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A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac

by Stanley John Weyman · English · Gutenberg #1939 · 816,695 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Gentleman of France: Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne Sieur de Marsac

Author: Stanley John Weyman


        
Release date: October 1, 1999 [eBook #1939]
                Most recently updated: February 18, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1939

Credits: Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE: BEING THE MEMOIRS OF GASTON DE BONNE SIEUR DE MARSAC ***



A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE

BEING THE MEMOIRS OF GASTON DE BONNE SIEUR DE MARSAC

By Stanley Weyman


Transcriber’s Note:

In this Etext, text in italics has been written in capital letters.

Many French words in the text have accents, etc. which have been
omitted.



CONTENTS.

     CHAPTER I.        THE SPORT OF FOOLS
     CHAPTER II.       THE KING OF NAVARRE
     CHAPTER III.      BOOT AND SADDLE
     CHAPTER IV.       MADEMOISELLE DE LA VIRE
     CHAPTER V.        THE ROAD TO BLOIS
     CHAPTER VI.       MY MOTHER’S LODGING
     CHAPTER VII.      SIMON FLEIX
     CHAPTER VIII.     AN EMPTY ROOM
     CHAPTER IX.       THE HOUSE IN THE RUELLE D’ARCY
     CHAPTER X.        THE FIGHT ON THE STAIRS
     CHAPTER XI.       THE MAN AT THE DOOR
     CHAPTER XII.      MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, BARON DE ROSNY
     CHAPTER XIII.     AT ROSNY
     CHAPTER XIV.      M. DE RAMBOUILLET
     CHAPTER XV.       VILAIN HERODES
     CHAPTER XVI.      IN THE KING’S CHAMBER
     CHAPTER XVII.     THE JACOBIN MONK
     CHAPTER XVIII.    THE OFFER OF THE LEAGUE
     CHAPTER XIX.      MEN CALL IT CHANCE
     CHAPTER XX.       THE KING’S FACE
     CHAPTER XXI.      TWO WOMEN
     CHAPTER XXII.     ‘LA FEMME DISPOSE’
     CHAPTER XXIII.    THE LAST VALOIS
     CHAPTER XXIV.     A ROYAL PERIL
     CHAPTER XXV.      TERMS OF SURRENDER
     CHAPTER XXVI.     MEDITATIONS
     CHAPTER XXVII.    TO ME, MY FRIENDS!
     CHAPTER XXVIII.   THE CASTLE ON THE HILL
     CHAPTER XXIX.     PESTILENCE AND FAMINE
     CHAPTER XXX.      STRICKEN
     CHAPTER XXXI.     UNDER THE GREENWOOD
     CHAPTER XXXII.    A TAVERN BRAWL
     CHAPTER XXXIII.   AT MEUDON
     CHAPTER XXXIV.    ‘’TIS AN ILL WIND’
     CHAPTER XXXV.     ‘LE ROI EST MORT’
     CHAPTER XXXVI.    ‘VIVE LE ROI!’




A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE.




CHAPTER I. THE SPORT OF FOOLS.

The death of the Prince of Conde, 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--wither 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 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 ‘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 antechamber, 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 Conde 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 close 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
antechamber. 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 so 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. de
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 Bearn, 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. ‘Where 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 stead 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 Chize, 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. ‘Chize, which you know by name,’ he
said, ‘is six leagues from here. Mademoiselle de la Vire is confined in
the north-west 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 Chize.’

‘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
women 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 Conde--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 Conde,’ he muttered sullenly, ‘employed these men.’

‘The Prince of Conde 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
unpatched 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, Chize half a league before us, and
darkness not far off.

By this time, however, I was myself again, save for a little humming is
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 Chateau of
Chize, 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 Chateau,
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 semi-circular 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.’

‘Mon dieu!’ 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 wanting 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 Chateau de Chize, 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 flight 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
antechamber, 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 forgo 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 Chize 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 Conde 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
Chize 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 day’s 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 rending 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 Chateau 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. Then 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 Chatelherault 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
antechamber 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,’ be 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 herself. 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 is 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 is 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! I 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 face.
‘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 is 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. En fin, 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 shame-facedness. ‘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 comes and finds 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, hi

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