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The House of the Wolf: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman · English · Gutenberg #2041 · 326,028 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The House of the Wolf: A Romance

Author: Stanley John Weyman


        
Release date: January 1, 2000 [eBook #2041]
                Most recently updated: December 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2041


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

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THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF

A Romance


by

STANLEY WEYMAN




CONTENTS.


 CHAP.

    I.--WARE WOLF!
   II.--THE VIDAME'S THREAT.
  III.--THE ROAD TO PARIS.
   IV.--ENTRAPPED!
    V.--A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.
   VI.--MADAME'S FRIGHT.
  VII.--A YOUNG KNIGHT ERRANT.
 VIII.--THE PARISIAN MATINS.
   IX.--THE HEAD OF ERASMUS.
    X.--HAU, HAU, HUGUENOTS!
   XI.--A NIGHT OF SORROW.
  XII.--JOY IN THE MORNING.



INTRODUCTION.

The following is a modern English version of a curious French memoir,
or fragment of autobiography, apparently written about the year 1620 by
Anne, Vicomte de Caylus, and brought to this country--if, in fact, the
original ever existed in England--by one of his descendants after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  This Anne, we learn from other
sources, was a principal figure at the Court of Henry IV., and,
therefore, in August, 1572, when the adventures here related took
place, he and his two younger brothers, Marie and Croisette, who shared
with him the honour and the danger, must have been little more than
boys. From the tone of his narrative, it appears that, in reviving old
recollections, the veteran renewed his youth also, and though his story
throws no fresh light upon the history of the time, it seems to possess
some human interest.




THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF.



CHAPTER I.

WARE WOLF!

I had afterwards such good reason to look back upon and remember the
events of that afternoon, that Catherine's voice seems to ring in my
brain even now.  I can shut my eyes and see again, after all these
years, what I saw then--just the blue summer sky, and one grey angle of
the keep, from which a fleecy cloud was trailing like the smoke from a
chimney.  I could see no more because I was lying on my back, my head
resting on my hands. Marie and Croisette, my brothers, were lying by me
in exactly the same posture, and a few yards away on the terrace,
Catherine was sitting on a stool Gil had brought out for her.  It was
the second Thursday in August, and hot.  Even the jackdaws were silent.
I had almost fallen asleep, watching my cloud grow longer and longer,
and thinner and thinner, when Croisette, who cared for heat no more
than a lizard, spoke up sharply, "Mademoiselle," he said, "why are you
watching the Cahors road?"

I had not noticed that she was doing so.  But something in the keenness
of Croisette's tone, taken perhaps with the fact that Catherine did not
at once answer him, aroused me; and I turned to her.  And lo!  she was
blushing in the most heavenly way, and her eyes were full of tears, and
she looked at us adorably.  And we all three sat up on our elbows, like
three puppy dogs, and looked at her.  And there was a long silence.
And then she said quite simply to us, "Boys, I am going to be married
to M. de Pavannes."

I fell flat on my back and spread out my arms.  "Oh, Mademoiselle!" I
cried reproachfully.

"Oh, Mademoiselle!" cried Marie.  And he fell flat on his back, and
spread out his arms and moaned.  He was a good brother, was Marie, and
obedient.

And Croisette cried, "Oh, mademoiselle!"  too.  But he was always
ridiculous in his ways.  He fell flat on his back, and flopped his arms
and squealed like a pig.

Yet he was sharp.  It was he who first remembered our duty, and went to
Catherine, cap in hand, where she sat half angry and half confused, and
said with a fine redness in his cheeks, "Mademoiselle de Caylus, our
cousin, we give you joy, and wish you long life; and are your servants,
and the good friends and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as--"

But I could not stand that.  "Not so fast, St. Croix de Caylus" I said,
pushing him aside--he was ever getting before me in those days--and
taking his place.  Then with my best bow I began, "Mademoiselle, we
give you joy and long life, and are your servants and the good friends
and aiders of M. de Pavannes in all quarrels, as--as--"

"As becomes the cadets of your house," suggested Croisette, softly.

"As becomes the cadets of your house," I repeated.  And then Catherine
stood up and made me a low bow and we all kissed her hand in turn,
beginning with me and ending with Croisette, as was becoming.
Afterwards Catherine threw her handkerchief over her face--she was
crying--and we three sat down, Turkish fashion, just where we were, and
said "Oh, Kit!"  very softly.

But presently Croisette had something to add.  "What will the Wolf
say?"  he whispered to me.

"Ah!  To be sure!"  I exclaimed aloud.  I had been thinking of myself
before; but this opened quite another window.  "What will the Vidame
say, Kit?"

She dropped her kerchief from her face, and turned so pale that I was
sorry I had spoken--apart from the kick Croisette gave me. "Is M. de
Bezers at his house?"  she asked anxiously.

"Yes," Croisette answered.  "He came in last night from St. Antonin,
with very small attendance."

The news seemed to set her fears at rest instead of augmenting them as
I should have expected.  I suppose they were rather for Louis de
Pavannes, than for herself.  Not unnaturally, too, for even the Wolf
could scarcely have found it in his heart to hurt our cousin.  Her
slight willowy figure, her pale oval face and gentle brown eyes, her
pleasant voice, her kindness, seemed to us boys and in those days, to
sum up all that was womanly.  We could not remember, not even Croisette
the youngest of us--who was seventeen, a year junior to Marie and
myself--we were twins--the time when we had not been in love with her.

But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded
seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday
stillness of that afternoon.  It was the summer of 1572.  The great
peace, it will be remembered, between the Catholics and the Huguenots
had not long been declared; the peace which in a day or two was to be
solemnized, and, as most Frenchmen hoped, to be cemented by the
marriage of Henry of Navarre with Margaret of Valois, the King's
sister.  The Vicomte de Caylus, Catherine's father and our guardian,
was one of the governors appointed to see the peace enforced; the
respect in which he was held by both parties--he was a Catholic, but no
bigot, God rest his soul!--recommending him for this employment.  He
had therefore gone a week or two before to Bayonne, his province.  Most
of our neighbours in Quercy were likewise from home, having gone to
Paris to be witnesses on one side or the other of the royal wedding.
And consequently we young people, not greatly checked by the presence
of good-natured, sleepy Madame Claude, Catherine's duenna, were
disposed to make the most of our liberty; and to celebrate the peace in
our own fashion.

We were country-folk.  Not one of us had been to Pau, much less to
Paris.  The Vicomte held stricter views than were common then, upon
young people's education; and though we had learned to ride and shoot,
to use our swords and toss a hawk, and to read and write, we knew
little more than Catherine herself of the world; little more of the
pleasures and sins of court life, and not one-tenth as much as she did
of its graces.  Still she had taught us to dance and make a bow.  Her
presence had softened our manners; and of late we had gained something
from the frank companionship of Louis de Pavannes, a Huguenot whom the
Vicomte had taken prisoner at Moncontour and held to ransom.  We were
not, I think, mere clownish yokels.

But we were shy.  We disliked and shunned strangers.  And when old Gil
appeared suddenly, while we were still chewing the melancholy cud of
Kit's announcement, and cried sepulchrally, "M. le Vidame de Bezers to
pay his respects to Mademoiselle!"--Well, there was something like a
panic, I confess!

We scrambled to our feet, muttering, "The Wolf!"  The entrance at
Caylus is by a ramp rising from the gateway to the level of the
terrace.  This sunken way is fenced by low walls so that one may
not--when walking on the terrace--fall into it.  Gil had spoken before
his head had well risen to view, and this gave us a moment, just a
moment.  Croisette made a rush for the doorway into the house; but
failed to gain it, and drew himself up behind a buttress of the tower,
his finger on his lip.  I am slow sometimes, and Marie waited for me,
so that we had barely got to our legs--looking, I dare say, awkward and
ungainly enough--before the Vidame's shadow fell darkly on the ground
at Catherine's feet.

"Mademoiselle!"  he said, advancing to her through the sunshine, and
bending over her slender hand with a magnificent grace that was born of
his size and manner combined, "I rode in late last night from Toulouse;
and I go to-morrow to Paris.  I have but rested and washed off the
stains of travel that I may lay my--ah!"

He seemed to see us for the first time and negligently broke off in his
compliment; raising himself and saluting us.  "Ah," he continued
indolently, "two of the maidens of Caylus, I see.  With an odd pair of
hands apiece, unless I am mistaken, Why do you not set them spinning,
Mademoiselle?"  and he regarded us with that smile which--with other
things as evil--had made him famous.

Croisette pulled horrible faces behind his back.  We looked hotly at
him; but could find nothing to say.

"You grow red!"  he went on, pleasantly--the wretch!--playing with us
as a cat does with mice.  "It offends your dignity, perhaps, that I bid
Mademoiselle set you spinning?  I now would spin at Mademoiselle's
bidding, and think it happiness!"

"We are not girls!"  I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a
boy's passion.  "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a
girl, M. le Vidame!"  For though we counted it a joke among ourselves
that we all bore girls' names, we were young enough to be sensitive
about it.

He shrugged his shoulders.  And how he dwarfed us all as he stood there
dominating our terrace!  "M. de Montmorenci was a man," he said
scornfully.  "M. Anne de Caylus is--"

And the villain deliberately turned his great back upon us, taking his
seat on the low wall near Catherine's chair.  It was clear even to our
vanity that he did not think us worth another word--that we had passed
absolutely from his mind.  Madame Claude came waddling out at the same
moment, Gil carrying a chair behind her.  And we--well we slunk away
and sat on the other side of the terrace, whence we could still glower
at the offender.

Yet who were we to glower at him?  To this day I shake at the thought
of him.  It was not so much his height and bulk, though he was so big
that the clipped pointed fashion of his beard a fashion then new at
court--seemed on him incongruous and effeminate; nor so much the
sinister glance of his grey eyes--he had a slight cast in them; nor the
grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that
permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great
brutal presence of the man--that was overpowering--that made the great
falter and the poor crouch.  And then his reputation!  Though we knew
little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked
with his name.  We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an
employer of bravos.  At Jarnac he had been the last to turn from the
shambles.  Men called him cruel and vengeful even for those days--gone
by now, thank God!--and whispered his name when they spoke of
assassinations; saying commonly of him that he would not blench before
a Guise, nor blush before the Virgin.

Such was our visitor and neighbour, Raoul de Mar, Vidame de Bezers.  As
he sat on the terrace, now eyeing us askance, and now paying Catherine
a compliment, I likened him to a great cat before which a butterfly has
all unwittingly flirted her prettiness.  Poor Catherine!  No doubt she
had her own reasons for uneasiness; more reasons I fancy than I then
guessed.  For she seemed to have lost her voice.  She stammered and
made but poor replies; and Madame Claude being deaf and stupid, and we
boys too timid after the rebuff we had experienced to fill the gap, the
conversation languished.  The Vidame was not for his part the man to
put himself out on a hot day.

It was after one of these pauses--not the first but the longest--that I
started on finding his eyes fixed on mine.  More, I shivered.  It is
hard to describe, but there was a look in the Vidame's eyes at that
moment which I had never seen before.  A look of pain almost:  of dumb
savage alarm at any rate.  From me they passed slowly to Marie and
mutely interrogated him.  Then the Vidame's glance travelled back to
Catherine, and settled on her.

Only a moment before she had been but too conscious of his presence.
Now, as it chanced by bad luck, or in the course of Providence,
something had drawn her attention elsewhere.  She was unconscious of
his regard.  Her own eyes were fixed in a far-away gaze.  Her colour
was high, her lips were parted, her bosom heaved gently.

The shadow deepened on the Vidame's face.  Slowly he took his eyes from
hers, and looked northwards also.

Caylus Castle stands on a rock in the middle of the narrow valley of
that name.  The town clusters about the ledges of the rock so closely
that when I was a boy I could fling a stone clear of the houses.  The
hills are scarcely five hundred yards distant on either side, rising in
tamer colours from the green fields about the brook.  It is possible
from the terrace to see the whole valley, and the road which passes
through it lengthwise. Catherine's eyes were on the northern extremity
of the defile, where the highway from Cahors descends from the uplands.
She had been sitting with her face turned that way all the afternoon.

I looked that way too.  A solitary horseman was descending the steep
track from the hills.

"Mademoiselle!"  cried the Vidame suddenly.  We all looked up. His tone
was such that the colour fled from Kit's face.  There was something in
his voice she had never heard in any voice before--something that to a
woman was like a blow. "Mademoiselle," he snarled, "is expecting news
from Cahors, from her lover.  I have the honour to congratulate M. de
Pavannes on his conquest."

Ah!  he had guessed it!  As the words fell on the sleepy silence, an
insult in themselves, I sprang to my feet, amazed and angry, yet
astounded by his quickness of sight and wit.  He must have recognized
the Pavannes badge at that distance.  "M. le Vidame," I said
indignantly--Catherine was white and voiceless--"M. le Vidame--" but
there I stopped and faltered stammering.  For behind him I could see
Croisette; and Croisette gave me no sign of encouragement or support.

So we stood face to face for a moment; the boy and the man of the
world, the stripling and the ROUE.  Then the Vidame bowed to me in
quite a new fashion.  "M. Anne de Caylus desires to answer for M. de
Pavannes?"  he asked smoothly; with a mocking smoothness.

I understood what he meant.  But something prompted me--Croisette said
afterwards that it was a happy thought, though now I know the crisis to
have been less serious than he fancied to answer, "Nay, not for M. de
Pavannes.  Rather for my cousin."  And I bowed.  "I have the honour on
her behalf to acknowledge your congratulations, M. le Vidame.  It
pleases her that our nearest neighbour should also be the first outside
the family to wish her well.  You have divined truly in supposing that
she will shortly be united to M. de Pavannes."

I suppose--for I saw the giant's colour change and his lip quiver as I
spoke--that his previous words had been only a guess.  For a moment the
devil seemed to be glaring through his eyes; and he looked at Marie and
me as a wild animal at its keepers.  Yet he maintained his cynical
politeness in part.  "Mademoiselle desires my congratulations?"  he
said, slowly, labouring with each word it seemed.  "She shall have them
on the happy day.  She shall certainly have them then.  But these are
troublous times.  And Mademoiselle's betrothed is I think a Huguenot,
and has gone to Paris.  Paris--well, the air of Paris is not good for
Huguenots, I am told."

I saw Catherine shiver; indeed she was on the point of fainting, I
broke in rudely, my passion getting the better of my fears. "M. de
Pavannes can take care of himself, believe me," I said brusquely.

"Perhaps so," Bezers answered, his voice like the grating of steel on
steel.  "But at any rate this will be a memorable day for Mademoiselle.
The day on which she receives her first congratulations--she will
remember it as long as she lives!  Oh, yes, I will answer for that, M.
Anne," he said looking brightly at one and another of us, his eyes more
oblique than ever, "Mademoiselle will remember it, I am sure!"

It would be impossible to describe the devilish glance he flung at the
poor sinking girl as he withdrew, the horrid emphasis he threw into
those last words, the covert deadly threat they conveyed to the dullest
ears.  That he went then, was small mercy.  He had done all the evil he
could do at present.  If his desire had been to leave fear behind him,
he had certainly succeeded.

Kit crying softly went into the house; her innocent coquetry more than
sufficiently punished already.  And we three looked at one another with
blank faces, It was clear that we had made a dangerous enemy, and an
enemy at our own gates.  As the Vidame had said, these were troublous
times when things were done to men--ay, and to women and
children--which we scarce dare to speak of now.  "I wish the Vicomte
were here," Croisette said uneasily after we had discussed several
unpleasant contingencies.

"Or even Malines the steward," I suggested.

"He would not be much good," replied Croisette.

"And he is at St. Antonin, and will not be back this week. Father
Pierre too is at Albi."

"You do not think," said Marie, "that he will attack us?"

"Certainly not!" Croisette retorted with contempt.  "Even the Vidame
would not dare to do that in time of peace.  Besides, he has not half a
score of men here," continued the lad, shrewdly, "and counting old Gil
and ourselves we have as many.  And Pavannes always said that three men
could hold the gate at the bottom of the ramp against a score.  Oh, he
will not try that!"

"Certainly not!" I agreed.  And so we crushed Marie.  "But for Louis de
Pavannes--"

Catherine interrupted me.  She came out quickly looking a different
person; her face flushed with anger, her tears dried.

"Anne!" she cried, imperiously, "what is the matter down below--will
you see?"

I had no difficulty in doing that.  All the sounds of town life came up
to us on the terrace.  Lounging there we could hear the chaffering over
the wheat measures in the cloisters of the market-square, the yell of a
dog, the voice of a scold, the church bell, the watchman's cry.  I had
only to step to the wall to overlook it all.  On this summer afternoon
the town had been for the most part very quiet.  If we had not been
engaged in our own affairs we should have taken the alarm before,
remarking in the silence the first beginnings of what was now a very
respectable tumult.  It swelled louder even as we stepped to the wall.

We could see--a bend in the street laying it open--part of the Vidame's
house; the gloomy square hold which had come to him from his mother.
His own chateau of Bezers lay far away in Franche Comte, but of late he
had shown a preference--Catherine could best account for it,
perhaps--for this mean house in Caylus.  It was the only house in the
town which did not belong to us.  It was known as the House of the
Wolf, and was a grim stone building surrounding a courtyard.  Rows of
wolves' heads carved in stone flanked the windows, whence their bare
fangs grinned day and night at the church porch opposite.

The noise drew our eyes in this direction; and there lolling in a
window over the door, looking out on the street with a laughing eye,
was Bezers himself.  The cause of his merriment--we had not far to look
for it--was a horseman who was riding up the street under difficulties.
He was reining in his steed--no easy task on that steep greasy
pavement--so as to present some front to a score or so of ragged knaves
who were following close at his heels, hooting and throwing mud and
pebbles at him.  The man had drawn his sword, and his oaths came up to
us, mingled with shrill cries of "VIVE LA MESSE!"  and half drowned by
the clattering of the horse's hoofs.  We saw a stone strike him in the
face, and draw blood, and heard him swear louder than before.

"Oh!"  cried Catherine, clasping her hands with a sudden shriek of
indignation, "my letter!  They will get my letter!"

"Death!"  exclaimed Croisette, "She is right!  It is M. de Pavannes'
courier!  This must be stopped!  We cannot stand this, Anne!"

"They shall pay dearly for it, by our Lady!"  I cried swearing myself.
"And in peace time too--the villains!  Gil!  Francis!" I shouted,
"where are you?"

And I looked round for my fowling piece, while Croisette jumped on the
wall, and forming a trumpet with his hands, shrieked at the top of his
voice, "Back!  he bears a letter from the Vicomte!"

But the device did not succeed, and I could not find my gun.  For a
moment we were helpless, and before I could have fetched the gun from
the house, the horseman and the hooting rabble at his heels, had turned
a corner and were hidden by the roofs.

Another turn however would bring them out in front of the gateway, and
seeing this we hurried down the ramp to meet them. I stayed a moment to
tell Gil to collect the servants, and, this keeping me, Croisette
reached the narrow street outside before me.  As I followed him I was
nearly knocked down by the rider, whose face was covered with, dirt and
blood, while fright had rendered his horse unmanageable.  Darting aside
I let him pass--he was blinded and could not see me--and then found
that Croisette--brave lad!  had collared the foremost of the ruffians,
and was beating him with his sheathed sword, while the rest of the
rabble stood back, ashamed, yet sullen, and with anger in their eyes.
A dangerous crew, I thought; not townsmen, most of them.

"Down with the Huguenots!"  cried one, as I appeared, one bolder than
the rest.

"Down with the CANAILLE!"  I retorted, sternly eyeing the ill-looking
ring.  "Will you set yourselves above the king's peace, dirt that you
are?  Go back to your kennels!"

The words were scarcely out of my mouth, before I saw that the fellow
whom Croisette was punishing had got hold of a dagger.  I shouted a
warning, but it came too late.  The blade fell, and--thanks to
God--striking the buckle of the lad's belt, glanced off harmless.  I
saw the steel flash up again--saw the spite in the man's eyes:  but
this time I was a step nearer, and before the weapon fell, I passed my
sword clean through the wretch's body. He went down like a log,
Croisette falling with him, held fast by his stiffening fingers.

I had never killed a man before, nor seen a man die; and if I had
stayed to think about it, I should have fallen sick perhaps.  But it
was no time for thought; no time for sickness.  The crowd were close
upon us, a line of flushed threatening faces from wall to wall.  A
single glance downwards told me that the man was dead, and I set my
foot upon his neck.  "Hounds!  Beasts!"  I cried, not loudly this time,
for though I was like one possessed with rage, it was inward rage, "go
to your kennels!  Will you dare to raise a hand against a Caylus?
Go--or when the Vicomte returns, a dozen of you shall hang in the
market-place!"

I suppose I looked fierce enough--I know I felt no fear, only a strange
exaltation--for they slunk away.  Unwillingly, but with little delay
the group melted, Bezers' following--of whom I knew the dead man was
one--the last to go.  While I still glared at them, lo!  the street was
empty; the last had disappeared round the bend.  I turned to find Gil
and half-a-dozen servants standing with pale faces at my back.
Croisette seized my hand with a sob.  "Oh, my lord," cried Gil,
quaveringly.  But I shook one off, I frowned at the other.

"Take up this carrion!"  I said, touching it with my foot, "And hang it
from the justice-elm.  And then close the gates!  See to it, knaves,
and lose no time."



CHAPTER II.

THE VIDAME'S THREAT.

Croisette used to tell a story, of the facts of which I have no
remembrance, save as a bad dream.  He would have it that I left my
pallet that night--I had one to myself in the summer, being the eldest,
while he and Marie slept on another in the same room--and came to him
and awoke him, sobbing and shaking and clutching him; and begging him
in a fit of terror not to let me go.  And that so I slept in his arms
until morning.  But as I have said, I do not remember anything of this,
only that I had an ugly dream that night, and that when I awoke I was
lying with him and Marie; so I cannot say whether it really happened.

At any rate, if I had any feeling of the kind it did not last long; on
the contrary--it would be idle to deny it--I was flattered by the
sudden respect, Gil and the servants showed me. What Catherine thought
of the matter I could not tell.  She had her letter and apparently
found it satisfactory.  At any rate we saw nothing of her.  Madame
Claude was busy boiling simples, and tending the messenger's hurts.
And it seemed natural that I should take command.

There could be no doubt--at any rate we had none that the assault on
the courier had taken place at the Vidame's instance.  The only wonder
was that he had not simply cut his throat and taken the letter.  But
looking back now it seems to me that grown men mingled some
childishness with their cruelty in those days--days when the religious
wars had aroused our worst passions.  It was not enough to kill an
enemy.  It pleased people to make--I speak literally--a football of his
head, to throw his heart to the dogs.  And no doubt it had fallen in
with the Vidame's grim humour that the bearer of Pavannes' first love
letter should enter his mistress's presence, bleeding and plaistered
with mud. And that the riff-raff about our own gates should have part
in the insult.

Bezers' wrath would be little abated by the issue of the affair, or the
justice I had done on one of his men.  So we looked well to bolts, and
bars, and windows, although the castle is well-nigh impregnable, the
smooth rock falling twenty feet at least on every side from the base of
the walls.  The gatehouse, Pavannes had shown us, might be blown up
with gunpowder indeed, but we prepared to close the iron grating which
barred the way half-way up the ramp.  This done, even if the enemy
should succeed in forcing an entrance he would only find himself caught
in a trap--in a steep, narrow way exposed to a fire from the top of the
flanking walls, as well as from the front.  We had a couple of
culverins, which the Vicomte had got twenty years before, at the time
of the battle of St. Quentin.  We fixed one of these at the head of the
ramp, and placed the other on the terrace, where by moving it a few
paces forward we could train it on Bezers' house, which thus lay at our
mercy.

Not that we really expected an attack.  But we did not know what to
expect or what to fear.  We had not ten servants, the Vicomte having
taken a score of the sturdiest lackeys and keepers to attend him at
Bayonne.  And we felt immensely responsible.  Our main hope was that
the Vidame would at once go on to Paris, and postpone his vengeance.
So again and again we cast longing glances at the House of the Wolf
hoping that each symptom of bustle heralded his departure.

Consequently it was a shock to me, and a great downfall of hopes, when
Gil with a grave face came to me on the terrace and announced that M.
le Vidame was at the gate, asking to see Mademoiselle.

"It is out of the question that he should see her," the old servant
added, scratching his head in grave perplexity.

"Most certainly.  I will see him instead," I answered stoutly. "Do you
leave Francis and another at the gate, Gil.  Marie, keep within sight,
lad.  And let Croisette stay with me."

These preparations made--and they took up scarcely a moment--I met the
Vidame at the head of the ramp.  "Mademoiselle de Caylus," I said,
bowing, "is, I regret to say, indisposed to-day, Vidame."

"She will not see me?"  he asked, eyeing me very unpleasantly.

"Her indisposition deprives her of the pleasure," I answered with an
effort.  He was certainly a wonderful man, for at sight of him,
three-fourths of my courage, and all my importance, oozed out at the
heels of my boots.

"She will not see me.  Very well," he replied, as if I had not spoken.
And the simple words sounded like a sentence of death. "Then, M. Anne,
I have a crow to pick with you.  What compensation do you propose to
make for the death of my servant? A decent, quiet fellow, whom you
killed yesterday, poor man, because his enthusiasm for the true faith
carried him away a little."

"Whom I killed because he drew a dagger on M. St. Croix de Caylus at
the Vicomte's gate," I answered steadily.  I had thought about this of
course and was ready for it.  "You are aware, M. de Bezers," I
continued, "that the Vicomte has jurisdiction extending to life and
death over all persons within the valley?"

"My household excepted," he rejoined quietly.

"Precisely; while they are within the curtilage of your house," I
retorted.  "However as the punishment was summary, and the man had no
time to confess himself, I am willing to--"

"Well?"

"To pay Father Pierre to say ten masses for his soul."

The way the Vidame received this surprised me.  He broke into
boisterous laughter.  "By our Lady, my friend," he cried with rough
merriment, "but you are a joker!  You are indeed.  Masses? Why the man
was a Protestant!"

And that startled me more than anything which had gone before; more
indeed than I can explain.  For it seemed to prove that this man,
laughing his unholy laugh was not like other men.  He did not pick and
choose his servants for their religion.  He was sure that the Huguenot
would stone his fellow at his bidding; the Catholic cry "Vive Coligny!"
I was so completely taken aback that I found no words to answer him,
and it was Croisette who said smartly, "Then how about his enthusiasm
for the true faith, M. le Vidame?"

"The true faith," he answered--"for my servants is my faith." Then a
thought seemed to strike him.  "What is more."  he continued slowly,
"that it is the true and only faith for all, thousands will learn
before the world is ten days older.  Bear my words in mind, boy!  They
will come back to you.  And now hear me," he went on in his usual tone,
"I am anxious to accommodate a neighbour.  It goes without saying that
I would not think of putting you, M. Anne, to any trouble for the sake
of that rascal of mine.  But my people will expect something.  Let the
plaguy fellow who caused all this disturbance be given up to me, that I
may hang him; and let us cry quits."

"That is impossible!"  I answered coolly.  I had no need to ask what he
meant.  Give up Pavannes' messenger indeed!  Never!

He regarded me--unmoved by my refusal--with a smile under which I
chafed, while I was impotent to resent it.  "Do not build too much on a
single blow, young gentleman," he said, shaking his head waggishly.  "I
had fought a dozen times when I was your age. However, I understand
that you refuse to give me satisfaction?"

"In the mode you mention, certainly," I replied.  "But--"

"Bah!"  he exclaimed with a sneer, "business first and pleasure
afterwards!  Bezers will obtain satisfaction in his own way, I promise
you that!  And at his own time.  And it will not be on unfledged
bantlings like you.  But what is this for?"  And he rudely kicked the
culverin which apparently he had not noticed before, "So!  so!
understand," he continued, casting a sharp glance at one and another of
us.  "You looked to be besieged! Why you, booby, there is the shoot of
your kitchen midden, twenty feet above the roof of old Fretis' store!
And open, I will be sworn!  Do you think that I should have come this
way while there was a ladder in Caylus!  Did you take the wolf for a
sheep?"

With that he turned on his heel, swaggering away in the full enjoyment
of his triumph.  For a triumph it was.  We stood stunned; ashamed to
look one another in the face.  Of course the shoot was open.  We
remembered now that it was, and we were so sorely mortified by his
knowledge and our folly, that I failed in my courtesy, and did not see
him to the gate, as I should have done.  We paid for that later.

"He is the devil in person!"  I exclaimed angrily, shaking my fist at
the House of the Wolf, as I strode up and down impatiently.  "I hate
him worse!"

"So do I!"  said Croisette, mildly.  "But that he hates us is a matter
of more importance.  At any rate we will close the shoot."

"Wait a moment!"  I replied, as after another volley of complaints
directed at our visitor, the lad was moving off to see to it. "What is
going on down there?"

"Upon my word, I believe he is leaving us!"  Croisette rejoined sharply.

For there was a noise of hoofs below us, clattering on the pavement.
Half-a-dozen horsemen were issuing from the House of the Wolf, the ring
of their bridles and the sound of their careless voices coming up to us
through the clear morning air Bezers' valet, whom we knew by sight, was
the last of them.  He had a pair of great saddle-bags before him, and
at sight of these we uttered a glad exclamation.  "He is going!"  I
murmured, hardly able to believe my eyes.  "He is going after all!"

"Wait!"  Croisette answered drily.

But I was right.  We had not to wait long.  He WAS going.  In another
moment he came out himself, riding a strong iron-grey horse:  and we
could see that he had holsters to his saddle.  His steward was running
beside him, to take I suppose his last orders.  A cripple, whom the
bustle had attracted from his usual haunt, the church porch, held up
his hand for alms.  The Vidame as he passed, cut him savagely across
the face with his whip, and cursed him audibly.

"May the devil take him!"  exclaimed Croisette in just rage.  But I
said nothing, remembering that the cripple was a particular pet of
Catherine's.  I thought instead of an occasion, not so very long ago,
when the Vicomte being at home, we had had a great hawking party.
Bezers and Catherine had ridden up the street together, and Catherine
giving the cripple a piece of money, Bezers had flung to him all his
share of the game.  And my heart sank.

Only for a moment, however.  The man was gone; or was going at any
rate.  We stood silent and motionless, all watching, until, after what
seemed a long interval, the little party of seven became visible on the
white road far below us--to the northward, and moving in that
direction.  Still we watched them, muttering a word to one another, now
and again, until presently the riders slackened their pace, and began
to ascend the winding track that led to the hills and Cahors; and to
Paris also, if one went far enough.

Then at length with a loud "Whoop!"  we dashed across the terrace,
Croisette leading, and so through the courtyard to the parlour; where
we arrived breathless.  "He is off!"  Croisette cried shrilly.  "He has
started for Paris!  And bad luck go with him!"  And we all flung up our
caps and shouted.

But no answer, such as we expected, came from the women folk. When we
picked up our caps, and looked at Catherine, feeling rather foolish,
she was staring at us with a white face and great scornful eyes.
"Fools!"  she said.  "Fools!"

And that was all.  But it was enough to take me aback.  I had looked to
see her face lighten at our news; instead it wore an expression I had
never seen on it before.  Catherine, so kind and gentle, calling us
fools!  And without cause!  I did not understand it.  I turned
confusedly to Croisette.  He was looking at her, and I saw that he was
frightened.  As for Madame Claude, she was crying in the corner.  A
presentiment of evil made my heart sink like lead.  What had happened?

"Fools!"  my cousin repeated with exceeding bitterness, her foot
tapping the parquet unceasingly.  "Do you think he would have stooped
to avenge himself on YOU?  On you!  Or that he could hurt me one
hundredth part as much here as--as--"  She broke off stammering.  Her
scorn faltered for an instant.  "Bah!  he is a man!  He knows!"  she
exclaimed superbly, her chin in the air, "but you are boys.  You do not
understand!"

I looked amazedly at this angry woman.  I had a difficulty in
associating her with my cousin.  As for Croisette, he stepped forward
abruptly, and picked up a white object which was lying at her feet.

"Yes, read it!"  she cried, "read it!  Ah!"  and she clenched her
little hand, and in her passion struck the oak table beside her, so
that a stain of blood sprang out on her knuckles.  "Why did you not
kill him?  Why did you not do it when you had the chance? You were
three to one," she hissed.  "You had him in your power! You could have
killed him, and you did not!  Now he will kill me!"

Madame Claude muttered something tearfully; something about Pavannes
and the saints.  I looked over Croisette's shoulder, and read the
letter.  It began abruptly without any term of address, and ran thus,
"I have a mission in Paris, Mademoiselle, which admits of no delay,
your mission, as well as my own--to see Pavannes.  You have won his
heart.  It is yours, and I will bring it you, or his right hand in
token that he has yielded up his claim to yours.  And to this I pledge
myself."

The thing bore no signature.  It was written in some red fluid--blood
perhaps--a mean and sorry trick!  On the outside was scrawled a
direction to Mademoiselle de Caylus.  And the packet was sealed with
the Vidame's crest, a wolf's head.

"The coward!  the miserable coward!"  Croisette cried.  He was the
first to read the meaning of the thing.  And his eyes were full of
tears--tears of rage.

For me I was angry exceedingly.  My veins seemed full of fire, as I
comprehended the mean cruelty which could thus torture a girl.

"Who delivered this?"  I thundered.  "Who gave it to Mademoiselle? How
did it reach her hands?  Speak, some one!"

A maid, whimpering in the background, said that Francis had given it to
her to hand to Mademoiselle.

I ground my teeth together, while Marie, unbidden, left the room to
seek Francis--and a stirrup leather.  The Vidame had brought the note
in his pocket no doubt, rightly expecting that he would not get an
audience of my cousin.  Returning to the gate alone he had seen his
opportunity, and given the note to Francis, probably with a small fee
to secure its transmission.

Croisette and I looked at one another, apprehending all this. "He will
sleep at Cahors to-night," I said sullenly.

The lad shook his head and answered in a low voice, "I am afraid not.
His horses are fresh.  I think he will push on.  He always travels
quickly.  And now you know--"

I nodded, understanding only too well.

Catherine had flung herself into a chair.  Her arms lay nerveless on
the table.  Her face was hidden in them.  But now, overhearing us, or
stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish.  Her
face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like
one in physical pain.  "Oh, I cannot bear it!"  she cried to us in
dreadful tones.  "Oh, will no one do anything?  I will go to him!  I
will tell him I will give him up! I will do whatever he wishes if he
will only spare him!"

Croisette went from the room crying.  It was a dreadful sight for
us--this girl in agony.  And it was impossible to reassure her! Not one
of us doubted the horrible meaning of the note, its covert threat.
Civil wars and religious hatred, and I fancy Italian modes of thought,
had for the time changed our countrymen to beasts.  Far more dreadful
things were done then than this which Bezers threatened--even if he
meant it literally--far more dreadful things were suffered.  But in the
fiendish ingenuity of his vengeance on her, the helpless, loving woman,
I thought Raoul de Bezers stood alone.  Alas!  it fares ill with the
butterfly when the cat has struck it down.  Ill indeed!

Madame Claude rose and put her arms round the girl, dismissing me by a
gesture.  I went out, passing through two or three scared servants, and
made at once for the terrace.  I felt as if I could only breathe there.
I found Marie and St. Croix together, silent, the marks of tears on
their faces.  Our eyes met and they told one tale.

We all spoke at the same time.  "When?"  we said.  But the others
looked to me for an answer.

I was somewhat sobered by that, and paused to consider before I
replied.  "At daybreak to-morrow," I decided presently.  "It is an hour
after noon already.  We want money, and the horses are out.  It will
take an hour to bring them in.  After that we might still reach Cahors
to-night, perhaps; but more haste less speed you know.  At daybreak
to-morrow we will start."

They nodded assent.

It was a great thing we meditated.  No less than to go to Paris--the
unknown city so far beyond the hills--and seek out M. de Pavannes, and
warn him.  It would be a race between the Vidame and ourselves; a race
for the life of Kit's suitor.  Could we reach Paris first, or even
within twenty-four hours of Bezers' arrival, we should in all
probability be in time, and be able to put Pavannes on his guard.  It
had been the first thought of all of us, to take such men as we could
get together and fall upon Bezers wherever we found him, making it our
simple object to kill him.  But the lackeys M. le Vicomte had left with
us, the times being peaceful and the neighbours friendly, were
poor-spirited fellows.  Bezers' handful, on the contrary, were reckless
Swiss riders--like master, like men.  We decided that it would be wiser
simply to warn Pavannes, and then stand by him if necessary.

We might have despatched a messenger.  But our servants--Gil excepted,
and he was too old to bear the journey--were ignorant of Paris.  Nor
could any one of them be trusted with a mission so delicate.  We
thought of Pavannes' courier indeed.  But he was a Rochellois, and a
stranger to the capital.  There was nothing for it but to go ourselves.

Yet we did not determine on this adventure with light hearts, I
remember.  Paris loomed big and awesome in the eyes of all of us. The
glamour of the court rather frightened than allured us.  We felt that
shrinking from contact with the world which a country life engenders,
as well as that dread of seeming unlike other people which is peculiar
to youth.  It was a great plunge, and a dangerous which we meditated.
And we trembled.  If we had known more--especially of the future--we
should have trembled more.

But we were young, and with our fears mingled a delicious excitement.
We were going on an adventure of knight errantry in which we might win
our spurs.  We were going to see the world and play men's parts in it!
to save a friend and make our mistress happy!

We gave our orders.  But we said nothing to Catherine or Madame Claude;
merely bidding Gil tell them after our departure.  We arranged for the
immediate despatch of a message to the Vicomte at Bayonne, and charged
Gil until he should hear from him to keep the gates closed, and look
well to the shoot of the kitchen midden.  Then, when all was ready, we
went to our pallets, but it was with hearts throbbing with excitement
and wakeful eyes.

"Anne!  Anne!"  said Croisette, rising on his elbow and speaking to me
some three hours later, "what do you think the Vidame meant this
morning when he said that about the ten days?"

"What about the ten days?"  I asked peevishly.  He had roused me just
when I was at last falling asleep.

"About the world seeing that his was the true faith--in ten days?"

"I am sure I do not know.  For goodness' sake let us go to sleep," I
replied.  For I had no patience with Croisette, talking such nonsense,
when we had our own business to think about.



CHAPTER III.

THE ROAD TO PARIS.

The sun had not yet risen above the hills when we three with a single
servant behind us drew rein at the end of the valley; and easing our
horses on the ascent, turned in the saddle to take a last look at
Caylus--at the huddled grey town, and the towers above it.  A little
thoughtful we all were, I think.  The times were rough and our errand
was serious.  But youth and early morning are fine dispellers of care;
and once on the uplands we trotted gaily forward, now passing through
wide glades in the sparse oak forest, where the trees all leaned one
way, now over bare, wind-swept downs; or once and again descending into
a chalky bottom, where the stream bubbled through deep beds of fern,
and a lonely farmhouse nestled amid orchards.

Four hours' riding, and we saw below us Cahors, filling the bend of the
river.  We cantered over the Vallandre Bridge, which there crosses the
Lot, and so to my uncle's house of call in the square.  Here we ordered
breakfast, and announced with pride that we were going to Paris.

Our host raised his hands.  "Now there!"  he exclaimed, regret in his
voice.  "And if you had arrived yesterday you could have travelled up
with the Vidame de Bezers!  And you a small party--saving your
lordships' presence--and the roads but so-so!"

"But the Vidame was riding with only half-a-dozen attendants also!"  I
answered, flicking my boot in a careless way.

The landlord shook his head.  "Ah, M. le Vidame knows the world!" he
answered shrewdly.  "He is not to be taken off his guard, not he!  One
of his men whispered me that twenty staunch fellows would join him at
Chateauroux.  They say the wars are over, but"--and the good man,
shrugging his shoulders, cast an expressive glance at some fine
flitches of bacon which were hanging in his chimney. "However, your
lordships know better than I do," he added briskly.  "I am a poor man.
I only wish to live at peace with my neighbours, whether they go to
mass or sermon."

This was a sentiment so common in those days and so heartily echoed by
most men of substance both in town and country, that we did not stay to
assent to it; but having received from the worthy fellow a token which
would insure our obtaining fresh cattle at Limoges, we took to the road
again, refreshed in body, and with some food for thought.

Five-and-twenty attendants were more than even such a man as Bezers,
who had many enemies, travelled with in those days; unless accompanied
by ladies.  That the Vidame had provided such a reinforcement seemed to
point to a wider scheme than the one with which we had credited him.
But we could not guess what his plans were; since he must have ordered
his people before he heard of Catherine's engagement.  Either his
jealousy therefore had put him on the alert earlier, or his threatened
attack on Pavannes was only part of a larger plot.  In either case our
errand seemed more urgent, but scarcely more hopeful.

The varied sights and sounds however of the road--many of them new to
us--kept us from dwelling over much on this.  Our eyes were young, and
whether it was a pretty girl lingering behind a troop of gipsies, or a
pair of strollers from Valencia--JONGLEURS they still called
themselves--singing in the old dialect of Provence, or a Norman
horse-dealer with his string of cattle tied head and tail, or the Puy
de Dome to the eastward over the Auvergne hills, or a tattered old
soldier wounded in the wars--fighting for either side, according as
their lordships inclined--we were pleased with all.

Yet we never forgot our errand.  We never I think rose in the
morning--too often stiff and sore--without thinking "To-day or
to-morrow or the next day--" as the case might be--"we shall make all
right for Kit!"  For Kit!  Perhaps it was the purest enthusiasm we were
ever to feel, the least selfish aim we were ever to pursue.  For Kit!

Meanwhile we met few travellers of rank on the road.  Half the nobility
of France were still in Paris enjoying the festivities which were being
held to mark the royal marriage.  We obtained horses where we needed
them without difficulty.  And though we had heard much of the dangers
of the way, infested as it was said to be by disbanded troopers, we
were not once stopped or annoyed.

But it is not my intention to chronicle all the events of this my first
journey, though I dwell on them with pleasure; or to say what I thought
of the towns, all new and strange to me, through which we passed.
Enough that we went by way of Limoges, Chateauroux and Orleans, and
that at Chateauroux we learned the failure of one hope we had formed.
We had thought that Bezers when joined there by his troopers would not
be able to get relays; and that on this account we might by travelling
post overtake him; and possibly slip by him between that place and
Paris.  But we learned at Chateauroux that his troop had received fresh
orders to go to Orleans and await him there; the result being that he
was able to push forward with relays so far.  He was evidently in hot
haste.  For leaving there with his horses fresh he passed through
Angerville, forty miles short of Paris, at noon, whereas we reached it
on the evening of the same day--the sixth after leaving Caylus.

We rode into the yard of the inn--a large place, seeming larger in the
dusk--so tired that we could scarcely slip from our saddles.  Jean, our
servant, took the four horses, and led them across to the stables, the
poor beasts hanging their heads, and following meekly.  We stood a
moment stamping our feet, and stretching our legs.  The place seemed in
a bustle, the clatter of pans and dishes proceeding from the windows
over the entrance, with a glow of light and the sound of feet hurrying
in the passages.  There were men too, half-a-dozen or so standing at
the doors of the stables, while others leaned from the windows.  One or
two lanthorns just kindled glimmered here and there in the
semi-darkness; and in a corner two smiths were shoeing a horse.

We were turning from all this to go in, when we heard Jean's voice
raised in altercation, and thinking our rustic servant had fallen into
trouble, we walked across to the stables near which he and the horses
were still lingering.  "Well, what is it?"  I said sharply.

"They say that there is no room for the horses," Jean answered
querulously, scratching his head; half sullen, half cowed, a country
servant all over.

"And there is not!"  cried the foremost of the gang about the door,
hastening to confront us in turn.  His tone was insolent, and it needed
but half an eye to see that his fellows were inclined to back him up.
He stuck his arms akimbo and faced us with an impudent smile.  A
lanthorn on the ground beside him throwing an uncertain light on the
group, I saw that they all wore the same badge.

"Come," I said sternly, "the stables are large, and your horses cannot
fill them.  Some room must be found for mine."

"To be sure!  Make way for the king!"  he retorted.  While one jeered
"VIVE LE ROI!"  and the rest laughed.  Not good-humouredly, but with a
touch of spitefulness.

Quarrels between gentlemen's servants were as common then as they are
to-day.  But the masters seldom condescended to interfere. "Let the
fellows fight it out," was the general sentiment.  Here, however, poor
Jean was over-matched, and we had no choice but to see to it ourselves.

"Come, men, have a care that you do not get into trouble," I urged,
restraining Croisette by a touch, for I by no means wished to have a
repetition of the catastrophe which had happened at Caylus.  "These
horses belong to the Vicomte de Caylus.  If your master be a friend of
his, as may very probably be the case, you will run the risk of getting
into trouble."

I thought I heard, as I stopped speaking, a subdued muttering, and
fancied I caught the words, "PAPEGOT!  Down with the Guises!" But the
spokesman's only answer aloud was "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"  he repeated, flapping his arms in defiance. "Here
is a cock of a fine hackle!"  And so on, and so forth, while he turned
grinning to his companions, looking for their applause.

I was itching to chastise him, and yet hesitating, lest the thing
should have its serious side, when a new actor appeared.  "Shame, you
brutes!"  cried a shrill voice above us in the clouds it seemed.  I
looked up, and saw two girls, coarse and handsome, standing at a window
over the stable, a light between them.  "For shame!  Don't you see that
they are mere children?  Let them be," cried one.

The men laughed louder than ever; and for me, I could not stand by and
be called a child.  "Come here," I said, beckoning to the man in the
doorway.  "Come here, you rascal, and I will give you the thrashing you
deserve for speaking to a gentleman!"

He lounged forward, a heavy fellow, taller than myself and six inches
wider at the shoulders.  My heart failed me a little as I measured him.
But the thing had to be done.  If I was slight, I was wiry as a hound,
and in the excitement had forgotten my fatigue.  I snatched from Marie
a loaded riding-whip he carried, and stepped forward.

"Have a care, little man!"  cried the girl gaily--yet half in pity, I
think.  "Or that fat pig will kill you!"

My antagonist did not join in the laugh this time.  Indeed it struck me
that his eye wandered and that he was not so ready to enter the ring as
his mates were to form it.  But before I could try his mettle, a hand
was laid on my shoulder.  A man appearing from I do not know
where--from the dark fringe of the group, I suppose--pushed me aside,
roughly, but not discourteously.

"Leave this to me!"  he said, coolly stepping before me.  "Do not dirty
your hands with the knave, master.  I am pining for work and the job
will just suit me!  I will fit him for the worms before the nuns above
can say an AVE!"

I looked at the newcomer.  He was a stout fellow; not over tall, nor
over big; swarthy, with prominent features.  The plume of his bonnet
was broken, but he wore it in a rakish fashion; and altogether he
swaggered with so dare-devil an air, clinking his spurs and swinging
out his long sword recklessly, that it was no wonder three or four of
the nearest fellows gave back a foot.

"Come on!"  he cried, boisterously, forming a ring by the simple
process of sweeping his blade from side to side, while he made the
dagger in his left hand flash round his head.  "Who is for the game?
Who will strike a blow for the little Admiral?  Will you come one, two,
three at once; or all together?  Anyway, come on, you--" And he closed
his challenge with a volley of frightful oaths, directed at the group
opposite.

"It is no quarrel of yours," said the big man, sulkily; making no show
of drawing his sword, but rather drawing back himself.

"All quarrels are my quarrels!  and no quarrels are your quarrels. That
is about the truth, I fancy!"  was the smart retort; which our champion
rendered more emphatic by a playful lunge that caused the big bully to
skip again.

There was a loud laugh at this, even among the enemy's backers. "Bah,
the great pig!"  ejaculated the girl above.  "Spit him!" and she spat
down on the whilom Hector--who made no great figure now.

"Shall I bring you a slice of him, my dear?"  asked my rakehelly
friend, looking up and making his sword play round the shrinking
wretch.  "Just a tit-bit, my love?"  he added persuasively.  "A
mouthful of white liver and caper sauce?"

"Not for me, the beast!"  the girl cried, amid the laughter of the yard.

"Not a bit?  If I warrant him tender?  Ladies' meat?"

"Bah!  no!"  and she stolidly spat down again.

"Do you hear?  The lady has no taste for you," the tormentor cried.
"Pig of a Gascon!"  And deftly sheathing his dagger, he seized the big
coward by the ear, and turning him round, gave him a heavy kick which
sent him spinning over a bucket, and down against the wall.  There the
bully remained, swearing and rubbing himself by turns; while the victor
cried boastfully, "Enough of him.  If anyone wants to take up his
quarrel, Blaise Bure is his man.  If not, let us have an end of it.
Let someone find stalls for the gentlemen's horses before they catch a
chill; and have done with it.  As for me," he added, and then he turned
to us and removed his hat with an exaggerated flourish, "I am your
lordship's servant to command."

I thanked him with a heartiness, half-earnest, half-assumed.  His cloak
was ragged, his trunk hose, which had once been fine enough, were
stained, and almost pointless, He swaggered inimitably, and had
led-captain written large upon him.  But he had done us a service, for
Jean had no further trouble about the horses.  And besides one has a
natural liking for a brave man, and this man was brave beyond question.

"You are from Orleans," he said respectfully enough, but as one
asserting a fact, not asking a question.

"Yes," I answered, somewhat astonished, "Did you see us come in?"

"No, but I looked at your boots, gentlemen," he replied.  "White dust,
north; red dust, south.  Do you see?"

"Yes, I see," I said, with admiration.  "You must have been brought up
in a sharp school, M. Bure."

"Sharp masters make sharp scholars," he replied, grinning.  And that
answer I had occasion to remember afterwards.

"You are from Orleans, also?"  I asked, as we prepared to go in.

"Yes, from Orleans too, gentlemen.  But earlier in the day.  With
letters--letters of importance!"  And bestowing something like a wink
of confidence on us, he drew himself up, looked sternly at the
stable-folk, patted himself twice on the chest, and finally twirled his
moustaches, and smirked at the girl above, who was chewing straws.

I thought it likely enough that we might find it hard to get rid of
him.  But this was not so.  After listening with gratification to our
repeated thanks, he bowed with the same grotesque flourish, and marched
off as grave as a Spaniard, humming--

  "Ce petit homme tant joli!
  Qui toujours cause et toujours rit,
  Qui toujours baise sa mignonne,
  Dieu gard' de mal ce petit homme!"

On our going in, the landlord met us politely, but with curiosity, and
a simmering of excitement also in his manner. "From Paris, my lords?"
he asked, rubbing his hands and bowing low.  "Or from the south?"

"From the south," I answered.  "From Orleans, and hungry and tired,
Master Host."

"Ah!"  he replied, disregarding the latter part of my answer, while his
little eyes twinkled with satisfaction.  "Then I dare swear, my lords,
you have not heard the news?"  He halted in the narrow passage, and
lifting the candle he carried, scanned our faces closely, as if he
wished to learn something about us before he spoke.

"News!"  I answered brusquely, being both tired, and as I had told him,
hungry.  "We have heard none, and the best you can give us will be that
our supper is ready to be served."

But even this snub did not check his eagerness to tell his news. "The
Admiral de Coligny," he said, breathlessly, "you have not heard what
has happened to him?"

"To the admiral?  No, what?"  I inquired rapidly.  I was interested at
last.

For a moment let me digress.  The few of my age will remember, and the
many younger will have been told, that at this time the Italian
queen-mother was the ruling power in France.  It was Catharine de'
Medici's first object to maintain her influence over Charles the
Ninth--her son; who, ricketty, weak, and passionate, was already doomed
to an early grave.  Her second, to support the royal power by balancing
the extreme Catholics against the Huguenots.  For the latter purpose
she would coquet first with one party, then with the other.  At the
present moment she had committed herself more deeply than was her wont
to the Huguenots.  Their leaders, the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the
King of Navarre, and the Prince of Conde, were supposed to be high in
favour, while the chiefs of the other party, the Duke of Guise, and the
two Cardinals of his house, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Cardinal
of Guise, were in disgrace; which, as it seemed, even their friend at
court, the queen's favourite son, Henry of Anjou, was unable to
overcome.

Such was the outward aspect of things in August, 1572, but there were
not wanting rumours that already Coligny, taking advantage of the
footing given him, had gained an influence over the young king, which
threatened Catharine de' Medici herself.  The admiral, therefore, to
whom the Huguenot half of France had long looked as to its leader, was
now the object of the closest interest to all; the Guise faction,
hating him--as the alleged assassin of the Duke of Guise--with an
intensity which probably was not to be found in the affection of his
friends, popular with the latter as he was.

Still, many who were not Huguenots had a regard for him as a great
Frenchman and a gallant soldier.  We--though we were of the old faith,
and the other side--had heard much of him, and much good.  The Vicomte
had spoken of him always as a great man, a man mistaken, but brave,
honest and capable in his error.  Therefore it was that when the
landlord mentioned him, I forgot even my hunger.

"He was shot, my lords, as he passed through the Rue des Fosses,
yesterday," the man declared with bated breath.  "It is not known
whether he will live or die.  Paris is in an uproar, and there are some
who fear the worst."

"But," I said doubtfully, "who has dared to do this?  He had a safe
conduct from the king himself."

Our host did not answer; shrugging his shoulders instead, he opened the
door, and ushered us into the eating-room.

Some preparations for our meal had already been made at one end of the
long board.  At the other was seated a man past middle age; richly but
simply dressed.  His grey hair, cut short about a massive head, and his
grave, resolute face, square-jawed, and deeply-lined, marked him as one
to whom respect was due apart from his clothes.  We bowed to him as we
took our seats.

He acknowledged the salute, fixing us a moment with a penetrating
glance; and then resumed his meal.  I noticed that his sword and belt
were propped against a chair at his elbow, and a dag, apparently
loaded, lay close to his hand by the candlestick.  Two lackeys waited
behind his chair, wearing the badge we had remarked in the inn yard.

We began to talk, speaking in low tones that we might not disturb him.
The attack on Coligny had, if true, its bearing on our own business.
For if a Huguenot so great and famous and enjoying the king's special
favour still went in Paris in danger of his life, what must be the risk
that such an one as Pavannes ran?  We had hoped to find the city quiet.
If instead it should be in a state of turmoil Bezers' chances were so
much the better; and ours--and Kit's, poor Kit's--so much the worse.

Our companion had by this time finished his supper.  But he still sat
at table, and seemed to be regarding us with some curiosity. At length
he spoke.  "Are you going to Paris, young gentlemen?" he asked, his
tone harsh and high-pitched.

We answered in the affirmative.  "To-morrow?"  he questioned.

"Yes," we answered; and expected him to continue the conversation.  But
instead he became silent, gazing abstractedly at the table; and what
with our meal, and our own talk we had almost forgotten him again, when
looking up, I found him at my elbow, holding out in silence a small
piece of paper.

I started his face was so grave.  But seeing that there were
half-a-dozen guests of a meaner sort at another table close by, I
guessed that he merely wished to make a private communication to us;
and hastened to take the paper and read it.  It contained a scrawl of
four words only--

  "Va chasser l'Idole."

No more.  I looked at him puzzled; able to make nothing out of it.  St.
Croix wrinkled his brow over it with the same result. It was no good
handing it to Marie, therefore.

"You do not understand?"  the stranger continued, as he put the scrap
of paper back in his pouch.

"No," I answered, shaking my head.  We had all risen out of respect to
him, and were standing a little group about him.

"Just so; it is all right then," he answered, looking at us as it
seemed to me with grave good-nature.  "It is nothing.  Go your way.
But--I have a son yonder not much younger than you, young gentlemen.
And if you had understood, I should have said to you, 'Do not go!
There are enough sheep for the shearer!'"

He was turning away with this oracular saying when Croisette touched
his sleeve.  "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said
eagerly, "that the Admiral de Coligny was wounded yesterday?"

"It is true," the other answered, turning his grave eyes on his
questioner, while for a moment his stern look failed him, "It is true,
my boy," he added with an air of strange solemnity.  "Whom the Lord
loveth, He chasteneth.  And, God forgive me for saying it, whom He
would destroy, He first maketh mad."

He had gazed with peculiar favour at Croisette's girlish face, I
thought:  Marie and I were dark and ugly by the side of the boy. But he
turned from him now with a queer, excited gesture, thumping his
gold-headed cane on the floor.  He called his servants in a loud,
rasping voice, and left the room in seeming anger, driving them before
him, the one carrying his dag, and the other, two candles.

When I came down early next morning, the first person I met was Blaise
Bure.  He looked rather fiercer and more shabby by daylight than
candlelight.  But he saluted me respectfully; and this, since it was
clear that he did not respect many people, inclined me to regard him
with favour.  It is always so, the more savage the dog, the more highly
we prize its attentions.  I asked him who the Huguenot noble was who
had supped with us.  For a Huguenot we knew he must be.

"The Baron de Rosny," he answered; adding with a sneer, "He is a
careful man!  If they were all like him, with eyes on both sides of his
head and a dag by his candle--well, my lord, there would be one more
king in France--or one less!  But they are a blind lot:  as blind as
bats."  He muttered something farther in which I caught the word
"to-night."  But I did not hear it all; or understand any of it.

"Your lordships are going to Paris?"  he resumed in a different tone.
When I said that we were, he looked at me in a shamefaced way, half
timid, half arrogant.  "I have a small favour to ask of you then," he
said.  "I am going to Paris myself.  I am not afraid of odds, as you
have seen.  But the roads will be in a queer state if there be anything
on foot in the city, and--well, I would rather ride with you gentlemen
than alone."

"You are welcome to join us," I said.  "But we start in half-an-hour.
Do you know Paris well?"

"As well as my sword-hilt," he replied briskly, relieved I thought by
my acquiescence, "And I have known that from my breeching.  If you want
a game at PAUME, or a pretty girl to kiss, I can put you in the way for
the one or the other."

The half rustic shrinking from the great city which I felt, suggested
to me that our swashbuckling friend might help us if he would.  "Do you
know M. de Pavannes?"  I asked impulsively, "Where he lives in Paris, I
mean?"

"M. Louis de Pavannes?"  quoth he.

"Yes."

"I know--" he replied slowly, rubbing his chin and looking at the
ground in thought--"where he had his lodgings in town a while ago,
before--Ah!  I do know!  I remember," he added, slapping his thigh,
"when I was in Paris a fortnight ago I was told that his steward had
taken lodgings for him in the Rue St. Antoine."

"Good!"  I answered overjoyed.  "Then we want to dismount there, if you
can guide us straight to the house."

"I can," he replied simply.  "And you will not be the worse for my
company.  Paris is a queer place when there is trouble to the fore, but
your lordships have got the right man to pilot you through it."

I did not ask him what trouble he meant, but ran indoors to buckle on
my sword, and tell Marie and Croisette of the ally I had secured.  They
were much pleased, as was natural; so that we took the road in
excellent spirits intending to reach the city in the afternoon.  But
Marie's horse cast a shoe, and it was some time before we could find a
smith.  Then at Etampes, where we stopped to lunch, we were kept an
unconscionable time waiting for it.  And so we approached Paris for the
first time at sunset.  A ruddy glow was at the moment warming the
eastern heights, and picking out with flame the twin towers of Notre
Dame, and the one tall tower of St. Jacques la Boucherie.  A dozen
roofs higher than their neighbours shone hotly; and a great bank of
cloud, which lay north and south, and looked like a man's hand
stretched over the city, changed gradually from blood-red to violet,
and from violet to black, as evening fell.

Passing within the gates and across first one bridge and then another,
we were astonished and utterly confused by the noise and hubbub through
which we rode.  Hundreds seemed to be moving this way and that in the
narrow streets.  Women screamed to one another from window to window.
The bells of half-a-dozen churches rang the curfew.  Our country ears
were deafened.  Still our eyes had leisure to take in the tall houses
with their high-pitched roofs, and here and there a tower built into
the wall; the quaint churches, and the groups of townsfolk--sullen
fellows some of them with a fierce gleam in their eyes--who, standing
in the mouths of reeking alleys, watched us go by.

But presently we had to stop.  A crowd had gathered to watch a little
cavalcade of six gentlemen pass across our path.  They were riding two
and two, lounging in their saddles and chattering to one another,
disdainfully unconscious of the people about them, or the remarks they
excited.  Their graceful bearing and the richness of their dress and
equipment surpassed anything I had ever seen.  A dozen pages and
lackeys were attending them on foot, and the sound of their jests and
laughter came to us over the heads of the crowd.

While I was gazing at them, some movement of the throng drove back
Bure's horse against mine.  Bure himself uttered a savage oath;
uncalled for so far as I could see.  But my attention was arrested the
next moment by Croisette, who tapped my arm with his riding whip.
"Look!"  he cried in some excitement, "is not that he?"

I followed the direction of the lad's finger--as well as I could for
the plunging of my horse which Bure's had frightened--and scrutinized
the last pair of the troop.  They were crossing the street in which we
stood, and I had only a side view of them; or rather of the nearer
rider.  He was a singularly handsome man, in age about twenty-two or
twenty-three with long lovelocks falling on his lace collar and cloak
of orange silk.  His face was sweet and kindly and gracious to a
marvel.  But he was a stranger to me.

"I could have sworn," exclaimed Croisette, "that that was Louis
himself--M. de Pavannes!"

"That?"  I answered, as we began to move again, the crowd melting
before us.  "Oh, dear, no!"

"No!  no!  The farther man!"  he explained.

But I had not been able to get a good look at the farther of the two.
We turned in our saddles and peered after him.  His back in the dusk
certainly reminded me of Louis.  Bure, however, who said he knew M. de
Pavannes by sight, laughed at the idea.  "Your friend," he said, "is a
wider man than that!"  And I thought he was right there--but then it
might be the cut of the clothes. "They have been at the Louvre playing
paume, I'll be sworn!"  he went on.  "So the Admiral must be better.
The one next us was M. de Teligny, the Admiral's son-in-law.  And the
other, whom you mean, was the Comte de la Rochefoucault."

We turned as he spoke into a narrow street near the river, and could
see not far from us a mass of dark buildings which Bure told us was the
Louvre--the king's residence.  Out of this street we turned into a
short one; and here Bure drew rein and rapped loudly at some heavy
gates.  It was so dark that when, these being opened, he led the way
into a courtyard, we could see little more than a tall, sharp-gabled
house, projecting over us against a pale sky; and a group of men and
horses in one corner. Bure spoke to one of the men, and begging us to
dismount, said the footman would show us to M. de Pavannes.

The thought that we were at the end of our long journey, and in time to
warn Louis of his danger, made us forget all our exertions, our fatigue
and stiffness.  Gladly throwing the bridles to Jean we ran up the steps
after the servant.  The thing was done.  Hurrah!  the thing was done!

The house--as we passed through a long passage and up some
steps--seemed full of people.  We heard voices and the ring of arms
more than once.  But our guide, without pausing, led us to a small room
lighted by a hanging lamp.  "I will inform M. de Pavannes of your
arrival," he said respectfully, and passed behind a curtain, which
seemed to hide the door of an inner apartment.  As he did so the clink
of glasses and the hum of conversation reached us.

"He has company supping with him," I said nervously.  I tried to flip
some of the dust from my boots with my whip.  I remembered that this
was Paris.

"He will be surprised to see us," quoth Croisette, laughing--a little
shyly, too, I think.  And so we stood waiting.

I began to wonder as minutes passed by--the gay company we had seen
putting it in my mind, I suppose--whether M. de Pavannes, of Paris,
might not turn out to be a very different person from Louis de
Pavannes, of Caylus; whether the king's courtier would be as friendly
as Kit's lover.  And I was still thinking of this without having
settled the point to my satisfaction, when the curtain was thrust aside
again.  A very tall man, wearing a splendid suit of black and silver
and a stiff trencher-like ruff, came quickly in, and stood smiling at
us, a little dog in his arms.  The little dog sat up and snarled:  and
Croisette gasped. It was not our old friend Louis certainly!  It was
not Louis de Pavannes at all.  It was no old friend at all, It was the
Vidame de Bezers!

"Welcome, gentlemen!"  he said, smiling at us--and never had the cast
been so apparent in his eyes.  "Welcome to Paris, M. Anne!"



CHAPTER IV.

ENTRAPPED!

There was a long silence.  We stood glaring at him, and he smiled upon
us--as a cat smiles.  Croisette told me afterwards that he could have
died of mortification--of shame and anger that we had been so
outwitted.  For myself I did not at once grasp the position.  I did not
understand.  I could not disentangle myself in a moment from the belief
in which I had entered the house--that it was Louis de Pavannes' house.
But I seemed vaguely to suspect that Bezers had swept him aside and
taken his place.  My first impulse therefore--obeyed on the
instant--was to stride to the Vidame's side and grasp his arm.  "What
have you done?"  I cried, my voice sounding hoarsely even in my own
ears.  "What have you done with M. de Pavannes?  Answer me!"

He showed just a little more of his sharp white teeth as he looked down
at my face--a flushed and troubled face doubtless. "Nothing--yet," he
replied very mildly.  And he shook me off.

"Then," I retorted, "how do you come here?"

He glanced at Croisette and shrugged his shoulders, as if I had been a
spoiled child.  "M. Anne does not seem to understand," he said with
mock courtesy, "that I have the honour to welcome him to my house the
Hotel Bezers, Rue de Platriere."

"The Hotel Bezers!  Rue de Platriere!"  I cried confusedly.  "But
Blaise Bure told us that this was the Rue St. Antoine!"

"Ah!"  he replied as if slowly enlightened--the hypocrite!  "Ah! I
see!"  and he smiled grimly.  "So you have made the acquaintance of
Blaise Bure, my excellent master of the horse! Worthy Blaise! Indeed,
indeed, now I understand.  And you thought, you whelps," he continued,
and as he spoke his tone changed strangely, and he fixed us suddenly
with angry eyes, "to play a rubber with me!  With me, you imbeciles!
You thought the wolf of Bezers could be hunted down like any hare!
Then listen, and I will tell you the end of it.  You are now in my
house and absolutely at my mercy.  I have two score men within call who
would cut the throats of three babes at the breast, if I bade them!
Ay," he, added, a wicked exultation shining in his eyes, "they would,
and like the job!"

He was going on to say more, but I interrupted him.  The rage I felt,
caused as much by the thought of our folly as by his arrogance, would
let me be silent no longer.  "First, M. de Bezers, first," I broke out
fiercely, my words leaping over one another in my haste, "a word with
you!  Let me tell you what I think of you!  You are a treacherous
hound, Vidame!  A cur!  a beast!  And I spit upon you!  Traitor and
assassin!"  I shouted, "is that not enough?  Will nothing provoke you?
If you call yourself a gentleman, draw!"

He shook his head; he was still smiling, still unmoved.  "I do not do
my own dirty work," he said quietly, "nor stint my footmen of their
sport, boy."

"Very well!"  I retorted.  And with the words I drew my sword, and
sprang as quick as lightning to the curtain by which he had entered.
"Very well, we will kill you first!"  I cried wrathfully, my eye on his
eye, and every savage passion in my breast aroused, "and take our
chance with the lackeys afterwards! Marie!  Croisette!"  I cried
shrilly, "on him, lads!"

But they did not answer!  They did not move or draw.  For the moment
indeed the man was in my power.  My wrist was raised, and I had my
point at his breast, I could have run him through by a single thrust.
And I hated him.  Oh, how I hated him!  But he did not stir.  Had he
spoken, had he moved so much as an eyelid, or drawn back his foot, or
laid his hand on his hilt, I should have killed him there.  But he did
not stir and I could not do it.  My hand dropped.  "Cowards!"  I cried,
glancing bitterly from him to them--they had never failed me before.
"Cowards!"  I muttered, seeming to shrink into myself as I said the
word.  And I flung my sword clattering on the floor.

"That is better!"  he drawled quite unmoved, as if nothing more than
words had passed, as if he had not been in peril at all. "It was what I
was going to ask you to do.  If the other young gentlemen will follow
your example, I shall be obliged.  Thank you.  Thank you."

Croisette, and a minute later Marie, obeyed him to the letter!  I could
not understand it.  I folded my arms and gave up the game in despair,
and but for very shame I could have put my hands to my face and cried.
He stood in the middle under the lamp, a head taller than the tallest
of us; our master.  And we stood round him trapped, beaten, for all the
world like children.  Oh, I could have cried!  This was the end of our
long ride, our aspirations, our knight-errantry!

"Now perhaps you will listen to me," he went on smoothly, "and hear
what I am going to do.  I shall keep you here, young gentlemen, until
you can serve me by carrying to mademoiselle, your cousin, some news of
her betrothed.  Oh, I shall not detain you long," he added with an evil
smile.  "You have arrived in Paris at a fortunate moment.  There is
going to be a--well, there is a little scheme on foot appointed for
to-night--singularly lucky you are!--for removing some objectionable
people, some friends of ours perhaps among them, M. Anne.  That is all.
You will hear shots, cries, perhaps screams.  Take no notice.  You will
be in no danger.  For M. de Pavannes," he continued, his voice sinking,
"I think that by morning I shall be able to give you a--a more
particular account of him to take to Caylus--to Mademoiselle, you
understand."

For a moment the mask was off.  His face took a sombre brightness.  He
moistened his lips with his tongue as though he saw his vengeance
worked out then and there before him, and were gloating over the
picture.  The idea that this was so took such a hold upon me that I
shrank back, shuddering; reading too in Croisette's face the same
thought--and a late repentance.  Nay, the malignity of Bezers' tone,
the savage gleam of joy in his eyes appalled me to such an extent that
I fancied for a moment I saw in him the devil incarnate!

He recovered his composure very quickly, however; and turned carelessly
towards the door.  "If you will follow me," he said, "I will see you
disposed of.  You may have to complain of your lodging--I have other
things to think of to-night than hospitality, But you shall not need to
complain of your supper."

He drew aside the curtain as he spoke, and passed into the next room
before us, not giving a thought apparently to the possibility that we
might strike him from behind.  There certainly was an odd quality
apparent in him at times which seemed to contradict what we knew of him.

The room we entered was rather long than wide, hung with tapestry, and
lighted by silver lamps.  Rich plate, embossed, I afterwards learned,
by Cellini the Florentine--who died that year I remember--and richer
glass from Venice, with a crowd of meaner vessels filled with meats and
drinks covered the table; disordered as by the attacks of a numerous
party.  But save a servant or two by the distant dresser, and an
ecclesiastic at the far end of the table, the room was empty.

The priest rose as we entered, the Vidame saluting him as if they had
not met that day.  "You are welcome M. le Coadjuteur," he said; saying
it coldly, however, I thought.  And the two eyed one another with
little favour; rather as birds of prey about to quarrel over the spoil,
than as host and guest.  Perhaps the Coadjutor's glittering eyes and
great beak-like nose made me think of this.

"Ho!  ho!"  he said, looking piercingly at us--and no doubt we must
have seemed a miserable and dejected crew enough.  "Who are these?  Not
the first-fruits of the night, eh?"

The Vidame looked darkly at him.  "No," he answered brusquely. "They
are not.  I am not particular out of doors, Coadjutor, as you know, but
this is my house, and we are going to supper. Perhaps you do not
comprehend the distinction.  Still it exists--for me," with a sneer.

This was as good as Greek to us.  But I so shrank from the priest's
malignant eyes, which would not quit us, and felt so much disgust
mingled with my anger that when Bezers by a gesture invited me to sit
down, I drew back.  "I will not eat with you," I said sullenly;
speaking out of a kind of dull obstinacy, or perhaps a childish
petulance.

It did not occur to me that this would pierce the Vidame's armour.  Yet
a dull red showed for an instant in his cheek, and he eyed me with a
look, that was not all ferocity, though the veins in his great temples
swelled.  A moment, nevertheless, and he was himself again.  "Armand,"
he said quietly to the servant, "these gentlemen will not sup with me.
Lay for them at the other end."

Men are odd.  The moment he gave way to me I repented of my words.  It
was almost with reluctance that I followed the servant to the lower
part of the table.  More than this, mingled with the hatred I felt for
the Vidame, there was now a strange sentiment towards him--almost of
admiration; that had its birth I think in the moment, when I held his
life in my hand, and he had not flinched.

We ate in silence; even after Croisette by grasping my hand under the
table had begged me not to judge him hastily.  The two at the upper end
talked fast, and from the little that reached us, I judged that the
priest was pressing some course on his host, which the latter declined
to take.

Once Bezers raised his voice.  "I have my own ends to serve!"  he broke
out angrily, adding a fierce oath which the priest did not rebuke, "and
I shall serve them.  But there I stop.  You have your own.  Well, serve
them, but do not talk to me of the cause! The cause?  To hell with the
cause!  I have my cause, and you have yours, and my lord of Guise has
his!  And you will not make me believe that there is any other!"

"The king's?"  suggested the priest, smiling sourly.

"Say rather the Italian woman's!"  the Vidame answered
recklessly--meaning the queen-mother, Catharine de' Medici, I supposed.

"Well, then, the cause of the Church?"  the priest persisted.

"Bah!  The Church?  It is you, my friend!"  Bezers rejoined, rudely
tapping his companion--at that moment in the act of crossing
himself--on the chest.  "The Church?"  he continued; "no, no, my
friend.  I will tell you what you are doing.  You want me to help you
to get rid of your branch, and you offer in return to aid me with
mine--and then, say you, there will be no stick left to beat either of
us.  But you may understand once for all"--and the Vidame struck his
hand heavily down among the glasses--"that I will have no interference
with my work, master Clerk!  None!  Do you hear?  And as for yours, it
is no business of mine.  That is plain speaking, is it not?"

The priest's hand shook as he raised a full glass to his lips, but he
made no rejoinder, and the Vidame, seeing we had finished, rose.
"Armand!"  he cried, his face still dark, "take these gentlemen to
their chamber.  You understand?"

We stiffly acknowledged his salute--the priest taking no notice of
us--and followed the servant from the room; going along a corridor and
up a steep flight of stairs, and seeing enough by the way to be sure
that resistance was hopeless.  Doors opened silently as we passed, and
grim fellows, in corslets and padded coats, peered out.  The clank of
arms and murmur of voices sounded continuously about us; and as we
passed a window the jingle of bits, and the hollow clang of a restless
hoof on the flags below, told us that the great house was for the time
a fortress.  I wondered much.  For this was Paris, a city with gates
and guards; the night a short August night.  Yet the loneliest manor in
Quercy could scarcely have bristled with more pikes and musquetoons, on
a winter's night and in time of war.

No doubt these signs impressed us all; and Croisette not least. For
suddenly I heard him stop, as he followed us up the narrow staircase,
and begin without warning to stumble down again as fast as he could.  I
did not know what he was about; but muttering something to Marie, I
followed the lad to see.  At the foot of the flight of stairs I looked
back, Marie and the servant were standing in suspense, where I had left
them.  I heard the latter bid us angrily to return.

But by this time Croisette was at the end of the corridor; and
reassuring the fellow by a gesture I hurried on, until brought to a
standstill by a man opening a door in my face.  He had heard our
returning footsteps, and eyed me suspiciously; but gave way after a
moment with a grunt of doubt I hastened on, reaching the door of the
room in which we had supped in time to see something which filled me
with grim astonishment; so much so that I stood rooted where I was, too
proud at any rate to interfere.

Bezers was standing, the leering priest at his elbow.  And Croisette
was stooping forward, his hands stretched out in an attitude of
supplication.

"Nay, but M. le Vidame," the lad cried, as I stood, the door in my
hand, "it were better to stab her at once than break her heart!  Have
pity on her!  If you kill him, you kill her!"

The Vidame was silent, seeming to glower on the boy.  The priest
sneered.  "Hearts are soon mended--especially women's," he said.

"But not Kit's!"  Croisette said passionately--otherwise ignoring him.
"Not Kit's!  You do not know her, Vidame!  Indeed you do not!"

The remark was ill-timed.  I saw a spasm of anger distort Bezers' face.
"Get up, boy!"  he snarled, "I wrote to Mademoiselle what I would do,
and that I shall do!  A Bezers keeps his word.  By the God above us--if
there be a God, and in the devil's name I doubt it to-night!--I shall
keep mine!  Go!"

His great face was full of rage.  He looked over Croisette's head as he
spoke, as if appealing to the Great Registrar of his vow, in the very
moment in which he all but denied Him.  I turned and stole back the way
I had come; and heard Croisette follow.

That little scene completed my misery.  After that I seemed to take no
heed of anything or anybody until I was aroused by the grating of our
gaoler's key in the lock, and became aware that he was gone, and that
we were alone in a small room under the tiles. He had left the candle
on the floor, and we three stood round it. Save for the long shadows we
cast on the walls and two pallets hastily thrown down in one corner,
the place was empty.  I did not look much at it, and I would not look
at the others.  I flung myself on one of the pallets and turned my face
to the wall, despairing.  I thought bitterly of the failure we had made
of it, and of the Vidame's triumph.  I cursed St. Croix especially for
that last touch of humiliation he had set to it.  Then, forgetting
myself as my anger abated, I thought of Kit so far away at Caylus--of
Kit's pale, gentle face, and her sorrow.  And little by little I
forgave Croisette.  After all he had not begged for us--he had not
stooped for our sakes, but for hers.

I do not know how long I lay at see-saw between these two moods. Or
whether during that time the others talked or were silent, moved about
the room or lay still.  But it was Croisette's hand on my shoulder,
touching me with a quivering eagerness that instantly communicated
itself to my limbs, which recalled me to the room and its shadows.
"Anne!"  he cried.  "Anne!  Are you awake?"

"What is it?"  I said, sitting up and looking at him.

"Marie," he began, "has--"

But there was no need for him to finish.  I saw that Marie was standing
at the far side of the room by the unglazed window; which, being in a
sloping part of the roof, inclined slightly also.  He had raised the
shutter which closed it, and on his tip-toes--for the sill was almost
his own height from the floor--was peering out.  I looked sharply at
Croisette.  "Is there a gutter outside?"  I whispered, beginning to
tingle all over as the thought of escape for the first time occurred to
me.

"No," he answered in the same tone.  "But Marie says he can see a beam
below, which he thinks we can reach."

I sprang up, promptly displaced Marie, and looked out.  When my eyes
grew accustomed to the gloom I discerned a dark chaos of roofs and
gables stretching as far as I could see before me. Nearer, immediately
under the window, yawned a chasm--a narrow street.  Beyond this was a
house rather lower than that in which we were, the top of its roof not
quite reaching the level of my eyes.

"I see no beam," I said.

"Look below!"  quoth Marie, stolidly,

I did so, and then saw that fifteen or sixteen feet below our window
there was a narrow beam which ran from our house to the opposite
one--for the support of both, as is common in towns.  In the shadow
near the far end of this--it was so directly under our window that I
could only see the other end of it--I made out a casement, faintly
illuminated from within.

I shook my head.

"We cannot get down to it," I said, measuring the distance to the beam
and the depth below it, and shivering.

"Marie says we can, with a short rope," Croisette replied.  His eyes
were glistening with excitement.

"But we have no rope!"  I retorted.  I was dull--as usual.  Marie made
no answer.  Surely he was the most stolid and silent of brothers.  I
turned to him.  He was taking off his waistcoat and neckerchief.

"Good!"  I cried.  I began to see now.  Off came our scarves and
kerchiefs also, and fortunately they were of home make, long and
strong.  And Marie had a hank of four-ply yarn in his pocket as it
turned out, and I had some stout new garters, and two or three yards of
thin cord, which I had brought to mend the girths, if need should
arise.  In five minutes we had fastened them cunningly together.

"I am the lightest," said Croisette.

"But Marie has the steadiest head," I objected.  We had learned that
long ago--that Marie could walk the coping-stones of the battlements
with as little concern as we paced a plank set on the ground.

"True," Croisette had to admit.  "But he must come last, because
whoever does so will have to let himself down."

I had not thought of that, and I nodded.  It seemed that the lead was
passing out of my hands and I might resign myself.  Still one thing I
would have.  As Marie was to come last, I would go first. My weight
would best test the rope.  And accordingly it was so decided.

There was no time to be lost.  At any moment we might be interrupted.
So the plan was no sooner conceived than carried out.  The rope was
made fast to my left wrist.  Then I mounted on Marie's shoulders, and
climbed--not without quavering--through the window, taking as little
time over it as possible, for a bell was already proclaiming midnight.

All this I had done on the spur of the moment.  But outside, hanging by
my hands in the darkness, the strokes of the great bell in my ears, I
had a moment in which to think.  The sense of the vibrating depth below
me, the airiness, the space and gloom around, frightened me.  "Are you
ready?"  muttered Marie, perhaps with a little impatience.  He had not
a scrap of imagination, had Marie.

"No!  wait a minute!"  I blurted out, clinging to the sill, and taking
a last look at the bare room, and the two dark figures between me and
the light.  "No!"  I added, hurriedly. "Croisette--boys, I called you
cowards just now.  I take it back! I did not mean it!  That is all!"  I
gasped.  "Let go!"

A warm touch on my hand.  Something like a sob.

The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house, down
into the depth.  The light shot up.  My head turned giddily. I clung,
oh, how I clung to that rope!  Half way down the thought struck me that
in case of accident those above might not be strong enough to pull me
up again.  But it was too late to think of that, and in another second
my feet touched the beam.  I breathed again.  Softly, very gingerly, I
made good my footing on the slender bridge, and, disengaging the rope,
let it go.  Then, not without another qualm, I sat down astride of the
beam, and whistled in token of success.  Success so far!

It was a strange position, and I have often dreamed of it since. In the
darkness about me Paris lay to all seeming asleep.  A veil, and not the
veil of night only, was stretched between it and me; between me, a mere
lad, and the strange secrets of a great city; stranger, grimmer, more
deadly that night than ever before or since.  How many men were
watching under those dimly-seen roofs, with arms in their hands?  How
many sat with murder at heart?  How many were waking, who at dawn would
sleep for ever, or sleeping who would wake only at the knife's edge?
These things I could not know, any more than I could picture how many
boon-companions were parting at that instant, just risen from the dice,
one to go blindly--the other watching him--to his death?  I could not
imagine, thank Heaven for it, these secrets, or a hundredth part of the
treachery and cruelty and greed that lurked at my feet, ready to burst
all bounds at a pistol-shot.  It had no significance for me that the
past day was the 23rd of August, or that the morrow was St.
Bartholomew's feast!

No.  Yet mingled with the jubilation which the possibility of triumph
over our enemy raised in my breast, there was certainly a foreboding.
The Vidame's hints, no less than his open boasts, had pointed to
something to happen before morning--something wider than the mere
murder of a single man.  The warning also which the Baron de Rosny had
given us at the inn occurred to me with new meaning.  And I could not
shake the feeling off.  I fancied, as I sat in the darkness astride of
my beam, that I could see, closing the narrow vista of the street, the
heavy mass of the Louvre; and that the murmur of voices and the tramp
of men assembling came from its courts, with now and again the stealthy
challenge of a sentry, the restrained voice of an officer. Scarcely a
wayfarer passed beneath me:  so few, indeed, that I had no fear of
being detected from below.  And yet unless I was mistaken, a furtive
step, a subdued whisper were borne to me on every breeze, from every
quarter.  And the night was full of phantoms.

Perhaps all this was mere nervousness, the outcome of my position.  At
any rate I felt no more of it when Croisette joined me.  We had our
daggers, and that gave me some comfort.  If we could once gain entrance
to the house opposite, we had only to beg, or in the last resort force
our way downstairs and out, and then to hasten with what speed we might
to Pavannes' dwelling. Clearly it was a question of time only now;
whether Bezers' band or we should first reach it.  And struck by this I
whispered Marie to be quick.  He seemed to be long in coming.

He scrambled down hand over hand at last, and then I saw that he had
not lingered above for nothing.  He had contrived after getting out of
the window to let down the shutter.  And more he had at some risk
lengthened our rope, and made a double line of it, so that it ran round
a hinge of the shutter; and when he stood beside us, he took it by one
end and disengaged it.  Good, clever Marie!

"Bravo!"  I said softly, clapping him on the back.  "Now they will not
know which way the birds have flown!"

So there we all were, one of us, I confess, trembling.  We slid easily
enough along the beam to the opposite house.  But once there in a row
one behind the other with our faces to the wall, and the night air
blowing slantwise--well I am nervous on a height and I gasped.  The
window was a good six feet above the beam, The casement--it was
unglazed--was open, veiled by a thin curtain, and alas!  protected by
three horizontal bars--stout bars they looked.

Yet we were bound to get up, and to get in; and I was preparing to rise
to my feet on the giddy bridge as gingerly as I could, when Marie
crawled quickly over us, and swung himself up to the narrow sill, much
as I should mount a horse on the level.  He held out his foot to me,
and making an effort I reached the same dizzy perch.  Croisette for the
time remained below.

A narrow window-ledge sixty feet above the pavement, and three bars to
cling to!  I cowered to my holdfasts, envying even Croisette.  My legs
dangled airily, and the black chasm of the street seemed to yawn for
me.  For a moment I turned sick.  I recovered from that to feel
desperate.  I remembered that go forward we must, bars or no bars.  We
could not regain our old prison if we would.

It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates should
object.  On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless. The bars of the
window were close together.  A woman, a child, could disengage our
hands, and then--I turned sick again.  I thought of the cruel stones.
I glued my face to the bars, and pushing aside a corner of the curtain,
looked in.

There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving about
fully dressed, late as it was.  The room was a mere attic, the
counterpart of that we had left.  A box-bed with a canopy roughly
nailed over it stood in a corner.  A couple of chairs were by the
hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and bareness.  Yet the woman
whom we saw was richly dressed, though her silks and velvets were
disordered.  I saw a jewel gleam in her hair, and others on her hands.
When she turned her face towards us--a wild, beautiful face, perplexed
and tear-stained--I knew her instantly for a gentlewoman, and when she
walked hastily to the door, and laid her hand upon it, and seemed to
listen--when she shook the latch and dropped her hands in despair and
went back to the hearth, I made another discovery I knew at once,
seeing her there, that we were likely but to change one prison for
another.  Was every house in Paris then a dungeon?  And did each roof
cover its tragedy?

"Madame!"  I said, speaking softly, to attract her attention. "Madame!"

She started violently, not knowing whence the sound came, and looked
round, at the door first.  Then she moved towards the window, and with
an affrighted gesture drew the curtain rapidly aside.

Our eyes met.  What if she screamed and aroused the house?  What,
indeed?  "Madame," I said again, speaking hurriedly, and striving to
reassure her by the softness of my voice, "we implore your help!
Unless you assist us we are lost."

"You!  Who are you?"  she cried, glaring at us wildly, her hand to her
head.  And then she murmured to herself, "Mon Dieu!  what will become
of me?"

"We have been imprisoned in the house opposite," I hastened to explain,
disjointedly I am afraid.  "And we have escaped.  We cannot get back if
we would.  Unless you let us enter your room and give us shelter--"

"We shall be dashed to pieces on the pavement," supplied Marie, with
perfect calmness--nay, with apparent enjoyment.

"Let you in here?"  she answered, starting back in new terror; "it is
impossible."

She reminded me of our cousin, being, like her pale and dark-haired.
She wore her hair in a coronet, disordered now.  But though she was
still beautiful, she was older than Kit, and lacked her pliant grace.
I saw all this, and judging her nature, I spoke out of my despair.
"Madame," I said piteously, "we are only boys.  Croisette!  Come up!"
Squeezing myself still more tightly into my corner of the ledge, I made
room for him between us.  "See, Madame," I cried, craftily, "will you
not have pity on three boys?"

St. Crois's boyish face and fair hair arrested her attention, as I had
expected.  Her expression grew softer, and she murmured, "Poor boy!"

I caught at the opportunity.  "We do but seek a passage through your
room," I said fervently.  Good heavens, what had we not at stake!  What
if she should remain obdurate?  "We are in trouble--in despair," I
panted.  "So, I believe, are you.  We will help you if you will first
save us.  We are boys, but we can fight for you."

"Whom am I to trust?"  she exclaimed, with a shudder.  "But heaven
forbid," she continued, her eyes on Croisette's face, "that, wanting
help, I should refuse to give it.  Come in, if you will."

I poured out my thanks, and had forced my head between the bars--at
imminent risk of its remaining there--before the words were well out of
her mouth.  But to enter was no easy task after all. Croisette did,
indeed, squeeze through at last, and then by force pulled first one and
then the other of us after him.  But only necessity and that chasm
behind could have nerved us, I think, to go through a process so
painful.  When I stood, at length on the floor, I seemed to be one
great abrasion from head to foot.  And before a lady, too!

But what a joy I felt, nevertheless.  A fig for Bezers now.  He had
called us boys; and we were boys.  But he should yet find that we could
thwart him.  It could be scarcely half-an-hour after midnight; we might
still be in time.  I stretched myself and trod the level door
jubilantly, and then noticed, while doing so, that our hostess had
retreated to the door and was eyeing us timidly--half-scared.

I advanced to her with my lowest bow--sadly missing my sword. "Madame,"
I said, "I am M. Anne de Caylus, and these are my brothers.  And we are
at your service."

"And I," she replied, smiling faintly--I do not know why--"am Madame de
Pavannes, I gratefully accept your offers of service."

"De Pavannes?"  I exclaimed, amazed and overjoyed.  Madame de Pavannes!
Why, she must be Louis' kinswoman!  No doubt she could tell us where he
was lodged, and so rid our task of half its difficulty.  Could anything
have fallen out more happily?  "You know then M. Louis de Pavannes?"  I
continued eagerly.

"Certainly," she answered, smiling with a rare shy sweetness this time.
"Very well indeed.  He is my husband."



CHAPTER V.

A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.

"He is my husband!"

The statement was made in the purest innocence; yet never, as may well
be imagined, did words fall with more stunning force.  Not one of us
answered or, I believe, moved so much as a limb or an eyelid.  We only
stared, wanting time to take in the astonishing meaning of the words,
and then more time to think what they meant to us in particular.

Louis de Pavannes' wife!  Louis de Pavannes married!  If the statement
were true--and we could not doubt, looking in her face, that at least
she thought she was telling the truth--it meant that we had been fooled
indeed!  That we had had this journey for nothing, and run this risk
for a villain.  It meant that the Louis de Pavannes who had won our
boyish admiration was the meanest, the vilest of court-gallants.  That
Mademoiselle de Caylus had been his sport and plaything.  And that we
in trying to be beforehand with Bezers had been striving to save a
scoundrel from his due.  It meant all that, as soon as we grasped it in
the least.

"Madame," said Croisette gravely, after a pause so prolonged that her
smile faded pitifully from her face, scared by our strange looks.
"Your husband has been some time away from you?  He only returned, I
think, a week or two ago?"

"That is so," she answered, naively, and our last hope vanished. "But
what of that?  He was back with me again, and only yesterday--only
yesterday!"  she continued, clasping her hands, "we were so happy."

"And now, madame?"

She looked at me, not comprehending.

"I mean," I hastened to explain, "we do not understand how you come to
be here.  And a prisoner."  I was really thinking that her story might
throw some light upon ours.

"I do not know, myself," she said.  "Yesterday, in the afternoon, I
paid a visit to the Abbess of the Ursulines."

"Pardon me," Croisette interposed quickly, "but are you not of the new
faith?  A Huguenot?"

"Oh, yes," she answered eagerly.  "But the Abbess is a very dear friend
of mine, and no bigot.  Oh, nothing of that kind, I assure you.  When I
am in Paris I visit her once a week.  Yesterday, when I left her, she
begged me to call here and deliver a message."

"Then," I said, "you know this house?"

"Very well, indeed," she replied.  "It is the sign of the 'Hand and
Glove,' one door out of the Rue Platriere.  I have been in Master
Mirepoix's shop more than once before.  I came here yesterday to
deliver the message, leaving my maid in the street, and I was asked to
come up stairs, and still up until I reached this room.  Asked to wait
a moment, I began to think it strange that I should be brought to so
wretched a place, when I had merely a message for Mirepoix's ear about
some gauntlets.  I tried the door; I found it locked.  Then I was
terrified, and made a noise."

We all nodded.  We were busy building up theories--or it might be one
and the same theory--to explain this.  "Yes," I said, eagerly.

"Mirepoix came to me then.  'What does this mean?' I demanded. He
looked ashamed of himself, but he barred my way.  'Only this,' he said
at last, 'that your ladyship must remain here a few hours--two days at
most.  No harm whatever is intended to you. My wife will wait upon you,
and when you leave us, all shall be explained.' He would say no more,
and it was in vain I asked him if he did not take me for some one else;
if he thought I was mad. To all he answered, No.  And when I dared him
to detain me he threatened force.  Then I succumbed.  I have been here
since, suspecting I know not what, but fearing everything."

"That is ended, madame," I answered, my hand on my breast, my soul in
arms for her.  Here, unless I was mistaken, was one more unhappy and
more deeply wronged even than Kit; one too who owed her misery to the
same villain.  "Were there nine glovers on the stairs," I declared
roundly, "we would take you out and take you home!  Where are your
husband's apartments?"

"In the Rue de Saint Merri, close to the church.  We have a house
there."

"M. de Pavannes," I suggested cunningly, "is doubtless distracted by
your disappearance."

"Oh, surely," she answered with earnest simplicity, while the tears
sprang to her eyes.  Her innocence--she had not the germ of a
suspicion--made me grind my teeth with wrath.  Oh, the base wretch!
The miserable rascal!  What did the women see, I wondered--what had we
all seen in this man, this Pavannes, that won for him our hearts, when
he had only a stone to give in return?

I drew Croisette and Marie aside, apparently to consider how we might
force the door.  "What is the meaning of this?"  I said softly,
glancing at the unfortunate lady.  "What do you think, Croisette?"

I knew well what the answer would be.

"Think!"  he cried with fiery impatience.  "What can any one think
except that that villain Pavannes has himself planned his wife's
abduction?  Of course it is so!  His wife out of the way he is free to
follow up his intrigues at Caylus.  He may then marry Kit or--Curse
him!"

"No," I said sternly, "cursing is no good.  We must do something more.
And yet--we have promised Kit, you see, that we would save him--we must
keep our word.  We must save him from Bezers at least."

Marie groaned.

But Croisette took up the thought with ardour.  "From Bezers?" he
cried, his face aglow.  "Ay, true!  So we must!  But then we will draw
lots, who shall fight him and kill him."

I extinguished him by a look.  "We shall fight him in turn," I said,
"until one of us kill him.  There you are right.  But your turn comes
last.  Lots indeed!  We have no need of lots to learn which is the
eldest."

I was turning from him--having very properly crushed him--to look for
something which we could use to force the door, when he held up his
hand to arrest my attention.  We listened, looking at one another.
Through the window came unmistakeable sounds of voices. "They have
discovered our flight," I said, my heart sinking.

Luckily we had had the forethought to draw the curtain across the
casement.  Bezers' people could therefore, from their window, see no
more than ours, dimly lighted and indistinct.  Yet they would no doubt
guess the way we had escaped, and hasten to cut off our retreat below.
For a moment I looked at the door of our room, half-minded to attack
it, and fight our way out, taking the chance of reaching the street
before Bezers' folk should have recovered from their surprise and gone
down.  But then I looked at Madame.  How could we ensure her safety in
the struggle? While I hesitated the choice was taken from us.  We heard
voices in the house below, and heavy feet on the stairs.

We were between two fires.  I glanced irresolutely round the bare
garret, with its sloping roof, searching for a better weapon.  I had
only my dagger.  But in vain.  I saw nothing that would serve.  "What
will you do?"  Madame de Pavannes murmured, standing pale and trembling
by the hearth, and looking from one to another.  Croisette plucked my
sleeve before I could answer, and pointed to the box-bed with its
scanty curtains.  "If they see us in the room," he urged softly, "while
they are half in and half out, they will give the alarm.  Let us hide
ourselves yonder. When they are inside--you understand?"

He laid his hand on his dagger.  The muscles of the lad's face grew
tense.  I did understand him.  "Madame," I said quickly, "you will not
betray us?"

She shook her head.  The colour returned to her cheek, and the
brightness to her eyes.  She was a true woman.  The sense that she was
protecting others deprived her of fear for herself.

The footsteps were on the topmost stair now, and a key was thrust with
a rasping sound into the lock.  But before it could be turned--it
fortunately fitted ill--we three had jumped on the bed and were
crouching in a row at the head of it, where the curtains of the alcove
concealed, and only just concealed us, from any one standing at the end
of the room near the door.

I was the outermost, and through a chink could see what passed. One,
two, three people came in, and the door was closed behind them.  Three
people, and one of them a woman!  My heart--which had been in my
mouth--returned to its place, for the Vidame was not one.  I breathed
freely; only I dared not communicate my relief to the others, lest my
voice should be heard.  The first to come in was the woman closely
cloaked and hooded.  Madame de Pavannes cast on her a single doubtful
glance, and then to my astonishment threw herself into her arms,
mingling her sobs with little joyous cries of "Oh, Diane!  oh, Diane!"

"My poor little one!"  the newcomer exclaimed, soothing her with tender
touches on hair and shoulder.  "You are safe now.  Quite safe!"

"You have come to take me away?"

"Of course we have!"  Diane answered cheerfully, still caressing her.
"We have come to take you to your husband.  He has been searching for
you everywhere.  He is distracted with grief, little one."

"Poor Louis!"  ejaculated the wife.

"Poor Louis, indeed!"  the rescuer answered.  "But you will see him
soon.  We only learned at midnight where you were.  You have to thank
M. le Coadjuteur here for that.  He brought me the news, and at once
escorted me here to fetch you."

"And to restore one sister to another," said the priest silkily, as he
advanced a step.  He was the very same priest whom I had seen two hours
before with Bezers, and had so greatly disliked! I hated his pale face
as much now as I had then.  Even the errand of good on which he had
come could not blind me to his thin-lipped mouth, to his mock humility
and crafty eyes.  "I have had no task so pleasant for many days," added
he, with every appearance of a desire to propitiate.

But, seemingly, Madame de Pavannes had something of the same feeling
towards him which I had myself; for she started at the sound of his
voice, and disengaging herself from her sister's arms--it seemed it was
her sister--shrank back from the pair. She bowed indeed in
acknowledgment of his words.  But there was little gratitude in the
movement, and less warmth.  I saw the sister's face--a brilliantly
beautiful face it was--brighter eyes and lips and more lovely auburn
hair I have never seen--even Kit would have been plain and dowdy beside
her--I saw it harden strangely.  A moment before, the two had been in
one another's arms.  Now they stood apart, somehow chilled and
disillusionised. The shadow of the priest had fallen upon them--had
come between them.

At this crisis the fourth person present asserted himself. Hitherto he
had stood silent just within the door:  a plain man, plainly dressed,
somewhat over sixty and grey-haired.  He looked disconcerted and
embarrassed, and I took him for Mirepoix--rightly as it turned out.

"I am sure," he now exclaimed, his voice trembling with anxiety, or it
might be with fear, "your ladyship will regret leaving here!  You will
indeed!  No harm would have happened to you. Madame d'O does not know
what she is doing, or she would not take you away.  She does not know
what she is doing!"  he repeated earnestly.

"Madame d'O!"  cried the beautiful Diane, her brown eyes darting fire
at the unlucky culprit, her voice full of angry disdain. "How dare
you--such as you--mention my name?  Wretch!"

She flung the last word at him, and the priest took it up.  "Ay,
wretch!  Wretched man indeed!"  he repeated slowly, stretching out his
long thin hand and laying it like the claw of some bird of prey on the
tradesman's shoulder, which flinched, I saw, under the touch.  "How
dare you--such as you--meddle with matters of the nobility?  Matters
that do not concern you?  Trouble!  I see trouble hanging over this
house, Mirepoix!  Much trouble!"

The miserable fellow trembled visibly under the covert threat. His face
grew pale.  His lips quivered.  He seemed fascinated by the priest's
gaze.  "I am a faithful son of the church," he muttered; but his voice
shook so that the words were scarcely audible.  "I am known to be such!
None better known in Paris, M. le Coadjuteur."

"Men are known by their works!"  the priest retorted.  "Now, now," he
continued, abruptly raising his voice, and lifting his hand in a kind
of exaltation, real or feigned, "is the appointed time! And now is the
day of salvation!  and woe, Mirepoix, woe! woe!  to the backslider, and
to him that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back to-night!"

The layman cowered and shrank before his fierce denunciation; while
Madame de Pavannes gazed from one to the other as if her dislike for
the priest were so great that seeing the two thus quarrelling, she
almost forgave Mirepoix his offence.  "Mirepoix said he could explain,"
she murmured irresolutely.

The Coadjutor fixed his baleful eyes on him.  "Mirepoix," he said
grimly, "can explain nothing!  Nothing!  I dare him to explain!"

And certainly Mirepoix thus challenged was silent.  "Come," the priest
continued peremptorily, turning to the lady who had entered with him,
"your sister must leave with us at once.  We have no time to lose."

"But what what does it mean!"  Madame de Pavannes said, as though she
hesitated even now.  "Is there danger still?"

"Danger!"  the priest exclaimed, his form seeming to swell, and the
exaltation I had before read in his voice and manner again asserting
itself.  "I put myself at your service, Madame, and danger disappears!
I am as God to-night with powers of life and death!  You do not
understand me?  Presently you shall.  But you are ready.  We will go
then.  Out of the way, fellow!"  he thundered, advancing upon the door.

But Mirepoix, who had placed himself with his back to it, to my
astonishment did not give way.  His full bourgeois face was pale; yet
peeping through my chink, I read in it a desperate resolution.  And
oddly--very oddly, because I knew that, in keeping Madame de Pavannes a
prisoner, he must be in the wrong--I sympathised with him.  Low-bred
trader, tool of Pavannes though he was, I sympathised with him, when he
said firmly:

"She shall not go!"

"I say she shall!"  the priest shrieked, losing all control over
himself.  "Fool!  Madman!  You know not what you do!"  As the words
passed his lips, he made an adroit forward movement, surprised the
other, clutched him by the arms, and with a strength I should never
have thought lay in his meagre frame, flung him some paces into the
room.  "Fool!"  he hissed, shaking his crooked fingers at him in
malignant triumph.  "There is no man in Paris, do you hear--or woman
either--shall thwart me to-night!"

"Is that so?  Indeed?"

The words, and the cold, cynical voice, were not those of Mirepoix;
they came from behind.  The priest wheeled round, as if he had been
stabbed in the back.  I clutched Croisette, and arrested the cramped
limb I was moving under cover of the noise. The speaker was Bezers!  He
stood in the open door-way, his great form filling it from post to
post, the old gibing smile on his face.  We had been so taken up,
actors and audience alike, with the altercation, that no one had heard
him ascend the stairs.  He still wore the black and silver suit, but it
was half hidden now under a dark riding cloak which just disclosed the
glitter of his weapons.  He was booted and spurred and gloved as for a
journey.

"Is that so?"  he repeated mockingly, as his gaze rested in turn on
each of the four, and then travelled sharply round the room. "So you
will not be thwarted by any man in Paris, to-night, eh? Have you
considered, my dear Coadjutor, what a large number of people there are
in Paris?  It would amuse me very greatly now--and I'm sure it would
the ladies too, who must pardon my abrupt entrance--to see you put to
the test; pitted against--shall we say the Duke of Anjou?  Or M. de
Guise, our great man?  Or the Admiral?  Say the Admiral foot to foot?"

Rage and fear--rage at the intrusion, fear of the intruder--struggled
in the priest's face.  "How do you come here, and what do you want?"
he inquired hoarsely.  If looks and tones could kill, we three,
trembling behind our flimsy screen, had been freed at that moment from
our enemy.

"I have come in search of the young birds whose necks you were for
stretching, my friend!"  was Bezers' answer.  "They have vanished.
Birds they must be, for unless they have come into this house by that
window, they have flown away with wings."

"They have not passed this way," the priest declared stoutly, eager
only to get rid of the other and I blessed him for the words!  "I have
been here since I left you."

But the Vidame was not one to accept any man's statement.  "Thank you;
I think I will see for myself," he answered coolly. "Madame," he
continued, speaking to Madame de Pavannes as he passed her, "permit me."

He did not look at her, or see her emotion, or I think he must have
divined our presence.  And happily the others did not suspect her of
knowing more than they did.  He crossed the floor at his leisure, and
sauntered to the window, watched by them with impatience.  He drew
aside the curtain, and tried each of the bars, and peered through the
opening both up and down, An oath and an expression of wonder escaped
him.  The bars were standing, and firm and strong; and it did not occur
to him that we could have passed between them.  I am afraid to say how
few inches they were apart.

As he turned, he cast a casual glance at the bed--at us; and hesitated.
He had the candle in his hand, having taken it to the window the better
to examine the bars; and it obscured his sight. He did not see us.  The
three crouching forms, the strained white faces, the starting eyes,
that lurked in the shadow of the curtain escaped him.  The wild beating
of our hearts did not reach his ears.  And it was well for him that it
was so.  If he had come up to the bed I think that we should have
killed him, I know that we should have tried.  All the blood in me had
gone to my head, and I saw him through a haze--larger than life.  The
exact spot near the buckle of his cloak where I would strike him,
downwards and inwards, an inch above the collar-bone,--this only I saw
clearly.  I could not have missed it.  But he turned away, his face
darkening, and went back to the group near the door, and never knew the
risk he had run.



CHAPTER VI.

MADAME'S FRIGHT.

And we breathed again.  The agony of suspense, which Bezers' pause had
created, passed away.  But the night already seemed to us as a week of
nights.  An age of experience, an aeon of adventures cut us off--as we
lay shaking behind the curtain--from Caylus and its life.  Paris had
proved itself more treacherous than we had even expected to find it.
Everything and everyone shifted, and wore one face one minute, and one
another.  We had come to save Pavannes' life at the risk of our own; we
found him to be a villain!  Here was Mirepoix owning himself a
treacherous wretch, a conspirator against a woman; we sympathised with
him. The priest had come upon a work of charity and rescue; we loathed
the sound of his voice, and shrank from him, we knew not why, seeming
only to read a dark secret, a gloomy threat in each doubtful word he
uttered.  He was the strangest enigma of all. Why did we fear him?  Why
did Madame de Pavannes, who apparently had known him before, shudder at
the touch of his hand?  Why did his shadow come even between her and
her sister, and estrange them?  so that from the moment Pavannes' wife
saw him standing by Diane's side, she forgot that the latter had come
to save, and looked on her in doubt and sorrow, almost with repugnance.

We left the Vidame going back to the fireplace.  He stooped to set down
the candle by the hearth.  "They are not here," he said, as he
straightened himself again, and looked curiously at his companions.  He
had apparently been too much taken up with the pursuit to notice them
before.  "That is certain, so I have the less time to lose," he
continued.  "But I would--yes, my dear Coadjutor, I certainly would
like to know before I go, what you are doing here.  Mirepoix--Mirepoix
is an honest man.  I did not expect to find you in HIS house.  And two
ladies?  Two!  Fie, Coadjutor.  Ha!  Madame d'O, is it?  My dear lady,"
he continued, addressing her in a whimsical tone, "do not start at the
sound of your own name!  It would take a hundred hoods to hide your
eyes, or bleach your lips to the common colour; I should have known you
at once, had I looked at you.  And your companion?  Pheugh!"

He broke off, whistling softly.  It was clear that he recognised Madame
de Pavannes, and recognised her with astonishment.  The bed creaked as
I craned my neck to see what would follow.  Even the priest seemed to
think that some explanation was necessary, for he did not wait to be
questioned.

"Madame de Pavannes," he said in a dry, husky voice, and without
looking up, "was spirited hither yesterday; and detained against her
will by this good man, who will have to answer for it. Madame d'O
discovered her whereabouts, and asked me to escort her here without
loss of time to enforce her sister's release."

"And her restoration to her distracted husband?"

"Just so," the priest assented, acquiring confidence, I thought.

"And Madame desires to go?"

"Surely!  Why not?"

"Well," the Vidame drawled, his manner such as to bring the blood to
Madame de Pavannes' cheek, "it depends on the person who--to use your
phrase, M. le Coadjuteur--spirited her hither."

"And that," Madame herself retorted, raising her head, while her voice
quivered with indignation and anger, "was the Abbess of the Ursulines.
Your suspicions are base, worthy of you and unworthy of me, M. le
Vidame!  Diane!"  she continued sharply, taking her sister's arm, and
casting a disdainful glance at Bezers, "let us go.  I want to be with
my husband.  I am stifled in this room."

"We are going, little one," Diane murmured reassuringly.  But I noticed
that the speaker's animation, which had been as a soul to her beauty
when she entered the room, was gone.  A strange stillness was it fear
of the Vidame?  had taken its place.

"The Abbess of the Ursulines?"  Bezers continued thoughtfully. "SHE
brought you here, did she?"  There was surprise, genuine surprise, in
his voice.  "A good soul, and, I think I have heard, a friend of yours.
Umph!"

"A very dear friend," Madame answered stiffly.  "Now, Diane!"

"A dear friend!  And she spirited you hither yesterday!" commented the
Vidame, with the air of one solving an anagram. "And Mirepoix detained
you; respectable Mirepoix, who is said to have a well-filled stocking
under his pallet, and stands well with the bourgeoisie.  He is in the
plot.  Then at a very late hour, your affectionate sister, and my good
friend the Coadjutor, enter to save you.  From what?"

No one spoke.  The priest looked down, his cheeks livid with anger.

"From what?"  Bezers continued with grim playfulness.  "There is the
mystery.  From the clutches of this profligate Mirepoix, I suppose.
From the dangerous Mirepoix.  Upon my honour," with a sudden ring of
resolution in his tone, "I think you are safer here; I think you had
better stay where you are, Madame, until morning!  And risk Mirepoix!"

"Oh, no!  no!"  Madame cried vehemently.

"Oh, yes!  yes!"  he replied.  "What do you say, Coadjutor?  Do you not
think so?"

The priest looked down sullenly.  His voice shook as he murmured in
answer, "Madame will please herself.  She has a character, M. le
Vidame.  But if she prefer to stay here--well!"

"Oh, she has a character, has she?"  rejoined the giant, his eyes
twinkling with evil mirth, "and she should go home with you, and my old
friend Madame d'O, to save it!  That is it, is it?  No, no," he
continued when he had had his silent laugh out, "Madame de Pavannes
will do very well here--very well here until morning. We have work to
do.  Come.  Let us go and do it."

"Do you mean it?"  said the priest, starting and looking up with a
subtle challenge--almost a threat--in his tone.

"Yes, I do."

Their eyes met: and seeing their looks, I chuckled, nudging Croisette.
No fear of their discovering us now.  I recalled the old proverb which
says that when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own, and
speculated on the chance of the priest freeing us once for all from M.
de Bezers.

But the two were ill-matched.  The Vidame could have taken up the other
with one hand and dashed his head on the floor.  And it did not end
there.  I doubt if in craft the priest was his equal. Behind a frank
brutality Bezers--unless his reputation belied him--concealed an
Italian intellect.  Under a cynical recklessness he veiled a rare
cunning and a constant suspicion; enjoying in that respect a
combination of apparently opposite qualities, which I have known no
other man to possess in an equal degree, unless it might be his late
majesty, Henry the Great.  A child would have suspected the priest; a
veteran might have been taken in by the Vidame.

And indeed the priest's eyes presently sank.  "Our bargain is to go for
nothing?"  he muttered sullenly.

"I know of no bargain," quoth the Vidame.  "And I have no time to lose,
splitting hairs here.  Set it down to what you like.  Say it is a whim
of mine, a fad, a caprice.  Only understand that Madame de Pavannes
stays.  We go.  And--" he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to
strike him, "though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I
think Madame d'O had better come too."

"You speak masterfully," the priest said with a sneer, forgetting the
tone he had himself used a few minutes before to Mirepoix.

"Just so.  I have forty horsemen over the way," was the dry answer.
"For the moment, I am master of the legions, Coadjutor."

"That is true," Madame d'O said; so softly that I started.  She had
scarcely spoken since Bezers' entrance.  As she spoke now, she shook
back the hood from her face and disclosed the chestnut hair clinging
about her temples--deep blots of colour on the abnormal whiteness of
her skin, "That is true, M. de Bezers," she said.  "You have the
legions.  You have the power.  But you will not use it, I think,
against an old friend.  You will not do us this hurt when I--But
listen."

He would not.  In the very middle of her appeal he cut her short--brute
that he was!  "No Madame!"  he burst out violently, disregarding the
beautiful face, the supplicating glance, that might have moved a stone,
"that is just what I will not do.  I will not listen!  We know one
another.  Is not that enough?"

She looked at him fixedly.  He returned her gaze, not smiling now, but
eyeing her with a curious watchfulness.

And after a long pause she turned from him.  "Very well," she said
softly, and drew a deep, quivering breath, the sound of which reached
us.  "Then let us go."  And without--strangest thing of all--bestowing
a word or look on her sister, who was weeping bitterly in a chair, she
turned to the door and led the way out, a shrug of her shoulders the
last thing I marked.

The poor lady heard her departing step however, and sprang up.  It
dawned upon her that she was being deserted. "Diane!  Diane!"  she
cried distractedly--and I had to put my hand on Croisette to keep him
quiet, there was such fear and pain in her tone--"I will go!  I will
not be left behind in this dreadful place!  Do you hear?  Come back to
me, Diane!"

It made my blood run wildly.  But Diane did not come back. Strange!
And Bezers too was unmoved.  He stood between the poor woman and the
door, and by a gesture bid Mirepoix and the priest pass out before him.
"Madame," he said--and his voice, stern and hard as ever, expressed no
jot of compassion for her, rather such an impatient contempt as a
puling child might elicit--"you are safe here.  And here you will stop!
Weep if you please," he added cynically, "you will have fewer tears to
shed to-morrow."

His last words--they certainly were odd ones--arrested her attention.
She checked her sobs, being frightened I think, and looked up at him.
Perhaps he had spoken with this in view, for while she still stood at
gaze, her hands pressed to her bosom, he slipped quickly out and closed
the door behind him.  I heard a muttering for an instant outside, and
then the tramp of feet descending the stairs.  They were gone, and we
were still undiscovered.

For Madame, she had clean forgotten our presence--of that I am
sure--and the chance of escape we might afford.  On finding herself
alone she gazed a short time in alarmed silence at the door, and then
ran to the window and peered out, still trembling, terrified, silent.
So she remained a while.

She had not noticed that Bezers on going out had omitted to lock the
door behind him.  I had.  But I was unwilling to move hastily.  Some
one might return to see to it before the Vidame left the house.  And
besides the door was not over strong, and if locked would be no
obstacle to the three of us when we had only Mirepoix to deal with.  So
I kept the others where they were by a nudge and a pinch, and held my
breath a moment, straining my ears to catch the closing of the door
below.  I did not hear that. But I did catch a sound that otherwise
might have escaped me, but which now riveted my eyes to the door of our
room.  Some one in the silence, which followed the trampling on the
stairs, had cautiously laid a hand on the latch.

The light in the room was dim.  Mirepoix had taken one of the candles
with him, and the other wanted snuffing.  I could not see whether the
latch moved; whether or no it was rising.  But watching intently, I
made out that the door was being opened--slowly, noiselessly.  I saw
someone enter--a furtive gliding shadow.

For a moment I felt nervous--then I recognised the dark hooded figure.
It was only Madame d'O.  Brave woman!  She had evaded the Vidame and
slipped back to the rescue.  Ha, ha!  We would defeat the Vidame yet!
Things were going better!

But then something in her manner--as she stood holding the door and
peering into the room--something in her bearing startled and frightened
me.  As she came forward her movements were so stealthy that her
footsteps made no sound.  Her dark shadow, moving ahead of her across
the floor, was not more silent than she.  An undefined desire to make a
noise, to give the alarm, seized me.

Half-way across the room she stopped to listen, and looked round,
startled herself, I think, by the silence.  She could not see her
sister, whose figure was blurred by the outlines of the curtain; and no
doubt she was puzzled to think what had become of her. The suspense
which I felt, but did not understand, was so great that at last I
moved, and the bed creaked.

In a moment her face was turned our way, and she glided forwards, her
features still hidden by the hood of her cloak.  She was close to us
now, bending over us.  She raised her hand to her head--to shade her
eyes, as she looked more closely, I supposed, and I was wondering
whether she saw us--whether she took the shapelessness in the shadow of
the curtain for her sister, or could not make it out--I was thinking
how we could best apprise her of our presence without alarming
her--when Croisette dashed my thoughts to the winds!  Croisette, with a
tremendous whoop and a crash, bounded over me on to the floor!

She uttered a gasping cry--a cry of intense, awful fear.  I have the
sound in my ears even now.  With that she staggered back, clutching the
air.  I heard the metallic clang and ring of something falling on the
floor.  I heard an answering cry of alarm from the window; and then
Madame de Pavannes ran forward and caught her in her arms.

It was strange to find the room lately so silent become at once alive
with whispering forms, as we came hastily to light.  I cursed Croisette
for his folly, and was immeasurably angry with him, but I had no time
to waste words on him then.  I hurried to the door to guard it.  I
opened it a hand's breadth and listened. All was quiet below; the house
still.  I took the key out of the lock and put it in my pocket and went
back.  Marie and Croisette were standing a little apart from Madame de
Pavannes, who, hanging over her sister, was by turns bathing her face
and explaining our presence.

In a very few minutes Madame d'O seemed to recover, and sat up. The
first shock of deadly terror had passed, but she was still pale.  She
still trembled, and shrank from meeting our eyes, though I saw her,
when our attention was apparently directed elsewhere, glance at one and
another of us with a strange intentness, a shuddering curiosity.  No
wonder, I thought.  She must have had a terrible fright--one that might
have killed a more timid woman!

"What on earth did you do that for!"  I asked Croisette presently, my
anger certainly not decreasing the more I looked at her beautiful face.
"You might have killed her!"

In charity I supposed his nerves had failed him, for he could not even
now give me a straightforward answer.  His only reply was, "Let us get
away!  Let us get away from this horrible house!" and this he kept
repeating with a shudder as he moved restlessly to and fro.

"With all my heart!"  I answered, looking at him with some contempt.
"That is exactly what we are going to do!"

But all the same his words reminded me of something which in the
excitement of the scene I had momentarily forgotten, and that was our
duty.  Pavannes must still be saved, though not for Kit; rather to
answer to us for his sins.  But he must be saved!  And now that the
road was open, every minute lost was reproach to us. "Yes," I added
roughly, my thoughts turned into a more rugged channel, "you are right.
This is no time for nursing.  We must be going.  Madame de Pavannes," I
went on, addressing myself to her, "you know the way home from here--to
your house!"  "Oh, yes," she cried.

"That is well," I answered.  "Then we will start.  Your sister is
sufficiently recovered now, I think.  And we will not risk any further
delay."

I did not tell her of her husband's danger, or that we suspected him of
wronging her, and being in fact the cause of her detention.  I wanted
her services as a guide.  That was the main point, though I was glad to
be able to put her in a place of safety at the same time that we
fulfilled our own mission.

She rose eagerly.  "You are sure that we can get out?"  she said.

"Sure," I replied with a brevity worthy of Bezers himself.

And I was right.  We trooped down stairs, making as little noise as
possible; with the result that Mirepoix only took the alarm, and came
upon us when we were at the outer door, bungling with the lock.  Then I
made short work of him, checking his scared words of remonstrance by
flashing my dagger before his eyes.  I induced him in the same
fashion--he was fairly taken by surprise--to undo the fastenings
himself; and so, bidding him follow us at his peril, we slipped out one
by one.  We softly closed the door behind us.  And lo!  we were at last
free--free and in the streets of Paris, with the cool night air fanning
our brows.  A church hard by tolled the hour of two; and the strokes
were echoed, before we had gone many steps along the ill-paved way, by
the solemn tones of the bell of Notre Dame.

We were free and in the streets, with a guide who knew the way. If
Bezers had not gone straight from us to his vengeance, we might thwart
him yet.  I strode along quickly, Madame d'O by my side the others a
little way in front.  Here and there an oil-lamp, swinging from a
pulley in the middle of the road, enabled us to avoid some obstacle
more foul than usual, or to leap over a pool which had formed in the
kennel.  Even in my excitement, my country-bred senses rebelled against
the sights, and smells, the noisome air and oppressive closeness of the
streets.

The town was quiet, and very dark where the smoky lamps were not
hanging.  Yet I wondered if it ever slept, for more than once we had to
stand aside to give passage to a party of men, hurrying along with
links and arms.  Several times too, especially towards the end of our
walk, I was surprised by the flashing of bright lights in a courtyard,
the door of which stood half open to right or left.  Once I saw the
glow of torches reflected ruddily in the windows of a tall and splendid
mansion, a little withdrawn from the street.  The source of the light
was in the fore-court, hidden from us by a low wall, but I caught the
murmur of voices and stir of many feet.  Once a gate was stealthily
opened and two armed men looked out, the act and their manner of doing
it, reminding me on the instant of those who had peeped out to inspect
us some hours before in Bezers' house.  And once, nay twice, in the
mouth of a narrow alley I discerned a knot of men standing motionless
in the gloom.  There was an air of mystery abroad, a feeling as of
solemn stir and preparation going on under cover of the darkness, which
awed and unnerved me.

But I said nothing of this, and Madame d'O was equally silent. Like
most countrymen I was ready to believe in any exaggeration of the
city's late hours, the more as she made no remark.  I supposed--shaking
off the momentary impression--that what I saw was innocent and normal.
Besides, I was thinking what I should say to Pavannes when I saw
him--in what terms I should warn him of his peril, and cast his perfidy
in his teeth.  We had hurried along in this way--and in absolute
silence, save when some obstacle or pitfall drew from us an
exclamation--for about a quarter of a mile, when my companion, turning
into a slightly wider street, slackened her speed, and indicated by a
gesture that we had arrived.  A lamp hung over the porch, to which she
pointed, and showed the small side gate half open.  We were close
behind the other three now.  I saw Croisette stoop to enter and as
quickly fall back a pace.  Why?

In a moment it flashed across my mind that we were too late that the
Vidame had been before us.

And yet how quiet it all was.

Then I breathed freely again.  I saw that Croisette had only stepped
back to avoid some one who was coming out--the Coadjutor in fact.  The
moment the entrance was clear, the lad shot in, and the others after
him, the priest taking no notice of them, nor they of him.

I was for going in too, when I felt Madame d'O's hand tighten suddenly
on my arm, and then fall from it.  Apprised of something by this, I
glanced at the priest's face, catching sight of it by chance just as
his eyes met hers.  His face was white--nay it was ugly with
disappointment and rage, bitter snarling rage, that was hardly human.
He grasped her by the arm roughly and twisted her round without
ceremony, so as to draw her a few paces aside; yet not so far that I
could not hear what they said.

"He is not here!"  he hissed.  "Do you understand?  He crossed the
river to the Faubourg St. Germain at nightfall--searching for her.  And
he has not come back!  He is on the other side of the water, and
midnight has struck this hour past!"

She stood silent for a moment as if she had received a blow--silent and
dismayed.  Something serious had happened.  I could see that.

"He cannot recross the river now?"  she said after a time.  "The
gates--"

"Shut!"  he replied briefly.  "The keys are at the Louvre."

"And the boats are on this side?"

"Every boat!"  he answered, striking his one hand on the other with
violence.  "Every boat!  No one may cross until it is over."

"And the Faubourg St. Germain?"  she said in a lower voice.

"There will be nothing done there.  Nothing!"



CHAPTER VII

A YOUNG KNIGHT-ERRANT.

I would gladly have left the two together, and gone straight into the
house.  I was eager now to discharge the errand on which I had come so
far; and apart from this I had no liking for the priest or wish to
overhear his talk.  His anger, however, was so patent, and the rudeness
with which he treated Madame d'O so pronounced that I felt I could not
leave her with him unless she should dismiss me.  So I stood patiently
enough--and awkwardly enough too, I daresay--by the door while they
talked on in subdued tones.  Nevertheless, I felt heartily glad when at
length, the discussion ending Madame came back to me.  I offered her my
arm to help her over the wooden foot of the side gate. She laid her
hand on it, but she stood still.

"M. de Caylus," she said; and at that stopped.  Naturally I looked at
her, and our eyes met.  Hers brown and beautiful, shining in the light
of the lamp overhead looked into mine.  Her lips were half parted, and
one fair tress of hair had escaped from her hood.  "M. de Caylus, will
you do me a favour," she resumed, softly, "a favour for which I shall
always be grateful?"

I sighed.  "Madame," I said earnestly, for I felt the solemnity of the
occasion, "I swear that in ten minutes, if the task I now have in hand
be finished I will devote my life to your service. For the present--"

"Well, for the present?  But it is the present I want, Master
Discretion."

"I must see M. de Pavannes!  I am pledged to it," I ejaculated.

"To see M. de Pavannes?"

"Yes."

I was conscious that she was looking at me with eyes of doubt, almost
of suspicion.

"Why?  Why?"  she asked with evident surprise.  "You have restored--and
nearly frightened me to death in doing it--his wife to her home; what
more do you want with him, most valiant knight-errant?"

"I must see him," I said firmly.  I would have told her all and been
thankful, but the priest was within hearing--or barely out of it; and I
had seen too much pass between him and Bezers to be willing to say
anything before him.

"You must see M. de Pavannes?"  she repeated, gazing at me.

"I must," I replied with decision.

"Then you shall.  That is exactly what I am going to help you to do,"
she exclaimed.  "He is not here.  That is what is the matter.  He went
out at nightfall seeking news of his wife, and crossed the river, the
Coadjutor says, to the Faubourg St. Germain.  Now it is of the utmost
importance that he should return before morning--return here."

"But is he not here?"  I said, finding all my calculations at fault.
"You are sure of it, Madame?"

"Quite sure," she answered rapidly.  "Your brothers will have by this
time discovered the fact.  Now, M. de Caylus, Pavannes must be brought
here before morning, not only for his wife's sake--though she will be
wild with anxiety--but also--"

"I know," I said, eagerly interrupting her, "for his own too! There is
a danger threatening him."

She turned swiftly, as if startled, and I turned, and we looked at the
priest.  I thought we understood one another.  "There is," she answered
softly, "and I would save him from that danger; but he will only be
safe, as I happen to know, here!  Here, you understand!  He must be
brought here before daybreak, M. de Caylus.  He must!  He must!"  she
exclaimed, her beautiful features hardening with the earnestness of her
feelings.  "And the Coadjutor cannot go.  I cannot go.  There is only
one man who can save him, and that is yourself.  There is, above all,
not a moment to be lost."

My thoughts were in a whirl.  Even as she spoke she began to walk back
the way we had come, her hand on my arm; and I, doubtful, and in a
confused way unwilling, went with her.  I did not clearly understand
the position.  I would have wished to go in and confer with Marie and
Croisette; but the juncture had occurred so quickly, and it might be
that time was as valuable as she said, and--well, it was hard for me, a
lad, to refuse her anything when she looked at me with appeal in her
eyes.  I did manage to stammer, "But I do not know Paris.  I could not
find my way, I am afraid, and it is night, Madame."

She released my arm and stopped.  "Night!"  she cried, with a scornful
ring in her voice.  "Night!  I thought you were a man, not a boy!  You
are afraid!"

"Afraid," I said hotly; "we Cayluses are never afraid."

"Then I can tell you the way, if that be your only difficulty. We turn
here.  Now, come in with me a moment," she continued, "and I will give
you something you will need--and your directions."

She had stopped at the door of a tall, narrow house, standing between
larger ones in a street which appeared to me to be more airy and
important than any I had yet seen.  As she spoke, she rang the bell
once, twice, thrice.  The silvery tinkle had scarcely died away the
third time before the door opened silently; I saw no one, but she drew
me into a narrow hall or passage.  A taper in an embossed holder was
burning on a chest. She took it up, and telling me to follow her led
the way lightly up the stairs, and into a room, half-parlour,
half-bedroom--such a room as I had never seen before.  It was richly
hung from ceiling to floor with blue silk, and lighted by the soft rays
of lamps shaded by Venetian globes of delicate hues.  The scent of
cedar wood was in the air, and on the hearth in a velvet tray were some
tiny puppies.  A dainty disorder reigned everywhere. On one table a
jewel-case stood open, on another lay some lace garments, two or three
masks and a fan.  A gemmed riding-whip and a silver-hilted poniard hung
on the same peg.  And, strangest of all, huddled away behind the door,
I espied a plain, black-sheathed sword, and a man's gauntlets.

She did not wait a moment, but went at once to the jewel-case. She took
from it a gold ring--a heavy seal ring.  She held this out to me in the
most matter-of-fact way--scarcely turning, in fact.  "Put it on your
finger," she said hurriedly.  "If you are stopped by soldiers, or if
they will not give you a boat to cross the river, say boldly that you
are on the king's service.  Call for the officer and show that ring.
Play the man.  Bid him stop you at his peril!"

I hastily muttered my thanks, and she as hastily took something from a
drawer, and tore it into strips.  Before I knew what she was doing she
was on her knees by me, fastening a white band of linen round my left
sleeve.  Then she took my cap, and with the same precipitation fixed a
fragment of the stuff in it, in the form of a rough cross.

"There," she said.  "Now, listen, M. de Caylus.  There is more afoot
to-night than you know of.  Those badges will help you across to St.
Germain, but the moment you land tear them off: Tear them off,
remember.  They will help you no longer.  You will come back by the
same boat, and will not need them.  If you are seen to wear them as you
return, they will command no respect, but on the contrary will bring
you--and perhaps me into trouble."

"I understand," I said, "but--"

"You must ask no questions," she retorted, waving one snowy finger
before my eyes.  "My knight-errant must have faith in me, as I have in
him; or he would not be here at this time of night, and alone with me.
But remember this also.  When you meet Pavannes do not say you come
from me.  Keep that in your mind; I will explain the reason afterwards.
Say merely that his wife is found, and is wild with anxiety about him.
If you say anything as to his danger he may refuse to come.  Men are
obstinate."

I nodded a smiling assent, thinking I understood.  At the same time I
permitted myself in my own mind a little discretion. Pavannes was not a
fool, and the name of the Vidame--but, however, I should see.  I had
more to say to him than she knew of.  Meanwhile she explained very
carefully the three turnings I had to take to reach the river, and the
wharf where boats most commonly lay, and the name of the house in which
I should find M. de Pavannes.

"He is at the Hotel de Bailli," she said.  "And there, I think that is
all."

"No, not all," I said hardily.  "There is one thing I have not got.
And that is a sword!"

She followed the direction of my eyes, started, and laughed--a little
oddly.  But she fetched the weapon.  "Take it, and do not," she urged,
"do not lose time.  Do not mention me to Pavannes.  Do not let the
white badges be seen as you return. That is really all.  And now good
luck!"  She gave me her hand to kiss.  "Good luck, my knight-errant,
good luck--and come back to me soon!"

She smiled divinely, as it seemed to me, as she said these last words,
and the same smile followed me down stairs:  for she leaned over the
stair-head with one of the lamps in her hand, and directed me how to
draw the bolts.  I took one backward glance as I did so at the fair
stooping figure above me, the shining eyes, and tiny outstretched hand,
and then darting into the gloom I hurried on my way.

I was in a strange mood.  A few minutes before I had been at Pavannes'
door, at the end of our journey; on the verge of success.  I had been
within an ace, as I supposed at least, of executing my errand.  I had
held the cup of success in my hand. And it had slipped.  Now the
conflict had to be fought over again; the danger to be faced.  It would
have been no more than natural if I had felt the disappointment keenly:
if I had almost despaired.

But it was otherwise--far otherwise.  Never had my heart beat higher or
more proudly than as I now hurried through the streets, avoiding such
groups as were abroad in them, and intent only on observing the proper
turnings.  Never in any moment of triumph in after days, in love or
war, did anything like the exhilaration, the energy, the spirit, of
those minutes come back to me.  I had a woman's badge in my cap--for
the first time--the music of her voice in my ears.  I had a magic ring
on my finger:  a talisman on my arm.  My sword was at my side again.
All round me lay a misty city of adventures, of danger and romance,
full of the richest and most beautiful possibilities; a city of real
witchery, such as I had read of in stories, through which those fairy
gifts and my right hand should guide me safely.  I did not even regret
my brothers, or our separation.  I was the eldest. It was fitting that
the cream of the enterprise should be reserved for me, Anne de Caylus.
And to what might it not lead? In fancy I saw myself already a duke and
peer of France--already I held the baton.

Yet while I exulted boyishly, I did not forget what I was about. I kept
my eyes open, and soon remarked that the number of people passing to
and fro in the dark streets had much increased within the last half
hour.  The silence in which in groups or singly these figures stole by
me was very striking.  I heard no brawling, fighting or singing; yet if
it were too late for these things, why were so many people up and
about?  I began to count presently, and found that at least half of
those I met wore badges in their hats and on their arms, similar to
mine, and that they all moved with a businesslike air, as if bound for
some rendezvous.

I was not a fool, though I was young, and in some matters less quick
than Croisette.  The hints which had been dropped by so many had not
been lost on me.  "There is more afoot to-night than you know of!"
Madame d'O had said.  And having eyes as well as ears I fully believed
it.  Something was afoot.  Something was going to happen in Paris
before morning.  But what, I wondered. Could it be that a rebellion was
about to break out?  If so I was on the king's service, and all was
well.  I might even be going--and only eighteen--to make history!  Or
was it only a brawl on a great scale between two parties of nobles?  I
had heard of such things happening in Paris.  Then--well I did not see
how I could act in that case.  I must be guided by events.

I did not imagine anything else which it could be.  That is the truth,
though it may need explanation.  I was accustomed only to the milder
religious differences, the more evenly balanced parties of Quercy,
where the peace between the Catholics and Huguenots had been welcome to
all save a very few.  I could not gauge therefore the fanaticism of the
Parisian populace, and lost count of the factor, which made possible
that which was going to happen--was going to happen in Paris before
daylight as surely as the sun was going to rise!  I knew that the
Huguenot nobles were present in the city in great numbers, but it did
not occur to me that they could as a body be in danger.  They were many
and powerful, and as was said, in favour with the king.  They were
under the protection of the King of Navarre--France's brother-in-law of
a week, and the Prince of Conde; and though these princes were young,
Coligny the sagacious admiral was old, and not much the worse I had
learned for his wound.  He at least was high in royal favour, a trusted
counsellor.  Had not the king visited him on his sick-bed and sat by
him for an hour together?

Surely, I thought, if there were danger, these men would know of it.
And then the Huguenots' main enemy, Henri le Balafre, the splendid Duke
of Guise, "our great man," and "Lorraine," as the crowd called him--he,
it was rumoured, was in disgrace at court. In a word these things, to
say nothing of the peaceful and joyous occasion which had brought the
Huguenots to Paris, and which seemed to put treachery out of the
question, were more than enough to prevent me forecasting the event.

If for a moment, indeed, as I hurried along towards the river, anything
like the truth occurred to me, I put it from me.  I say with pride I
put it from me as a thing impossible.  For God forbid--one may speak
out the truth these forty years back--God forbid, say I, that all
Frenchmen should bear the blood guiltiness which came of other than
French brains, though French were the hands that did the work.

I was not greatly troubled by my forebodings therefore:  and the state
of exaltation to which Madame d'O's confidence had raised my spirits
lasted until one of the narrow streets by the Louvre brought me
suddenly within sight of the river.  Here faint moonlight bursting
momentarily through the clouds was shining on the placid surface of the
water.  The fresh air played upon, and cooled my temples.  And this
with the quiet scene so abruptly presented to me, gave check to my
thoughts, and somewhat sobered me.

At some distance to my left I could distinguish in the middle of the
river the pile of buildings which crowd the Ile de la Cite, and could
follow the nearer arm of the stream as it swept landwards of these,
closely hemmed in by houses, but unbroken as yet by the arches of the
Pont Neuf which I have lived to see built.  Not far from me on my
right--indeed within a stone's throw--the bulky mass of the Louvre rose
dark and shapeless against the sky.  Only a narrow open space--the
foreshore--separated me from the water; beyond which I could see an
irregular line of buildings, that no doubt formed the Faubourg St.
Germain.

I had been told that I should find stairs leading down to the water,
and boats moored at the foot of them, at this point. Accordingly I
walked quickly across the open space to a spot, where I made out a
couple of posts set up on the brink--doubtless to mark the landing
place.

I had not gone ten paces, however, out of the shadow, before I chanced
to look round, and discerned with an unpleasant eerie feeling three
figures detach themselves from it, and advance in a row behind me, so
as the better to cut off my retreat.  I was not to succeed in my
enterprise too easily then.  That was clear. Still I thought it better
to act as if I had not seen my followers, and collecting myself, I
walked as quickly as I could down to the steps.  The three were by that
time close upon me--within striking distance almost.  I turned abruptly
and confronted them.

"Who are you, and what do you want?"  I said, eyeing them warily, my
hand on my sword.

They did not answer, but separated more widely so as to form a
half-circle:  and one of them whistled.  On the instant a knot of men
started out of the line of houses, and came quickly across the strip of
light towards us.

The position seemed serious.  If I could have run indeed--but I glanced
round, and found escape in that fashion impossible. There were men
crouching on the steps behind me, between me and the river.  I had
fallen into a trap.  Indeed, there was nothing for it now but to do as
Madame had bidden me, and play the man boldly.  I had the words still
ringing in my ears.  I had enough of the excitement I had lately felt
still bounding in my veins to give nerve and daring.  I folded my arms
and drew myself up.

"Knaves!"  I said, with as much quiet contempt as I could muster, "you
mistake me.  You do not know whom you have to deal with. Get me a boat,
and let two of you row me across.  Hinder me, and your necks shall
answer for it--or your backs!"

A laugh and an oath of derision formed the only response, and before I
could add more, the larger group arrived, and joined the three.

"Who is it, Pierre?"  asked one of these in a matter-of-fact way, which
showed I had not fallen amongst mere thieves.

The speaker seemed to be the leader of the band.  He had a feather in
his bonnet, and I saw a steel corslet gleam under his cloak, when some
one held up a lanthorn to examine me the better. His trunk-hose were
striped with black, white, and green--the livery as I learned
afterwards of Monsieur the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou,
afterwards Henry the Third; then a close friend of the Duke of Guise,
and later his murderer.  The captain spoke with a foreign accent, and
his complexion was dark to swarthiness.  His eyes sparkled and flashed
like black beads.  It was easy to see that he was an Italian.

"A gallant young cock enough," the soldier who had whistled answered;
"and not quite of the breed we expected."  He held his lanthorn towards
me and pointed to the white badge on my sleeve. "It strikes me we have
caught a crow instead of a pigeon!"

"How comes this?"  the Italian asked harshly, addressing me. "Who are
you?  And why do you wish to cross the river at this time of night,
young sir?"

I acted on the inspiration of the moment.  "Play the man boldly!"
Madame had said.  I would:  and I did with a vengeance.  I sprang
forward and seizing the captain by the clasp of his cloak, shook him
violently, and flung him off with all my force, so that he reeled.
"Dog!"  I exclaimed, advancing, as if I would seize him again.  "Learn
how to speak to your betters!  Am I to be stopped by such sweepings as
you?  Hark ye, I am on the King's service!"

He fairly spluttered with rage.  "More like the devil's!"  he
exclaimed, pronouncing his words abominably, and fumbling vainly for
his weapon.  "King's service or no service you do not insult Andrea
Pallavicini!"

I could only vindicate my daring by greater daring, and I saw this even
as, death staring me in the face, my heart seemed to stop.  The man had
his mouth open and his hand raised to give an order which would
certainly have sent Anne de Caylus from the world, when I cried
passionately--it was my last chance, and I never wished to live more
strongly than at that moment--I cried passionately, "Andrea
Pallavicini, if such be your name, look at that!  Look at that!"  I
repeated, shaking my open hand with the ring on it before his face,
"and then hinder me if you dare! To-morrow if you have quarterings
enough, I will see to your quarrel!  Now send me on my way, or your
fate be on your own head!  Disobey--ay, do but hesitate--and I will
call on these very men of yours to cut you down!"

It was a bold throw, for I staked all on a talisman of which I did not
know the value!  To me it was the turn of a die, for I had had no
leisure to look at the ring, and knew no more than a babe whose it was.
But the venture was as happy as desperate.

Andrea Pallavicini's expression--no pleasant one at the best of
times--changed on the instant.  His face fell as he seized my hand, and
peered at the ring long and intently.  Then he cast a quick glance of
suspicion at his men, of hatred at me.  But I cared nothing for his
glance, or his hatred.  I saw already that he had made up his mind to
obey the charm:  and that for me was everything.  "If you had shown
that to me a little earlier, young sir, it would, maybe, have been
better for both of us," he said, a surly menace in his voice.  And
cursing his men for their stupidity he ordered two of them to unmoor a
boat.

Apparently the craft had been secured with more care than skill, for to
loosen it seemed to be a work of time.  Meanwhile I stood waiting in
the midst of the group, anxious and yet exultant; an object of
curiosity, and yet curious myself.  I heard the guards whisper
together, and caught such phrases as "It is the Duc d'Aumale."

"No, it is not D'Aumale.  It is nothing like him."

"Well, he has the Duke's ring, fool!"

"The Duke's?"

"Ay."

"Then it is all right, God bless him!"  This last was uttered with
extreme fervour.

I was conscious too of being the object of many respectful glances; and
had just bidden the men on the steps below me to be quick, when I
discovered with alarm three figures moving across the open space
towards us, and coming apparently from the same point from which
Pallavicini and his men had emerged.

In a moment I foresaw danger.  "Now be quick there!"  I cried again.
But scarcely had I spoken before I saw that it was impossible to get
afloat before these others came up, and I prepared to stand my ground
resolutely.

The first words, however, with which Pallavicini saluted the new-comers
scattered my fears.  "Well, what the foul fiend do you want?"  he
exclaimed rudely; and he rapped out half-a-dozen CORPOS before they
could answer him.  "What have you brought him here for, when I left him
in the guard-house?  Imbeciles!"

"Captain Pallavicini," interposed the midmost of the three, speaking
with patience--he was a man of about thirty, dressed with some
richness, though his clothes were now disordered as though by a
struggle--"I have induced these good men to bring me down--"

"Then," cried the captain, brutally interrupting him, "you have lost
your labour, Monsieur."

"You do not know me," replied the prisoner with sternness--a prisoner
he seemed to be.  "You do not understand that I am a friend of the
Prince of Conde, and that--"

He would have said more, but the Italian again cut him short.  "A fig
for the Prince of Conde!"  he cried; "I understand my duty. You may as
well take things easily.  You cannot cross, and you cannot go home, and
you cannot have any explanation; except that it is the King's will!
Explanation?"  he grumbled, in a lower tone, "you will get it soon
enough, I warrant!  Before you want it!"

"But there is a boat going to cross," said the other, controlling his
temper by an effort and speaking with dignity.  "You told me that by
the King's order no one could cross; and you arrested me because,
having urgent need to visit St. Germain, I persisted. Now what does
this mean, Captain Pallavicini?  Others are crossing.  I ask what this
means?"

"Whatever you please, M. de Pavannes," the Italian retorted
contemptuously.  "Explain it for yourself!"

I started as the name struck my ear, and at once cried out in surprise,
"M. de Pavannes!"  Had I heard aright?

Apparently I had, for the prisoner turned to me with a bow. "Yes, sir,"
he said with dignity, "I am M. de Pavannes.  I have not the honour of
knowing you, but you seem to be a gentleman." He cast a withering
glance at the captain as he said this. "Perhaps you will explain to me
why this violence has been done to me.  If you can, I shall consider it
a favour; if not, pardon me."

I did not answer him at once, for a good reason--that every faculty I
had was bent on a close scrutiny of the man himself. He was fair, and
of a ruddy complexion.  His beard was cut in the short pointed fashion
of the court; and in these respects he bore a kind of likeness, a
curious likeness, to Louis de Pavannes. But his figure was shorter and
stouter.  He was less martial in bearing, with more of the air of a
scholar than a soldier.  "You are related to M. Louis de Pavannes?"  I
said, my heart beginning to beat with an odd excitement.  I think I
foresaw already what was coming.

"I am Louis de Pavannes," he replied with impatience.

I stared at him in silence:  thinking--thinking--thinking.  And then I
said slowly, "You have a cousin of the same name?"

"I have."

"He fell prisoner to the Vicomte de Caylus at Moncontour?"

"He did," he answered curtly.  "But what of that, sir?"

Again I did not answer--at once.  The murder was out.  I remembered, in
the dim fashion in which one remembers such things after the event,
that I had heard Louis de Pavannes, when we first became acquainted
with him, mention this cousin of the same name; the head of a younger
branch.  But our Louis living in Provence and the other in Normandy,
the distance between their homes, and the troubles of the times had
loosened a tie which their common religion might have strengthened.
They had scarcely ever seen one another.  As Louis had spoken of his
namesake but once during his long stay with us, and I had not then
foreseen the connection to be formed between our families, it was no
wonder that in the course of months the chance word had passed out of
my head, and I had clean forgotten the subject of it. Here however, he
was before my eyes, and seeing him; I saw too what the discovery meant.
It meant a most joyful thing!  a most wonderful thing which I longed to
tell Croisette and Marie.  It meant that our Louis de Pavannes--my
cheek burned for my want of faith in him--was no villain after all, but
such a noble gentleman as we had always till this day thought him!  It
meant that he was no court gallant bent on breaking a country heart for
sport, but Kit's own true lover!  And--and it meant more--it meant that
he was yet in danger, and still ignorant of the vow that unchained
fiend Bezers had taken to have his life!  In pursuing his namesake we
had been led astray, how sadly I only knew now!  And had indeed lost
most precious time.

"Your wife, M. de Pavannes"--I began in haste, seeing the necessity of
explaining matters with the utmost quickness.  "Your wife is--"

"Ah, my wife!"  he cried interrupting me, with anxiety in his tone.
"What of her?  You have seen her!"

"I have.  She is safe at your house in the Rue de St. Merri."

"Thank Heaven for that!"  he replied fervently.  Before he could say
more Captain Andrea interrupted us.  I could see that his suspicions
were aroused afresh.  He pushed rudely between us, and addressing me
said, "Now, young sir, your boat is ready."

"My boat?"  I answered, while I rapidly considered the situation. Of
course I did not want to cross the river now.  No doubt Pavannes--this
Pavannes--could guide me to Louis' address.  "My boat?"

"Yes, it is waiting," the Italian replied, his black eyes roving from
one to the other of us.

"Then let it wait!"  I answered haughtily, speaking with an assumption
of anger.  "Plague upon you for interrupting us!  I shall not cross the
river now.  This gentleman can give me the information I want.  I shall
take him back with me."

"To whom?"

"To whom?  To those who sent me, sirrah!"

I thundered.  "You do not seem to be much in the Duke's confidence,
captain," I went on; "now take a word of advice from me!  There is
nothing:  so easily cast off as an over-officious servant!  He goes too
far--and he goes like an old glove!  An old glove," I repeated grimly,
sneering in his face, "which saves the hand and suffers itself.  Beware
of too much zeal, Captain Pallavicini!  It is a dangerous thing!"

He turned pale with anger at being thus treated by a beardless boy.
But he faltered all the same.  What I said was unpleasant, but the
bravo knew it was true.

I saw the impression I had made, and I turned to the soldiers standing
round.

"Bring here, my friends," I said, "M. de Pavannes' sword!"

One ran up to the guard house and brought it at once.  They were
townsfolk, burgher guards or such like, and for some reason betrayed so
evident a respect for me, that I soberly believe they would have turned
on their temporary leader at my bidding. Pavannes took his sword, and
placed it under his arm.  We both bowed ceremoniously to Pallavicini,
who scowled in response; and slowly, for I was afraid to show any signs
of haste, we walked across the moonlit space to the bottom of the
street by which I had come.  There the gloom swallowed us up at once.
Pavannes touched my sleeve and stopped in the darkness.

"I beg to be allowed to thank you for your aid," he said with emotion,
turning and facing me.  "Whom have I the honour of addressing?"

"M. Anne de Caylus, a friend of your cousin," I replied.

"Indeed?"  he said "well, I thank you most heartily," and we embraced
with warmth.

"But I could have done little," I answered modestly, "on your behalf,
if it had not been for this ring."

"And the virtue of the ring lies in--"

"In--I am sure I cannot say in what!"  I confessed.  And then, in the
sympathy which the scene had naturally created between us, I forgot one
portion of my lady's commands and I added impulsively, "All I know is
that Madame d'O gave it me; and that it has done all, and more than all
she said it would."

"Who gave it to you?"  he asked, grasping my arm so tightly as to hurt
me.

"Madame d'O," I repeated.  It was too late to draw back now.

"That woman!"  he ejaculated in a strange low whisper.  "Is it
possible?  That woman gave it you?"

I wandered what on earth he meant, surprise, scorn and dislike were so
blended in his tone.  It even seemed to me that he drew off from me
somewhat.  "Yes, M. de Pavannes," I replied, offended and indignant,
"It is so far possible that it is the truth; and more, I think you
would not so speak of this lady if you knew all; and that it was
through her your wife was to-day freed from those who were detaining
her, and taken safely home!"

"Ha!"  he cried eagerly.  "Then where has my wife been?"

"At the house of Mirepoix, the glover," I answered coldly, "in the Rue
Platriere.  Do you know him?  You do.  Well, she was kept there a
prisoner, until we helped her to escape an hour or so ago."

He did not seem to comprehend even then.  I could see little of his
face, but there was doubt and wonder in his tone when he spoke.
"Mirepoix the glover," he murmured.  "He is an honest man enough,
though a Catholic.  She was kept there!  Who kept her there?"

"The Abbess of the Ursulines seems to have been at the bottom of it," I
explained, fretting with impatience.  This wonder was misplaced, I
thought; and time was passing.  "Madame d'O found out where she was," I
continued, "and took her home, and then sent me to fetch you, hearing
you had crossed the river.  That is the story in brief."

"That woman sent you to fetch me?"  he repeated again.

"Yes," I answered angrily.  "She did, M. de Pavannes."

"Then," he said slowly, and with an air of solemn conviction which
could not but impress me, "there is a trap laid for me! She is the
worst, the most wicked, the vilest of women!  If she sent you, this is
a trap!  And my wife has fallen into it already!  Heaven help her--and
me--if it be so!"



CHAPTER VIII.

THE PARISIAN MATINS.

There are some statements for which it is impossible to be prepared;
statements so strong and so startling that it is impossible to answer
them except by action--by a blow.  And this of M. de Pavannes was one
of these.  If there had been any one present, I think I should have
given him the lie and drawn upon him.  But alone with him at midnight
in the shadow near the bottom of the Rue des Fosses, with no witnesses,
with every reason to feel friendly towards him, what was I to do?

As a fact, I did nothing.  I stood, silent and stupefied, waiting to
hear more.  He did not keep me long.

"She is my wife's sister," he continued grimly.  "But I have no reason
to shield her on that account!  Shield her?  Had you lived at court
only a month I might shield her all I could, M. de Caylus, it would
avail nothing.  Not Madame de Sauves is better known.  And I would not
if I could!  I know well, though my wife will not believe it, that
there is nothing so near Madame d'O's heart as to get rid of her sister
and me--of both of us--that she may succeed to Madeleine's inheritance!
Oh, yes, I had good grounds for being nervous yesterday, when my wife
did not return," he added excitedly.

"But there at least you wrong Madame d'O!"  I cried, shocked and
horrified by an accusation, which seemed so much more dreadful in the
silence and gloom--and withal so much less preposterous than it might
have seemed in the daylight.  "There you certainly wrong her!  For
shame!  M. de Pavannes."

He came a step nearer, and laying a hand on my sleeve peered into my
face.  "Did you see a priest with her?"  he asked slowly.  "A man
called the Coadjutor--a down-looking dog?"

I said--with a shiver of dread, a sudden revulsion of feeling, born of
his manner--that I had.  And I explained the part the priest had taken.

"Then," Pavannes rejoined, "I am right There IS a trap laid for me.
The Abbess of the Ursulines!  She abduct my wife?  Why, she is her
dearest friend, believe me.  It is impossible.  She would be more
likely to save her from danger than to--umph!  wait a minute."  I did:
I waited, dreading what he might discover, until he muttered, checking
himself--"Can that be it?  Can it be that the Abbess did know of some
danger threatening us, and would have put Madeleine in a safe retreat?
I wonder!"

And I wondered; and then--well, thoughts are like gunpowder.  The least
spark will fire a train.  His words were few, but they formed spark
enough to raise such a flare in my brain as for a moment blinded me,
and shook me so that I trembled.  The shock over, I was left face to
face with a possibility of wickedness such as I could never have
suspected of myself.  I remembered Mirepoix's distress and the priest's
eagerness.  I re-called the gruff warning Bezers--even Bezers, and
there was something very odd in Bezers giving a warning!--had given
Madame de Pavannes when he told her that she would be better where she
was.  I thought of the wakefulness which I had marked in the streets,
the silent hurrying to and fro, the signs of coming strife, and
contrasted these with the quietude and seeming safety of Mirepoix's
house; and I hastily asked Pavannes at what time he had been arrested.

"About an hour before midnight," he answered.

"Then you know nothing of what is happening?"  I replied quickly. "Why,
even while we are loitering here--but listen!"

And with all speed, stammering indeed in my haste and anxiety, I told
him what I had noticed in the streets, and the hints I had heard, and I
showed him the badges with which Madame had furnished me.

His manner when he had heard me out frightened me still more.  He drew
me on in a kind of fury to a house in the windows of which some lighted
candles had appeared not a minute before.

"The ring!"  he cried, "let me see the ring!  Whose is it?"

He held up my hand to this chance light and we looked at the ring.  It
was a heavy gold signet, with one curious characteristic:  it had two
facets.  On one of these was engraved the letter "H," and above it a
crown.  On the other was an eagle with outstretched wings.

Pavannes let my hand drop and leaned against the wall in sudden
despair.  "It is the Duke of Guise's," he muttered.  "It is the eagle
of Lorraine."

"Ha!"  said I softly, seeing light.  The Duke was the idol then, as
later, of the Parisian populace, and I understood now why the citizen
soldiers had shown me such respect.  They had taken me for the Duke's
envoy and confidant.

But I saw no farther.  Pavannes did, and murmured bitterly, "We may say
our prayers, we Huguenots.  That is our death-warrant. To-morrow night
there will not be one left in Paris, lad.  Guise has his father's death
to avenge, and these cursed Parisians will do his bidding like the
wolves they are!  The Baron de Rosny warned us of this, word for word.
I would to Heaven we had taken his advice!"

"Stay!"  I cried--he was going too fast for me--"stay!"  His monstrous
conception, though it marched some way with my own suspicions, outran
them far!  I saw no sufficient grounds for it. "The King--the king
would not permit such a thing, M. de Pavannes," I argued.

"Boy, you are blind!"  he rejoined impatiently, for now he saw all and
I nothing.  "Yonder was the Duke of Anjou's captain--Monsieur's
officer, the follower of France's brother, mark you! And HE--he obeyed
the Duke's ring!  The Duke has a free hand to-night, and he hates us.
And the river.  Why are we not to cross the river?  The King indeed!
The King has undone us.  He has sold us to his brother and the Guises.
VA CHASSER L'IDOLE" for the second time I heard the quaint phrase,
which I learned afterwards was an anagram of the King's name, Charles
de Valois, used by the Protestants as a password--"VA CHASSER L'IDOLE
has betrayed us!  I remember the very words he used to the Admiral,
'Now we have got you here we shall not let you go so easily!' Oh, the
traitor!  The wretched traitor!"

He leaned against the wall overcome by the horror of the conviction
which had burst upon him, and unnerved by the imminence of the peril.
At all times he was an unready man, I fancy, more fit, courage apart,
for the college than the field; and now he gave way to despair.
Perhaps the thought of his wife unmanned him.  Perhaps the excitement
through which he had already gone tended to stupefy him, or the
suddenness of the discovery.

At any rate, I was the first to gather my wits together, and my
earliest impulse was to tear into two parts a white handkerchief I had
in my pouch, and fasten one to his sleeve, the other in his hat, in
rough imitation of the badges I wore myself.

It will appear from this that I no longer trusted Madame d'O.  I was
not convinced, it is true, of her conscious guilt, still I did not
trust her entirely.  "Do not wear them on your return," she had said
and that was odd; although I could not yet believe that she was such a
siren as Father Pierre had warned us of, telling tales from old poets.
Yet I doubted, shuddering as I did so.  Her companionship with that
vile priest, her strange eagerness to secure Pavannes' return, her
mysterious directions to me, her anxiety to take her sister home--home,
where she would be exposed to danger, as being in a known Huguenot's
house--these things pointed to but one conclusion; still that one was
so horrible that I would not, even while I doubted and distrusted her,
I would not, I could not accept it.  I put it from me, and refused to
believe it, although during the rest of that night it kept coming back
to me and knocking for admission at my brain.

All this flashed through my mind while I was fixing on Pavannes'
badges.  Not that I lost time about it, for from the moment I grasped
the position as he conceived it, every minute we had wasted on
explanations seemed to me an hour.  I reproached myself for having
forgotten even for an instant that which had brought us to town--the
rescue of Kit's lover.  We had small chance now of reaching him in
time, misled as we had been by this miserable mistake in identity.  If
my companion's fears were well founded, Louis would fall in the general
massacre of the Huguenots, probably before we could reach him.  If
ill-founded, still we had small reason to hope.  Bezers' vengeance
would not wait.  I knew him too well to think it.  A Guise might spare
his foe, but the Vidame--the Vidame never!  We had warned Madame de
Pavannes it was true; but that abnormal exercise of benevolence could
only, I cynically thought, have the more exasperated the devil within
him, which now would be ravening like a dog disappointed of its
victuals.

I glanced up at the line of sky visible between the tall houses, and
lo!  the dawn was coming.  It wanted scarcely half-an-hour of daylight,
though down in the dark streets about us the night still reigned.  Yes,
the morning was coming, bright and hopeful, and the city was quiet.
There were no signs, no sounds of riot or disorder.  Surely, I thought,
surely Pavannes must be mistaken.  Either the plot had never existed,
that was most likely, or it had been abandoned, or perhaps--Crack!

A pistol shot!  Short, sharp, ominous it rang out on the instant, a
solitary sound in the night!  It was somewhere near us, and I stopped.
I had been speaking to my companion at the moment. "Where was it?"  I
cried, looking behind me.

"Close to us.  Near the Louvre," he answered, listening intently. "See!
See!  Ah, heavens!"  he continued in a voice of despair, "it was a
signal!"

It was.  One, two, three!  Before I could count so far, lights sprang
into brightness in the windows of nine out of ten houses in the short
street where we stood, as if lighted by a single hand.  Before too I
could count as many more, or ask him what this meant, before indeed, we
could speak or stir from the spot, or think what we should do, with a
hurried clang and clash, as if brought into motion by furious frenzied
hands, a great bell just above our heads began to boom and whirr!  It
hurled its notes into space, it suddenly filled all the silence.  It
dashed its harsh sounds down upon the trembling city, till the air
heaved, and the houses about us rocked.  It made in an instant a
pandemonium of the quiet night.

We turned and hurried instinctively from the place, crouching and
amazed, looking upwards with bent shoulders and scared faces. "What is
it?  What is it?"  I cried, half in resentment; half in terror.  It
deafened me.

"The bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois!"  he shouted in answer. "The
Church of the Louvre.  It is as I said.  We are doomed!"

"Doomed?  No!"  I replied fiercely, for my courage seemed to rise again
on the wave of sound and excitement as if rebounding from the momentary
shock.  "Never!  We wear the devil's livery, and he will look after his
own.  Draw, man, and let him that stops us look to himself.  You know
the way.  Lead on!"  I cried savagely.

He caught the infection and drew his sword.  So we started boldly, and
the result justified my confidence.  We looked, no doubt, as like
murderers as any who were abroad that night. Moving in this desperate
guise we hastened up that street and into another--still pursued by the
din and clangour of the bell--and then a short distance along a third.
We were not stopped or addressed by anyone, though numbers, increasing
each moment as door after door opened, and we drew nearer to the heart
of the commotion, were hurrying in the same direction, side by side
with us; and though in front, where now and again lights gleamed on a
mass of weapons, or on white eager faces, filling some alley from wall
to wall, we heard the roar of voices rising and falling like the murmur
of an angry sea.

All was blur, hurry, confusion, tumult.  Yet I remember, as we pressed
onwards with the stream and part of it, certain sharp outlines.  I
caught here and there a glimpse of a pale scared face at a window, a
half-clad form at a door, of the big, wondering eyes of a child held up
to see us pass, of a Christ at a corner ruddy in the smoky glare of a
link, of a woman armed, and in man's clothes, who walked some distance
side by side with us, and led off a ribald song.  I retain a memory of
these things:  of brief bursts of light and long intervals of darkness,
and always, as we tramped forwards, my hand on Pavannes' sleeve, of an
ever-growing tumult in front--an ever-rising flood of noise.

At last we came to a standstill where a side street ran out of ours.
Into this the hurrying throng tried to wheel, and, unable to do so,
halted, and pressed about the head of the street, which was already
full to overflowing; and so sought with hungry eyes for places whence
they might look down it.  Pavannes and I struggled only to get through
the crowd--to get on; but the efforts of those behind partly aiding and
partly thwarting our own, presently forced us to a position whence we
could not avoid seeing what was afoot.

The street--this side street was ablaze with light.  From end to end
every gable, every hatchment was glowing, every window was flickering
in the glare of torches.  It was paved too with faces--human faces, yet
scarcely human--all looking one way, all looking upward; and the noise,
as from time to time this immense crowd groaned or howled in unison,
like a wild beast in its fury, was so appalling, that I clutched
Pavannes' arm and clung to him in momentary terror.  I do not wonder
now that I quailed, though sometimes I have heard that sound since.
For there is nothing in the world so dreadful as that brute beast we
call the CANAILLE, when the chain is off and its cowardly soul is
roused.

Near our end of the street a group of horsemen rising island-like from
the sea of heads, sat motionless in their saddles about a gateway.
They were silent, taking no notice of the rioting fiends shouting at
their girths, but watching in grim quiet what was passing within the
gates.  They were handsomely dressed, although some wore corslets over
their satin coats or lace above buff jerkins.  I could even at that
distance see the jewels gleam in the bonnet of one who seemed to be
their leader.  He was in the centre of the band, a very young man,
perhaps twenty or twenty-one, of most splendid presence, sitting his
horse superbly.  He wore a grey riding-coat, and was a head taller than
any of his companions.  There was pride in the very air with which his
horse bore him.

I did not need to ask Pavannes who he was.  I KNEW that he was the Duke
of Guise, and that the house before which he stood was Coligny's.  I
knew what was being done there.  And in the same moment I sickened with
horror and rage.  I had a vision of grey hairs and blood and fury
scarcely human, And I rebelled.  I battled with the rabble about me.  I
forced my way through them tooth and nail after Pavannes, intent only
on escaping, only on getting away from there.  And so we neither halted
nor looked back until we were clear of the crowd and had left the blaze
of light and the work doing by it some way behind us.

We found ourselves then in the mouth of an obscure alley which my
companion whispered would bring us to his house; and here we paused to
take breath and look back.  The sky was red behind us, the air full of
the clash and din of the tocsin, and the flood of sounds which poured
from every tower and steeple.  From the eastward came the rattle of
drums and random shots, and shrieks of "A BAS COLIGNY!"  "A BAS LES
HUGUENOTS!"  Meanwhile the city was rising as one man, pale at this
dread awakening.  From every window men and women, frightened by the
uproar, were craning their necks, asking or answering questions or
hurriedly calling for and kindling tapers.  But as yet the general
populace seemed to be taking no active part in the disorder.

Pavannes raised his hat an instant as we stood in the shadow of the
houses.  "The noblest man in France is dead," he said, softly and
reverently.  "God rest his soul!  They have had their way with him and
killed him like a dog.  He was an old man and they did not spare him!
A noble, and they have called in the CANAILLE to tear him.  But be
sure, my friend"--and as the speaker's tone changed and grew full and
proud, his form seemed to swell with it--"be sure the cruel shall not
live out half their days!  No. He that takes the knife shall perish by
the knife!  And go to his own place!  I shall not see it, but you will!"

His words made no great impression on me then.  My hardihood was
returning.  I was throbbing with fierce excitement, and tingling for
the fight.  But years afterwards, when the two who stood highest in the
group about Coligny's threshold died, the one at thirty-eight, the
other at thirty-five--when Henry of Guise and Henry of Valois died
within six months of one another by the assassin's knife--I remembered
Pavannes' augury.  And remembering it, I read the ways of Providence,
and saw that the very audacity of which Guise took advantage to entrap
Coligny led him too in his turn to trip smiling and bowing, a comfit
box in his hand and the kisses of his mistress damp on his lips, into a
king's closet--a king's closet at Blois!  Led him to lift the
curtain--ah!  to lift the curtain, what Frenchman does not know the
tale?--behind which stood the Admiral!

To return to our own fortunes; after a hurried glance we resumed our
way, and sped through the alley, holding a brief consultation as we
went.  Pavannes' first hasty instinct to seek shelter at home began to
lose its force, and he to consider whether his return would not
endanger his wife.  The mob might be expected to spare her, he argued.
Her death would not benefit any private foes if he escaped.  He was for
keeping away therefore.  But I would not agree to this.  The priest's
crew of desperadoes--assuming Pavannes' suspicions to be correct--would
wait some time, no doubt, to give the master of the house a chance to
return, but would certainly attack sooner or later out of greed, if
from no other motive.  Then the lady's fate would at the best be
uncertain.  I was anxious myself to rejoin my brothers, and take all
future chances, whether of saving our Louis, or escaping ourselves,
with them.  United we should be four good swords, and might at least
protect Madame de Pavannes to a place of safety, if no opportunity of
succouring Louis should present itself.  We had too the Duke's ring,
and this might be of service at a pinch. "No," I urged, "let us get
together.  We two will slip in at the front gate, and bolt and bar it,
and then we will all escape in a body at the back, while they are
forcing the gateway."

"There is no door at the back," he answered, shaking his head.

"There are windows?"

"They are too strongly barred.  We could not break out in the time," he
explained, with a groan.

I paused at that, crestfallen.  But danger quickened my wits.  In a
moment I had another plan, not so hopeful and more dangerous, yet worth
trying I thought, I told him of it, and he agreed to it.  As he nodded
assent we emerged into a street, and I saw--for the grey light of
morning was beginning to penetrate between the houses--that we were
only a few yards from the gateway, and the small door by which I had
seen my brothers enter.  Were they still in the house?  Were they safe?
I had been away an hour at least.

Anxious as I was about them, I looked round me very keenly as we
flitted across the road, and knocked gently at the door.  I thought it
so likely that we should be fallen upon here, that I stood on my guard
while we waited.  But we were not molested. The street, being at some
distance from the centre of the commotion, was still and empty, with no
signs of life apparent except the rows of heads poked through the
windows--all possessing eyes which watched us heedfully and in perfect
silence.  Yes, the street was quite empty:  except, ah!  except, for
that lurking figure, which, even as I espied it, shot round a distant
angle of the wall, and was lost to sight.

"There!"  I cried, reckless now who might hear me, "knock!  knock
louder!  never mind the noise.  The alarm is given.  A score of people
are watching us, and yonder spy has gone off to summon his friends."

The truth was my anger was rising.  I could bear no longer the silent
regards of all those eyes at the windows.  I writhed under them--cruel,
pitiless eyes they were.  I read in them a morbid curiosity, a patient
anticipation that drove me wild.  Those men and women gazing on us so
stonily knew my companion's rank and faith.  They had watched him
riding in and out daily, one of the sights of their street, gay and
gallant; and now with the same eyes they were watching greedily for the
butchers to come.  The very children took a fresh interest in him, as
one doomed and dying; and waited panting for the show to begin.  So I
read them.

"Knock!"  I repeated angrily, losing all patience.  Had I been foolish
in bringing him back to this part of the town where every soul knew
him?  "Knock; we must get in, whether or no.  They cannot all have left
the house!"

I kicked the door desperately, and my relief was great when it opened.
A servant with a pale face stood before me, his knees visibly shaking.
And behind him was Croisette.

I think we fell straightway into one another's arms.

"And Marie," I cried, "Marie?"

"Marie is within, and madame," he answered joyfully; "we are together
again and nothing matters, But oh, Anne, where have you been?  And what
is the matter?  Is it a great fire?  Or is the king dead?  Or what is
it?"

I told him.  I hastily poured out some of the things which had happened
to me, and some which I feared were in store for others. Naturally he
was surprised and shocked by the latter, though his fears had already
been aroused.  But his joy and relief, when he heard the mystery of
Louis de Pavannes' marriage explained, were so great that they
swallowed up all other feelings.  He could not say enough about it.  He
pictured Louis again and again as Kit's lover, as our old friend, our
companion; as true, staunch, brave without fear, without reproach:  and
it was long before his eyes ceased to sparkle, his tongue to run
merrily, the colour to mantle in his cheeks--long that is as time is
counted by minutes. But presently the remembrance of Louis' danger and
our own position returned more vividly.  Our plan for rescuing him had
failed--failed!

"No!  no!"  cried Croisette, stoutly.  He would not hear of it. He
would not have it at any price.  "No, we will not give up hope!  We
will go shoulder to shoulder and find him.  Louis is as brave as a lion
and as quick as a weasel.  We will find him in time yet.  We will go
when--I mean as soon as--"

He faltered, and paused.  His sudden silence as he looked round the
empty forecourt in which we stood was eloquent.  The cold light, faint
and uncertain yet, was stealing into the court, disclosing a row of
stables on either side, and a tiny porter's hutch by the gates, and
fronting us a noble house of four storys, tall, grey, grim-looking.

I assented; gloomily however.  "Yes," I said, "we will go when--"

And I too stopped.  The same thought was in my mind.  How could we
leave these people?  How could we leave madame in her danger and
distress?  How could we return her kindness by desertion?  We could
not.  No, not for Kit's sake.  Because after all Louis, our Louis, was
a man, and must take his chance.  He must take his chance.  But I
groaned.

So that was settled.  I had already explained our plan to Croisette:
and now as we waited he began to tell me a story, a long, confused
story about Madame d'O.  I thought he was talking for the sake of
talking--to keep up our spirits--and I did not attend much to him; so
that he had not reached the gist of it, or at least I had not grasped
it, when a noise without stayed his tongue.  It was the tramp of
footsteps, apparently of a large party in the street.  It forced him to
break off, and promptly drove us all to our posts.

But before we separated a slight figure, hardly noticeable in that dim,
uncertain light, passed me quickly, laying for an instant a soft hand
in mine as I stood waiting by the gates.  I have said I scarcely saw
the figure, though I did see the kind timid eyes, and the pale cheeks
under the hood; but I bent over the hand and kissed it, and felt, truth
to tell, no more regret nor doubt where our duty lay.  But stood,
waiting patiently.



CHAPTER IX.

THE HEAD OF ERASMUS.

Waiting, and waiting alone!  The gates were almost down now.  The gang
of ruffians without

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