of our quarry for
+many hours, perhaps for days, I scanned the long, flat heaths
+unceasingly, searched every marshy bottom before we descended into it,
+and panted for the moment when the next low ridge should expose to our
+view a fresh track of wood and waste. The rosy visions of the past
+night, and those fancies in particular which had made the dawn
+memorable, recurred to me, as his deeds in the body (so men say) to a
+hopeless drowning wretch. I grew to think of nothing but Bruhl and
+revenge. Even the absurd care with which Simon avoided the
+neighbourhood of Fanchette, riding anywhere so long as he might
+ride at a distance from the angry woman's tongue and hand--which
+provoked many a laugh from the men, and came to be the joke of the
+company--failed to draw a smile from me.
+
+We passed through Contres, four leagues from Blois, an hour after
+noon, and three hours later crossed the Cher at Selles, where we
+stayed awhile to bait our horses. Here we had news of the party before
+us, and henceforth had little doubt that Bruhl was making for the
+Limousin; a district in which he might rest secure under the
+protection of Turenne, and safely defy alike the King of France and
+the King of Navarre. The greater the necessity, it was plain, for
+speed; but the roads in that neighbourhood, and forward as far as
+Valancy, proved heavy and foundrous, and it was all we could do to
+reach Levroux with jaded horses three hours after sunset. The
+probability that Bruhl would lie at Châteauroux, five leagues farther
+on--for I could not conceive that under the circumstances he would
+spare the women,--would have led me to push forward had it been
+possible; but the darkness and the difficulty of finding a guide who
+would venture deterred me from the hopeless attempt, and we stayed the
+night where we were.
+
+Here we first heard of the plague; which was said to be ravaging
+Châteauroux and all the country farther south. The landlord of the inn
+would have regaled us with many stories of it, and particularly of the
+swiftness with which men and even cattle succumbed to its attacks. But
+we had other things to think of, and between anxiety and weariness had
+clean forgotten the matter when we rose next morning.
+
+We started shortly after daybreak, and for three leagues pressed on at
+tolerable speed. Then, for no reason stated, our guide gave us the
+slip as we passed through a wood, and was seen no more. We lost the
+road, and had to retrace our steps. We strayed into a slough, and
+extracted ourselves with difficulty. The man who was riding the bay I
+had purchased forgot the secret which I had imparted to him, and got
+an ugly fall. In fine, after all these mishaps it wanted little of
+noon, and less to exhaust our patience, when at length we came in
+sight of Châteauroux.
+
+Before entering the town we had still an adventure; for we came at a
+turn in the road on a scene as surprising as it was at first
+inexplicable. A little north of the town, in a coppice of box facing
+the south and west, we happed suddenly on a rude encampment,
+consisting of a dozen huts and booths, set back from the road and
+formed, some of branches of evergreen trees laid clumsily together,
+and some of sacking stretched aver poles. A number of men and women of
+decent appearance lay on the short grass before the booths, idly
+sunning themselves; or moved about, cooking and tending fires, while a
+score of children raced to and fro with noisy shouts and laughter. The
+appearance of our party on the scene caused an instant panic. The
+women and children fled screaming into the wood, spreading the sound
+of breaking branches farther and farther as they retreated; while the
+men, a miserable pale-faced set, drew together, and seeming half
+inclined to fly also, regarded us with glances of fear and suspicion.
+
+Remarking that their appearance and dress were not those of vagrants,
+while the booths seemed to indicate little skill or experience in the
+builders, I bade my companions halt, and advanced alone.
+
+'What is the meaning of this, my men?' I said, addressing the first
+group I reached. 'You seem to have come a-Maying before the time.
+Whence are you?'
+
+'From Châteauroux,' the foremost answered sullenly. His dress, now I:
+saw him nearer, seemed to be that of a respectable townsman.
+
+'Why?' I replied. 'Have you no homes?'
+
+'Ay we have homes,' he answered with the same brevity.
+
+'Then why, in God's name, are you here?' I retorted, marking the
+gloomy air and downcast faces of the group. 'Have you been harried?'
+
+'Ay, harried by the Plague!' he answered bitterly. 'Do you mean to say
+you have not heard? In Châteauroux there is one man dead in three.
+Take my advice, sir--you are a brave company--turn, and go home
+again.'
+
+'Is it as bad as that?' I exclaimed. I had forgotten the landlord's
+gossip, and the explanation struck me with the force of surprise.
+
+'Ay, is it! Do you see the blue haze?' he continued, pointing with a
+sudden gesture to the lower ground before us, over which a light pall
+of summery vapour hung still and motionless. 'Do you see it? Well,
+under that there is death! You may find food in Châteauroux, and
+stalls for your horses, and a man to take money; for there are still
+men there. But cross the Indre, and you will see sights worse than a
+battle-field a week old! You will find no living soul in house or
+stable or church, but corpses plenty. The land is cursed! cursed for
+heresy, some say! Half are dead, and half are fled to the woods! And
+if you do not die of the plague, you will starve.'
+
+'God forbid!' I muttered, thinking with a shudder of those before us.
+This led me to ask him if a party resembling ours in number, and
+including two women, had passed that way. He answered, Yes, after
+sunset the evening before; that their horses were stumbling with
+fatigue and the men swearing in pure weariness. He believed that they
+had not entered the town, but had made a rude encampment half a mile
+beyond it; and had again broken this up, and ridden southwards two or
+three hours before our arrival.
+
+'Then we may overtake them to-day?' I said.
+
+'By your leave, sir,' he answered, with grave meaning. 'I think you
+are more likely to meet them.'
+
+Shrugging my shoulders, I thanked him shortly and left him; the full
+importance of preventing my men hearing what I had heard--lest the
+panic which possessed these townspeople should seize on them
+also--being already in my mind. Nevertheless the thought came too
+late, for on turning my horse I found one of the foremost, a long,
+solemn-faced man, had already found his way to Maignan's stirrup;
+where he was dilating so eloquently upon the enemy which awaited us
+southwards that the countenances of half the troopers were as long as
+his own, and I saw nothing for it but to interrupt his oration by a
+smart application of my switch to his shoulders. Having thus stopped
+him, and rated him back to his fellows, I gave the word to march. The
+men obeyed mechanically, we swung into a canter, and for a moment the
+danger was over.
+
+But I knew that it would recur again and again. Stealthily marking the
+faces round me, and listening to the whispered talk which went on, I
+saw the terror spread from one to another. Voices which earlier in the
+day had been raised in song and jest grew silent. Great reckless
+fellows of Maignan's following, who had an oath and a blow for all
+comers, and to whom the deepest ford seemed to be child's play, rode
+with drooping heads and knitted brows; or scanned with ill-concealed
+anxiety the strange haze before us, through which the roofs of the
+town, and here and there a low hill or line of poplars, rose to
+plainer view. Maignan himself, the stoutest of the stout, looked
+grave, and had lost his swaggering air. Only three persons preserved
+their _sang-froid_ entire. Of these, M. d'Agen rode as if he had heard
+nothing, and Simon Fleix as if he feared nothing; while Fanchette,
+gazing eagerly forward, saw, it was plain, only one object in the
+mist, and that was her mistress's face.
+
+We found the gates of the town open, and this, which proved to be the
+herald of stranger sights, daunted the hearts of my men more than the
+most hostile reception. As we entered, our horses' hoofs, clattering
+loudly on the pavement, awoke a hundred echoes in the empty houses to
+right and left. The main street, flooded with sunshine, which made its
+desolation seem a hundred times more formidable, stretched away before
+us, bare and empty; or haunted only by a few slinking dogs, and
+prowling wretches, who fled, affrighted at the unaccustomed sounds, or
+stood and eyed us listlessly as we passed. A bell tolled; in the
+distance we heard the wailing of women. The silent ways, the black
+cross which marked every second door, the frightful faces which once
+or twice looked out from upper windows and blasted our sight, infected
+my men with terror so profound and so ungovernable that at last
+discipline was forgotten; and one shoving his horse before another in
+narrow places, there was a scuffle to be first. One, and then a
+second, began to trot. The trot grew into a shuffling canter. The
+gates of the inn lay open, nay seemed to invite us to enter; but no
+one turned or halted. Moved by a single-impulse we pushed breathlessly
+on and on, until the open country was reached, and we who had entered
+the streets in silent awe, swept out and over the bridge as if the
+fiend were at our heels.
+
+That I shared in this flight causes me no shame even now, for my men
+were at the time ungovernable, as the best-trained troops are when
+seized by such panics; and, moreover, I could have done no good by
+remaining in the town, where the strength of the contagion was
+probably greater and the inn larder like to be as bare as the
+hillside. Few towns are without a hostelry outside the gates for the
+convenience of knights of the road or those who would avoid the dues,
+and Châteauroux proved no exception to this rule. A short half-mile
+from the walls we drew rein before a second encampment raised about a
+wayside house. It scarcely needed the sound of music mingled with
+brawling voices to inform us that the wilder spirits of the town had
+taken refuge here, and were seeking to drown in riot and debauchery,
+as I have seen happen in a besieged place, the remembrance of the
+enemy which stalked; abroad in the sunshine. Our sudden appearance,
+while it put a stop to the mimicry of mirth, brought out a score of
+men and women in every stage of drunkenness and dishevelment, of whom
+some, with hiccoughs and loose gestures, cried to us to join them,
+while others swore horridly at being recalled to the present, which,
+with the future, they were endeavouring to forget.
+
+I cursed them in return for a pack of craven wretches, and threatening
+to ride down those who obstructed; us, ordered my men forward; halting
+eventually a quarter of a mile farther on, where a wood of groundling
+oaks which still wore last year's leaves afforded fair shelter. Afraid
+to leave my men myself, lest some should stray to the inn and others
+desert altogether, I requested M. d'Agen to return thither with
+Maignan and Simon, and bring us what forage and food we required. This
+he did with perfect success, though not until after a scuffle, in
+which Maignan showed himself a match for a hundred. We watered the
+horses at a neighbouring brook, and assigning two hours to rest and:
+refreshment--a great part of which M. d'Agen and I spent walking up
+and down in  moody silence, each immersed in his own thoughts--we
+presently took the road again with renewed spirits.
+
+But a panic is not easily shaken off, nor is any fear so difficult to
+combat and defeat as the fear of the invisible. The terrors which food
+and drink had for a time thrust out presently returned with sevenfold
+force. Men looked uneasily in one another's faces, and from them to
+the haze which veiled all distant objects. They muttered of the heat,
+which was sudden, strange, and abnormal at that time of the year. And
+by-and-by they had other things to speak of. We met a man, who ran
+beside us and begged of us, crying out in a dreadful voice that his
+wife and four children lay unburied in the house. A little farther on,
+beside a well, the corpse of a woman with a child at her breast lay
+poisoning the water; she had crawled to it to appease her thirst, and
+died of the draught. Last of all, in a beech-wood near Lotier we came
+upon a lady I living in her coach, with one or two panic-stricken
+women for her only attendants. Her husband was in Paris, she told me;
+half her servants were dead, the rest had fled. Still she retained in
+a remarkable degree both courage and courtesy, and accepting with
+fortitude my reasons and excuses for perforce, leaving her in such a
+plight, gave me a clear account of Bruhl and his party, who had passed
+her some hours before. The picture of this lady gazing after us with
+perfect good-breeding, as we rode away at speed, followed by the
+lamentations of her women, remains with me to this day; filling my
+mind at once with admiration and melancholy. For, as I learned later,
+she fell ill of the plague where we left her in the beech-wood, and
+died in a night with both her servants.
+
+The intelligence we had from her inspired us to push forward, sparing
+neither spur nor horseflesh, in the hope that we might overtake Bruhl
+before night should expose his captives to fresh hardships and
+dangers. But the pitch to which the dismal sights and sounds I have
+mentioned, and a hundred like them, had raised the fears of my
+following did much to balk my endeavours. For a while, indeed, under
+the influence of momentary excitement, they spurred their horses to
+the gallop, as if their minds were made up to face the worst; but
+presently they checked them despite all my efforts, and, lagging
+slowly and more slowly, seemed to lose all spirit and energy. The
+desolation which met our eyes on every side, no less than the
+death-like stillness which prevailed, even the birds, as it seemed to
+us, being silent, chilled the most reckless to the heart. Maignan's
+face lost its colour, his voice its ring. As for the rest, starting at
+a sound and wincing if a leather galled them, they glanced backwards
+twice for once they looked forwards, and held themselves ready to take
+to their heels and be gone at the least alarm.
+
+Noting these signs, and doubting if I could trust even Maignan, I
+thought it prudent to change my place, and falling to the rear, rode
+there with a grim face and a pistol ready to my hand. It was not the
+least of my annoyances that M. d'Agen appeared to be ignorant of any
+cause for apprehension save such as lay before us, and riding on in
+the same gloomy fit which had possessed him from the moment of
+starting, neither sought my opinion nor gave his own, but seemed to
+have undergone so complete and mysterious a change that I could think
+of one thing only that could have power to effect so marvellous a
+transformation. I felt his presence a trial rather than a help, and
+reviewing the course of our short friendship, which a day or two
+before had been so great a delight to me--as the friendship of a young
+man commonly is to one growing old--I puzzled myself with much
+wondering whether there could be rivalry between us.
+
+Sunset, which was welcome to my company, since it removed the haze,
+which they regarded with superstitious dread, found us still plodding
+through a country of low ridges and shallow valleys, both clothed in
+oak-woods. Its short brightness died away, and with it my last hope of
+surprising Bruhl before I slept. Darkness fell upon us as we wended
+our way slowly down a steep hillside where the path was so narrow and
+difficult as to permit only one to descend at a time. A stream of some
+size, if we might judge from the noise it made, poured through the
+ravine below us, and presently, at the point where we believed the
+crossing to be, we espied a solitary light shining in the blackness.
+To proceed farther was impossible, for the ground grew more and more
+precipitous; and, seeing this, I bade Maignan dismount, and leaving us
+where we were, go for a guide to the house from which the light
+issued.
+
+He obeyed, and plunging into the night, which in that pit between the
+hills was of an inky darkness, presently returned with a peasant and a
+lanthorn. I was about to bid the man guide us to the ford, or to some
+level ground where we could picket the horses, when Maignan gleefully
+cried out that he had news. I asked what news.
+
+'Speak up, _manant!_' he said, holding up his lanthorn so that the
+light fell on the man's haggard face and unkempt hair. 'Tell his
+Excellency what you have told me, or I will skin you alive, little
+man!'
+
+'Your other party came to the ford an hour before sunset,' the peasant
+answered, staring dully at us. 'I saw them coming, and hid myself.
+They quarrelled by the ford. Some were for crossing, and some not.'
+
+'They had ladies with them?' M. d'Agen said suddenly.
+
+'Ay, two, your Excellency,' the clown answered, 'riding like men. In
+the end they did not cross for fear of the plague, but turned up the
+river, and rode westwards towards St. Gaultier.'
+
+'St. Gaultier!' I said. 'Where is that? Where does the road to it go
+to besides?'
+
+But the peasant's knowledge was confined to his own neighbourhood. He
+knew no world beyond St. Gaultier, and could not answer my question. I
+was about to bid him show us the way down, when Maignan cried out that
+he knew more.
+
+'What?' I asked.
+
+'Arnidieu! he heard them say where they were going to spend the
+night!
+
+'Ha!' I cried. 'Where?'
+
+'In an old ruined castle two leagues from this, and between here and
+St. Gaultier,' the equerry answered, forgetting in his triumph both
+plague and panic. 'What do you I say to that, your Excellency?' It is
+so, sirrah, is it not?' he continued; turning to the peasant. 'Speak,
+Master Jacques, or I will roast you before a slow fire!'
+
+But I did not wait to hear the answer. Leaping to the ground, I took
+the Cid's rein on my arm, and cried impatiently to the man to lead us
+down.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                       THE CASTLE ON THE HILL.
+
+
+The certainty that Bruhl and his captives were not far off, and the
+likelihood that we might be engaged within the hour, expelled from the
+minds of even the most, timorous among us the vapourish fears which
+had before haunted them. In the hurried scramble which presently
+landed us on the bank of the stream, men who had ridden for hours in
+sulky silence found their voices, and from cursing their horses'
+blunders soon advanced to swearing and singing after the fashion of
+their kind. This change, by relieving me of a great fear, left me at
+leisure to consider our position, and estimate more clearly than I
+might have done the advantages of hastening, or postponing, an attack.
+We numbered eleven; the enemy, to the best of my belief, twelve. Of
+this slight superiority I should have recked little in the daytime;
+nor, perhaps, counting Maignan as two, have allowed that it existed.
+But the result of a night attack is more difficult to forecast; and I
+had also to take into account the perils to which the two ladies would
+be exposed, between the darkness and tumult, in the event of the issue
+remaining for a time in doubt.
+
+These  considerations, and particularly the last, weighed so
+powerfully with me, that before I reached the bottom of the gorge I
+had decided to postpone I the attack until morning. The answers to
+some questions which I put to the inhabitant of the house by the ford
+as soon as I reached level ground only confirmed me in this
+resolution. The road Bruhl had taken ran for a distance by the
+riverside, and along the bottom of the gorge; and, difficult by day,
+was repotted to be impracticable for horses by night. The castle he
+had mentioned lay full two leagues away, and on the farther edge of a
+tract of rough woodland. Finally, I doubted whether, in the absence of
+any other reason for delay, I could have marched my men, weary as they
+were, to the place before day break.
+
+When I came to announce this decision, however, and to inquire what
+accommodation the peasant could afford us, I found myself in trouble.
+Fauchette, mademoiselle's woman, suddenly confronted me, her face
+scarlet with rage. Thrusting herself forward into the circle of light
+cast by the lanthorn, she assailed me with a virulence and fierceness
+which said more for her devotion to her mistress than her respect for
+me. Her wild gesticulations, her threats, and the appeals which she
+made now to me, and now to the men who stood in a circle round us,
+their faces in shadow, discomfited as much as they surprised me.
+
+'What!' she cried violently, 'you call yourself a gentleman, and lie
+here and let my mistress be murdered, or worse, within a league of
+you! Two leagues? A groat for your two leagues! I would walk them
+barefoot, if that would shame you. And you, you call yourselves men,
+and suffer it! It is God's truth you are a set of cravens and
+sluggards. Give me as many women, and I would----'
+
+'Peace, woman!' Maignan said in his deep voice. 'You had your way and
+came with us, and you will obey orders as well as another! Be off, and
+see to the victuals before worse happen to you!'
+
+'Ay, see to the victuals!' she retorted. 'See to the victuals,
+forsooth! That is all you think of--to lie warm and eat your fill! A
+set of dastardly, drinking, droning guzzlers you are! You are!' she
+retorted, her voice rising to a shriek. 'May the plague take you!'
+
+'Silence!' Maignan growled fiercely, 'or have a care to yourself! For
+a copper-piece I would send you to cool your heels in the water
+below--for that last word! Begone, do you hear,' he continued, seizing
+her by the shoulder and thrusting her towards the house, 'or worse may
+happen to you. We are rough customers, as you will find if you do not
+lock up your tongue!'
+
+I heard her go wailing into the darkness; and Heaven knows it was not
+without compunction I forced myself to remain inactive in the face of
+a devotion which seemed so much greater than mine. The men fell away
+one by one to look to their horses and choose sleeping-quarters for
+the night; and presently M. d'Agen and I were left alone standing
+beside the lanthorn, which the man had hung on a bush before his door.
+The brawling of the water as it poured between the banks, a score of
+paces from us, and the black darkness which hid everything beyond the
+little ring of light in which we stood--so that for all we could see
+we were in a pit--had the air of isolating us from all the world.
+
+I looked at the young man, who had not once lisped that day; and I
+plainly read in his attitude his disapproval of my caution. Though he
+declined to meet my eye, he stood with his arms folded and his head
+thrown back, making no attempt to disguise the scorn and ill-temper
+which his face expressed. Hurt by the woman's taunts, and possibly
+shaken in my opinion, I grew restive under his silence, and unwisely
+gave way to my feelings.
+
+'You do not appear to approve of my decision, M. d'Agen?' I said.
+
+'It is yours to command, sir,' he answered proudly.
+
+There are truisms which have more power to annoy than the veriest
+reproaches. I should have borne in mind the suspense and anxiety he
+was suffering, and which had so changed him that I scarcely knew him
+for the gay young spark on whose toe I had trodden. I should have
+remembered that he was young and I old, and that it behoved me to be
+patient. But on my side also there was anxiety, and responsibility as
+well; and, above all, a rankling soreness, to which I refrain from
+giving the name of jealousy, though it came as near to that feeling as
+the difference in our ages and personal advantages (whereof the
+balance was all on his side) would permit. This, no doubt, it was
+which impelled me to continue the argument.
+
+'You would go on?' I said persistently.
+
+'It is idle to say what I would do,' he answered with a flash of
+anger.
+
+'I asked for your opinion, sir,' I rejoined stiffly.
+
+'To what purpose?' he retorted, stroking his small moustache
+haughtily. 'We look at the thing from opposite points. You are going
+about your business, which appears to be the rescuing of ladies who
+are--may I venture to say it?--so unfortunate as to entrust themselves
+to your charge. I, M. de Marsac, am more deeply interested. More
+deeply interested,' he repeated lamely. 'I--in a word, I am prepared,
+sir, to do what others only talk of--and if I cannot, follow
+otherwise, would follow on my feet!'
+
+'Whom?' I asked curtly, stung by this repetition of my own words.
+
+He laughed harshly and bitterly. 'Why explain? or why quarrel?' he
+replied cynically. 'God knows, if I could afford to quarrel with you,
+I should; have done so fifty hours ago. But I need your help; and,
+needing it, I am prepared I to do that which must seem to a person
+of your calm passions and perfect judgment alike futile and
+incredible--pay the full price for it.'
+
+'The full price for it!' I muttered, understanding nothing, except
+that I did not understand.
+
+'Ay, the full price for it!' he repeated. And as he spoke he looked at
+me with an expression of rage so fierce that I recoiled a step. That
+seemed to restore him in some degree to himself, for without giving me
+an opportunity of answering he turned hastily from me, and, striding
+away, was in a moment lost in the darkness.
+
+He left me amazed beyond measure. I stood repeating his phrase about
+'the full price' a hundred times over, but still found it and his
+passion inexplicable. To cut the matter short, I could come to no
+other conclusion than that he desired to insult me, and aware of my
+poverty and the equivocal position in which I stood towards
+mademoiselle, chose his words accordingly. This seemed a thing
+unworthy of one of whom I had before thought highly; but calmer
+reflection enabling me to see something of youthful bombast in the
+tirade he had delivered, I smiled a little sadly, and determined to
+think no more of the matter for the present, but to persist firmly in
+that which seemed to me to be the right course.
+
+Having settled this, I was about to enter the house, when Maignan
+stopped me, telling me that the plague had killed five people in it,
+letting only the man we had seen; who had, indeed, been seized, but
+recovered. This ghastly news had scared my company to such a degree
+that they had gone as far from the house as the level ground
+permitted, and there lighted a fire, round which they were going to
+pass the night. Fanchette had taken up her quarters in the stable, and
+the equerry announced that he had kept a shed full of sweet, hay for
+M. d'Agen and myself. I assented to this arrangement, and after
+supping off soup and black bread, which was all we could procure, bade
+the peasant rouse us two hours before sunrise; and so, being too weary
+and old in service to remain awake thinking, I fell asleep, and slept;
+soundly till a little after four.
+
+My first business on rising was to see that the men before mounting
+made a meal, for it is ill work fighting empty. I went round also and
+saw that all had their arms, and that such as carried pistols had them
+loaded and primed. M. François did not put in an appearance until this
+work was done, and then showed a very pale and gloomy countenance. I
+took no heed of him, however, and with the first streak of daylight we
+started in single file and at a snail's pace up the valley, the
+peasant, whom I placed in Maignan's charge, going before to guide us,
+and M. d'Agen and I riding in the rear. By the time the sun rose and
+warmed our chilled and shivering frames we were over the worst of the
+ground, and were able to advance at some speed along, a track cut
+through a dense forest of oak-trees.
+
+Though we had now risen out of the valley, the close-set trunks and
+the undergrowth round them prevented our seeing in any direction. For
+a mile or more we rode on blindly, and presently started on finding
+ourselves on the brow of a hill, looking down into a valley, the
+nearer end of which was clothed in woods, while the farther widened
+into green sloping pastures. From the midst of these a hill or mount
+rose sharply up, until it ended in walls of grey stone scarce to be
+distinguished at that distance from the native rock on which they
+stood.
+
+'See!' cried our guide. 'There is the castle!'
+
+Bidding the men dismount in haste, that the chance of our being seen
+by the enemy--which was not great--might be farther lessened, I began
+to inspect the position at leisure; my first feeling while doing so
+being one of thankfulness that I had not attempted a night attack,
+which must inevitably have miscarried, possibly with loss to
+ourselves, and certainly with the result of informing the enemy of our
+presence. The castle, of which we had a tolerable view, was long and
+narrow in shape, consisting of two towers connected by walls. The
+nearer tower, through which lay the entrance, was roofless, and in
+every way seemed to be more ruinous than the inner one, which appeared
+to be perfect in both its stories. This defect notwithstanding, the
+place was so strong that my heart sank lower the longer I looked; and
+a glance at Maignan's face assured me that his experience was also at
+fault. For M. d'Agen, I clearly saw, when I turned to him, that he had
+never until this moment realised what we had to expect, but, regarding
+our pursuit in the light of a hunting-party, had looked to see it end
+in like easy fashion. His blank, surprised face, as he stood eyeing
+the stout grey walls, said as much as this.
+
+'Arnidieu!' Maignan muttered, 'give me ten men, and I would hold it
+against a hundred!'
+
+'Tut, man, there is more than one way to Rome!' I answered oracularly,
+though I was far from feeling as confident as I seemed. 'Come, let us
+descend and view this nut a little nearer.'
+
+We began to trail downwards in silence, and as the path led us for a
+while out of sight of the castle, we were able to proceed with less
+caution. We had nearly reached without adventure the farther skirts of
+the wood, between which and the ruin lay an interval of open ground,
+when we came suddenly, at the edge of a little clearing, on an old
+hag; who was so intent upon tying up faggots that she did not see us
+until Maignan's hand was on her shoulder. When she did, she screamed
+out, and escaping from him with an activity wonderful in a woman of
+her age, ran with great swiftness to the side of an old man who lay at
+the foot of a tree half a bowshot off; and whom we had not before
+seen. Snatching up an axe, she put herself in a posture of defence
+before him with gestures and in a manner as touching in the eyes of
+some among us as they were ludicrous in those of others; who cried to
+Maignan that he had met his match at last, with other gibes of the
+kind that pass current in camps.
+
+I called to him to let her be, and went forward myself to the old man,
+who lay on a rude bed of leaves, and seemed unable to rise. Appealing
+to me with a face of agony not to hurt his wife, he bade her again and
+again lay down her axe; but she would not do this until I had assured
+her that we meant him no harm, and that my men should molest neither
+the one nor the other.
+
+'We only want to know this,' I said, speaking slowly, in fear lest my
+language should be little more intelligible to them than their
+_patois_ to me. 'There are a dozen horsemen in the old castle there,
+are there not?'
+
+The man stilled his wife, who continued to chatter and mow at us, and
+answered eagerly that there were; adding, with a trembling oath, that
+the robbers had beaten him, robbed him of his small store of meal, and
+when he would have protested, thrown him out, breaking his leg.
+
+'Then how came you here?' I said.
+
+'She brought me on her back,' he answered feebly.
+
+Doubtless there were men in my train who would have done all that
+these others had done; but hearing the simple story told, they stamped
+and swore great oaths of indignation; and one, the roughest of the
+party, took out some black bread and gave it to the woman, whom under
+other circumstances he would not have hesitated to rob. Maignan, who
+knew all arts appertaining to war, examined the man's leg and made a
+kind of cradle for it, while I questioned the woman.
+
+'They are there still?' I said. 'I saw their horses tethered under the
+walls.'
+
+'Yes, God requite them!' she answered, trembling violently.
+
+'Tell me about the castle, my good woman,' I said. 'How many roads
+into it are there?'
+
+'Only one.'
+
+'Through the nearer tower?'
+
+She said yes, and finding that she understood me, and was less dull of
+intellect than her wretched appearance led me to expect, I put a
+series of questions to her which it would be tedious to detail.
+Suffice it that I learned that it was impossible to enter or leave the
+ruin except through the nearer tower; that a rickety temporary, gate
+barred the entrance, and that from this tower, which was a mere shell
+of four walls, a narrow square-headed doorway without a door led into
+the court, beyond, which rose the habitable tower of two stories.
+
+'Do you know if they intend to stay there?' I asked.
+
+'Oh, ay, they bade me bring them faggots for their fire this morning,
+and I should have a handful of my own meal back,' she answered
+bitterly; and fell thereon into a passion of impotent rage, shaking
+both her clenched hands in the direction of the castle, and screaming
+frenzied maledictions in her cracked and quavering voice.
+
+I pondered awhile over what she had said; liking very little the
+thought of that narrow square-headed doorway through which we must
+pass before we could effect anything. And the gate, too, troubled me.
+It might not be a strong one, but we had neither powder, nor guns, nor
+any siege implements, and could not pull down stone walls with our
+naked hands. By seizing the horses we could indeed cut off Bruhl's
+retreat; but he might still escape in the night; and in any case our
+pains would only increase the women's hardships while adding fuel to
+his rage. We must have some other plan.
+
+The sun was high by this time; the edge of the wood scarcely a hundred
+paces from us. By advancing a few yards through the trees I could see
+the horses feeding peacefully at the foot of the sunny slope, and even
+follow with my eyes the faint track which zigzagged up the hill to
+the closed gate. No one appeared--doubtless they were sleeping off
+the fatigue of the journey--and I drew no inspiration thence; but as
+I turned to consult Maignan my eye lit on the faggots, and I saw in a
+flash that here was a chance of putting into practice a stratagem as
+old as the hills, yet ever fresh, and not seldom successful.
+
+It was no time for over-refinement. My knaves were beginning to stray
+forward out of curiosity, and at any moment one of our horses,
+scenting those of the enemy, might neigh and give the alarm. Hastily
+calling M. d'Agen and Maignan to me, I laid my plan before them, and
+satisfied myself that it had their approval; the fact that I had
+reserved a special part for the former serving to thaw the reserve
+which had succeeded to his outbreak, of the night before. After some
+debate Maignan persuaded me that the old woman had not sufficient
+nerve to play the part I proposed for her, and named Fanchette; who
+being called into council, did not belie the opinion we had formed of
+her courage. In a few moments our preparations were complete: I had
+donned the old charcoal-burner's outer rags, Fanchette had assumed
+those of the woman, while M. d'Agen, who was for a time at a loss, and
+betrayed less taste for this part of the plan than for any other,
+ended by putting on the jerkin and hose of the man who had served us
+as guide.
+
+When all was ready I commended the troop to Maignan's discretion,
+charging him in the event of anything happening to us to continue the
+most persistent efforts for mademoiselle's release, and on no account
+to abandon her. Having received his promise to this effect, and being
+satisfied that he would keep it, we took up each of us a great faggot,
+which being borne on the head and shoulders served to hide the
+features very effectually; and thus disguised we boldly left the
+shelter of the trees. Fanchette and I went first, tottering in a most
+natural fashion under the weight of our burdens, while M. d'Agen
+followed a hundred yards behind. I had given Maignan orders to make a
+dash for the gate the moment he saw the last named start to run.
+
+The perfect stillness of the valley, the clearness of the air, and the
+absence of any sign of life in the castle before us--which might have
+been that of the Sleeping Princess, so fairy-like it looked against
+the sky--with the suspense and excitement in our own breasts, which
+these peculiarities seemed to increase a hundred-fold, made the time
+that followed one of the strangest in my experience. It was nearly ten
+o'clock, and the warm sunshine flooding everything about us rendered
+the ascent, laden as we were, laborious in the extreme. The crisp,
+short turf, which had scarcely got its spring growth, was slippery and
+treacherous. We dared not hasten, for we knew not what eyes were upon
+us, and we dared as little after we had gone half-way--lay our faggots
+down, lest the action should disclose too much of our features.
+
+When we had reached a point within a hundred paces of the gate, which
+still remained obstinately closed, we stood to breathe ourselves, and
+balancing my bundle on my head, I turned to make sure that all was
+right behind us. I found that M. d'Agen, intent on keeping his
+distance, had chosen the same moment for rest, and was sitting in a
+very natural manner on his faggot, mopping his face with the sleeve of
+his jerkin. I scanned the brown leafless wood, in which we had left
+Maignan and our men; but I could detect no glitter among the trees nor
+any appearance likely to betray us. Satisfied on these points, I
+muttered a few words of encouragement to Fanchette, whose face was
+streaming with perspiration; and together we turned and addressed
+ourselves to our task, fatigue--for we had had no practice in carrying
+burdens on the head--enabling us to counterfeit the decrepitude of age
+almost to the life.
+
+The same silence prevailing as we drew nearer inspired me with not a
+few doubts and misgivings. Even the bleat of a sheep would have been
+welcome in the midst of a stillness which seemed ominous. But no sheep
+bleated, no voice hailed us. The gate, ill-hung and full of fissures,
+remained closed. Step by step we staggered up to it, and at length
+reached it. Afraid to speak lest my accent should betray me, I struck
+the forepart of my faggot against it and waited: doubting whether our
+whole stratagem had not been perceived from the beginning, and a
+pistol-shot might not be the retort.
+
+Nothing of the kind happened, however. The sound of the blow, which
+echoed dully through the building, died away, and the old silence
+resumed its sway. We knocked again, but fully two minutes elapsed
+before a grumbling voice, as of a man aroused from sleep, was heard
+drawing near, and footsteps came slowly and heavily to the gate.
+Probably the fellow inspected us through a loophole, for he paused a
+moment, and my heart sank; but the next, seeing nothing suspicious, he
+unbarred the gate with a querulous oath, and, pushing it open, bade us
+enter and be quick about it.
+
+I stumbled forward into the cool, dark shadow, and the woman followed
+me, while the man, stepping out with a yawn, stood in the entrance,
+stretching himself in the sunshine. The roofless tower, which smelled
+dank and unwholesome, was empty, or cumbered only with rubbish and
+heaps of stones; but looking through the inner door I saw in the
+courtyard a smouldering fire and half a dozen men in the act of
+rousing themselves from sleep. I stood a second balancing my faggot,
+as if in doubt where to lay it down; and then assuring myself by a
+swift glance that the man who had let us in still had his back towards
+us, I dropped it across the inner doorway. Fanchette, as she had been
+instructed, plumped hers upon it, and at the same moment I sprang to
+the door, and taking the man there by surprise, dealt him a violent
+blow between the shoulders, which sent him headlong down the slope.
+
+A cry behind me, followed by an oath of alarm, told me that the action
+was observed and that now was the pinch. In a second I was back at the
+faggots, and drawing a pistol from under my blouse was in time to meet
+the rush of the nearest man, who, comprehending all, sprang up, and
+made for me, with his sheathed sword. I shot him in the chest as he
+cleared the faggots--which, standing nearly as high as a man's waist,
+formed a tolerable obstacle--and he pitched forward at my feet.
+
+This balked his companions, who drew back; but unfortunately it was
+necessary for me to stoop to get my sword, which was hidden in the
+faggot I had carried. The foremost of the rascals took advantage of
+this. Rushing at me with a long knife, he failed to stab me--for I
+caught his wrist--but he succeeded in bringing me to the ground. I
+thought I was undone. I looked to have the others swarm over upon us;
+and so it would doubtless have happened had not Fanchette, with rare
+courage, dealt the first who followed a lusty blow on the body with a
+great stick she snatched up. The man collapsed on the faggots, and
+this hampered the rest. The check was enough. It enabled M. d'Agen to
+come up, who, dashing in through the gate, shot down the first he saw
+before him, and running at the doorway with his sword with incredible
+fury and the courage which I had always known him to possess, cleared
+it in a twinkling. The man with whom I was engaged on the ground,
+seeing what had happened, wrested himself free with the strength of
+despair, and dashing through the outer door, narrowly escaped being
+ridden down by my followers as they swept up to the gate at a gallop,
+and dismounted amid a whirlwind of cries.
+
+In a moment they thronged in on us pell-mell, and as soon as I could
+lay my hand on my sword I led them through the doorway with a cheer,
+hoping to be able to enter the farther tower with the enemy. But the
+latter had taken the alarm too early and too thoroughly. The court was
+empty. We were barely in time to see the last man dart up a flight of
+outside stairs, which led to the first story, and disappear, closing a
+heavy door behind him. I rushed to the foot of the steps and would
+have ascended also, hoping against hope to find the door unsecured;
+but a shot which was fired through a loop hole and narrowly missed my
+head, and another which brought down one of my men, made me pause.
+Discerning all the advantage to be on Bruhl's side, since he could
+shoot us down from his cover, I cried a retreat; the issue of the
+matter leaving us masters of the entrance-tower, while they retained
+the inner and stronger tower, the narrow court between the two being
+neutral ground unsafe for either party.
+
+Two of their men had fled outwards and were gone, and two lay dead;
+while the loss on our side was confined to the man who was shot, and
+Fanchette, who had received a blow on the head in the _mêlée_, and was
+found, when we retreated, lying sick and dazed against the wall.
+
+It surprised me much, when I came to think upon it, that I had seen
+nothing of Bruhl, though the skirmish had lasted two or three minutes
+from the first outcry, and been attended by an abundance of noise. Of
+Fresnoy, too, I now remembered that I had caught a glimpse only. These
+two facts seemed so strange that I was beginning to augur the worst,
+though I scarcely know why, when my spirits were marvellously raised
+and my fears relieved by a thing which Maignan, who was the first to
+notice it, pointed out to me. This was the appearance at an upper
+window of a white 'kerchief, which was waved several times towards us.
+The window was little more than an arrow-slit, and so narrow and high
+besides that it was impossible to see who gave the signal; but my
+experience of mademoiselle's coolness and resource left me in no doubt
+on the point. With high hopes and a lighter heart than I had worn for
+some time I bestirred myself to take every precaution, and began by
+bidding Maignan select two men and ride round the hill, to make sure
+that the enemy had no way of retreat open to him.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                        PESTILENCE AND FAMINE.
+
+
+While Maignan was away about this business I despatched two men to
+catch our horses, which were running loose in the valley, and to
+remove those of Bruhl's party to a safe distance from the castle. I
+also blocked up the lower part of the door leading into the courtyard,
+and named four men to remain under arms beside it, that we might not
+be taken by surprise; an event of which I had the less fear, however,
+since the enemy were now reduced to eight swords, and could only
+escape, as we could only enter, through this doorway. I was still
+busied with these arrangements when M. d'Agen joined me, and I broke
+off to compliment him on his courage, acknowledging in particular the
+service he had done me personally. The heat of the conflict had melted
+the young man's reserve, and flushed his face with pride; but as he
+listened to me he gradually froze again, and when I ended he regarded
+me with the same cold hostility.
+
+'I am obliged to you,' he said, bowing. 'But may I ask what next, M.
+de Marsac?'
+
+'We have no choice,' I answered. 'We can only starve them out.'
+
+'But the ladies?' he said, starting slightly. 'What of them?'
+
+'They will suffer less than the men,' I replied. 'Trust me, the latter
+will not bear starving long.'
+
+He seemed surprised, but I explained that with our small numbers we
+could not hope to storm the tower, and might think ourselves fortunate
+that we now had the enemy cooped up where he could not escape, and
+must eventually surrender.
+
+'Ay, but in the meantime how will you ensure the women against
+violence?' he asked, with an air which showed he was far from
+satisfied.
+
+'I will see to that when Maignan comes back,' I answered pretty
+confidently.
+
+The equerry appeared in a moment with the assurance that egress from
+the farther side of the tower was impossible. I bade him nevertheless
+keep a horseman moving round the hill, that we might have intelligence
+of any attempt. The order was scarcely given when a man--one of those
+I had left on guard at the door of the courtyard--came to tell me that
+Fresnoy desired to speak with me on behalf of M. de Bruhl.
+
+'Where is he?' I asked.
+
+'At the inner door with a flag of truce,' was the answer.
+
+'Tell him, then,' I said, without offering to move, 'that I will
+communicate with no one except his leader, M. de Bruhl. And add this,
+my friend,' I continued. 'Say it aloud: that if the ladies whom he has
+in charge are injured by so much as a hair, I will hang every man
+within these walls, from M. de Bruhl to the youngest lackey.' And I
+added a solemn oath to that effect.
+
+The man nodded, and went on his errand, while I and M. d'Agen, with
+Maignan, remained standing outside the gate, looking idly over the
+valley and the brown woods through which we had ridden in the early
+morning. My eyes rested chiefly on the latter, Maignan's as it proved
+on the former. Doubtless we all had our own thoughts. Certainly I had,
+and for a while, in my satisfaction at the result of the attack and
+the manner in which we had Bruhl confined, I did not remark the
+gravity which was gradually overspreading the equerry's countenance.
+When I did I took the alarm, and asked him sharply what was the
+matter.
+
+'I don't like that, your Excellency,' he answered, pointing into the
+valley.
+
+I looked anxiously, and looked, and saw nothing.
+
+'What?' I said in astonishment.
+
+'The blue mist,' he muttered, with a shiver. 'I have been watching it
+this half-hour, your Excellency. It is rising fast.'
+
+I cried out on him for a maudlin fool, and M. d'Agen swore
+impatiently; but for all that, and despite the contempt I strove to
+exhibit, I felt a sudden chill at my heart as I recognised in the
+valley below the same blue haze which had attended us through
+yesterday's ride, and left us only at nightfall. Involuntarily we both
+fell to watching it as it rose slowly and more slowly, first
+enveloping the lower woods, and then spreading itself abroad in the
+sunshine. It is hard to witness a bold man's terror and remain
+unaffected by it; and I confess I trembled. Here, in the moment of our
+seeming success, was something which I had not taken into account,
+something against which I could not guard either myself or others!
+
+'See!' Maignan whispered hoarsely, pointing again with his linger. 'It
+is the Angel of Death, your Excellency! Where he kills by ones and
+twos, he is invisible. But when he slays by hundreds and by thousands,
+men see the shadow of his wings!'
+
+'Chut, fool!' I retorted with, anger, which was secretly proportioned
+to the impression his weird saying made on me. 'You have been in
+battles! Did you ever see him there? or at a sack? A truce to this
+folly,' I continued. 'And do you go and inquire what food we have with
+us. It may be necessary to send for some.'
+
+I watched him go doggedly off, and knowing the stout nature of the man
+and his devotion to his master, I had no fear that he would fail us;
+but there were others, almost as necessary to us, in whom I could not
+place the same confidence. And these had also taken the alarm. When I
+turned I found groups of pale-faced men, standing by twos and threes
+at my back; who, pointing and muttering and telling one another what
+Maignan had told us, looked where we had looked. As one spoke and
+another listened, I saw the old panic revive in their eyes. Men who an
+hour or two before had crossed the court under fire with the utmost
+resolution, and dared instant death without a thought, grew pale, and
+looking from this side of the valley to that; with faltering eyes,
+seemed to be seeking, like hunted animals, a place of refuge. Fear,
+once aroused, hung is the air. Men talked in whispers of the abnormal
+heat, and, gazing at the cloudless sky, fled from the sunshine to the
+shadow; or, looking over the expanse of woods, longed to be under
+cover and away from this lofty eyrie, which to their morbid eyes
+seemed a target for all the shafts of death.
+
+I was not slow to perceive the peril with which these fears and
+apprehensions, which rapidly became general, threatened my plans. I
+strove to keep the men employed, and to occupy their thoughts as far
+as possible with the enemy and his proceedings; but I soon found that
+even here a danger lurked; for Maignan, coming to me by-and-by with a
+grave face, told me that one of Bruhl's men had ventured out, and was
+parleying with the guard on our side of the court. I went at once and
+broke the matter off, threatening to shoot the fellow if he was not
+under cover before I counted ten. But the scared, sultry faces he left
+behind him told me that the mischief was done, and I could think of no
+better remedy for it than to give M. d'Agen a hint, and station him at
+the outer gate with his pistols ready.
+
+The question of provisions, too, threatened to become a serious one; I
+dared not leave to procure them myself, nor could I trust any of my
+men with the mission. In fact the besiegers were rapidly becoming the
+besieged. Intent on the rising haze and their own terrors, they forgot
+all else. Vigilance and caution were thrown to the winds. The
+stillness of the valley, its isolation, the distant woods that
+encircled us and hung quivering in the heated air, all added to the
+panic. Despite all my efforts and threats, the men gradually left
+their posts, and getting together in little parties at the gate,
+worked themselves up to such a pitch of dread that by two hours after
+noon they were fit for any folly; and at the mere cry of 'plague!'
+would have rushed to their horses and ridden in every direction.
+
+It was plain that I could depend for useful service on myself and
+three others only--of whom, to his credit be it said, Simon Fleix was
+one. Seeing this, I was immensely relieved when I presently heard that
+Fresnoy was again seeking to speak with me. I was no longer, it will
+be believed, for standing on formalities; but glad to waive in silence
+the punctilio on which I had before insisted, and anxious to afford
+him no opportunity of marking the slackness which prevailed among my
+men, I hastened to meet him at the door of the courtyard where Maignan
+had detained him.
+
+I might have spared my pains, however. I had no more than saluted him
+and exchanged the merest preliminaries before I saw that he was in a
+state of panic far exceeding that of my following. His coarse face,
+which had never been prepossessing, was mottled and bedabbled with
+sweat; his bloodshot eyes, when they met mine, wore the fierce yet
+terrified expression of an animal caught in a trap. Though his first
+word was an oath, sworn for the purpose of raising his courage, the
+bully's bluster was gone. He spoke in a low voice, and his hands
+shook; and for a penny-piece I saw he would have bolted past me and
+taken his chance in open flight.
+
+I needed nothing after this to assure me that he meditated something
+of the basest; and I took care how I answered him. 'I have known you
+stiff enough upon occasions,' I replied drily. 'And then, again, I
+have known you not so stiff, M. Fresnoy.'
+
+'Only when you were in question,' he muttered with another oath. 'But
+flesh and blood cannot stand this. You could not yourself. Between him
+and them I am fairly worn out. Give me good terms--good terms, you
+understand, M. de Marsac?' he whispered eagerly, sinking his voice
+still lower, 'and you shall have all you want.'
+
+'Your lives, and liberty to go where you please,' I answered coldly.
+'The two ladies to be first given up to me uninjured. Those are the
+terms.'
+
+'But for me?' he said anxiously.
+
+'For you? The same as the others,' I retorted. 'Or I will make a
+distinction for old acquaintance sake, M. Fresnoy; and if the ladies
+have aught to complain of, I will hang you first.'
+
+He tried to bluster and hold out for a sum of money, or at least for
+his horse to be given up to him. But I had made up my mind to reward
+my followers with a present of a horse apiece; and I was besides well
+aware that this was only an afterthought on his part, and that he had
+fully decided to yield. I stood fast, therefore. The result justified
+my firmness, for he presently agreed to surrender on those terms.
+
+'Ay, but M. de Bruhl?' I said, desiring to learn clearly whether he
+had authority to treat for all. 'What of him?'
+
+He looked at me impatiently. 'Come and see!' he said, with an ugly
+sneer.
+
+'No, no, my friend,' I answered, shaking my head warily. 'That is not
+according to rule. You are the surrendering party, and it is for you
+to trust us. Bring out the ladies, that I may have speech with them,
+and then I will draw off my men.'
+
+'Nom de Dieu!' he cried hoarsely, with so much fear and rage in his
+face that I recoiled from him. 'That is just what I cannot do.'
+
+'You cannot?' I rejoined with a sudden thrill of horror. 'Why not? why
+not, man?' And in the excitement of the moment, conceiving the idea
+that the worst had happened to the women, I pushed him back with so
+much fury that he laid his hand on his sword.
+
+'Confound you!' he stuttered, 'stand back! It is not that, I tell you!
+Mademoiselle is safe and sound, and madame, if she had her senses,
+would be sound too. It is not our fault if she is not. But I have not
+got the key of the rooms. It is in Bruhl's pocket, I tell you!'
+
+'Oh!' I made answer drily. 'And Bruhl?'
+
+'Hush, man,' Fresnoy replied, wiping the perspiration from his brow,
+and bringing his pallid, ugly face, near to mine, 'he has got the
+plague!'
+
+I stared at him for a moment in silence; which he was the first to
+break. 'Hush!' he muttered again, laying a trembling hand on my arm,
+'if the men knew it--and not seeing him they are beginning to suspect
+it--they would rise on us. The devil himself could not keep them here.
+Between him and them I am on a razor's edge. Madame is with him, and
+the door is locked. Mademoiselle is in a room; upstairs, and the door
+is locked. And he has the keys. What can I do? What can I do, man?' he
+cried, his voice hoarse with terror and dismay.
+
+'Get the keys,' I said instinctively.
+
+'What? From him?' he muttered, with an irrepressible shudder, which
+shook his bloated cheeks. 'God forbid I should, see him! It takes
+stout men infallibly. I should be dead by night! By God, I should!' he
+continued, whining. Now you are not stout, M. de Marsac. If you will
+come with me I will draw off the men from that part; and you may go in
+and get the key from him.'
+
+His terror, which surpassed all feigning, and satisfied me without
+doubt that he was in earnest, was so intense that it could not fail to
+infect me. I felt my face, as I looked into his, grow to the same hue.
+I trembled as he did and grew sick. For if there is a word which
+blanches the soldier's cheek and tries his heart more than another, it
+is the name of the disease which travels in the hot noonday, and,
+tainting the strongest as he rides in his pride, leaves him in a few
+hours a poor mass of corruption. The stoutest and the most reckless
+fear it; nor could I, more than another, boast myself indifferent to
+it, or think of its presence without shrinking. But the respect in
+which a man of birth holds himself saves him from the unreasoning fear
+which masters the vulgar; and in a moment I recovered myself, and made
+up my mind what it behoved me to do.
+
+'Wait awhile,' I said sternly, 'and I will come with you.'
+
+He waited accordingly, though with manifest impatience, while I sent
+for M. d'Agen, and communicated to him what I was about to do. I did
+not think it necessary to enter into details, or to mention Bruhl's
+state, for some of the men were well in hearing. I observed that the
+young gentleman received my directions with a gloomy and dissatisfied
+air. But I had become by this time so used to his moods, and found
+myself so much mistaken in his character, that I scarcely gave the
+matter a second thought. I crossed the court with Fresnoy, and in a
+moment had mounted the outside staircase and passed through the heavy
+doorway.
+
+The moment I entered, I was forced to do Fresnoy the justice of
+admitting that he had not come to me before he was obliged. The three
+men who were on guard inside tossed down their weapons at sight of me,
+while a fourth, who was posted at a neighbouring window, hailed me
+with a cry of relief. From the moment I crossed the threshold the
+defence was practically at an end. I might, had I chosen or found it
+consistent with honour, have called in my following and secured the
+entrance. Without pausing, however, I passed on to the foot of a
+gloomy stone staircase winding up between walls of rough masonry; and
+here Fresnoy stood on one side and stopped. He pointed upwards with a
+pale face and muttered, 'The door on the left.'
+
+Leaving him there watching me as I went upwards, I mounted slowly to
+the landing, and by the light of an arrow-slit which dimly lit the
+ruinous place found the door he had described, and tried it with my
+hand. It was locked, but I heard someone moan in the room, and a step
+crossed the floor, as if he or another came to the door and listened.
+I knocked, hearing my heart beat in the silence.
+
+At last a voice quite strange to me cried, 'Who is it?'
+
+'A friend,' I muttered, striving to  dull my voice that they might not
+hear me below.
+
+'A friend!' the bitter answer came. 'Go! You have made a mistake! We
+have no friends.'
+
+'It is I, M. de Marsac,' I rejoined, knocking more imperatively. I
+would see M. de Bruhl; I must see him.'
+
+The person inside, at whose identity I could now make a guess, uttered
+a low exclamation, and still seemed to hesitate. But on my repeating
+my demand I heard a rusty bolt withdrawn, and Madame de Bruhl, opening
+the door, a few inches, showed her face in the gap. 'What do you
+want?' she murmured jealously.
+
+Prepared as I was to see her, I was shocked by the change in her
+appearance, a change which even that imperfect light failed to hide.
+Her blue eyes had grown larger and harder, and there were dark marks
+under them. Her face, once so brilliant, was grey and pinched; her
+hair had lost its golden lustre. 'What do you want?' she repeated,
+eyeing me fiercely.
+
+'To see him,' I answered.
+
+'You know?' she muttered. 'You know that he----'
+
+I nodded.
+
+'And you still want to come in? My God! Swear you will not hurt him?'
+
+'Heaven forbid!' I said; and on that she held the door open that I
+might enter. But I was not half-way across the room before she had
+passed me, and was again between me and the wretched makeshift pallet.
+Nay, when I stood and looked down at him, as he moaned and rolled in
+senseless agony, with livid face and distorted features (which the
+cold grey light of that miserable room rendered doubly appalling), she
+hung over him and fenced him from me: so that looking on him and her,
+and remembering how he had treated her, and why he came to be in this
+place, I felt unmanly tears rise to my eyes. The room was still a
+prison, a prison with broken mortar covering the floor and loopholes
+for windows; but the captive was held by other chains than those of
+force. When she might have gone free, her woman's love surviving all
+that he had done to kill it, chained her to his side with fetters
+which old wrongs and present danger were powerless to break.
+
+It was impossible that I could view a scene so strange without
+feelings of admiration as well as pity; or without forgetting for a
+while, in my respect for Madame de Bruhl's devotion, the risk which
+had seemed so great to me on the stairs. I had come simply for a
+purpose of my own, and with no thought of aiding him who lay here. But
+so great, as I have noticed on other occasions, is the power of a
+noble example, that, before I knew it, I found myself wondering what I
+could do to help this man, and how I could relieve madame in the
+discharge of offices which her husband had as little right to expect
+at her hands as at mine. At the mere sound of the word Plague I knew
+she would be deserted in this wilderness by all, or nearly all; a
+reflection which suggested to me that I should first remove
+mademoiselle to a distance, and then consider what help I could afford
+here.
+
+I was about to tell her the purpose with which I had come when a
+paroxysm more than ordinarily violent, and induced perhaps by the
+excitement of my presence--though he seemed beside himself--seized
+him, and threatened to tax her powers to the utmost. I could not look
+on and see her spend herself in vain; and almost before I knew what I
+was doing I had laid my hands on him and after a brief struggle thrust
+him back exhausted on the couch.
+
+She looked at me so strangely after that that in the half-light which
+the loopholes afforded I tried in vain to read her meaning. 'Why did
+you come?' she cried at length, breathing quickly. 'You, of all men?
+Why did you come? He was no friend of yours, Heaven knows!'
+
+'No, madame, nor I of his,' I answered bitterly, with a sudden
+revulsion of feeling.
+
+'Then why are you here?' she retorted.
+
+'I could not send one of my men,' I answered. 'And I want the key of
+the room above.'
+
+At the mention of that--the room above--she flinched as if I had
+struck her, and looked as strangely at Bruhl as she had before looked
+at me. No doubt the reference to Mademoiselle de la Vire recalled to
+her mind her husband's wild passion for the girl, which for the moment
+she had forgotten. Nevertheless she did not speak, though her face
+turned very pale. She stooped over the couch, such as it was, and
+searching his clothes, presently stood up, and held out the key to me.
+'Take it, and let her out,' she said with a forced smile. 'Take it up
+yourself, and do it. You have done so much for her it is right that
+you should do this.'
+
+I took the key, thanking her with more haste than thought, and turned
+towards the door, intending to go straight up to the floor above and
+release mademoiselle. My hand was already on the door, which madame, I
+found, had left ajar in the excitement of my entrance, when I heard
+her step behind me. The next instant she touched me on the shoulder.
+'You fool!' she exclaimed, her eyes flashing, 'would you kill her?
+Would you go from him to her, and take the plague to her? God forgive
+me, it was in my mind to send you. And men are such puppets you would
+have gone!'
+
+I trembled with horror, as much at my stupidity as at her craft. For
+she was right: in another moment I should have gone, and comprehension
+and remorse would have come too late. As it was, in my longing at once
+to reproach her for her wickedness and to thank her for her timely
+repentance, I found no words; but I turned away in silence and went
+out with a full heart.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                              STRICKEN.
+
+
+Outside the door, standing in the dimness of the landing, I found M.
+d'Agen. At any other time I should have been the first to ask him why
+he had left the post which I had assigned to him. But at the moment I
+was off my balance, and his presence suggested nothing more than that
+here was the very person who could best execute my wishes. I held out
+the key to him at arms length, and bade him release Mademoiselle de la
+Vire, who was in the room above, and escort her out of the castle. 'Do
+not let her linger here,' I continued urgently. 'Take her to the place
+where we found the wood-cutters. You need fear no resistance.'
+
+'But Bruhl?' he said, as he took the key mechanically from me.
+
+'He is out of the question,' I answered in a low voice. 'We have done
+with him. He has the plague.'
+
+He uttered a sharp exclamation. 'What of madame, then?' he muttered.
+
+'She is with him,' I said.
+
+He cried out suddenly at that, sucking in his breath, as I have known
+men do in pain. And but that I drew back he would have laid his hand
+on my sleeve. 'With him?' he stammered. 'How is that?'
+
+'Why, man, where else should she be?' I answered, forgetting that the
+sight of those two together had at first surprised me also, as well as
+moved me. 'Or who else should be with him? He is her husband.'
+
+He stared at me for a moment at that, and then he turned slowly away
+and began to go up; while I looked after him, gradually thinking out
+the clue to his conduct. Could it be that it was not mademoiselle
+attracted him, but Madame de Bruhl?
+
+And with that hint I understood it all. I saw in a moment the
+conclusion to which he had come on hearing of the presence of madame
+in my room. In my room at night! The change had dated from that time;
+instead of a careless, light-spirited youth he had become in a moment
+a morose and restive churl, as difficult to manage as an unbroken
+colt. Quite clearly I saw now the meaning of the change; why he had
+shrunk from me, and why all intercourse between us had been so
+difficult and so constrained.
+
+I laughed to think how he had deceived himself, and how nearly I had
+come to deceiving myself also. And what more I might have thought I do
+not know, for my meditations were cut short at this point by a loud
+outcry below, which, beginning in one or two sharp cries of alarm and
+warning, culminated quickly in a roar of anger and dismay.
+
+Fancying I recognised Maignan's voice, I ran down the stairs,
+seeking a loophole whence I could command the scene; but finding
+none, and becoming more and more alarmed, I descended to the court,
+which I found, to my great surprise, as empty and silent as an old
+battle-field. Neither on the enemy's side nor on ours was a single man
+to be seen. With growing dismay I sprang across the court and darted
+through the outer tower, only to find that and the gateway equally
+unguarded. Nor was it until I had passed through the latter, and stood
+on the brow of the slope, which we had had to clamber with so much
+toil, that I learned what was amiss.
+
+Far below me a string of men, bounding and running at speed, streamed
+down the hill towards the horses. Some were shouting, some running
+silently, with their elbows at their sides and their scabbards leaping
+against their calves. The horses stood tethered in a ring near the
+edge of the wood, and by some oversight had been left unguarded. The
+foremost runner I made out to be Fresnoy; but a number of his men were
+close upon him, and then after an interval came Maignan, waving his
+blade and emitting frantic threats with every stride. Comprehending at
+once that Fresnoy and his following, rendered desperate by panic and
+the prospective loss of their horses, had taken advantage of my
+absence and given Maignan the slip, I saw I could do nothing save
+watch the result of the struggle.
+
+This was not long delayed. Maignan's threats, which seemed to me mere
+waste of breath, were not without effect on those he followed. There
+is nothing which demoralises men like flight. Troopers who have stood
+charge after charge while victory was possible will fly like sheep,
+and like sheep allow themselves to be butchered, when they have once
+turned the back. So it was here. Many of Fresnoy's men were stout
+fellows, but having started to run they had no stomach for fighting.
+Their fears caused Maignan to appear near, while the horses seemed
+distant; and one after another they turned aside and made like rabbits
+for the wood. Only Fresnoy, who had taken care to have the start of
+all, kept on, and, reaching the horses, cut the rope which tethered
+the nearest, and vaulted nimbly on its back. Safely seated there, he
+tried to frighten the others into breaking loose; but not succeeding
+at the first attempt, and seeing Maignan, breathing vengeance, coming
+up with him, he started his horse, a bright bay, and rode off laughing
+along the edge of the wood.
+
+Fully content with the result--for our carelessness, might have cost
+us very dearly--I was about to turn away when I saw that Maignan had
+mounted and was preparing to follow. I stayed accordingly to see the
+end, and from my elevated position enjoyed a first-rate view of the
+race which ensued. Both were heavy weights, and at first Maignan
+gained no ground. But when a couple of hundred yards had been covered
+Fresnoy had the ill-luck to blunder into some heavy ground, and this
+enabling his pursuer, who had time to avoid it, to get within
+two-score paces of him, the race became as exciting as I could wish.
+Slowly and surely Maignan, who had chosen the Cid, reduced the
+distance between them to a score of paces--to fifteen--to ten. Then
+Fresnoy, becoming alarmed, began to look over his shoulder and ride in
+earnest. He had no whip, and I saw him raise his sheathed sword, and
+strike his beast on the flank. It sprang forward, and appeared for a
+few strides to be holding its own. Again he repeated the blow--but
+this time with a different result. While his hand was still in the
+air, his horse stumbled, as it seemed to me, made a desperate effort
+to recover itself, fell headlong and rolled over and over.
+
+Something in the fashion of the fall, which reminded me of the mishap
+I had suffered on the way to Chizé, led me to look more particularly
+at the horse as it rose trembling to its feet, and stood with drooping
+head. Sure enough, a careful glance enabled me, even at that distance,
+to identify it as Matthew's bay--the trick-horse. Shading my eyes, and
+gazing on the scene with increased interest, I saw Maignan, who had
+dismounted, stoop over something on the ground, and again after an
+interval stand upright.
+
+But Fresnoy did not rise. Nor was it without awe that, guessing what
+had happened to him, I remembered how he had used this very horse to
+befool me; how heartlessly he had abandoned Matthew, its owner; and by
+what marvellous haps--which men call chances--Providence had brought
+it to this place, and put it in his heart to choose it out of a score
+which stood ready to his hand!
+
+I was right. The man's neck was broken. He was quite dead. Maignan
+passed the word to one, and he to another, and so it reached me on the
+hill. It did not fail to awaken memories both grave and wholesome. I
+thought of St. Jean d'Angely, of Chizé, of the house in the Ruelle
+d'Arcy; then in the midst of these reflections I heard voices, and
+turned to find mademoiselle, with M. d'Agen behind me.
+
+Her hand was still bandaged, and her dress, which she had not changed
+since leaving Blois, was torn and stained with mud. Her hair was in
+disorder; she walked with a limp. Fatigue and apprehension had stolen
+the colour from her cheeks, and in a word she looked, when I turned,
+so wan and miserable that for a moment I feared the plague had seized
+her.
+
+The instant, however, that she caught sight of me a wave of colour
+invaded, not her cheeks only, but her brow and neck. From her hair to
+the collar of her gown she was all crimson. For a second she stood
+gazing at me, and then, as I saluted her, she sprang forward. Had I
+not stepped back she would have taken my hands.
+
+My heart so overflowed with joy at this sight, that in the certainty
+her blush gave me I was fain to toy with my happiness. All jealousy of
+M. d'Agen was forgotten; only I thought it well not to alarm her by
+telling her what I knew of the Bruhls. 'Mademoiselle,' I said
+earnestly, bowing, but retreating from her, 'I thank God for your
+escape. One of your enemies lies helpless here, and another is dead
+yonder.'
+
+'It is not of my enemies I am thinking,' she answered quickly, 'but of
+God, of whom you rightly remind me; and then of my friends.'
+
+'Nevertheless,' I answered as quickly, 'I beg you will not stay to
+thank them now, but go down to the wood with M. d'Agen, who will do
+all that may be possible to make you comfortable.'
+
+'And you, sir?' she said, with a charming air of confusion.
+
+'I must stay here,' I answered, 'for a while.'
+
+'Why?' she asked with a slight frown.
+
+I did not know how to tell her, and I began lamely. 'Someone must stop
+with madame,' I said without thought.
+
+'Madame?' she exclaimed. 'Does she require assistance? I will stop.'
+
+'God forbid!' I cried.
+
+I do not know how she understood the words, but her face, which had
+been full of softness, grew hard. She moved quickly towards me; but,
+mindful of the danger I carried about me, I drew farther back. 'No
+nearer, mademoiselle,' I murmured, 'if you please.'
+
+She looked puzzled, and finally angry, turning away with a sarcastic
+bow. 'So be it, then, sir,' she said proudly, 'if you desire it. M.
+d'Agen, if you are not afraid of me, will you lead me down?'
+
+I stood and watched them go down the hill, comforting myself with the
+reflection that to-morrow, or the next day, or within a few days at
+most, all would be well. Scanning her figure as she moved, I fancied
+that she went with less spirit as the space increased between us. And
+I pleased myself with the notion. A few days, a few hours, I thought,
+and all would be well. The sunset which blazed in the west was no more
+than a faint reflection of the glow which for a few minutes pervaded
+my mind, long accustomed to cold prospects and the chill of neglect.
+
+A term was put to these pleasant imaginings by the arrival of Maignan;
+who, panting: from the ascent of the hill, informed me with a
+shamefaced air that the tale of horses was complete, but that four of
+our men were missing, and had doubtless gone off with the fugitives.
+These proved to be M. d'Agen's two lackeys and the two varlets M. de
+Rambouillet had lent us. There remained besides Simon Fleix only
+Maignan's three men from Rosny; but the state in which our affairs now
+stood enabled us to make light of this. I informed the equerry--who
+visibly paled at the news--that M. de Bruhl lay ill of the plague, and
+like to die; and I bade him form a camp in the wood below, and,
+sending for food to the house where we had slept the night before,
+make mademoiselle as comfortable as circumstances permitted.
+
+He listened with surprise, and when I had done asked with concern what
+I intended to do myself.
+
+'Someone must remain with Madame de Bruhl,' I answered. 'I have
+already been to the bedside to procure the key of mademoiselle's room,
+and I run no farther risk. All I ask is that you will remain in the
+neighbourhood, and furnish us with supplies should it be necessary.'
+
+He looked at me with emotion, which, strongly in conflict with his
+fears as it was, touched me not a little. 'But morbleu! M. de Marsac,'
+he said, 'you will take the plague and die.'
+
+'If God wills,' I answered, very lugubriously I confess, for pale
+looks in one commonly so fearless could not but depress me. 'But if
+not, I shall escape. Any way, my friend,' I continued, 'I owe you a
+quittance. Simon Fleix has an inkhorn and paper. Bid him bring them to
+this stone and leave them, and I will write that Maignan, the equerry
+of the Baron de Rosny, served me to the end as a brave soldier and an
+honest friend. What, _mon ami?_' I continued, for I saw that he was
+overcome by this, which was, indeed, a happy thought of mine. 'Why
+not? It is true, and will aquit you with the Baron. Do it, and go.
+Advise M. d'Agen, and be to him what you have been to me.'
+
+He swore two or three great oaths, such as men of his kind use to hide
+an excess of feeling, and after some further remonstrance went away to
+carry out my orders; leaving me to stand on the brow in a strange kind
+of solitude, and watch horses and men withdraw to the wood, until the
+whole valley seemed left to me and stillness and the grey evening. For
+a time I stood in thought. Then reminding myself, for a fillip to my
+spirits, that I had been far more alone when I walked the streets of
+St. Jean friendless and threadbare (than I was now), I turned, and
+swinging my scabbard against my boots for company, stumbled through
+the dark, silent courtyard, and mounted as cheerfully as I could to
+madame's room.
+
+To detail all that passed during the next five days would be tedious
+and in indifferent taste, seeing that I am writing this memoir for the
+perusal of men of honour; for though I consider the offices which the
+whole can perform for the sick to be worthy of the attention of every
+man, however well born, who proposes to see service, they seem to be
+more honourable in the doing than the telling. One episode, however,
+which marked those days filled me then, as it does now, with the most
+lively pleasure; and that was the unexpected devotion displayed by
+Simon Fleix, who, coming to me, refused to leave, and showed himself
+at this pinch to be possessed of such sterling qualities that I freely
+forgave him the deceit he had formerly practised on me. The fits of
+moody silence into which he still fell at times and an occasional
+irascibility seemed to show that he had not altogether conquered his
+insane fancy; but the mere fact that he had come to me in a situation
+of hazard, and voluntarily removed himself from mademoiselle's
+neighbourhood, gave me good hope for the future.
+
+M. de Bruhl died early on the morning of the second day, and Simon and
+I buried him at noon. He was a man of courage and address, lacking
+only principles. In spite of madame's grief and prostration, which
+were as great as though she had lost the best husband in the world, we
+removed before night to a separate camp in the woods; and left with
+the utmost relief the grey ruin on the hill, in which, it seemed to
+me, we had lived an age. In our new bivouac, where, game being
+abundant, and the weather warm, we lacked no comfort, except the
+society of our friends, we remained four days longer. On the fifth
+morning we met the others of our company by appointment on the north
+road, and commenced the return journey.
+
+Thankful that we had escaped contagion, we nevertheless still proposed
+to observe for a time such precautions in regard to the others as
+seemed necessary; riding in the rear and having no communication with
+them, though they showed by signs the pleasure they felt at seeing us.
+From the frequency with which mademoiselle turned and looked behind
+her, I judged she had overcome her pique at my strange conduct; which
+the others should by this time have explained to her. Content,
+therefore, with the present, and full of confidence in the future, I
+rode along in a rare state of satisfaction; at one moment planning
+what I would do, and at another reviewing what I had done.
+
+The brightness and softness of the day, and the beauty of the woods,
+which in some places, I remember, were bursting into leaf, contributed
+much to establish me in this frame of mind. The hateful mist, which
+had so greatly depressed us, had disappeared; leaving the face of the
+country visible in all the brilliance of early spring. The men who
+rode before us, cheered by the happy omen, laughed and talked as they
+rode, or tried the paces of their horses, where the trees grew
+sparsely; and their jests and laughter coming pleasantly to our ears
+as we followed, warmed even madame's sad face to a semblance of
+happiness.
+
+I was riding along in this state of contentment when a feeling of
+fatigue, which the distance we had come did not seem to justify, led
+me to spur the Cid into a brisker pace. The sensation of lassitude
+still continued, however, and indeed grew worse; so that I wondered
+idly whether I had over-eaten myself at my last meal. Then the thing
+passed for a while from, my mind, which the descent of a steep hill
+sufficiently occupied.
+
+But a few minutes later, happening to turn in the saddle, I
+experienced a strange and sudden dizziness; so excessive as to force
+me to grasp the cantle, and cling to it, while trees and hills
+appeared to dance round me. A quick, hot pain in the side followed,
+almost before I recovered the power of thought; and this increased so
+rapidly, and was from the first so definite, that, with a dreadful
+apprehension already formed in my mind, I thrust my hand inside my
+clothes, and found that swelling which is the most sure and deadly
+symptom of the plague.
+
+The horror of that moment--in which I saw all those things on the
+possession of which I had just been congratulating myself, pass
+hopelessly from me, leaving me in dreadful gloom--I will not attempt
+to describe in this place. Let it suffice that the world lost in a
+moment its joyousness, the sunshine its warmth. The greenness and
+beauty round me, which an instant before had filled me with pleasure,
+seemed on a sudden no more than a grim and cruel jest at my expense,
+and I an atom perishing unmarked and unnoticed. Yes, an atom, a mote;
+the bitterness of that feeling I well remember. Then, in no long
+time--being a soldier--I recovered my coolness, and, retaining the
+power to think, decided what it behoved me to do.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                         UNDER THE GREENWOOD.
+
+
+To escape from my companions on some pretext, which should enable me
+to ensure their safety without arousing their fears, was the one
+thought which possessed me on the subsidence of my first alarm.
+Probably it answered to that instinct in animals which bids them get
+away alone when wounded or attacked by disease; and with me it had the
+fuller play as the pain prevailed rather by paroxysms than in
+permanence, and, coming and going, allowed intervals of ease, in which
+I was able to think clearly and consecutively, and even to sit firmly
+in the saddle.
+
+The moment one of these intervals enabled me to control myself, I used
+it to think where I might go without danger to others; and at once and
+naturally my thoughts turned to the last place we had passed; which
+happened to be the house in the gorge where we had received news of
+Bruhl's divergence from the road. The man who lived there alone had
+had the plague; therefore he did not fear it. The place itself was
+solitary, and I could reach it, riding slowly, in half an hour. On the
+instant and without more delay I determined on this course. I would
+return, and, committing myself to the fellow's good offices, bid him
+deny me to others, and especially to my friends--should they seek me.
+
+Aware that I had no time to lose if I would put this plan into
+execution before the pains returned to sap my courage, I drew bridle
+at once, and muttered some excuse to madame; if I remember rightly,
+that I had dropped my gauntlet. Whatever the pretext--and my dread was
+great lest she should observe any strangeness in my manner--it passed
+with her; by reason, chiefly, I think, of the grief which monopolised
+her. She let me go, and before anyone else could mark or miss me I was
+a hundred yards away on the back-track, and already sheltered from
+observation by a turn in the road.
+
+The excitement of my evasion supported me for a while after leaving
+her; and then for another while, a paroxysm of pain deprived me of the
+power of thought. But when this last was over, leaving me weak and
+shaken, yet clear in my mind, the most miserable sadness and
+depression that can be conceived came upon me; and, accompanying
+me through the wood, filled its avenues (which doubtless were fair
+enough to others' eyes) with the blackness of despair. I saw but the
+charnel-house, and that everywhere. It was not only that the horrors
+of the first discovery returned upon me and almost unmanned me; nor
+only that regrets and memories, pictures of the past and plans for the
+future, crowded thick upon my mind, so that I could have wept at the
+thought of all ending here. But in my weakness mademoiselle's face
+shone where the wood was darkest, and, tempting and provoking me to
+return--were it only to tell her that, grim and dull as I seemed, I
+loved her--tried me with a subtle temptation almost beyond my strength
+to resist. All that was mean in me rose in arms, all that was selfish
+clamoured to know why I must die in the ditch while others rode in the
+sunshine; why I must go to the pit, while others loved and lived!
+
+And so hard was I pressed that I think I should have given way had the
+ride been longer or my horse less smooth and nimble. But in the midst
+of my misery, which bodily pain was beginning to augment to such a
+degree that I could scarcely see, and had to ride gripping the saddle
+with both hands, I reached the mill. My horse stopped of its own
+accord. The man we had seen before came out. I had just strength left
+to tell him what was the matter, and what I wanted; and then a fresh
+attack came on, with sickness, and overcome by vertigo I fell to the
+ground.
+
+I have but an indistinct idea what happened after that; until I found
+myself inside the house, clinging to the man's arm. He pointed to a
+box-bed in one corner of the room (which was, or seemed to my sick
+eyes, gloomy and darksome in the extreme), and would have had me lie
+down in it. But something inside me revolted against the bed, and
+despite the force he used, I broke away, and threw myself on a heap of
+straw which I saw in another corner.
+
+'Is not the bed good enough for you?' he grumbled.
+
+I strove to tell him it was not that.
+
+'It should be good enough to die on,' he continued brutally. 'There's
+five have died on that bed, I'd have you know! My wife one, and my son
+another, and my daughter another; and then my son again, and a
+daughter again. Five! Ay, five in that bed!'
+
+Brooding in the gloom of the chimney-corner, where he was busied about
+a black pot, he continued to mutter and glance at me askance; but
+after a while I swooned away with pain.
+
+When I opened my eyes again the room was darker. The man still sat
+where I had last seen him, but a noise, the same, perhaps, which had
+roused me, drew him as I looked to the unglazed window. A voice
+outside, the tones of which I seemed to know, inquired if he had seen
+me; and so carried away was I by the excitement of the moment that I
+rose on my elbow to hear the answer. But the man was staunch. I heard
+him deny all knowledge of me, and presently the sound of retreating
+hoofs and the echo of voices dying in the distance assured me I was
+left.
+
+Then, at that instant, a doubt of the man on whose compassion I had
+thrown myself entered my mind. Plague-stricken, hopeless as I was, it
+chilled me to the very heart; staying in a moment the feeble tears I
+was about to shed, and curing even the vertigo, which forced me to
+clutch at the straw on which I lay. Whether the thought arose from a
+sickly sense of my own impotence, or was based on the fellow's morose
+air and the stealthy glances he continued to cast at me, I am as
+unable to say as I am to decide whether it was well-founded, or the
+fruit of my own fancy. Possibly the gloom of the room and the man's
+surly words inclined me to suspicion; possibly his secret thoughts
+portrayed themselves in his hang-dog visage. Afterwards it appeared
+that he had stripped me, while I lay, of everything of value; but he
+may have done this in the belief that I should die.
+
+All I know is that I knew nothing certain, because the fear died
+almost as soon as it was born. The man had scarcely seated himself
+again, or I conceived the thought, when a second alarm outside caused
+him to spring to his feet. Scowling and muttering as he went, he
+hurried to the window. But before he reached it the door was dashed
+violently open, and Simon Fleix stood in the entrance.
+
+There came in with him so blessed a rush of light and life as in a
+moment dispelled the horror of the room, and stripped me at one and
+the same time of fear and manhood. For whether I would or no, at sight
+of the familiar face, which I had fled so lately, I burst into tears;
+and, stretching out my hands to him, as a frightened child might have
+done, called on him by name. I suppose the plague was by this time so
+plainly written on my face that all who looked might read; for he
+stood at gaze, staring at me, and was still so standing when a hand
+put him aside and a slighter, smaller figure, pale-faced and hooded,
+stood for a moment between me and the sunshine. It was mademoiselle!
+
+That, I thank God, restored me to myself, or I had been for ever
+shamed. I cried to them with all the voice I had left to take her
+away; and calling out frantically again and again that I had the
+plague and she would die, I bade the man close the door. Nay,
+regaining something of strength in my fear for her, I rose up,
+half-dressed as I was, and would have fled into some corner to avoid
+her, still calling out to them to take her away, to take her away--if
+a fresh paroxysm had not seized me, so that I fell blind and helpless
+where I was.
+
+For a time after that I knew nothing; until someone held water to my
+lips, and I drank greedily, and presently awoke to the fact that the
+entrance was dark with faces and figures all gazing at me as I lay.
+But I could not see her; and I had sense enough to know and be
+thankful that she was no longer among them. I would fain have bidden
+Maignan begone too, for I read the consternation in his face. But I
+could not muster strength or voice for the purpose, and when I turned
+my head to see who held me--ah me! it comes back to me still in
+dreams--it was mademoiselle's hair that swept my forehead and her hand
+that ministered to me; while tears she did not try to hide or wipe
+away fell on my hot cheek. I could have pushed her away even then, for
+she was slight and small; but the pains came upon me, and with a sob
+choking my voice I lost all knowledge.
+
+I am told that I lay for more than a month between life and death, now
+burning with fever and now in the cold fit; and that but for the
+tendance which never failed nor faltered, nor could have been outdone
+had my malady been the least infectious in the world, I must have died
+a hundred times, as hundreds round me did die week by week in that
+year. From the first they took me out of the house (where I think I
+should have perished quickly, so impregnated was it with the plague
+poison) and laid me under a screen of boughs in the forest, with a
+vast quantity of cloaks and horse-cloths cunningly disposed to
+windward. Here I ran some risk from cold and exposure and the fall of
+heavy dews; but, on the other hand, had all the airs of heaven to
+clear away the humours and expel the fever from my brain.
+
+Hence it was that when the first feeble beginnings of consciousness
+awoke in me again, they and the light stole in on me through green
+leaves, and overhanging boughs, and the freshness and verdure of the
+spring woods. The sunshine which reached my watery eyes was softened
+by its passage through great trees, which grew and expanded as I gazed
+up into them, until each became a verdant world, with all a world's
+diversity of life. Grown tired of this, I had still long avenues of
+shade, carpeted with flowers, to peer into; or a little wooded
+bottom--where the ground fell away on one side--that blazed and burned
+with red-thorn. Ay, and hence it was that the first sounds I heard,
+when the fever left me at last, and I knew morning from evening, and
+man from woman, were the songs of birds calling to their mates.
+
+Mademoiselle and Madame de Bruhl, with Fanchette and Simon Fleix, lay
+all this time in such shelter as could be raised for them where I lay;
+M. François and three stout fellows, whom Maignan left to guard us,
+living in a hut within hail. Maignan himself, after seeing out a week
+of my illness, had perforce returned to his master, and no news had
+since been received from him. Thanks to the timely move into the
+woods, no other of the party fell ill, and by the time I was able to
+stand and speak the ravages of the disease had so greatly decreased
+that fear was at an end.
+
+I should waste words were I to try to describe how the peace and
+quietude of the life we led in the forest during the time of my
+recovery sank into my heart; which had known, save by my mother's
+bedside, little of such joys. To awake in the morning to sweet sounds
+and scents, to eat with reviving appetite and feel the slow growth of
+strength, to lie all day in shade or sunshine as it pleased me, and
+hear women's voices and tinkling laughter, to have no thought of the
+world and no knowledge of it, so that we might have been, for anything
+we saw, in another sphere--these things might have sufficed for
+happiness without that which added to each and every one of them a
+sweeter and deeper and more lasting joy. Of which next.
+
+I had not begun to take notice long before I saw that M. François and
+madame had come to an understanding; such an one, at least, as
+permitted him to do all for her comfort and entertainment without
+committing her to more than was becoming at such a season. Naturally
+this left mademoiselle much in my company; a circumstance which would
+have ripened into passion the affection I before entertained for her,
+had not gratitude and a nearer observance of her merits already
+elevated the feeling into the most ardent worship that even the
+youngest lover ever felt for his mistress.
+
+In proportion, however, as I and my love grew stronger, and
+mademoiselle's presence grew more necessary to my happiness--so that
+were she away but an hour I fell a-moping--she began to draw off from
+me, and absenting herself more and more on long walks in the woods,
+by-and-by reduced me to such a pitch of misery as bid fair to complete
+what the fever had left undone.
+
+If this had happened in the world I think it likely that I should have
+suffered in silence. But here, under the greenwood, in common
+enjoyment of God's air and earth, we seemed more nearly equal. She was
+scarce better dressed than a sutler's wife; while recollections of her
+wealth and station, though they assailed me nightly, lost much of
+their point in presence of her youth and of that fair and patient
+gentleness which forest life and the duties of a nurse had fostered.
+
+So it happened that one day, when she had been absent longer than
+usual, I took my courage in my hand and went to meet her as far as the
+stream which ran through the bottom by the redthorn. Here, at a place
+where there were three stepping-stones, I waited for her; first taking
+away the stepping-stones, that she might have to pause, and, being at
+a loss, might be glad to see me.
+
+She came presently, tripping through an alley in the low wood, with
+her eyes on the ground, and her whole carriage full of a sweet
+pensiveness which it did me good to see. I turned my back on the
+stream before she saw me, and made a pretence of being taken up with
+something in another direction. Doubtless she espied me soon, and
+before she came very near; but she made no sign until she reached the
+brink, and found the stepping-stones were gone.
+
+Then, whether she suspected me or not, she called out to me, not once,
+but several times. For, partly to tantalise her, as lovers will, and
+partly because it charmed me to hear her use my name, I would not turn
+at once.
+
+When I did, and discovered her standing with one small foot dallying
+with the water, I cried out with well-affected concern; and in a great
+hurry ran towards her, paying no attention to her chiding or the
+pettish haughtiness with which she spoke to me.
+
+'The stepping-stones are all on your side,' she said imperiously. 'Who
+has moved them?'
+
+I looked about without answering, and at last pretended to find them;
+while she stood watching me, tapping the ground with one foot the
+while. Despite her impatience, the stone which was nearest to her I
+took care to bring last--that she might not cross without my
+assistance. But after all she stepped over so lightly and quickly that
+the hand she placed in mine seemed scarcely to rest there a second.
+Yet when she was over I managed to retain it; nor did she resist,
+though her cheek, which had been red before, turned crimson and her
+eyes fell, and bound to me by the link of her little hand, she stood
+beside me with her whole figure drooping.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' I said gravely, summoning all my resolution to my aid,
+'do you know of what that stream with its stepping-stones reminds me?'
+
+She shook her head but did not answer.
+
+'Of the stream which has flowed between us from the day when I first
+saw you at St. Jean,' I said in a low voice. 'It has flowed between
+us, and it still does--separating us.'
+
+'What stream?' she murmured, with her eyes cast down, and her foot
+playing with the moss. 'You speak in riddles, sir.'
+
+'You understand this one only too well, mademoiselle,' I answered.
+'Are you not young and gay and beautiful, while I am old, or almost
+old, and dull and grave? You are rich and well-thought-of at Court,
+and I a soldier of fortune, not too successful. What did you think of
+me when you first saw me at St. Jean? What when I came to Rosny? That,
+mademoiselle,' I continued with fervour, 'is the stream which flows
+between us and separates us; and I know of but one stepping-stone that
+can bridge it.'
+
+She looked aside, toying with a piece of thorn-blossom she had picked.
+It was not redder than her cheeks.
+
+'That one stepping-stone,' I said, after waiting vainly for any word
+or sign from her, 'is Love. Many weeks ago, mademoiselle, when I had
+little cause to like you, I loved you; I loved you whether I would or
+not, and without thought or hope of return. I should have been mad had
+I spoken to you then. Mad, and worse than mad. But now, now that I owe
+you my life, now that I have drunk from your hand in fever, and,
+awaking early and late, have found you by my pillow--now that, seeing
+you come in and out in the midst of fear and hardship, I have learned
+to regard you as a woman kind and gentle as my mother--now that I love
+you, so that to be with you is joy, and away from you grief, is it
+presumption in me now, mademoiselle, to think that that stream may be
+bridged?'
+
+I stopped, out of breath, and saw that she was trembling. But she
+spoke presently. 'You said one stepping-stone?' she murmured.
+
+'Yes,' I answered hoarsely, trying in vain to look at her face, which
+she kept averted from me.
+
+'There should be two,' she said, almost in a whisper. 'Your love, sir,
+and--and mine. You have said much of the one, and nothing of the
+other. In that you are wrong, for I am proud still. And I would not
+cross the stream you speak of for any love of yours!'
+
+'Ah!' I cried in sharpest pain.
+
+'But,' she continued, looking up at me on a sudden with eyes that told
+me all, 'because I love you I am willing to cross it--to cross it once
+for ever, and live beyond it all my life--if I may live my life with
+you.'
+
+I fell on my knee and kissed her hand again and again in a rapture of
+joy and gratitude. By-and-by she pulled it from me. 'If you will,
+sir,' she said, 'you may kiss my lips. If you do not, no man ever
+will.'
+
+After that, as may be guessed, we walked every day in the forest,
+making longer and longer excursions as my strength came back to me,
+and the nearer parts grew familiar. From early dawn, when I brought my
+love a posy of flowers, to late evening, when Fanchette hurried her
+from me, our days were passed in a long round of delight; being filled
+full of all beautiful things--love, and sunshine, and rippling
+streams, and green banks, on which we sat together under scented
+limes, telling one another all we had ever thought, and especially all
+we had ever thought of one another. Sometimes--when the light was low
+in the evening--we spoke of my mother; and once--but that was in the
+sunshine, when the bees were humming and my blood had begun to run
+strongly in my veins--I spoke of my great and distant kinsman, Rohan.
+But mademoiselle would hear nothing of him, murmuring again and again
+in my ear, 'I have crossed, my love, I have crossed.'
+
+Truly the sands of that hour-glass were of gold. But in time they ran
+out. First M. François, spurred by the restlessness of youth, and
+convinced that madame would for a while yield no farther, left us, and
+went back to the world. Then news came of great events that could not
+fail to move us. The King of France and the King of Navarre had met at
+Tours, and embracing in the sight of an immense multitude, had
+repulsed the League with slaughter in the suburb of St. Symphorien.
+Fast on this followed the tidings of their march northwards with an
+overwhelming army of fifty-thousand men of both religions, bent,
+rumour had it, on the signal punishment of Paris.
+
+I grew--shame that I should say it--to think more and more of these
+things; until mademoiselle, reading the signs, told me one day that we
+must go. 'Though never again,' she added with a sigh, 'shall we be so
+happy.'
+
+'Then why go?' I asked foolishly.
+
+'Because you are a man,' she answered with a wise smile, 'as I would
+have you be, and you need something besides love. To-morrow we will
+go.'
+
+'Whither?' I said in amazement.
+
+'To the camp before Paris,' she answered. 'We will go back in the
+light of day--seeing that we have done nothing of which to be
+ashamed--and throw ourselves on the justice of the King of Navarre.
+You shall place me with Madame Catherine, who will not refuse to
+protect me; and so, sweet, you will have only yourself to think of.
+Come, sir,' she continued, laying her little hand in mine, and looking
+into my eyes, 'you are not afraid?'
+
+'I am more afraid than ever I used to be,' I said trembling.
+
+'So I would have it,' she whispered, hiding her face on my shoulder.
+'Nevertheless we will go.'
+
+And go we did. The audacity of such a return in the face of Turenne,
+who was doubtless in the King of Navarre's suite, almost took my
+breath away; nevertheless, I saw that it possessed one advantage which
+no other course promised--that, I mean, of setting us right in the
+eyes of the world, and enabling me to meet in a straightforward manner
+such as maligned us. After some consideration I gave my assent, merely
+conditioning that until we reached the Court we should ride masked,
+and shun as far as possible encounters by the road.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                           A TAVERN BRAWL.
+
+
+On the following day, accordingly, we started. But the news of the two
+kings' successes, and particularly the certainty which these had bred
+in many minds that nothing short of a miracle could save Paris, had
+moved so many gentlemen to take the road that we found the inns
+crowded beyond example, and were frequently forced into meetings which
+made the task of concealing our identity more difficult and hazardous
+than I had expected. Sometimes shelter was not to be obtained on any
+terms, and then we had to lie in the fields or in any convenient shed.
+Moreover, the passage of the army had swept the country so bare both
+of food and forage, that these commanded astonishing prices; and a
+long day's ride more than once brought us to our destination without
+securing for us the ample meal we had earned, and required.
+
+Under these circumstances, it was with joy little short of transport
+that I recognised the marvellous change which had come over my
+mistress. Bearing all without a murmur, or a frown, or so much as one
+complaining word, she acted on numberless occasions so as to convince
+me that she spoke truly--albeit I scarcely dared to believe it--when
+she said that she had but one trouble in the world, and that was the
+prospect of our coming separation.
+
+For my part, and despite some gloomy moments, when fear of the future
+overcame me, I rode in Paradise riding by my mistress. It was her
+presence which glorified alike the first freshness of the morning,
+when we started with all the day before us, and the coolness of the
+late evening, when we rode hand-in-hand. Nor could I believe without
+an effort that I was the same Gaston de Marsac whom she had once
+spurned and disdained. God knows I was thankful for her love. A
+thousand times, thinking of my grey hairs, I asked her if she did not
+repent; and a thousand times she answered No, with so much happiness
+in her eyes that I was fain to thank God again and believe her.
+
+Notwithstanding the inconvenience of the practice, we made it a rule
+to wear our masks whenever we appeared in public; and this rule we
+kept more strictly as we approached Paris. It exposed us to some
+comment and more curiosity, but led to no serious trouble until we
+reached Etampes, twelve leagues from the capital; where we found the
+principal inn so noisy and crowded, and so much disturbed by the
+constant coming and going of couriers, that it required no experience
+to predicate the neighbourhood of the army. The great courtyard seemed
+to be choked with a confused mass of men and horses, through which we
+made our way with difficulty. The windows of the house were all open,
+and offered us a view of tables surrounded by men eating and drinking
+hastily, as the manner of travellers is. The gateway and the steps of
+the house were lined with troopers and servants and sturdy rogues; who
+scanned all who passed in or out, and not unfrequently followed them
+with ribald jests and nicknames. Songs and oaths, brawling and
+laughter, with the neighing of horses and the huzzas of the beggars,
+who shouted whenever a fresh party arrived, rose above all, and
+increased the reluctance with which I assisted madame and mademoiselle
+to dismount.
+
+Simon was no match for such an occasion as this; but the stalwart
+aspect of the three men whom Maignan had left with me commanded
+respect, and attended by two of these I made a way for the ladies--not
+without some opposition and a few oaths--to enter the house. The
+landlord, whom we found crushed into a corner inside, and entirely
+overborne by the crowd which had invaded his dwelling, assured me that
+he had not the smallest garret he could place at my disposal; but I
+presently succeeded in finding a small room at the top, which I
+purchased from the four men who had taken possession of it. As it was
+impossible to get anything to eat there, I left a man on guard, and
+myself descended with madame and mademoiselle to the eating-room, a
+large chamber set with long boards, and filled with a rough and noisy
+crew. Under a running fire of observations we entered, and found with
+difficulty three seats in an inner corner of the room.
+
+I ran my eye over the company, and noticed among them, besides a dozen
+travelling parties like our own, specimens of all those classes which
+are to be found in the rear of an army. There were some officers and
+more horse-dealers; half a dozen forage-agents and a few priests; with
+a large sprinkling of adventurers, bravos, and led-captains, and here
+and there two or three whose dress and the deference paid to them by
+their neighbours seemed to indicate a higher rank. Conspicuous among
+these last were a party of four who occupied a small table by the
+door. An attempt had been made to secure some degree of privacy for
+them by interposing a settle between them and the room; and their
+attendants, who seemed to be numerous, did what they could to add to
+this by filling the gap with their persons. One of the four, a man of
+handsome dress and bearing, who sat in the place of honour, was
+masked, as we were. The gentleman at his right hand I could not see.
+The others, whom I could see, were strangers to me.
+
+Some time elapsed before our people succeeded in procuring us any
+food, and during the interval we were exposed to an amount of comment
+on the part of those round us which I found very little to my liking.
+There were not half a dozen women present, and this and our masks
+rendered my companions unpleasantly conspicuous. Aware, however, of
+the importance of avoiding an altercation which might possibly detain
+us, and would be certain to add to our notoriety, I remained quiet;
+and presently the entrance of a tall, dark-complexioned man, who
+carried himself with a peculiar swagger, and seemed to be famous for
+something or other, diverted the attention of the company from us.
+
+The new-comer was somewhat of Maignan's figure. He wore a back and
+breast over a green doublet, and had an orange feather in his cap and
+an orange-lined cloak on his shoulder. On entering he stood a moment
+in the doorway, letting his bold black eyes rove round the room, the
+while he talked in a loud braggart fashion to his companions. There
+was a lack of breeding in the man's air, and something offensive in
+his look; which I noticed produced wherever it rested a momentary
+silence and constraint. When he moved farther into the room I saw that
+he wore a very long sword, the point of which trailed a foot behind
+him.
+
+He chose out for his first attentions the party of four whom I have
+mentioned; going up to them and accosting them with a ruffling air,
+directed especially to the gentleman in the mask. The latter lifted
+his head haughtily on finding himself addressed by a stranger, but did
+not offer to answer. Someone else did, however, for a sudden bellow
+like that of an enraged bull proceeded from behind the settle. The
+words were lost in noise, the unseen speaker's anger seeming so
+overpowering that he could not articulate; but the tone and voice,
+which were in some way familiar to me, proved enough for the bully,
+who, covering his retreat with a profound bow, backed out rapidly,
+muttering what was doubtless an apology. Cocking his hat more fiercely
+to make up for this repulse, he next proceeded to patrol the room,
+scowling from side to side as he went, with the evident intention of
+picking a quarrel with someone less formidable.
+
+By ill-chance his eye lit, as he turned, on our masks. He said
+something to his companions; and encouraged, no doubt, by the position
+of our seats at the board, which led him to think us people of small
+consequence, he came to a stop opposite us.
+
+'What! more dukes here?' he cried scoffingly. 'Hallo, you sir!' he
+continued to me, 'will you not unmask and drink a glass with me?'
+
+I thanked him civilly, but declined.
+
+His insolent eyes were busy, while I spoke, with madame's fair hair
+and handsome figure, which her mask failed to hide. 'Perhaps the
+ladies will have better taste, sir,' he said rudely. 'Will they not
+honour us with a sight of their pretty faces?'
+
+Knowing the importance of keeping my temper I put constraint on
+myself, and answered, still with civility, that they were greatly
+fatigued and were about to retire.
+
+'Zounds!' he cried, 'that is not to be borne. If we are to lose them
+so soon, the more reason we should enjoy their _beaux yeux_ while we
+can. A short life and a merry one, sir. This is not a nunnery, nor, I
+dare swear, are your fair friends nuns.'
+
+Though I longed to chastise him for this insult, I feigned deafness,
+and went on with my meal as if I had not heard him; and the table
+being between us prevented him going beyond words. After he had
+uttered one or two coarse jests of a similar character, which cost us
+less as we were masked, and our emotions could only be guessed, the
+crowd about us, seeing I took the thing quietly, began to applaud him;
+but more as it seemed to me out of fear than love. In this opinion I
+was presently confirmed on hearing from Simon--who whispered the
+information in my ear as he handed a dish--that the fellow was an
+Italian captain in the king's pay, famous for his skill with the sword
+and the many duels in which he had displayed it.
+
+Mademoiselle, though she did not know this, bore with his insolence
+with a patience which astonished me; while madame appeared unconscious
+of it. Nevertheless, I was glad when he retired and left us in peace.
+I seized the moment of his absence to escort the ladies through the
+room and upstairs to their apartment, the door of which I saw locked
+and secured. That done I breathed more freely; and feeling thankful
+that I had been able to keep my temper, took the episode to be at an
+end.
+
+But in this I was mistaken, as I found when I returned to the room in
+which we had supped, my intention being to go through it to the
+stables. I had not taken two paces across the floor before I found my
+road blocked by the Italian, and read alike in his eyes and in the
+faces of the company--of whom many hastened to climb the tables to see
+what passed--that the meeting was premeditated. The man's face was
+flushed with wine; proud of his many victories, he eyed me with a
+boastful contempt my patience had perhaps given him the right to feel.
+
+'Ha! well met, sir,' he said, sweeping the floor with his cap in an
+exaggeration of respect, 'now, perhaps, your high-mightiness will
+condescend to unmask? The table is no longer between us, nor are your
+fair friends here to protect their _cher ami!_'
+
+'If I still refuse, sir,' I said civilly, wavering between anger and
+prudence, and hoping still to avoid a quarrel which might endanger us
+all, 'be good enough to attribute it to private motives, and to no
+desire to disoblige you.'
+
+'No, I do not think you wish to disoblige me,' he answered, laughing
+scornfully--and a dozen voices echoed the gibe. 'But for your private
+motives, the devil take them! Is that plain enough, sir?'
+
+'It is plain enough to show me that you are an ill-bred man!' I
+answered, choler getting the better of me. 'Let me pass, sir.'
+
+'Unmask!' he retorted, moving so as still to detain me, 'or shall I
+call in the grooms to perform the office for you?'
+
+Seeing at last that all my attempts to evade the man only fed his
+vanity, and encouraged him to further excesses, and that the motley
+crowd, who filled the room and already formed a circle round us, had
+made up their minds to see sport, I would no longer balk them; I could
+no longer do it, indeed, with honour. I looked round, therefore, for
+someone whom I might enlist as my second, but I saw no one with whom I
+had the least acquaintance. The room was lined from table to ceiling
+with mocking faces and scornful eyes all turned to me.
+
+My opponent saw the look, and misread it; being much accustomed, I
+imagine, to a one-sided battle. He laughed contemptuously. 'No, my
+friend, there is no way out of it,' he said. 'Let me see your pretty
+face, or fight.'
+
+'So be it,' I said quietly. 'If I have no other choice, I will fight.'
+
+'In your mask?' he cried incredulously.
+
+'Yes,' I said sternly, feeling every nerve tingle with long-suppressed
+rage. 'I will fight as I am. Off with your back and breast, if you are
+a man. And I will so deal with you that if you see to-morrow's sun you
+shall need a mask for the rest of your days!'
+
+'Ho! ho!' he answered, scowling at me in surprise, 'you sing in a
+different key now. But I will put a term to it. There is space enough
+between these tables, if you can use your weapon; and much more than
+you will need tomorrow.'
+
+'To-morrow will show,' I retorted.
+
+Without more ado he unfastened the buckles of his breast-piece, and
+relieving himself of it, stepped back a pace. Those of the bystanders
+who occupied the part of the room he indicated--a space bounded by
+four tables, and not unfit for the purpose, though somewhat
+confined--hastened to get out of it, and seize instead upon
+neighbouring posts of 'vantage. The man's reputation was such, and his
+fame so great, that on all sides I heard naught but wagers offered
+against me at odds; but this circumstance, which might have flurried a
+younger man and numbed his arm, served only to set me on making the
+most of such openings as the fellow's presumption and certainty of
+success would be sure to afford.
+
+The news of the challenge running through the house had brought
+together by this time so many people as to fill the room from end to
+end, and even to obscure the light, which was beginning to wane. At
+the last moment, when we were on the point of engaging, a slight
+commotion marked the admission to the front of three or four persons,
+whose consequence or attendants gained them this advantage. I believed
+them to be the party of four I have mentioned, but at the time I could
+not be certain.
+
+In the few seconds of waiting while this went forward I examined
+our relative positions with the fullest intention of killing the
+man--whose glittering eyes and fierce smile filled me with a loathing
+which was very nearly hatred--if I could. The line of windows lay to
+my right and his left. The evening light fell across us, whitening the
+row of faces on my left, but leaving those on my right in shadow. It
+occurred to me on the instant that my mask was actually an advantage,
+seeing that it protected my sight from the side-light, and enabled me
+to watch his eyes and point with more concentration.
+
+'You will be the twenty-third man I have killed!' he said boastfully,
+as we crossed swords and stood an instant on guard.
+
+'Take care!' I answered. 'You have twenty-three against you!'
+
+A swift lunge was his only answer. I parried it, and thrust, and we
+fell to work. We had not exchanged half a dozen blows, however, before
+I saw that I should need all the advantage which my mask and greater
+caution gave me. I had met my match, and it might be something more;
+but that for a time it was impossible to tell. He had the longer
+weapon, and I the longer reach. He preferred the point, after the new
+Italian fashion, and I the blade. He was somewhat flushed with wine,
+while my arm had scarcely recovered the strength of which illness had
+deprived me. On the other hand, excited at the first by the cries of
+his backers, he played rather wildly; while I held myself prepared,
+and keeping up a strong guard, waited cautiously for any opening or
+mistake on his part.
+
+The crowd round us, which had hailed our first passes with noisy cries
+of derision and triumph, fell silent after a while, surprised and
+taken aback by their champion's failure to spit me at the first
+onslaught. My reluctance to engage had led them to predict a short
+fight and an easy victory.
+
+Convinced of the contrary, they began to watch each stroke with bated
+breath; or now and again, muttering the name of Jarnac, broke into
+brief exclamations as a blow more savage than usual drew sparks from
+our blades, and made the rafters ring with the harsh grinding of steel
+on steel.
+
+The surprise of the crowd, however, was a small thing compared with
+that of my adversary. Impatience, disgust, rage, and doubt chased one
+another in turn across his flushed features. Apprised that he had to
+do with a swordsman, he put forth all his power. With spite in his
+eyes he laboured blow on blow, he tried one form of attack after
+another, he found me equal, if barely equal, to all. And then at last
+there came a change. The perspiration gathered on his brow, the
+silence disconcerted him; he felt his strength failing under the
+strain, and suddenly, I think, the possibility of defeat and death,
+unthought of before, burst upon him. I heard him groan, and for a
+moment he fenced wildly. Then he again recovered himself. But now I
+read terror in his eyes, and knew that the moment of retribution was
+at hand. With his back to the table, and my point threatening his
+breast, he knew at last what those others had felt!
+
+He would fain have stopped to breathe, but I would not let him though
+my blows also were growing feeble, and my guard weaker; for I knew
+that if I gave him time to recover himself he would have recourse to
+other tricks, and might out-man[oe]uvre me in the end. As it was, my
+black unchanging mask, which always confronted him, which hid all
+emotions and veiled even fatigue, had grown to be full of terror to
+him--full of blank, passionless menace. He could not tell how I fared,
+or what I thought, or how my strength stood. A superstitious dread was
+on him, and threatened to overpower him. Ignorant who I was or whence
+I came, he feared and doubted, grappling with monstrous suspicions,
+which the fading light encouraged. His face broke out in blotches, his
+breath came and went in gasps, his eyes began to protrude. Once or
+twice they quitted mine for a part of a second to steal a despairing
+glance at the rows of onlookers that ran to right and left of us. But
+he read no pity there.
+
+At last the end came--more suddenly than I had looked for it, but I
+think he was unnerved. His hand lost its grip of the hilt, and a parry
+which I dealt a little more briskly than usual sent the weapon flying
+among the crowd, as much to my astonishment as to that of the
+spectators. A volley of oaths and exclamations hailed the event; and
+for a moment I stood at gaze, eyeing him watchfully. He shrank back;
+then he made for a moment as if he would fling himself upon me dagger
+in hand. But seeing my point steady, he recoiled a second time, his
+face distorted with rage and fear.
+
+'Go!' I said sternly. 'Begone! Follow your sword! But spare the next
+man you conquer.'
+
+He stared at me, fingering his dagger as if he did not understand, or
+as if in the bitterness of his shame at being so defeated even life
+were unwelcome. I was about to repeat my words when a heavy hand fell
+on my shoulder.
+
+'Fool!' a harsh growling voice muttered in my ear. 'Do you want him to
+serve you as Achon served Matas? This is the way to deal with him.'
+
+And before I knew who spoke or what to expect a man vaulted over the
+table beside me. Seizing the Italian by the neck and waist, he flung
+him bodily--without paying the least regard to his dagger--into the
+crowd. 'There!' the new-comer cried, stretching his arms as if the
+effort had relieved him, 'so much for him! And do you breathe
+yourself. Breathe yourself, my friend,' he continued with a
+vain-glorious air of generosity. 'When you are rested and ready, you
+and I will have a bout. Mon dieu! what a thing it is to see a man! And
+by my faith you are a man!'
+
+'But, sir,' I said, staring at him in the utmost bewilderment, 'we
+have no quarrel.'
+
+'Quarrel?' he cried in his loud, ringing voice. 'Heaven forbid! Why
+should we? I love a man, however, and when I see one I say to him, "I
+am Crillon! Fight me!" But I see you are not yet rested. Patience!
+There is no hurry. Berthon de Crillon is proud to wait your
+convenience. In the meantime, gentlemen,' he continued, turning with a
+grand air to the spectators, who viewed this sudden _bouleversement_
+with unbounded surprise, 'let us do what we can. Take the word from
+me, and cry all, "_Vive le Roi, et vive l'Inconnu!_"
+
+Like people awaking from a dream--so great was their astonishment--the
+company complied and with the utmost heartiness. When the shout died
+away, someone cried in turn, 'Vive Crillon!' and this was honoured
+with a fervour which brought the tears to the eyes of that remarkable
+man, in whom bombast was so strangely combined with the firmest and
+most reckless courage. He bowed again and again, turning himself about
+in the small space between the tables, while his face shone with
+pleasure and enthusiasm. Meanwhile I viewed him with perplexity. I
+comprehended that it was his voice I had heard behind the settle; but
+I had neither the desire to fight him nor so great a reserve of
+strength after my illness as to be able to enter on a fresh contest
+with equanimity. When he turned to me, therefore, and again asked,
+'Well, sir, are you ready?' I could think of no better answer than
+that I had already made to him, 'But, sir, I have no quarrel with
+you.'
+
+'Tut, tut!' he answered querulously, 'if that is all, let us engage.'
+
+'That is not all, however,' I said, resolutely putting up my sword. 'I
+have not only no quarrel with M. de Crillon, but I received at his
+hands when I last saw him a considerable service.'
+
+'Then now is the time to return it,' he answered briskly, and as if
+that settled the matter.
+
+I could not refrain from laughing. 'Nay, but I have still an excuse,'
+I said. 'I am barely recovered from an illness, and am weak. Even so,
+I should be loth to decline a combat with some; but a better man than
+I may give the wall to M. de Crillon and suffer no disgrace.'
+
+'Oh, if you put it that way--enough said,' he answered in a tone of
+disappointment. 'And, to be sure, the light is almost gone. That is a
+comfort. But you will not refuse to drink a cup of wine with me? Your
+voice I remember, though I cannot say who you are or what service I
+did you. For the future, however, count on me. I love a man who is
+brave as well as modest, and know no better friend than a stout
+swordsman.'
+
+I was answering him in fitting terms--while the fickle crowd, which a
+few minutes earlier had been ready to tear me, viewed us from a
+distance with respectful homage--when the masked gentleman who had
+before been in his company drew near and saluted me with much
+stateliness.
+
+'I congratulate you, sir,' he said, in the easy tone of a great man
+condescending. 'You use the sword as few use it, and fight with your
+head as well as your hands. Should you need a friend or employment,
+you will honour me by remembering that you are known to the Vicomte de
+Turenne.'
+
+I bowed low to hide the start which the mention of his name caused me.
+For had I tried, ay, and possessed to aid me all the wit of M. de
+Brantôme, I could have imagined nothing more fantastic than this
+meeting; or more entertaining than that I, masked, should talk with
+the Vicomte de Turenne masked, and hear in place of reproaches and
+threats of vengeance a civil offer of protection. Scarcely knowing
+whether I should laugh or tremble, or which should occupy me more, the
+diverting thing that had happened or the peril we had barely escaped,
+I made shift to answer him, craving his indulgence if I still
+preserved my incognito. Even while I spoke a fresh fear assailed me:
+lest M. de Crillon, recognising my voice or figure, should cry my name
+on the spot, and explode in a moment the mine on which we stood.
+
+This rendered me extremely impatient to be gone. But M. le Vicomte had
+still something to say, and I could not withdraw myself without
+rudeness.
+
+'You are travelling north like everyone else?' he said, gazing at me
+curiously. 'May I ask whether you are for Meudon, where the King of
+Navarre lies, or for the Court at St. Cloud?'
+
+I muttered, moving restlessly under his keen eyes, that I was for
+Meudon.
+
+'Then, if you care to travel with a larger company,' he rejoined,
+bowing with negligent courtesy, 'pray command me. I am for Meudon
+also, and shall leave here three hours before noon.'
+
+Fortunately he took my assent to his gracious invitation for granted,
+and turned away before I had well begun to thank him. From Crillon I
+found it more difficult to escape. He appeared to have conceived a
+great fancy for me, and felt also, I imagine, some curiosity as to my
+identity. But I did even this at last, and, evading the obsequious
+offers which were made me on all sides, escaped to the stables, where
+I sought out the Cid's stall, and lying down in the straw beside him,
+began to review the past, and plan the future. Under cover of the
+darkness sleep soon came to me; my last waking thoughts being divided
+between thankfulness for my escape and a steady purpose to reach
+Meudon before the Vicomte, so that I might make good my tale in his
+absence. For that seemed to be my only chance of evading the dangers I
+had chosen to encounter.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                              AT MEUDON.
+
+
+Making so early a start from Etampes that the inn, which had continued
+in an uproar till long after midnight, lay sunk in sleep when we rode
+out of the yard, we reached Meudon about noon next day. I should be
+tedious were I to detail what thoughts my mistress and I had during
+that day's journey--the last, it might be, which we should take
+together; or what assurances we gave one another, or how often we
+repented the impatience which had impelled us to put all to the touch.
+Madame, with kindly forethought, detached herself from us, and rode
+the greater part of the distance with Fanchette; but the opportunities
+she gave us went for little; for, to be plain, the separation we
+dreaded seemed to overshadow us already. We uttered few words, though
+those few were to the purpose, but riding hand-in-hand, with full
+hearts, and eyes which seldom quitted one another, looked forward to
+Meudon and its perils with such gloomy forebodings as our love and my
+precarious position suggested.
+
+Long before we reached the town, or could see more of it than
+the Château, over which the Lilies of France and the broad white
+banner of the Bourbons floated in company, we found ourselves swept
+into the whirlpool which surrounds an army. Crowds stood at all the
+cross-roads, wagons and sumpter-mules encumbered the bridges; each
+moment a horseman passed us at a gallop, or a troop of disorderly
+rogues, soldiers only in name, reeled, shouting and singing, along the
+road. Here and there, for a warning to the latter sort, a man dangled
+on a rude gallows; under which sportsmen returning from the chase and
+ladies who had been for an airing rode laughing on their way.
+
+Amid the multitude entering the town we passed unnoticed. A little way
+within the walls we halted to inquire where the Princess of Navarre
+had her lodging. Hearing that she occupied a house in the town, while
+her brother had his quarters in the Château, and the King of France at
+St. Cloud, I stayed my party in a by-road, a hundred paces farther on,
+and, springing from the Cid, went to my mistress's knee.
+
+'Mademoiselle,' I said formally, and so loudly that all my men might
+hear, 'the time is come. I dare not go farther with you. I beg you,
+therefore, to bear me witness that as I took you so I have brought you
+back, and both with your good-will. I beg that you will give me this
+quittance, for it may serve me.'
+
+She bowed her head and laid her ungloved hand on mine, which I had
+placed on the pommel of her saddle. 'Sir,' she answered in a broken
+voice, 'I will not give you this quittance, nor any quittance from me
+while I live.' With that she took off her mask before them all, and I
+saw the tears running down her white face. 'May God protect you, M. de
+Marsac,' she continued, stooping until her face almost touched mine,
+'and bring you to the thing you desire. If not, sir, and you pay too
+dearly for what you have done for me, I will live a maiden all my
+days. And, if I do not, these men may shame me!'
+
+My heart was too full for words, but I took the glove she held out to
+me, and kissed her hand with my knee bent. Then I waved--for I could
+not speak--to madame to proceed; and with Simon Fleix and Maignan's
+men to guard them they went on their way. Mademoiselle's white face
+looked back to me until a bend in the road hid them, and I saw them no
+more.
+
+I turned when all were gone, and going heavily to where my Sard
+stood with his head drooping, I climbed to the saddle, and rode at a
+foot-pace towards the Château. The way was short and easy, for the
+next turning showed me the open gateway and a crowd about it. A vast
+number of people were entering and leaving, while others rested in the
+shade of the wall, and a dozen grooms led horses up and down. The
+sunshine fell hotly on the road and the courtyard, and flashed back by
+the cuirasses of the men on guard, seized the eye and dazzled it with
+gleams of infinite brightness. I was advancing alone, gazing at all
+this with a species of dull indifference which masked for the moment
+the suspense I felt at heart, when a man, coming on foot along the
+street, crossed quickly to me and looked me in the face.
+
+I returned his look, and seeing he was a stranger to me, was for
+passing on without pausing. But he wheeled beside me and uttered my
+name in a low voice.
+
+I checked the Cid and looked down at him. 'Yes,' I said mechanically,
+'I am M. de Marsac. But I do not know you.'
+
+'Nevertheless I have been watching for you for three days,' he
+replied. 'M. de Rosny received your message. This is for you.'
+
+He handed me a scrap of paper. 'From whom?' I asked.
+
+'Maignan,' he answered briefly. And with that, and a stealthy look
+round, he left me, and went the way he had been going before.
+
+I tore open the note, and knowing that Maignan could not write, was
+not surprised to find that it lacked any signature. The brevity of its
+contents vied with the curtness of its bearer. 'In Heaven's name go
+back and wait,' it ran. 'Your enemy is here, and those who wish you
+well are powerless.'
+
+A warning so explicit, and delivered under such circumstances, might
+have been expected to make me pause even then. But I read the message
+with the same dull indifference, the same dogged resolve with which
+the sight of the crowded gateway before me had inspired me. I had not
+come so far and baffled Turenne by an hour to fail in my purpose at
+the last; nor given such pledges to another to prove false to myself.
+Moreover, the distant rattle of musketry, which went to show that a
+skirmish was taking place on the farther side of the Castle, seemed an
+invitation to me to proceed; for now, if ever, my sword might earn
+protection and a pardon. Only in regard to M. de Rosny, from whom I
+had no doubt that the message came, I resolved to act with prudence;
+neither making any appeal to him in public nor mentioning his name to
+others in private.
+
+The Cid had borne me by this time into the middle of the throng about
+the gateway, who, wondering to see a stranger of my appearance arrive
+without attendants, eyed me with a mixture of civility and
+forwardness. I recognised more than one man whom I had seen about the
+Court at St. Jean d'Angely six months before; but so great is the
+disguising power of handsome clothes and equipments that none of these
+knew me. I beckoned to the nearest, and asked him if the King of
+Navarre was in the Château.
+
+'He has gone to see the King of France at St. Cloud,' the man
+answered, with something of wonder that anyone should be ignorant of
+so important a fact. 'He is expected here in an hour.'
+
+I thanked him, and calculating that I should still have time and to
+spare before the arrival of M. de Turenne, I dismounted, and taking
+the rein over my arm, began to walk up and down in the shade of the
+wall. Meanwhile the loiterers increased in numbers as the minutes
+passed. Men of better standing rode up, and, leaving their horses in
+charge of their lackeys, went into the Château. Officers in shining
+corslets, or with boots and scabbards dulled with dust, arrived and
+clattered in through the gates. A messenger galloped up with letters,
+and was instantly surrounded by a curious throng of questioners; who
+left him only to gather about the next comers, a knot of townsfolk,
+whose downcast visages and glances of apprehension seemed to betoken
+no pleasant or easy mission.
+
+Watching many of these enter and disappear, while only the humbler
+sort remained to swell the crowd at the gate, I began to experience
+the discomfort and impatience which are the lot of the man who finds
+himself placed in a false position. I foresaw with clearness the
+injury I was about to do my cause by presenting myself to the king
+among the common herd; and yet I had no choice save to do this, for I
+dared not run the risk of entering, lest I should be required to give
+my name, and fail to see the King of Navarre at all.
+
+As it was I came very near to being foiled in this way; for I
+presently recognised, and was recognised in turn, by a gentleman who
+rode up to the gates and, throwing his reins to a groom, dismounted
+with an air of immense gravity. This was M. Forget, the king's
+secretary, and the person to whom I had on a former occasion presented
+a petition. He looked at me with eyes of profound astonishment, and
+saluting me stiffly from a distance, seemed in two minds whether he
+should pass in or speak to me. On second thoughts, however, he came
+towards me, and again saluted me with a peculiarly dry and austere
+aspect.
+
+'I believe, sir, I am speaking to M. de Marsac?' he said in a low
+voice, but not impolitely.
+
+I replied in the affirmative.
+
+'And that, I conclude, is your horse?' he continued, raising his cane,
+and pointing to the Cid, which I had fastened to a hook in the wall.
+
+I replied again in the affirmative.
+
+'Then take a word of advice,' he answered, screwing up his features,
+and speaking in a dry sort of way. 'Get upon its back without an
+instant's delay, and put as many leagues between yourself and Meudon
+as horse and man may.'
+
+'I am obliged to you,' I said, though I was greatly startled by his
+words. 'And what if I do not take your advice?'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. 'In that case look to yourself!' he
+retorted. 'But you will look in vain!'
+
+He turned on his heel as he spoke, and in a moment was gone. I watched
+him enter the Château, and in the uncertainty which possessed me
+whether he was not gone--after salving his conscience by giving me
+warning--to order my instant arrest, I felt, and I doubt not I looked,
+as ill at ease for the time being as the group of trembling townsfolk
+who stood near me. Reflecting that he should know his master's mind, I
+recalled with depressing clearness the repeated warnings the King of
+Navarre had given me that I must not look to him for reward or
+protection. I bethought me that I was here against his express orders:
+presuming on those very services which he had given me notice he
+should repudiate. I remembered that Rosny had always been in the same
+tale. And in fine I began to see that mademoiselle and I had together
+decided on a step which I should never have presumed to take on my own
+motion.
+
+I had barely arrived at this conclusion when the trampling of hoofs
+and a sudden closing in of the crowd round the gate announced the King
+of Navarre's approach. With a sick heart I drew nearer, feeling that
+the crisis was at hand; and in a moment he came in sight, riding
+beside an elderly man, plainly dressed and mounted, with whom he was
+carrying on an earnest conversation. A train of nobles and gentlemen,
+whose martial air and equipments made up for the absence of the
+gewgaws and glitter, to which my eyes had become accustomed at Blois,
+followed close on his heels. Henry himself wore a suit of white
+velvet, frayed in places and soiled by his armour; but his quick eye
+and eager, almost fierce, countenance could not fail to win and keep
+the attention of the least observant. He kept glancing from side to
+side as he came on; and that with so cheerful an air and a carriage so
+full at once of dignity and good-humour that no one could look on him
+and fail to see that here was a leader and a prince of men, temperate
+in victory and unsurpassed in defeat.
+
+The crowd raising a cry of '_Vive Navarre!_' as he drew near, he
+bowed, with a sparkle in his eye. But when a few by the gate cried
+'_Vivent les Rois!_' he held up his hand for silence, and said in a
+loud, clear voice, 'Not that, my friends. There is but one king in
+France. Let us say instead, "Vive le Roi!"'
+
+The spokesman of the little group of townsfolk, who, I learned, were
+from Arcueil, and had come to complain of the excessive number of
+troops quartered upon them, took advantage of the pause to approach
+him. Henry received the old man with a kindly look, and bent from his
+saddle to hear what he had to say. While they were talking I pressed
+forward, the emotion I felt on my own account heightened by my
+recognition of the man who rode by the King of Navarre--who was no
+other than M. de la Noüe. No Huguenot worthy of the name could look on
+the veteran who had done and suffered more for the cause than any
+living man without catching something of his stern enthusiasm; and the
+sight, while it shamed me, who a moment before had been inclined to
+prefer my safety to the assistance I owed my country, gave me courage
+to step to the king's rein, so that I heard his last words to the men
+of Arcueil.
+
+'Patience, my friends,' he said kindly. 'The burden is heavy, but the
+journey is a short one. The Seine is ours; the circle is complete. In
+a week Paris must surrender. The king, my cousin, will enter, and you
+will be rid of us. For France's sake one week, my friends.'
+
+The men fell back with low obeisances, charmed by his good-nature, and
+Henry, looking up, saw me before him. On the instant his jaw fell. His
+brow, suddenly contracting above eyes, which flashed with surprise and
+displeasure, altered in a moment the whole aspect of his face; which
+grew dark and stern as night. His first impulse was to pass by me; but
+seeing that I held my ground, he hesitated, so completely chagrined by
+my appearance that he did not know how to act, or in what way to deal
+with me. I seized the occasion, and bending my knee with as much
+respect as I had ever used to the King of France, begged to bring
+myself to his notice, and to crave his protection and favour.
+
+'This is no time to trouble me, sir,' he retorted, eyeing me with an
+angry side-glance. 'I do not know you. You are unknown to me, sir. You
+must go to M. de Rosny.'
+
+'It would be useless sire,' I answered, in desperate persistence.
+
+'Then I can do nothing for you,' he rejoined peevishly. 'Stand on one
+side, sir.'
+
+But I was desperate. I knew that I had risked all on the event, and
+must establish my footing before M. de Turenne's return, or run the
+risk of certain recognition and vengeance. I cried out, caring nothing
+who heard, that I was M. de Marsac, that I had come back to meet
+whatever my enemies could allege against me.
+
+'_Ventre Saint Gris!_' Henry exclaimed, starting in his saddle with
+well-feigned surprise. 'Are you that man?'
+
+'I am, sire,' I answered.
+
+'Then you must be mad!' he retorted, appealing to those behind him.
+'Stark, staring mad to show your face here! _Ventre Saint Gris!_ Are
+we to have all the ravishers and plunderers in the country come to
+us?'
+
+'I am neither the one nor the other!' I answered, looking with
+indignation from him to the gaping train behind him.
+
+'That you will have to settle with M. de Turenne!' he retorted,
+frowning down at me with his whole face turned gloomy and fierce. 'I
+know you well, sir, now. Complaint has been made that you abducted a
+lady from his Castle of Chizé some time back.'
+
+'The lady, sire, is now in charge of the Princess of Navarre.'
+
+'She is?' he exclaimed, quite taken aback.
+
+'And if she has aught of complaint against me,' I continued with
+pride, 'I will submit to whatever punishment you order or M. de
+Turenne demands. But if she has no complaint to make, and vows that
+she accompanied me of her own free-will and accord, and has suffered
+neither wrong nor displeasure at my hands, then, sire, I claim that
+this is a private matter between myself and M. de Turenne.'
+
+'Even so I think you will have your hands full,' he answered grimly.
+At the same time he stopped by a gesture those who would have cried
+out upon me, and looked at me himself with an altered countenance. 'Do
+I understand that you assert that the lady went of her own accord?' he
+asked.
+
+'She went and has returned, sire,' I answered.
+
+'Strange!' he ejaculated. 'Have you married her?'
+
+'No, sire,' I answered. 'I desire leave to do so.'
+
+'Mon dieu! she is M. de Turenne's ward,' he rejoined, almost
+dumbfounded by my audacity.
+
+'I do not despair of obtaining his assent, sire,' I said patiently.
+
+'_Saint Gris!_ the man is mad!' he cried, wheeling his horse and
+facing his train with a gesture of the utmost wonder. 'It is the
+strangest story I ever heard.'
+
+'But somewhat more to the gentleman's credit than the lady's!' one
+said with a smirk and a smile.
+
+'A lie!' I cried, springing forward on the instant with a boldness
+which astonished myself. 'She is as pure as your Highness's sister! I
+swear it. That man lies in his teeth, and I will maintain it.'
+
+'Sir!' the King of Navarre cried, turning on me with the utmost
+sternness, 'you forget yourself in my presence! Silence, and beware
+another time how you let your tongue run on those above you. You have
+enough trouble, let me tell you, on your hands already.'
+
+'Yet the man lies!' I answered doggedly, remembering Crillon and his
+ways. 'And if he will do me the honour of stepping aside with me, I
+will convince him of it!'
+
+'_Venire Saint Gris!_' Henry replied, frowning, and dwelling on each
+syllable of his favourite oath. 'Will you be silent, sir, and let me
+think? Or must I order your instant arrest?'
+
+'Surely that at least, sire,' a suave voice interjected. And with that
+a gentleman pressed forward from the rest, and gaining a place of
+'vantage by the King's side, shot at me a look of extreme malevolence.
+'My lord of Turenne will expect no less at your Highness's hands,' he
+continued warmly. 'I beg you will give the order on the spot, and hold
+this person to answer for his misdeeds. M. de Turenne returns to-day.
+He should be here now. I say again, sire, he will expect no less than
+this.'
+
+The king, gazing at me with gloomy eyes, tugged at his moustaches.
+Someone had motioned the common herd to stand back out of hearing; at
+the same time the suite had moved up out of curiosity and formed a
+half-circle; in the midst of which I stood fronting the king, who had
+La Noüe and the last speaker on either hand. Perplexity and annoyance
+struggled for the mastery in his face as he looked darkly down at me,
+his teeth showing through his beard. Profoundly angered by my
+appearance, which he had taken at first to be the prelude to
+disclosures which must detach Turenne at a time when union was
+all-important, he had now ceased to fear for himself; and perhaps saw
+something in the attitude I adopted which appealed to his nature and
+sympathies.
+
+'If the girl is really back,' he said at last, 'M. d'Aremburg, I do
+not see any reason why I should interfere. At present, at any rate.
+
+'I think, sire, M. de Turenne will see reason,' the gentleman answered
+drily.
+
+The king coloured. 'M. de Turenne,' he began,
+
+'Has made many sacrifices at your request, sire,' the other said with
+meaning. 'And buried some wrongs, or fancied wrongs, in connection
+with this very matter. This person has outraged him in the grossest
+manner, and in M. le Vicomte's name I ask, nay I press upon you, that
+he be instantly arrested, and held to answer for it.'
+
+'I am ready to answer for it now!' I retorted, looking from face to
+face for sympathy, and finding none save in M. de la Noüe's, who
+appeared to regard me with grave approbation. 'To the Vicomte de
+Turenne, or the person he may appoint to represent him.'
+
+'Enough!' Henry said, raising his hand and speaking in the tone of
+authority he knew so well how to adopt. 'For you, M. d'Aremburg, I
+thank you. Turenne is happy in his friend. But this gentleman came to
+me of his own free will and I do not think it consistent with my
+honour to detain him without warning given. I grant him an hour to
+remove himself from my neighbourhood. If he be found after that time
+has elapsed,' he continued solemnly, 'his fate be on his own head.
+Gentlemen, we are late already. Let us on.'
+
+I looked at him as he pronounced this sentence, and strove to find
+words in which to make a final appeal to him. But no words came; and
+when he bade me stand aside, I did so mechanically, remaining with my
+head bared to the sunshine while the troop rode by. Some looked back
+at me with curiosity, as at a man of whom they had heard a tale, and
+some with a jeer on their lips; a few with dark looks of menace. When
+they were all gone, and the servants who followed them had disappeared
+also, and I was left to the inquisitive glances of the rabble who
+stood gaping after the sight, I turned and went to the Cid, and loosed
+the horse with a feeling of bitter disappointment.
+
+The plan which mademoiselle had proposed and I had adopted in the
+forest by St. Gaultier--when it seemed to us that our long absence and
+the great events of which we heard must have changed the world and
+opened a path for our return--had failed utterly. Things were as they
+had been; the strong were still strong, and friendship under bond to
+fear. Plainly we should have shewn ourselves wiser had we taken the
+lowlier course, and, obeying the warnings given us, waited the King of
+Navarre's pleasure or the tardy recollection of Rosny. I had not then
+stood, as I now stood, in instant jeopardy, nor felt the keen, pangs
+of a separation which bade fair to be lasting. She was safe, and that
+was much; but I, after long service and brief happiness, must go out
+again alone, with only memories to comfort me.
+
+It was Simon Fleix's voice which awakened me from this unworthy
+lethargy--as selfish as it was useless--and, recalling me to myself,
+reminded me that precious time was passing while I stood inactive. To
+get at me he had forced his way through the curious crowd, and his
+face was flushed. He plucked me by the sleeve, regarding the varlets
+round him with a mixture of anger and fear.
+
+'Nom de Dieu! do they take you for a rope-dancer?' he muttered in my
+ear. 'Mount, sir, and come. There is not a moment to be lost.'
+
+'You left her at Madame Catherine's?' I said.
+
+'To be sure,' he answered impatiently. 'Trouble not about her. Save
+yourself, M. de Marsac. That is the thing to be done now.'
+
+I mounted mechanically, and felt my courage return as the horse moved
+under me. I trotted through the crowd, and without thought took the
+road by which we had come. When we had ridden a hundred yards,
+however, I pulled up. 'An hour is a short start,' I said sullenly.
+'Whither?'
+
+'To St. Cloud,' he answered promptly. 'The protection of the King of
+France may avail for a day or two. After that, there will still be the
+League, if Paris have not fallen.'
+
+I saw there was nothing else for it, and assented, and we set off. The
+distance which separates Meudon from St. Cloud we might have ridden
+under the hour, but the direct road runs across the Scholars' Meadow,
+a wide plain north of Meudon. This lay exposed to the enemy's fire,
+and was, besides, the scene of hourly conflicts between the horse of
+both parties, so that to cross it without an adequate force was
+impossible. Driven to make a circuit, we took longer to reach our
+destination, yet did so without mishap; finding the little town, when
+we came in sight of it, given up to all the bustle and commotion which
+properly belong to the Court and camp.
+
+It was, indeed, as full as it could be, for the surrender of Paris
+being momentarily expected, St. Cloud had become the rendezvous as
+well of the few who had long followed a principle as of the many who
+wait upon success. The streets, crowded in every part, shone with
+glancing colours, with steel and velvet, the garb of fashion and the
+plumes of war. Long lines of flags obscured the eaves and broke the
+sunshine, while, above all, the bells of half a dozen churches rang
+merry answer to the distant crash of guns. Everywhere on flag and arch
+and streamer I read the motto, 'Vive le Roi!'--words written, God knew
+then, and we know now, in what a mockery of doom!
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                         ''TIS AN ILL WIND.'
+
+
+We had made our way slowly and with much jostling as far as the
+principal street, finding the press increase as we advanced, when I
+heard, as I turned a corner, my name called, and, looking up, saw at a
+window the face of which I was in search. After that half a minute
+sufficed to bring M. d'Agen flying to my side, when nothing, as I had
+expected, would do but I must dismount where I was and share his
+lodging. He made no secret of his joy and surprise at sight of me, but
+pausing only to tell Simon where the stable was, haled me through the
+crowd and up his stairs with a fervour and heartiness which brought
+the tears to my eyes, and served to impress the company whom I found
+above with a more than sufficient sense of my importance.
+
+Seeing him again in the highest feather and in the full employment of
+all those little arts and graces which served as a foil to his real
+worth, I took it as a great honour that he laid them aside for the
+nonce; and introduced me to the seat of honour and made me known to
+his companions with a boyish directness and a simple thought for my
+comfort which infinitely pleased me. He bade his landlord, without a
+moment's delay, bring wine and meat and everything which could refresh
+a traveller, and was himself up and down a hundred times in a minute,
+calling to his servants for this or that, or railing at them for their
+failure to bring me a score of things I did not need. I hastened to
+make my excuses to the company for interrupting them in the midst of
+their talk; and these they were kind enough to accept in good part. At
+the same time, reading clearly in M. d'Agen's excited face and shining
+eyes that he longed to be alone with me, they took the hint, and
+presently left us together.
+
+'Well,' he said, coming back from the door, to which he had conducted
+them, 'what have you to tell me, my friend? She is not with you?'
+
+'She is with Mademoiselle de la Vire at Meudon,' I answered, smiling.
+'And for the rest, she is well and in better spirits.'
+
+'She sent me some message?' he asked.
+
+I shook my head. 'She did not know I should see you,' I answered.
+
+'But she--she has spoken of me lately?' he continued, his face
+falling.
+
+'I do not think she has named your name for a fortnight,' I answered,
+laughing. 'There's for you! Why, man,' I continued, adopting a
+different tone, and laying my hand on his shoulder in a manner which
+reassured him at least as much as my words, 'are you so young a lover
+as to be ignorant that a woman says least of that of which she thinks
+most? Pluck up courage! Unless I am mistaken, you have little to be
+afraid of except the past. Only have patience.'
+
+'You think so?' he said gratefully.
+
+I assured him that I had no doubt of it; and on that he fell into a
+reverie, and I to watching him. Alas for the littleness of our
+natures! He had received me with open arms, yet at sight of the
+happiness which took possession of his handsome face I gave way to the
+pettiest feeling which can harbour in a man's breast. I looked at him
+with eyes of envy, bitterly comparing my lot with that which fate had
+reserved for him. He had fortune, good looks, and success on his side,
+great relations, and high hopes; I stood in instant jeopardy, my
+future dark, and every path which presented itself so hazardous that I
+knew not which to adopt. He was young, and I past my prime; he in
+favour, and I a fugitive.
+
+To such reflections he put an end in a way which made me blush for my
+churlishness. For, suddenly awaking out of his pleasant dream, he
+asked me about myself and my fortunes, inquiring eagerly how I came to
+be in St. Cloud, and listening to the story of my adventures with a
+generous anxiety which endeared him to me more and more. When I had
+done--and by that time Simon had joined us, and was waiting at the
+lower end of the room--he pronounced that I must see the king.
+
+'There is nothing else for it,' he said.
+
+'I have come to see him,' I answered.
+
+'Mon dieu, yes!' he continued, rising from his seat and looking at me
+with a face of concern. 'No one else can help you.'
+
+I nodded.
+
+'Turenne has four thousand men here. You can do nothing against so
+many?'
+
+'Nothing,' I said. 'The question is, Will the king protect me?'
+
+'It is he or no one,' M. d'Agen answered warmly. 'You cannot see him
+to-night: he has a Council. To-morrow at daybreak you may. You must
+lie here to-night, and I will set my fellows to watch, and I think you
+will be safe. I will away now and see if my uncle will help. Can you
+think of anyone else who would speak for you?'
+
+I considered, and was about to answer in the negative, when Simon, who
+had listened with a scared face, suggested M. de Crillon.
+
+'Yes, if he would,' M. d'Agen exclaimed, looking at the lad with
+approbation. 'He has weight with the king.'
+
+'I think he might,' I replied slowly. 'I had a curious encounter with
+him last night.' And with that I told M. d'Agen of the duel I fought
+at the inn.
+
+'Good!' he said, his eyes sparkling. 'I wish I had been there to see.
+At any rate we will try him. Crillon fears no one, not even the king.'
+
+So it was settled. For that night I was to keep close in my friend's
+lodging, showing not even my nose at the window.
+
+When he had gone on his errand, and I found myself alone in the room,
+I am fain to confess that I fell very low in my spirits. M. d'Agen's
+travelling equipment lay about the apartment, but failed to give any
+but an untidy air to its roomy bareness. The light was beginning to
+wane, the sun was gone. Outside, the ringing of bells and the distant
+muttering of guns, with the tumult of sounds which rose from the
+crowded street, seemed to tell of joyous life and freedom, and all the
+hopes and ambitions from which I was cut off.
+
+Having no other employment, I watched the street, and keeping myself
+well retired from the window, saw knots of gay riders pass this way
+and that through the crowd, their corslets shining and their voices
+high. Monks and ladies, a cardinal and an ambassador, passed under my
+eyes--these and an endless procession of townsmen and beggars,
+soldiers and courtiers, Gascons, Normans and Picards. Never had I seen
+such a sight or so many people gathered together. It seemed as if half
+Paris had come out to make submission, so that while my gorge rose
+against my own imprisonment, the sight gradually diverted my mind from
+my private distresses, by bidding me find compensation for them in the
+speedy and glorious triumph of the cause.
+
+Even when the light failed the pageant did not cease, but, torches and
+lanthorns springing into life, turned night into day. From every side
+came sounds of revelry or strife. The crowd continued to perambulate
+the streets until a late hour, with cries of '_Vive le Roi!_' and
+'_Vive Navarre!_' while now and again the passage of a great noble
+with his suite called forth a fresh outburst of enthusiasm. Nothing
+seemed more certain, more inevitable, more clearly predestinated than
+that twenty-four hours must see the fall of Paris.
+
+Yet Paris did not fall.
+
+When M. d'Agen returned a little before midnight, he found me still
+sitting in the dark looking from the window. I heard him call roughly
+for lights, and apprised by the sound of his voice that something was
+wrong, I rose to meet him. He stood silent awhile, twirling his small
+moustaches, and then broke into a passionate tirade, from which I was
+not slow to gather that M. de Rambouillet declined to serve me.
+
+'Well,' I said, feeling for the young man's distress and
+embarrassment, 'perhaps he is right.'
+
+'He says that word respecting you came this evening', my friend
+answered, his cheeks red with shame, 'and that to countenance you
+after that would only be to court certain humiliation. I did not let
+him off too easily, I assure you,' M. d'Agen continued, turning away
+to evade my gaze; 'but I got no satisfaction. He said you had his
+good-will, and that to help you he would risk something, but that to
+do so under these circumstances would be only to injure himself.'
+
+'There is still Crillon,' I said, with as much cheerfulness as I could
+assume. 'Pray Heaven he be there early! Did M. de Rambouillet say
+anything else?'
+
+'That your only chance was to fly as quickly and secretly as
+possible.'
+
+'He thought my situation desperate, then?'
+
+My friend nodded; and scarcely less depressed on my account than
+ashamed on his own, evinced so much feeling that it was all I could do
+to comfort him; which I succeeded in doing only when I diverted the
+conversation to Madame de Bruhl. We passed the short night together,
+sharing the same room and the same bed, and talking more than we
+slept--of madame and mademoiselle, the castle on the hill, and the
+camp in the woods, of all old days in fine, but little of the future.
+Soon after dawn Simon, who lay on a pallet across the threshold,
+roused me from a fitful sleep into which I had just fallen, and a few
+minutes later I stood up dressed and armed, ready to try the last
+chance left to me.
+
+M. d'Agen had dressed stage for stage with me, and I had kept silence.
+But when he took up his cap, and showed clearly that he had it in his
+mind to go with me, I withstood him. 'No,' I said, 'you can do me
+little good, and may do yourself much harm.'
+
+'You shall not go without one friend,' he cried fiercely.
+
+'Tut, tut!' I said. 'I shall have Simon.'
+
+But Simon, when I turned to speak to him, was gone. Few men are at
+their bravest in the early hours of the day, and it did not surprise
+me that the lad's courage had failed him. The defection only
+strengthened, however, the resolution I had formed that I would not
+injure M. d'Agen; though it was some time before I could persuade him
+that I was in earnest, and would go alone or not at all. In the end he
+had to content himself with lending me his back and breast, which I
+gladly put on, thinking it likely enough that I might be set upon
+before I reached the castle. And then, the time being about seven, I
+parted from him with many embraces and kindly words, and went into the
+street with my sword under my cloak.
+
+The town, late in rising after its orgy, lay very still and quiet. The
+morning was grey and warm, with a cloudy sky. The flags, which had
+made so gay a show yesterday, hung close to the poles, or flapped idly
+and fell dead again. I walked slowly along beneath them, keeping a
+sharp look-out on every side; but there were few persons moving in the
+streets, and I reached the Castle gates without misadventure. Here was
+something of life; a bustle of officers and soldiers passing in and
+out, of courtiers whose office made their presence necessary, of
+beggars who had flocked hither in the night for company. In the middle
+of these I recognised on a sudden and with great surprise Simon Fleix
+walking my horse up and down. On seeing me he handed it to a boy, and
+came up to speak to me with a red face, muttering that four legs were
+better than two. I did not say much to him, my heart being full and my
+thoughts occupied with the presence chamber and what I should say
+there; but I nodded kindly to him, and he fell in behind me as the
+sentries challenged me. I answered them that I sought M. de Crillon,
+and so getting by, fell into the rear of a party of three who seemed
+bent on the same errand as myself.
+
+One of these was a Jacobin monk, whose black and white robes, by
+reminding me of Father Antoine, sent a chill to my heart. The
+second, whose eye I avoided, I knew to be M. la Guesle, the king's
+Solicitor-General. The third was a stranger to me. Enabled by M. la
+Guesle's presence to pass the main guards without challenge, the party
+proceeded through a maze of passages and corridors, conversing
+together in a low tone; while I, keeping in their train with my face
+cunningly muffled, got as far by this means as the antechamber, which
+I found almost empty. Here I inquired of the usher for M. de Crillon,
+and learned with the utmost consternation that he was not present.
+
+This blow, which almost stunned me, opened my eyes to the precarious
+nature of my position, which only the early hour and small attendance
+rendered possible for a moment. At any minute I might be recognised
+and questioned, or my name be required; while the guarded doors of the
+chamber shut me off as effectually from the king's face and grace as
+though I were in Paris, or a hundred leagues away. Endeavouring to the
+best of my power to conceal the chagrin and alarm, which possessed me
+as this conviction took hold of me, I walked to the window; and to
+hide my face more completely and at the same time gain a moment to
+collect my thoughts, affected to be engaged in looking through it.
+
+Nothing which passed in the room, however, escaped me. I marked
+everything and everyone, though all my thought was how I might get to
+the king. The barber came out of the chamber with a silver basin, and
+stood a moment, and went in again with an air of vast importance. The
+guards yawned, and an officer entered, looked round, and retired. M.
+la Guesle, who had gone in to the presence, came out again and stood
+near me talking with the Jacobin, whose pale nervous face and hasty
+movements reminded me somehow of Simon Fleix. The monk held a letter
+or petition in his hand, and appeared to be getting it by heart, for
+his lips moved continually. The light which fell on his face from the
+window showed it to be of a peculiar sweaty pallor, and distorted
+besides. But supposing him to be devoted, like many of his kind, to an
+unwholesome life, I thought nothing of this; though I liked him
+little, and would have shifted my place but for the convenience of his
+neighbourhood.
+
+Presently, while I was cudgelling my brains, a person came out and
+spoke to La Guesle; who called in his turn to the monk, and started
+hastily towards the door. The Jacobin followed. The third person who
+had entered in their company had his attention directed elsewhere at
+the moment; and though La Guesle called to him, took no heed. On the
+instant I grasped the situation. Taking my courage in my hands, I
+crossed the floor behind the monk; who, hearing me, or feeling his
+robe come in contact with me, presently started and looked round
+suspiciously, his face wearing a scowl so black and ugly that I almost
+recoiled from him, dreaming for a moment that I saw before me the very
+spirit of Father Antoine. But as the man said nothing, and the next
+instant averted his gaze, I hardened my heart and pushed on behind
+him, and passing the usher, found myself as by magic in the presence
+which had seemed a while ago as unattainable by my wits as it was
+necessary to my safety.
+
+It was not this success alone, however, which caused my heart to beat
+more hopefully. The king was speaking as I entered, and the gay tones
+of his voice seemed to promise a favourable reception. His Majesty sat
+half-dressed on a stool at the farther end of the apartment,
+surrounded by five or six noblemen, while as many attendants, among
+whom I hastened to mingle, waited near the door.
+
+La Guesle made as if he would advance, and then, seeing the king's
+attention was not on him, held back. But in a moment the king saw him
+and called to him. 'Ha, Guesle!' he said with good-temper, 'is it you?
+Is your friend with you?'
+
+The Solicitor went forward with the monk at his elbow, and I had
+leisure to remark the favourable change which had taken place in the
+king, who spoke more strongly and seemed in better health than of old.
+His face looked less cadaverous under the paint, his form a trifle
+less emaciated. That which struck me more than anything, however, was
+the improvement in his spirits. His eyes sparkled from time to time,
+and he laughed continually, so that I could scarcely believe that he
+was the same man whom I had seen overwhelmed with despair and tortured
+by his conscience.
+
+Letting his attention slip from La Guesle, he began to bandy words
+with the nobleman who stood nearest to him; looking up at him with a
+roguish eye, and making bets on the fall of Paris.
+
+'Morbleu!' I heard him cry gaily, 'I would give a thousand pounds to
+see the Montpensier this morning! She may keep her third crown for
+herself. Or, _peste!_ we might put her in a convent. That would be a
+fine vengeance!'
+
+'The veil for the tonsure,' the nobleman said with a smirk.
+
+'Ay. Why not? She would have made a monk of me,' the king rejoined
+smartly. 'She must be ready to hang herself with her garters this
+morning, if she is not dead of spite already. Or, stay, I had
+forgotten her golden scissors. Let her open a vein with them. Well,
+what does your friend want, La Guesle?'
+
+I did not hear the answer, but it was apparently satisfactory, for in
+a minute all except the Jacobin fell back, leaving the monk standing
+before the king; who, stretching out his hand, took from him a letter.
+The Jacobin, trembling visibly, seemed scarcely able to support the
+honour done him, and the king, seeing this, said in a voice audible to
+all, 'Stand up, man. You are welcome. I love a cowl as some love a
+lady's hood. And now, what is this?'
+
+He read a part of the letter and rose. As he did so the monk leaned
+forward as though to receive the paper back again, and then so
+swiftly, so suddenly, with so unexpected a movement that no one
+stirred until all was over, struck the king in the body with a knife!
+As the blade flashed and was hidden, and His Majesty with a deep sob
+fell back on the stool, then, and not till then, I knew that I had
+missed a providential chance of earning pardon and protection. For had
+I only marked the Jacobin as we passed the door together, and read his
+evil face aright, a word, one word, had done for me more than the
+pleading of a score of Crillons!
+
+Too late a dozen sprang forward to the king's assistance; but before
+they reached him he had himself drawn the knife from, the wound and
+struck the assassin with it on the head. While some, with cries of
+grief, ran to support Henry, from whose body the blood was already
+flowing fast, others seized and struck down the wretched monk. As they
+gathered round him I saw him raise himself for a moment on his knees
+and look upward; the blood which ran down his face, no less than the
+mingled triumph and horror of his features, impressed the sight on my
+recollection. The next instant three swords were plunged into his
+breast, and his writhing body, plucked up from the floor amid a
+transport of curses, was forced headlong through the casement and
+flung down to make sport for the grooms and scullions who stood below.
+
+A scene of indescribable confusion followed, some crying that the king
+was dead, while others called for a doctor, and some by name for
+Dortoman. I expected to see the doors closed and all within secured,
+that if the man had confederates they might be taken. But there was no
+one to give the order. Instead, many who had neither the _entrée_ nor
+any business in the chamber forced their way in, and by their cries
+and pressure rendered the hub-bub and tumult a hundred times worse. In
+the midst of this, while I stood stunned and dumbfounded, my own risks
+and concerns forgotten, I felt my sleeve furiously plucked, and,
+looking round, found Simon at my elbow. The lad's face was crimson,
+his eyes seemed starting from his head.
+
+'Come,' he muttered, seizing my arm. 'Come!' And without further
+ceremony or explanation he dragged me towards the door, while his face
+and manner evinced as much heat and impatience as if he had been
+himself the assassin. 'Come, there is not a moment to be lost,' he
+panted, continuing his exertions without the least intermission.
+
+'Whither?' I said, in amazement, as I reluctantly permitted him to
+force me along the passage and through the gaping crowd on the stairs.
+'Whither, man?'
+
+'Mount and ride!' was the answer he hissed in my ear. 'Ride for your
+life to the King of Navarre--to the King of France it may be! Ride as
+you have never ridden before, and tell him the news, and bid him look
+to himself! Be the first, and, Heaven helping us, Turenne may do his
+worst!'
+
+I felt every nerve in my body tingle as I awoke to his meaning.
+Without a word I left his arm, and flung myself into the crowd which
+filled the lower passage to suffocation. As I struggled fiercely with
+them Simon aided me by crying 'A doctor! a doctor! make way there!'
+and this induced many to give place to me under the idea that I was an
+accredited messenger. Eventually I succeeded in forcing my way through
+and reaching the courtyard; being, as it turned out, the first person
+to issue from the Château. A dozen people sprang towards me with
+anxious eyes and questions on their lips, but I ran past them and,
+catching the Cid, which was fortunately at hand, by the rein, bounded
+into the saddle.
+
+As I turned the horse to the gate I heard Simon cry after me, 'The
+Scholars' Meadow! Go that way!' and then I heard no more. I was out of
+the yard and galloping bareheaded down the pitched street, while women
+snatched their infants up and ran aside, and men came startled to the
+doors, crying that the League was upon us. As the good horse flung up
+his head and bounded forward, hurling the gravel behind him with hoofs
+which slid and clattered on the pavement, as the wind began to whistle
+by me, and I seized the reins in a shorter grip, I felt my heart bound
+with exultation. I experienced such a blessed relief and elation as
+the prisoner long fettered and confined feels when restored to the air
+of heaven.
+
+Down one street and through a narrow lane we thundered, until a broken
+gateway stopped with fascines--through which the Cid blundered and
+stumbled--brought us at a bound into the Scholars' Meadow just as the
+tardy sun broke through the clouds and flooded the low, wide plain
+with brightness. Half a league in front of us the towers of Meudon
+rose to view on a hill. In the distance, to the left, lay the walls of
+Paris, and nearer, on the same side, a dozen forts and batteries;
+while here and there, in that quarter, a shining clump of spears or a
+dense mass of infantry betrayed the enemy's presence.
+
+I heeded none of these things, however, nor anything except the towers
+of Meudon, setting the Cid's head straight for these and riding on at
+the top of his speed. Swiftly ditch and dyke came into view before us
+and flashed away beneath us. Men lying in pits rose up and aimed at
+us; or ran with cries to intercept us. A cannon-shot fired from the
+fort by Issy tore up the earth to one side; a knot of lancers sped
+from the shelter of an earthwork in the same quarter, and raced us for
+half a mile, with frantic shouts and threats of vengeance. But all
+such efforts were vanity. The Cid, fired by this sudden call upon his
+speed, and feeling himself loosed--rarest of events--to do his best,
+shook the foam from his bit, and opening his blood-red nostrils to the
+wind, crouched lower and lower: until his long neck, stretched out
+before him, seemed, as the sward swept by, like the point of an arrow
+speeding resistless to its aim.
+
+God knows, as the air rushed by me and the sun shone in my face, I
+cried aloud like a boy, and though I sat still and stirred neither
+hand nor foot, last I should break the good Sard's stride, I prayed
+wildly that the horse which I had groomed with my own hands and fed
+with my last crown might hold on unfaltering to the end. For I dreamed
+that the fate of a nation rode in my saddle; and mindful alike of
+Simon's words, 'Bid him look to himself,' and of my own notion that
+the League would not be so foolish as to remove one enemy to exalt
+another, I thought nothing more likely than that, with all my fury, I
+should arrive too late, and find the King of Navarre as I had left the
+King of France.
+
+In this strenuous haste I covered a mile as a mile has seldom been
+covered before; and I was growing under the influence of the breeze
+which whipped my temples somewhat more cool and hopeful, when I saw on
+a sudden right before me, and between me and Meudon, a handful of men
+engaged in a _mêlée_. There were red and white jackets in it--Leaguers
+and Huguenots--and the red coats seemed to be having the worst of it.
+Still, while I watched, they came off in order, and unfortunately in
+such a way and at such a speed that I saw they must meet me face to
+face whether I tried to avoid the encounter or not. I had barely time
+to take in the danger and its nearness, and discern beyond both
+parties the main-guard of the Huguenots, enlivened by a score of
+pennons, when the Leaguers were upon me.
+
+I suppose they knew that no friend would ride for Meudon at that pace,
+for they dashed at me six abreast with a shout of triumph; and before
+I could count a score we met. The Cid was still running strongly, and
+I had not thought to stay him, so that I had no time to use my
+pistols. My sword I had out, but the sun dazzled me and the men wore
+corslets, and I made but poor play with it; though I struck out
+savagely, as we crashed together, in my rage at this sudden crossing
+of my hopes when all seemed done and gained. The Cid faced them
+bravely--I heard the distant huzza of the Huguenots--and I put aside
+one point which threatened my throat. But the sun was in my eyes and
+something struck me on the head. Another second, and a blow in the
+breast forced me fairly from the saddle. Gripping furiously at the air
+I went down, stunned and dizzy, my last thought as I struck the ground
+being of mademoiselle, and the little brook with the stepping-stones.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+                          'LE ROI EST MORT!'
+
+
+IT was M. d'Agen's breastpiece saved my life by warding off the point
+of the varlet's sword, so that the worst injury I got was the loss of
+my breath for five minutes, with a swimming in the head and a kind of
+syncope. These being past, I found myself on my back on the ground,
+with a man's knee on my breast and a dozen horsemen standing round me.
+The sky reeled dizzily before my eyes and the men's figures loomed
+gigantic; yet I had sense enough to know what had happened to me, and
+that matters might well be worse.
+
+Resigning myself to the prospect of captivity, I prepared to ask for
+quarter; which I did not doubt I should receive, since they had taken
+me in an open skirmish, and honestly, and in the daylight. But the man
+whose knee already incommoded me sufficiently, seeing me about to
+speak, squeezed me on a sudden so fiercely, bidding me at the same
+time in a gruff whisper be silent, that I thought I could not do
+better than obey.
+
+Accordingly I lay still, and as in a dream, for my brain was still
+clouded, heard someone say, 'Dead! Is he? I hoped we had come in time.
+Well, he deserved a better fate. Who is he, Rosny?'
+
+'Do you know him, Maignan?' said a voice which sounded strangely
+familiar.
+
+The man who knelt upon me answered, 'No, my lord. He is a stranger to
+me. He has the look of a Norman.'
+
+'Like enough!' replied a high-pitched voice I had not heard before.
+'For he rode a good horse. Give me a hundred like it, and a hundred
+men to ride as straight, and I would not envy the King of France.'
+
+'Much less his poor cousin of Navarre,' the first speaker rejoined in
+a laughing tone, 'without a whole shirt to his back or a doublet that
+is decently new. Come, Turenne, acknowledge that you are not so badly
+off after all!'
+
+At that word the cloud which had darkened my faculties swept on a
+sudden aside. I saw that the men into whose hands I had fallen wore
+white favours, their leader a white plume; and comprehended without
+more that the King of Navarre had come to my rescue, and beaten off
+the Leaguers who had dismounted me. At the same moment the remembrance
+of all that had gone before, and especially of the scene I had
+witnessed in the king's chamber, rushed upon my mind with such
+overwhelming force that I fell into a fury of impatience at the
+thought of the time I had wasted; and rising up suddenly I threw off
+Maignan with all my force, crying out that I was alive--that I was
+alive, and had news.
+
+The equerry did his best to restrain me, cursing me under his breath
+for a fool, and almost squeezing the life out of me. But in vain, for
+the King of Navarre, riding nearer, saw me struggling. 'Hallo! hallo!
+'tis a strange dead man,' he cried, interposing. 'What is the meaning
+of this? Let him go! Do you hear, sirrah? Let him go!'
+
+The equerry obeyed and stood back sullenly, and I staggered to my
+feet, and looked round with eyes which still swam and watered. On the
+instant a cry of recognition greeted me, with a hundred exclamations
+of astonishment. While I heard my name uttered on every side in a
+dozen different tones, I remarked that M. de Rosny, upon whom my eyes
+first fell, alone stood silent, regarding me with a face of sorrowful
+surprise.
+
+'By heavens, sir, I knew nothing of this!' I heard the King of Navarre
+declare, addressing himself to the Vicomte de Turenne. 'The man is
+here by no connivance of mine. Interrogate him yourself, if you will.
+Or I will. Speak, sir,' he continued, turning to me with his
+countenance hard and forbidding. 'You heard me yesterday, what I
+promised you? Why, in God's name, are you here to-day?'
+
+I tried to answer, but Maignan had so handled me that I had not breath
+enough, and stood panting.
+
+'Your Highness's clemency in this matter,' M. de Turenne said, with a
+sneer, 'has been so great he trusted to its continuance. And doubtless
+he thought to find you alone. I fear I am in the way.'
+
+I knew him by his figure and his grand air, which in any other company
+would have marked him for master; and forgetting the impatience which
+a moment before had consumed me--doubtless I was still light-headed--I
+answered him. 'Yet I had once the promise of your lordship's
+protection,' I gasped.
+
+'My protection, sir?' he exclaimed, his eyes gleaming angrily.
+
+'Even so,' I answered. 'At the inn at Etampes, where M. de Crillon
+would have fought me.'
+
+He was visibly taken aback. 'Are you that man?' he cried.
+
+'I am. But I am not here to prate of myself,' I replied. And with
+that--the remembrance of my neglected errand flashing on me again--I
+staggered to the King of Navarre's side, and, falling on my knees,
+seized his stirrup. 'Sire, I bring you news! great news! dreadful
+news!' I cried, clinging to it. 'His Majesty was but a quarter of an
+hour ago stabbed in the body in his chamber by a villain monk. And is
+dying, or, it may be, dead.'
+
+'Dead? The King!' Turenne cried with an oath. 'Impossible!'
+
+Vaguely I heard others crying, some this, some that, as surprise and
+consternation, or anger, or incredulity moved them. But I did not
+answer them, for Henry, remaining silent, held me spellbound and awed
+by the marvellous change which I saw fall on his face. His eyes became
+on a sudden suffused with blood, and seemed to retreat under his heavy
+brows; his cheeks turned of a brick-red colour; his half-open lips
+showed his teeth gleaming through his beard; while his great nose,
+which seemed to curve and curve until it well-nigh met his chin, gave
+to his mobile countenance an aspect as strange as it was terrifying.
+Withal he uttered for a time no word, though I saw his hand grip the
+riding-whip he held in a convulsive grasp, as though his thought were
+''Tis mine! Mine! Wrest it away who dares!'
+
+'Bethink you, sir,' he said at last, fixing his piercing eyes on me,
+and speaking in a harsh, low tone, like the growling of a great dog,
+'this is no jesting-time. Nor will you save your skin by a ruse. Tell
+me, on your peril, is this a trick?'
+
+'Heaven forbid, sire!' I answered with passion. 'I was in the chamber,
+and saw it with my own eyes. I mounted on the instant, and rode hither
+by the shortest route to warn your Highness to look to yourself. Monks
+are many, and the Holy Union is not apt to stop half-way.'
+
+I saw he believed me, for his face relaxed. His breath seemed to come
+and go again, and for the tenth part of a second his eyes sought M. de
+Rosny's. Then he looked at me again. 'I thank you, sir,' he said,
+bowing gravely and courteously, 'for your care for me--not for your
+tidings, which are of the sorriest. God grant my good cousin and king
+may be hurt only. Now tell us exactly--for these gentlemen are equally
+interested with myself--had a surgeon seen him?'
+
+I replied in the negative, but added that the wound was in the groin,
+and bled much.
+
+'You said a few minutes ago, "dying or already dead!"' the King of
+Navarre rejoined. 'Why?'
+
+'His Majesty's face was sunken,' I stammered.
+
+He nodded. 'You may be mistaken,' he said. 'I pray that you are. But
+here comes Mornay. He may know more.'
+
+In a moment I was abandoned, even by M. de Turenne, so great was the
+anxiety which possessed all to learn the truth. Maignan alone, under
+pretence of adjusting a stirrup, remained beside me, and entreated me
+in a low voice to begone. 'Take this horse, M. de Marsac, if you
+will,' he urged, 'and ride back the way you came. You have done what
+you came to do. Go back, and be thankful.'
+
+'Chut!' I said, 'there is no danger.'
+
+'You will see,' he replied darkly, 'if you stay here. Come, come, take
+my advice and the horse,' he persisted, 'and begone! Believe me, it
+will be for the best.'
+
+I laughed outright at his earnestness and his face of perplexity. 'I
+see you have M. de Rosny's orders to get rid of me,' I said. 'But I am
+not going, my friend. He must find some other way out of his
+embarrassment, for here I stay.'
+
+'Well, your blood be on your own head,' Maignan retorted, swinging
+himself into the saddle with a gloomy face. 'I have done my best to
+save you!'
+
+'And your master!' I answered, laughing.
+
+For flight was the last thing I had in my mind. I had ridden this ride
+with a clear perception that the one thing I needed was a footing at
+Court. By the special kindness of Providence I had now gained this;
+and I was not the man to resign it because it proved to be scanty and
+perilous. It was something that I had spoken to the great Vicomte face
+to face and not been consumed, that I had given him look for look and
+still survived, that I had put in practice Crillon's lessons and come
+to no harm.
+
+Nor was this all. I had never in the worst times blamed the King of
+Navarre for his denial of me. I had been foolish, indeed, seeing that
+it was in the bargain, had I done so; nor had I ever doubted his
+good-will or his readiness to reward me should occasion arise. Now, I
+flattered myself, I had given him that which he needed, and had
+hitherto lacked--an excuse, I mean, for interference in my behalf.
+
+Whether I was right or wrong in this notion I was soon to learn, for
+at this moment Henry's cavalcade, which had left me a hundred paces
+behind, came to a stop, and while some of the number waved to me to
+come on, one spurred back to summon me to the king. I hastened to obey
+the order as fast as I could, but I saw on approaching that though all
+was at a standstill till I came up, neither the King of Navarre nor M.
+de Turenne was thinking principally of me. Every face, from Henry's to
+that of his least important courtier, wore an air of grave
+preoccupation; which I had no difficulty in ascribing to the doubt
+present in every mind, and outweighing every interest, whether the
+King of France was dead, or dying, or merely wounded.
+
+'Quick, sir!' Henry said with impatience, as soon as I came within
+hearing. 'Do not detain me with your affairs longer than is necessary.
+M. de Turenne presses me to carry into effect the order I gave
+yesterday. But as you have placed yourself in jeopardy on my account I
+feel that something is due to you. You will be good enough, therefore,
+to present yourself at once at M. la Varenne's lodging, and give me
+your parole to remain there without stirring abroad until your affair
+is concluded.'
+
+Aware that I owed this respite, which at once secured my present
+safety and promised well for the future, to the great event that, even
+in M. de Turenne's mind, had overshadowed all others, I bowed in
+silence. Henry, however, was not content with this. 'Come, sir,' he
+said sharply, and with every appearance of anger, 'do you agree to
+that?'
+
+I replied humbly that I thanked him for his clemency.
+
+'There is no need of thanks,' he replied coldly. 'What I have done is
+without prejudice to M. de Turenne's complaint. He must have justice.'
+
+I bowed again, and in a moment the troop were gone at a gallop towards
+Meudon, whence, as I afterwards learned, the King of Navarre, attended
+by a select body of five-and-twenty horsemen, wearing private arms,
+rode on at full speed to St. Cloud to present himself at His Majesty's
+bedside. A groom who had caught the Cid, which had escaped into the
+town with no other injury than a slight wound in the shoulder,
+by-and-by met me with the horse; and in this way I was enabled to
+render myself with some decency at Varenne's lodging, a small house at
+the foot of the hill, not far from the Castle-gate.
+
+Here I found myself under no greater constraint than that which my own
+parole laid upon me; and my room having the conveniency of a window
+looking upon the public street, I was enabled from hour to hour to
+comprehend and enter into the various alarms and surprises which made
+that day remarkable. The manifold reports which flew from mouth to
+mouth on the occasion, as well as the overmastering excitement which
+seized all, are so well remembered, however, that I forbear to dwell
+upon them, though they served to distract my mind from my own
+position. Suffice it that at one moment we heard that His Majesty was
+dead, at another that the wound was skin deep, and again that we might
+expect him at Meudon before sunset. The rumour that the Duchess de
+Montpensier had taken poison was no sooner believed than we were asked
+to listen to the guns of Paris firing _feux de joie_ in honour of the
+King's death.
+
+The streets were so closely packed with persons telling and hearing
+these tales that I seemed from my window to be looking on a fair. Nor
+was all my amusement without doors; for a number of the gentlemen of
+the Court, hearing that I had been at St. Cloud in the morning, and in
+the very chamber, a thing which made me for the moment the most
+desirable companion in the world, remembered on a sudden that they had
+a slight acquaintance with me, and honoured me by calling upon me and
+sitting a great part of the day with me. From which circumstance I
+confess I derived as much hope as they diversion; knowing that
+courtiers are the best weather-prophets in the world, who hate nothing
+so much as to be discovered in the company of those on whom the sun
+does not shine.
+
+The return of the King of Navarre, which happened about the middle of
+the afternoon, while it dissipated the fears of some and dashed the
+hopes of others, put an end to this state of uncertainty by
+confirming, to the surprise of many, that His Majesty was in no
+danger. We learned with varying emotions that the first appearances,
+which had deceived, not myself only, but experienced leeches, had been
+themselves belied by subsequent conditions; and that, in a word, Paris
+had as much to fear, and loyal men as much to hope, as before this
+wicked and audacious attempt.
+
+I had no more than stomached this surprising information, which was
+less welcome to me, I confess, than it should have been, when the
+arrival of M. d'Agen, who greeted me with the affection which he never
+failed to show me, distracted my thoughts for a time. Immediately on
+learning where I was and the strange adventures which had befallen me
+he had ridden off; stopping only once, when he had nearly reached me,
+for the purpose of waiting on Madame de Bruhl. I asked him how she had
+received him.
+
+'Like herself,' he replied with an ingenuous blush. 'More kindly than
+I had a right to expect, if not as warmly as I had the courage to
+hope.'
+
+'That will come with time,' I said, laughing. 'And Mademoiselle de la
+Vire?'
+
+'I did not see her,' he answered, 'but I heard she was well. And a
+hundred fathoms deeper in love,' he added, eyeing me roguishly, 'than
+when I saw her last.'
+
+It was my turn to colour now, and I did so, feeling all the pleasure
+and delight such a statement was calculated to afford me. Picturing
+mademoiselle as I had seen her last, leaning from her horse with love
+written so plainly on her weeping face that all who ran might read, I
+sank into so delicious a reverie that M. la Varenne, entering
+suddenly, surprised us both before another word passed on either side.
+
+His look and tone were as abrupt as it was in his nature, which was
+soft and compliant, to make them. 'M. de Marsac,' he said, 'I am sorry
+to put any constraint upon you, but I am directed to forbid you to
+your friends. And I must request this gentleman to withdraw.'
+
+'But all day my friends have come in and out,' I said with surprise.
+'Is this a new order?'
+
+'A written order, which reached me no farther back than two minutes
+ago,' he answered plainly. 'I am also directed to remove you to a room
+at the back of the house, that you may not overlook the street.'
+
+'But my parole was taken,' I cried, with a natural feeling of
+indignation.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. 'I am sorry to say that I have nothing to
+do with that,' he answered. 'I can only obey orders. I must ask this
+gentleman, therefore, to withdraw.'
+
+Of course M. d'Agen had no option but to leave me; which he did, I
+could see, notwithstanding his easy and confident expressions, with a
+good deal of mistrust and apprehension. When he was gone, La Varenne
+lost no time in carrying out the remainder of his orders. As a
+consequence I found myself confined to a small and gloomy apartment
+which looked, at a distance of three paces, upon the smooth face of
+the rock on which the Castle stood. This change, from a window which
+commanded all the life of the town, and intercepted every breath of
+popular fancy, to a closet whither no sounds penetrated, and where the
+very transition from noon to evening scarcely made itself known, could
+not fail to depress my spirits sensibly; the more as I took it to be
+significant of a change in my fortunes fully as grave. Reflecting that
+I must now appear to the King of Navarre in the light of a bearer of
+false tidings, I associated the order to confine me more closely with
+his return from St. Cloud; and comprehending that M. de Turenne was
+once more at liberty to attend to my affairs, I began to look about me
+with forebodings which were none the less painful because the parole I
+had given debarred me from any attempt to escape.
+
+Sleep and habit enabled me, nevertheless, to pass the night in
+comfort. Very early in the morning a great firing of guns, which made
+itself heard even in my quarters, led me to suppose that Paris had
+surrendered; but the servant who brought me my breakfast declined in a
+surly fashion to give me any information. In the end, I spent the
+whole day alone, my thoughts divided between my mistress and my own
+prospects, which seemed to grow more and more gloomy as the hours
+succeeded one another. No one came near me, no step broke the silence
+of the house; and for a while I thought my guardians had forgotten
+even that I needed food. This omission, it is true, was made good
+about sunset, but still M. la Varenne did not appear, the servant
+seemed to be dumb, and I heard no sounds in the house.
+
+I had finished my meal an hour or more, and the room was growing dark,
+when the silence was at last broken by quick steps passing along the
+entrance. They paused, and seemed to hesitate at the foot of the
+stairs, but the next moment they came on again, and stopped at my
+door. I rose from my seat on hearing the key turned in the lock, and
+my astonishment may be conceived when I saw no other than M. de
+Turenne enter, and close the door behind him.
+
+He saluted me in a haughty manner as he advanced to the table, raising
+his cap for an instant and then replacing it. This done he stood
+looking at me, and I at him, in a silence which on my side was the
+result of pure astonishment; on his, of contempt and a kind of wonder.
+The evening light, which was fast failing, lent a sombre whiteness to
+his face, causing it to stand out from the shadows behind him in a way
+which was not without its influence on me.
+
+'Well! 'he said at last, speaking slowly and with unimaginable
+insolence, 'I am here to look at you!'
+
+I felt my anger rise, and gave him back look for look. 'At your will,'
+I said, shrugging my shoulders.
+
+'And to solve a question,' he continued in the same tone. 'To learn
+whether the man who was mad enough to insult and defy _me_ was the old
+penniless dullard some called him, or the dare-devil others painted
+him.'
+
+'You are satisfied now?' I said.
+
+He eyed me for a moment closely; then with sudden heat he cried,
+'Curse me if I am! Nor whether I have to do with a man very deep or
+very shallow, a fool or a knave!'
+
+'You may say what you please to a prisoner,' I retorted coldly.
+
+'Turenne commonly does--to whom he pleases!' he answered. The next
+moment he made me start by saying, as he drew out a comfit-box and
+opened it, 'I am just from the little fool you have bewitched. If she
+were in my power I would have her whipped and put on bread and water
+till she came to her senses. As she is not, I must take another way.
+Have you any idea, may I ask,' he continued in his cynical tone, 'what
+is going to become of you, M. de Marsac?'
+
+I replied, my heart inexpressibly lightened by what he had said of
+mademoiselle, that I placed the fullest confidence in the justice of
+the King of Navarre.
+
+He repeated the name in a tone I did not understand.
+
+'Yes, sir, the King of Navarre,' I answered firmly.
+
+'Well, I daresay you have good reason to do so,' he rejoined with a
+sneer. 'Unless I am mistaken he knew a little more of this affair than
+he acknowledges.'
+
+'Indeed? The King of Navarre?' I said, staring stolidly at him.
+
+'Yes, indeed, indeed, the King of Navarre!' he retorted, mimicking me,
+with a nearer approach to anger than I had yet witnessed in him. 'But
+let him be a moment, sirrah!' he continued, 'and do you listen to me.
+Or first look at that. Seeing is believing.'
+
+He drew out as he spoke a paper, or, to speak more correctly, a
+parchment, which he thrust with a kind of savage scorn into my hand.
+Repressing for the moment the surprise I felt, I took it to the
+window, and reading it with difficulty, found it to be a royal patent
+drawn, as far as I could judge, in due form, and appointing some
+person unknown--for the name was left blank--to the post of
+Lieutenant-Governor of the Armagnac, with a salary of twelve thousand
+livres a year!
+
+'Well, sir?' he said impatiently.
+
+'Well?' I answered mechanically. For my brain reeled; the exhibition
+of such a paper in such a way raised extraordinary thoughts in my
+mind.
+
+'Can you read it?' he asked.
+
+'Certainly,' I answered, telling myself that he would fain play a
+trick on me.
+
+'Very well,' he replied, 'then listen. I am going to condescend; to
+make you an offer, M. de Marsac. I will procure you your freedom, and
+fill up the blank, which you see there, with your name--upon one
+condition.'
+
+I stared at him with all the astonishment it was natural for me to
+feel in the face of such a proposition, 'You will confer this office
+on me?' I muttered incredulously.
+
+'The king having placed it at my disposal,' he answered, 'I will. But
+first let me remind you,' he went on proudly, 'that the affair has
+another side. On the one hand I offer you such employment, M. de
+Marsac, as should satisfy your highest ambition. On the other, I warn
+you that my power to avenge myself is no less to-day than it was
+yesterday; and that if I condescend to buy you, it is because that
+course commends itself to me for reasons, not because it is the only
+one open.'
+
+I bowed, 'The condition, M. le Vicomte?' I said huskily, beginning to
+understand him.
+
+'That you give up all claim and suit to the hand of my kinswoman,' he
+answered lightly. 'That is all. It is a simple and easy condition.'
+
+I looked at him in renewed astonishment, in wonder, in stupefaction;
+asking myself a hundred questions. Why did he stoop to bargain, who
+could command? Why did he condescend to treat, who held me at his
+mercy? Why did he gravely discuss my aspirations, to whom they must
+seem the rankest presumption? Why?--but I could not follow it. I stood
+looking at him in silence; in perplexity as great as if he had offered
+me the Crown of France; in amazement and doubt and suspicion that knew
+no bounds.
+
+'Well!' he said at last, misreading the emotion which appeared in my
+face. 'You consent, sir?'
+
+'Never!' I answered firmly.
+
+He started. 'I think I cannot have heard you aright,' he said,
+speaking slowly and almost courteously. 'I offer you a great place and
+my patronage, M. de Marsac. Do I understand that you prefer a prison
+and my enmity?'
+
+'On those conditions,' I answered.
+
+'Think, think!' he said harshly.
+
+'I have thought,' I answered.
+
+'Ay, but have you thought where you are?' he retorted. 'Have you
+thought how many obstacles lie between you and this little fool? How
+many persons you must win over, how many friends you must gain? Have
+you thought what it will be to have me against you in this, or which
+of us is more likely to win in the end?'
+
+'I have thought,' I rejoined.
+
+But my voice shook, my lips were dry. The room had grown dark. The
+rock outside, intercepting the light, gave it already the air of a
+dungeon. Though I did not dream of yielding to him, though I even felt
+that in this interview he had descended to my level, and I had had the
+better of him, I felt my heart sink. For I remembered how men immured
+in prisons drag out their lives always petitioning, always forgotten;
+how wearily the days go, that to free men are bright with hope and
+ambition. And I saw in a flash what it would be to remain here, or in
+some such place; never to cross horse again, or breathe the free air
+of heaven, never to hear the clink of sword against stirrup, or the
+rich tones of M. d'Agen's voice calling for his friend!
+
+I expected M. de Turenne to go when I had made my answer, or else to
+fall into such a rage as opposition is apt to cause in those who
+seldom encounter it. To my surprise, however, he restrained himself.
+'Come,' he said, with patience which fairly astonished me, and so much
+the more as chagrin was clearly marked in his voice, 'I know where you
+put your trust. You think the King of Navarre will protect you. Well,
+I pledge you the honour of Turenne that he will not; that the King of
+Navarre will do nothing to save you. Now, what do you say?'
+
+'As I said before,' I answered doggedly.
+
+He took up the parchment from the table with a grim laugh. 'So much
+the worse for you then!' he said, shrugging his shoulders. 'So much
+the worse for you! I took you for a rogue! It seems you are a fool!'
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+                            'VIVE LE ROI!'
+
+
+He took his leave with those words. But his departure, which I should
+have hailed a few minutes before with joy, as a relief from
+embarrassment and humiliation, found me indifferent. The statement to
+which he had solemnly pledged himself in regard to the King of
+Navarre, that I could expect no further help from him, had prostrated
+me; dashing my hopes and spirits so completely that I remained rooted
+to the spot long after his step had ceased to sound on the stairs. If
+what he said was true, in the gloom which darkened alike my room and
+my prospects I could descry no glimmer of light. I knew His Majesty's
+weakness and vacillation too well to repose any confidence in him; if
+the King of Navarre also abandoned me, I was indeed without hope, as
+without resource.
+
+I had stood some time with my mind painfully employed upon this
+problem, which my knowledge of M. de Turenne's strict honour in
+private matters did not allow me to dismiss lightly, when I heard
+another step on the stairs, and in a moment M. la Varenne opened the
+door. Finding me in the dark he muttered an apology for the remissness
+of the servants; which I accepted, seeing nothing else for it, in good
+part.
+
+'We have been at sixes-and-sevens all day, and you have been
+forgotten,' he continued. 'But you will have no reason to complain
+now. I am ordered to conduct you to His Majesty without delay.'
+
+'To St. Cloud!' I exclaimed, greatly astonished.
+
+'No, the king of France is here,' he answered.
+
+'At Meudon?'
+
+'To be sure. Why not?'
+
+I expressed my wonder at his Majesty's rapid recovery.
+
+'Pooh!' he answered roughly. 'He is as well as he ever was. I will
+leave you my light. Be good enough to descend as soon as you are
+ready, for it is ill work keeping kings waiting. Oh! and I had
+forgotten one thing,' he continued, returning when he had already
+reached the door. 'My orders are to see that you do not hold converse
+with anyone until you have seen the king, M. de Marsac. You will
+kindly remember this if we are kept waiting in the ante-chamber.'
+
+'Am I to be transported to--other custody?' I asked, my mind full of
+apprehension.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. 'Possibly,' he replied. 'I do not know.'
+
+Of course there was nothing for it but to murmur that I was at the
+king's disposition; after which La Varenne retired, leaving me to put
+the best face on the matter I could. Naturally I augured anything but
+well of an interview weighted with such a condition; and this
+contributed still further to depress my spirits, already lowered by
+the long solitude in which I had passed the day. Fearing nothing,
+however, so much as suspense, I hastened to do what I could to repair
+my costume, and then descended to the foot of the stairs, where I
+found my custodian awaiting me with a couple of servants, of whom one
+bore a link.
+
+We went out side by side, and having barely a hundred yards to go,
+seemed in a moment to be passing through the gate of the Castle. I
+noticed that the entrance was very strongly guarded, but an instant's
+reflection served to remind me that this was not surprising after what
+had happened at St. Cloud. I remarked to M. la Varenne as we crossed
+the courtyard that I supposed Paris had surrendered; but he replied in
+the negative so curtly, and with so little consideration, that I
+forebore to ask any other questions; and the Château being small, we
+found ourselves almost at once in a long, narrow corridor, which
+appeared to serve as the antechamber.
+
+It was brilliantly lighted and crowded from end to end, and almost
+from wall to wall, with a mob of courtiers; whose silence, no less
+than their keen and anxious looks, took me by surprise. Here and there
+two or three, who had seized upon the embrasure of a window, talked
+together in a low tone; or a couple, who thought themselves
+sufficiently important to pace the narrow passage between the waiting
+lines, conversed in whispers as they walked. But even these were swift
+to take alarm, and continually looked askance; while the general
+company stood at gaze, starting and looking up eagerly whenever the
+door swung open or a newcomer was announced. The strange silence which
+prevailed reminded me of nothing so much as of the Court at Blois on
+the night of the Duke of Merc[oe]ur's desertion; but that stillness
+had brooded over empty chambers, this gave a peculiar air of
+strangeness to a room thronged in every part.
+
+M. la Varenne, who was received by those about the door with silent
+politeness, drew me into the recess of a window; whence I was able to
+remark, among other things, that the Huguenots present almost
+outnumbered the king's immediate following. Still, among those who
+were walking up and down, I noticed M. de Rambouillet, to whom at
+another time I should have hastened to pay my respects; with Marshal
+d'Aumont, Sancy, and Humières. Nor had I more than noted the presence
+of these before the door of the chamber opened and added to their
+number Marshal Biron, who came out leaning on the arm of Crillon. The
+sight of these old enemies in combination was sufficient of itself to
+apprise me that some serious crisis was at hand; particularly as their
+progress through the crowd was watched, I observed, by a hundred
+curious and attentive eyes.
+
+They disappeared at last through the outer door, and the assemblage
+turned as with one accord to see who came next. But nearly half an
+hour elapsed before the Chamber door, which all watched so studiously,
+again opened. This time it was to give passage to my late visitor,
+Turenne, who came out smiling, and leaning, to my great surprise, on
+the arm of M. de Rosny.
+
+As the two walked down the room, greeting here and there an obsequious
+friend, and followed in their progress by all eyes, I felt my heart
+sink indeed; both at sight of Turenne's good-humour, and of the
+company in which I found him. Aware that in proportion as he was
+pleased I was like to meet with displeasure, I still might have had
+hope left had I had Rosny left. Losing him, however--and I could not
+doubt, seeing him as I saw him, that I had lost him--and counting the
+King of Navarre as gone already, I felt such a failure of courage as I
+had never known before. I told myself with shame that I was not made
+for Courts, or for such scenes as these; and recalling with new and
+keen mortification the poor figure I had cut in the King of Navarre's
+antechamber at St. Jean, I experienced so strange a gush of pity for
+my mistress that nothing could exceed the tenderness I felt for her. I
+had won her under false colours, I was not worthy of her. I felt that
+my mere presence in her company in such a place as this, and among
+these people, must cover her with shame and humiliation.
+
+To my great relief, since I knew my face was on fire, neither of the
+two, as they walked down the passage, looked my way or seemed
+conscious of my neighbourhood. At the door they stood a moment talking
+earnestly, and it seemed as if M. de Rosny would have accompanied the
+Vicomte farther. The latter would not suffer it, however, but took his
+leave there; and this with so many polite gestures that my last hope
+based on M. de Rosny vanished.
+
+Nevertheless, that gentleman was not so wholly changed that on his
+turning to re-traverse the room I did not see a smile flicker for an
+instant on his features as the two lines of bowing courtiers opened
+before him. The next moment his look fell on me, and though his face
+scarcely altered, he stopped opposite me.
+
+'M. de Marsac is waiting to see His Majesty?' he asked aloud, speaking
+to M. la Varenne.
+
+My companion remaining silent, I bowed.
+
+'In five minutes,' M. de Rosny replied quietly, yet with a distant
+air, which made me doubt whether I had not dreamed all I remembered of
+this man. 'Ah! M. de Paul, what can I do for you?' he continued. And
+he bent his head to listen to the application which a gentleman who
+stood next me poured into his ear. 'I will see,' I heard him answer.
+'In any case you shall know to-morrow.'
+
+'But you will be my friend?' M. Paul urged, detaining him by the
+sleeve.
+
+'I will put only one before you,' he answered.
+
+My neighbour seemed to shrink into himself with disappointment. 'Who
+is it?' he murmured piteously.
+
+'The king and his service, my friend,' M. de Rosny replied drily. And
+with that he walked away. But half a dozen times at least before he
+reached the upper end of the room I saw the scene repeated.
+
+I looked on at all this in the utmost astonishment, unable to guess or
+conceive what had happened to give M. de Rosny so much importance. For
+it did not escape me that the few words he had stopped to speak to me
+had invested me with interest in the eyes of all who stood near. They
+gave me more room and a wider breathing-space, and looking at me
+askance, muttered my name in whispers. In my uncertainty, however,
+what this portended I drew no comfort from it; and before I had found
+time to weigh it thoroughly the door through which Turenne and Rosny
+had entered opened again. The pages and gentlemen who stood about it
+hastened to range themselves, on either side. An usher carrying a
+white wand came rapidly down the room, here and there requesting the
+courtiers to stand back where the passage was narrow. Then a loud
+voice without cried, 'The King, gentlemen! the King!' and one in every
+two of us stood a-tiptoe to see him enter.
+
+But there came in only Henry of Navarre, wearing a violet cloak and
+cap.
+
+I turned to La Varenne and with my head full of confusion, muttered
+impatiently, 'But the king, man! Where is the king?'
+
+He grinned at me, with his hand before his mouth. 'Hush!' he
+whispered. ''Twas a jest we played on you! His late Majesty died at
+daybreak this morning. This is the king.'
+
+'This! the King of Navarre?' I cried; so loudly that some round us
+called 'Silence!'
+
+'No, the King of France, fool!' he replied. 'Your sword must be
+sharper than your wits, or I have been told some lies!'
+
+I let the gibe pass and the jest, for my heart was beating so fast and
+painfully that I could scarcely preserve my outward composure. There
+was a mist before my eyes, and a darkness which set the lights at
+defiance. It was in vain I tried to think what this might mean--to me.
+I could not put two thoughts together, and while I still questioned
+what reception I might expect, and who in this new state of things
+were my friends, the king stopped before me.
+
+'Ha, M. de Marsac!' he cried cheerfully, signing to those who stood
+before me to give place. 'You are the gentleman who rode so fast to
+warn me the other morning. I have spoken to M. de Turenne about you,
+and he is willing to overlook the complaint he had against you. For
+the rest, go to my closet, my friend. Go! Rosny knows my will
+respecting you.'
+
+I had sense enough left to kneel and kiss his hand; but it was in
+silence, which he knew how to interpret. He had moved on and was
+speaking to another before I recovered the use of my tongue, or the
+wits which his gracious words had scattered. When I did so, and got on
+my feet again I found myself the centre of so much observation and the
+object of so many congratulations that I was glad to act upon the hint
+which La Varenne gave me, and hurry away to the closet.
+
+Here, though I had now an inkling of what I had to expect, I found
+myself received with a kindness which bade fair to overwhelm me. Only
+M. de Rosny was in the room, and he took me by both hands in a manner
+which told me without a word that the Rosny of old days was back, and
+that for the embarrassment I had caused him of late I was more than
+forgiven. When I tried to thank him for the good offices, which I knew
+he had done me with the king he would have none of it; reminding me
+with a smile that he had eaten of my cheese when the choice lay
+between that and Lisieux.
+
+'And besides, my friend,' he continued, his eyes twinkling, 'You have
+made me richer by five hundred crowns.'
+
+'How so?' I asked, wondering more and more.
+
+'I wagered that sum with Turenne that he could not bribe you,' he
+answered, smiling. 'And see,' he continued, selecting from some on the
+table the same parchment I had seen before, 'here is the bribe. Take
+it; it is yours. I have given a score to-day, but none with the same
+pleasure. Let me be the first to congratulate the Lieutenant-Governor
+of the Armagnac.'
+
+For a while I could not believe that he was in earnest; which pleased
+him mightily, I remember. When I was brought at last to see that the
+king had meant this for me from the first, and had merely lent the
+patent to Turenne that the latter might make trial of me, my pleasure
+and gratification were such that I could no more express them then
+than I can now describe them. For they knew no bounds. I stood before
+Rosny silent and confused, with long-forgotten tears welling up to my
+eyes, and one regret only in my heart--that my dear mother had not
+lived to see the fond illusions with which I had so often amused her
+turned to sober fact. Not then, but afterwards, I remarked that the
+salary of my office amounted to the exact sum which I had been in the
+habit of naming to her; and I learned that Rosny had himself fixed it
+on information given him by Mademoiselle de la Vire.
+
+As my transports grew more moderate, and I found voice to thank my
+benefactor, he had still an answer. 'Do not deceive yourself, my
+friend,' he said gravely, 'or think this an idle reward. My master is
+King of France, but he is a king without a kingdom, and a captain
+without money. To-day, to gain his rights, he has parted with half his
+powers. Before he win all back there will be blows--blows, my friend.
+And to that end I have bought your sword.'
+
+I told him that if no other left its scabbard for the king, mine
+should be drawn.
+
+'I believe you,' he answered kindly, laying his hand on my shoulder.
+'Not by reason of your words--Heaven knows I have heard vows enough
+to-day!--but because I have proved you. And now,' he continued,
+speaking in an altered tone and looking at me with a queer smile, 'now
+I suppose you are perfectly satisfied? You have nothing more to wish
+for, my friend?'
+
+I looked aside in a guilty fashion, not daring to prefer on the top of
+all his kindness a further petition. Moreover, His Majesty might have
+other views; or on this point Turenne might have proved obstinate. In
+a word, there was nothing in what had happened, or on M. de Rosny's
+communication, to inform me whether the wish of my heart was to be
+gratified or not.
+
+But I should have known that great man better than to suppose that he
+was one to promise without performing, or to wound a friend when he
+could not salve the hurt. After enjoying my confusion for a time he
+burst into a great shout of laughter, and taking me familiarly by the
+shoulders, turned me towards the door. 'There, go!' he said. 'Go up
+the passage. You will find a door on the right, and a door on the
+left. You will know which to open.'
+
+Forbidding me to utter a syllable, he put me out. In the passage,
+where I fain would have stood awhile to collect my thoughts, I was
+affrighted by sounds which warned me that the king was returning that
+way. Fearing to be surprised by him in such a state of perturbation, I
+hurried to the end of the passage, where I discovered, as I had been
+told, two doors.
+
+They were both closed, and there was nothing about either of them to
+direct my choice. But M. de Rosny was correct in supposing that I had
+not forgotten the advice he had offered me on the day when he gave me
+so fine a surprise in his own house--'When you want a good wife, M. de
+Marsac, turn to the right!' I remembered the words, and without a
+moment's hesitation--for the king and his suite were already entering
+the passage--I knocked boldly, and scarcely waiting for an invitation,
+went in.
+
+Fanchette was by the door, but stood aside with a grim smile, which I
+was at liberty to accept as a welcome or not. Mademoiselle, who had
+been seated on the farther side of the table, rose as I entered, and
+we stood looking at one another. Doubtless she waited for me to speak
+first; while I on my side was so greatly taken aback by the change
+wrought in her by the Court dress she was wearing and the air of
+dignity with which she wore it, that I stood gasping. I turned coward
+after all that had passed between us. This was not the girl I had
+wooed in the greenwoods by St. Gaultier; nor the pale-faced woman I
+had lifted to the saddle a score of times in the journey Paris-wards.
+The sense of unworthiness which I had experienced a few minutes before
+in the crowded antechamber returned in full force in presence of her
+grace and beauty, and once more I stood tongue-tied before her, as I
+had stood in the lodgings at Blois. All the later time, all that had
+passed between us was forgotten.
+
+She, for her part, looked at me wondering at my silence. Her face,
+which had grown rosy red at my entrance, turned pale again. Her eyes
+grew large with alarm; she began to beat her foot on the floor in a
+manner I knew. 'Is anything the matter, sir?' she muttered at last.
+
+'On the contrary, mademoiselle,' I answered hoarsely, looking every
+way, and grasping at the first thing I could think of, 'I am just from
+M. de Rosny.'
+
+'And he?'
+
+'He has made me Lieutenant-Governor of the Armagnac.'
+
+She curtseyed to me in a wonderful fashion. 'It pleases me to
+congratulate you, sir,' she said, in a voice between laughing and
+crying. 'It is not more than equal to your deserts.'
+
+I tried to thank her becomingly, feeling at the same time more foolish
+than I had ever felt in my life; for I knew that this was neither what
+I had come to tell nor she to hear. Yet I could not muster up courage
+nor find words to go farther, and stood by the table in a state of
+miserable discomposure.
+
+'Is that all, sir?' she said at last, losing patience.
+
+Certainly it was now or never, and I knew it. I made the effort. 'No,
+mademoiselle,' I said in a low voice, 'Far from it. But I do not see
+here the lady to whom I came to address myself, and whom I have seen a
+hundred times in far other garb than yours, wet and weary and
+dishevelled, in danger and in flight. Her I have served and loved; and
+for her I have lived, I have had no thought for months that has not
+been hers, nor care save for her. I and all that I have by the king's
+bounty are hers, and I came to lay them at her feet. But I do not see
+her here.'
+
+'No, sir? I she answered in a whisper, with her face averted.
+
+'No, mademoiselle.'
+
+With a sudden brightness and quickness which set my heart beating she
+turned, and looked at me. 'Indeed!' she said. 'I am sorry for that. It
+is a pity your love should be given elsewhere, M. de Marsac--since it
+is the king's will that you should marry me.'
+
+'Ah, mademoiselle!' I cried, kneeling before her--for she had come
+round the table and stood beside me--'But you?'
+
+'It is my will too, sir,' she answered, smiling through her tears.
+
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+
+On the following day Mademoiselle de la Vire became my wife; the
+king's retreat from Paris, which was rendered necessary by the
+desertion of many who were ill-affected to the Huguenots, compelling
+the instant performance of the marriage, if we would have it read by
+M. d'Amours. This haste notwithstanding, I was enabled by the kindness
+of M. d'Agen to make such an appearance, in respect both of servants
+and equipment, as became rather my future prospects than my past
+distresses. It is true that His Majesty, out of a desire to do nothing
+which might offend Turenne, did not honour us with his presence; but
+Madame Catherine attended on his behalf, and herself gave me my bride.
+M. de Sully and M. Crillon, with the Marquis de Rambouillet and his
+nephew, and my distant connection, the Duke de Rohan, who first
+acknowledged me on that day, were among those who earned my gratitude
+by attending me upon the occasion.
+
+The marriage of M. François d'Agen with the widow of my old rival and
+opponent did not take place until something more than a year later, a
+delay which was less displeasing to me than to the bridegroom,
+inasmuch as it left madame at liberty to bear my wife company during
+my absence on the campaign of Arques and Ivry. In the latter battle,
+which added vastly to the renown of M. de Rosny, who captured the
+enemy's standard with his own hand, I had the misfortune to be wounded
+in the second of the two charges led by the king; and being attacked
+by two foot soldiers, as I lay entangled I must inevitably have
+perished but for the aid afforded me by Simon Fleix, who flew to the
+rescue with the courage of a veteran. His action was observed by the
+king, who begged him from me, and attaching him to his own person in
+the capacity of clerk, started him so fairly on the road to fortune
+that he has since risen beyond hope or expectation.
+
+The means by which Henry won for a time the support of Turenne (and
+incidentally procured his consent to my marriage) are now too
+notorious to require explanation. Nevertheless, it was not until the
+Vicomte's union a year later with Mademoiselle de la Marck, who
+brought him the Duchy of Bouillon, that I thoroughly understood the
+matter; or the kindness peculiar to the king, my master, which
+impelled that great monarch, in the arrangement of affairs so vast, to
+remember the interests of the least of his servants.
+
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historical Romances: Under the Red
+Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France, by Stanley J. Weyman
+
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