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An Enemy to the King

by Robert Neilson Stephens · English · Gutenberg #9965 · 583,515 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: An Enemy to the King

Author: Robert Neilson Stephens


        
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9965]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9965

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                          AN ENEMY TO THE KING

     From the recently discovered memoirs of the Sieur de la Tournoire

                       By Robert Neilson Stephens

Author of "The Continental Dragoon," "The Road to Paris," "Philip
Winwood," etc.

                                  1897




CONTENTS.

      I. TWO ENCOUNTERS BY NIGHT
     II. LOVE-MAKING AT SHORT ACQUAINTANCE
    III. THE STRANGE REQUEST OF MLLE. D'ARENCY
     IV. HOW LA TOURNOIRE WAS ENLIGHTENED IN THE DARK
      V. HOW LA TOURNOIRE ESCAPED FROM PARIS
     VI. HOW HE FLED SOUTHWARD
    VII. HOW HE ANNOYED MONSIEUR DE LA CHATRE
   VIII. A SWEET LADY IN DISTRESS
     IX. THE FOUR RASCALS
      X. A DISAPPEARANCE
     XI. HOW THE HERO GAVE HIS WORD AND KEPT IT
    XII. AT THE CHÂTEAU OF MAURY
   XIII. HOW DE BERQUIN INVITED DEATH
    XIV. "GOD GRANT I DO NOT FIND YOU FALSE"
     XV. TO CLOCHONNE, AFTER MADEMOISELLE!
    XVI. BEHIND THE CURTAINS
   XVII. SWORD AND DAGGER
  XVIII. THE RIDE TOWARDS GUIENNE




AN ENEMY TO THE KING




CHAPTER I.

TWO ENCOUNTERS BY NIGHT


Hitherto I have written with the sword, after the fashion of greater men,
and requiring no secretary. I now take up the quill to set forth,
correctly, certain incidents which, having been noised about, stand in
danger of being inaccurately reported by some imitator of Brantome and De
l'Estoile. If all the world is to know of this matter, let it know
thereof rightly.

It was early in January, in the year 1578, that I first set out for
Paris. My mother had died when I was twelve years old, and my father had
followed her a year later. It was his last wish that I, his only child,
should remain at the château, in Anjou, continuing my studies until the
end of my twenty-first year. He had chosen that I should learn manners as
best I could at home, not as page in some great household or as gentleman
in the retinue of some high personage. "A De Launay shall have no master
but God and the King," he said. Reverently I had fulfilled his
injunctions, holding my young impulses in leash. I passed the time in
sword practice with our old steward, Michel, who had followed my father
in the wars under Coligny, in hunting in our little patch of woods,
reading the Latin authors in the flowery garden of the château, or in my
favorite chamber,--that one at the top of the new tower which had been
built in the reign of Henri II. to replace the original black tower from
which the earliest De Launay of note got the title of Sieur de la
Tournoire. All this while I was holding in curb my impatient desires. So
almost resistless are the forces that impel the young heart, that there
must have been a hard struggle within me had I had to wait even a month
longer for the birthday which finally set me free to go what ways I
chose. I rose early on that cold but sunlit January day, mad with
eagerness to be off and away into the great world that at last lay open
to me. Poor old Michel was sad that I had decided to go alone. But the
only servant whom I would have taken with me was the only one to whom I
would entrust the house of my fathers in my absence,--old Michel himself.
I thought the others too rustic. My few tenants would have made awkward
lackeys in peace, sorry soldiers in war.

Michel had my portmanteau fastened on my horse, which had been brought
out into the courtyard, and then he stood by me while I took my last
breakfast in La Tournoire; and, in my haste to be off, I would have
eaten little had he not pressed much upon me, reminding me how many
leagues I would have to ride before meeting a good inn on the Paris
road. He was sad, poor old Michel, at my going, and yet he partook of
some of my own eagerness. At last I had forced down my unwilling throat
food enough to satisfy even old Michel's solicitude. He girded on me the
finest of the swords that my father had left, placed over my violet
velvet doublet the new cloak I had bought for the occasion, handed me my
new hat with its showy plumes, and stood aside for me to pass out. In
the pocket of my red breeches was a purse holding enough golden crowns
to ease my path for some time to come. I cast one last look around the
old hall and, trying to check the rapidity of my breath, and the rising
of the lump in my throat, strode out to the court-yard, breathed the
fresh air with a new ecstasy, mounted the steaming horse, gave Michel my
hand for a moment, and, purposely avoiding meeting his eyes, spoke a
last kind word to the old man. After acknowledging the farewells of the
other servants, who stood in line trying to look joyous, I started my
horse with a little jerk of the rein, and was borne swiftly through the
porte, over the bridge, and out into the world. Behind me was the home
of my fathers and my childhood; before me was Paris. It was a fine,
bracing winter morning, and I was twenty-one. A good horse was under me,
a sword was at my side, there was money in my pocket. Will I ever feel
again as I did that morning?

Some have stupidly wondered why, being a Huguenot born and bred, I did
not, when free to leave La Tournoire, go at once to offer my sword to
Henri of Navarre or to some other leader of our party. This is easily
answered. If I was a Huguenot, I was also a man of twenty-one; and the
latter much more than the former. Paris was the centre of the world.
There was the court, there were the adventures to be had, there must one
go to see the whole of life; there would I meet men and make conquests of
women. There awaited me the pleasures of which I had known only by
report, there the advancement, the triumphs in personal quarrels; and,
above all else, the great love affair of my dreams. Who that is a man and
twenty-one has not such dreams? And who that is a man and seventy would
have been without them? Youth and folly go together, each sweetening the
other. The greatest fool, I think, is he who would have gone through life
entirely without folly. What then mattered religion to me? Or what
mattered the rivalry of parties, except as they might serve my own
personal ambitions and desires? Youth was ebullient in me. The longing to
penetrate the unknown made inaction intolerable to me. I must rush into
the whirlpool; I must be in the very midst of things; I longed for
gaiety, for mystery, for contest; I must sing, drink, fight, make love.
It is true that there would have been some outlet for my energies in camp
life, but no gratification for my finer tastes, no luxury, no such
pleasures as Paris afforded,--little diversity, no elating sense of being
at the core of events, no opportunities for love-making. In Paris were
the pretty women. The last circumstance alone would have decided me.

I had reached twenty-one without having been deeply in love. I had, of
course, had transient periods of inclination towards more than one of the
demoiselles in the neighborhood of La Tournoire; but these demoiselles
had rapidly become insipid to me. As I grew older, I found it less easy
to be attracted by young ladies whom I had known from childhood up. I had
none the less the desire to be in love; but the woman whom I should love
must be new to me, a mystery, something to fathom and yet unfathomable.
She must be a world, inexhaustible, always retaining the charm of the
partly unknown. I had high aspirations. No pretty maid, however low in
station, was unworthy a kiss and some flattery; but the real _affaire
d'amour_ of my life must have no elements but magnificent ones. She must
be some great lady of the court, and our passion must be attended by
circumstances of mystery, danger, everything to complicate it and raise
it to an epic height. Such was the amour I had determined to find in
Paris. Remember, you who read this, that I am disclosing the inmost
dreams of a man of twenty-one. Such dreams are appropriate to that age;
it is only when they are associated with middle age that they become
ridiculous; and when thoughts of amatory conquest are found in common
with gray hairs, they are loathsome. If I seem to have given my mind
largely up to fancies of love, consider that I was then at the age when
such fancies rather adorn than deface. Indeed, a young man without
thoughts of love is as much an anomaly as is an older man who gives
himself up to them.

I looked back once at La Tournoire, when I reached the top of the hill
that would, in another minute, shut it from my view. I saw old Michel
standing at the porte. I waved my hand to him, and turned to proceed on
my way. Soon the lump in my throat melted away, the moisture left my
eyes, and only the future concerned me. Every object that came into
sight, every tree along the roadside, now interested me. I passed several
travellers, some of whom seemed to envy me my indifference to the cold
weather, my look of joyous content.

About noon I overtook, just where the road left a wood and turned to
cross a bridge, a small cavalcade consisting of an erect, handsome
gentleman of middle age, and several armed lackeys. The gentleman wore a
black velvet doublet, and his attire, from his snowy ruff to his black
boots, was in the best condition. He had a frank, manly countenance that
invited address. At the turn of the road he saw me, and, taking me in at
a glance, he fell behind his lackeys that I might come up to him. He
greeted me courteously, and after he had spoken of the weather and the
promise of the sky, he mentioned, incidentally, that he was going to
Paris. I told him my own destination, and we came to talking of the
court. I perceived, from his remarks, that he was well acquainted there.
There was some talk of the quarrels between the King's favorites and
those of his brother, the Duke of Anjou; of the latter's sulkiness over
his treatment at the hands of the King; of the probabilities for and
against Anjou's leaving Paris and putting himself at the head of the
malcontent and Huguenot parties; of the friendship between Anjou and his
sister Marguerite, who remained at the Court of France while her husband,
Henri of Navarre, held his mimic Huguenot court in Béarn. Presently, the
name of the Duke of Guise came up.

Now we Huguenots held, and still hold, Henri de Guise to have been a
chief instigator of the event of St. Bartholomew's Night, in 1572.
Always I had in my mind the picture of Coligny, under whom my father had
fought, lying dead in his own courtyard, in the Rue de Bethizy, his
murder done under the direction of that same Henri, his body thrown from
his window into the court at Henri's orders, and there spurned by
Henri's foot. I had heard, too, of this illustrious duke's open
continuance of his amour with Marguerite, queen of our leader, Henri of
Navarre. When I spoke of him to the gentleman at whose side I rode, I
put no restraint on my tongue.

"The Duke of Guise!" I said. "All that I ever wish to say of him can
be very quickly spoken. If, as you Catholics believe, God has an
earthly representative in the Pope, then I think the devil has one in
Henri de Guise."

The gentleman was quiet for a moment, and looked very sober. Then he
said gravely:

"All men have their faults, monsieur. The difference between men is that
some have no virtues to compensate for their vices."

"If Henri de Guise has any virtues," I replied, "he wears a mask over
them; and he conceals them more effectually than he hides his
predilection for assassination, his amours, and his design to rule France
through the Holy League of which he is the real head."

The gentleman turned very red, and darted at me a glance of anger. Then
restraining himself, he answered in a very low tone:

"Monsieur, the subject can be discussed by us in only one way, or not
at all. You are young, and it would be too pitiful for you to be cut
off before you have even seen Paris. Doubtless, you are impatient to
arrive there. It would be well, then, if you rode on a little faster.
It is my intention to proceed at a much slower pace than will be
agreeable to you."

And he reined in his horse.

I reined in mine likewise. I was boiling with wrath at his superior tone,
and his consideration for my youth, but I imitated his coolness as well
as I could.

"Monsieur," said I, "whether or not I ever see Paris is not a matter to
concern you. I cannot allow you to consider my youth. You wish to be
obliging; then consider that nothing in the world would be a greater
favor to me than an opportunity to maintain with my sword my opinion of
Henri de Guise."

The man smiled gently, and replied without passion:

"Then, as we certainly are not going to fight, let my refusal be, not on
account of your youth, but on account of my necessity of reaching Paris
without accident."

His horse stood still. His lackeys also had stopped their horses, which
stood pawing and snorting at a respectful distance. It was an awkward
moment for me. I could not stand there trying to persuade a perfectly
serene man to fight. So with an abrupt pull of the rein I started my
horse, mechanically applied the spur, and galloped off. A few minutes
later I was out of sight of this singularly self-controlled gentleman,
who resented my description of the Duke of Guise. I was annoyed for some
time to think that he had had the better of the occurrence; and I gave
myself up for an hour to the unprofitable occupation of mentally
reenacting the scene in a manner more creditable to myself.

"I may meet him in Paris some day," I said to myself, "and find an
occasion to right myself in his estimation. He shall not let my youth
intercede for me again."

Then I wished that I had learned his name, that I might, on reaching
Paris, have found out more about him. Having in his suite no gentlemen,
but several lackeys, he was, doubtless, not himself an important
personage, but a follower of one. Not wishing to meet him again until
circumstances should have changed, I passed the next inn to which I came,
guessing that he would stop there. He must have done so, for he did not
come up with me that day, or at any time during my journey.

It was at sunset on a clear, cold evening that, without further
adventure, I rode into Paris through the Porte St. Michel, and stared,
as I proceeded along the Rue de la Harpe, at the crowds of people
hurrying in either direction in each of the narrow, crooked streets,
each person so absorbed in his own errand, and so used to the throng and
the noise, that he paid no heed to the animation that so interested and
stirred me. The rays of the setting sun lighted up the towers of the
colleges and abbeys at my right, while those at my left stood black
against the purple and yellow sky. I rode on and on, not wishing to stop
at an inn until I should have seen more of the panorama that so charmed
me. At last I reached the left bank of the Seine, and saw before me the
little Isle of the City, the sunlit towers of Notre Dame rising above
the wilderness of turrets and spires surrounding them. I crossed the
Pont St. Michel, stopping for a moment to look westward towards the Tour
de Nesle, and then eastward to the Tournelle, thus covering, in two
glances, the river bank of the University through which I had just come.
Emerging from the bridge, I followed the Rue de la Barillerie across the
Isle of the City, finding everywhere the same bustle, the same coming
and going of citizens, priests, students, and beggars, all alert, yet
not to be surprised by any spectacle that might arise before them.
Reaching the right arm of the Seine, I stopped again, this time on the
Pont-au-Change, and embraced, in a sweeping look from left to right, the
river bank of the town, the Paris of the court and the palaces, of the
markets and of trade, the Paris in which I hoped to find a splendid
future, the Paris into which, after taking this comprehensive view from
the towers of the Louvre and the Tour de Bois away leftward, to the Tour
de Billy away right ward, I urged my horse with a jubilant heart. It was
a quite dark Paris by the time I plunged into it. The Rue St. Denis,
along which I rode, was beginning to be lighted here and there by stray
rays from windows. The still narrower streets, that ran, like crooked
corridors in a great château, from the large thoroughfare, seemed to be
altogether dark.

But, dark as the city had become, I had determined to explore some of it
that night, so charming was its novelty, so inviting to me were its
countless streets, leading to who knows what? I stopped at a large inn in
the Rue St. Denis, saw my tired horse well cared for by an hostler, who
seemed amazed at my rustic solicitude for details, had my portmanteau
deposited in a clean, white-washed chamber, overlooking the street, ate a
supper such as only a Paris innkeeper can serve and a ravenous youth from
the country can devour, and went forth afoot, after curfew, into the now
entirely dark and no longer crowded street, to find what might befall me.

It had grown colder at nightfall, and I had to draw my cloak closely
around me. A wind had come up, too, and the few people whom I met were
walking with head thrust forward, the better to resist the breeze when it
should oppose them. Some were attended by armed servants bearing
lanterns. The sign-boards, that hung from the projecting stories of the
tall houses, swung as the wind swayed, and there was a continual sound of
creaking. Clouds had risen, and the moon was obscured much of the time,
so that when I looked down some of the narrower streets I could not see
whether they ended within a short distance, turned out of sight, or
continued far in the same direction. Being accustomed to the country
roads, the squares of smaller towns, and the wide avenues of the little
park at La Tournoire, I was at first surprised at the narrowness of the
streets. Across one of them lay a drunken man, peacefully snoring. His
head touched the house on one side of the street, and his feet pressed
the wall on the opposite side. It surprised me to find so many of the
streets no wider than this. But there was more breathing room wherever
two streets crossed and where several of them opened into some great
place. The crookedness and curvature of the streets constantly tempted me
to seek what might be beyond, around the corner, or the bend; and
whenever I sought, I found still other corners or bends hiding the
unknown, and luring me to investigate.

I had started westward from the inn, intending to proceed towards the
Louvre. But presently, having turned aside from one irregular street
into another, I did not know what was the direction in which I went.
The only noises that I heard were those caused by the wind, excepting
when now and then came suddenly a burst of loud talk, mingled mirth and
jangling, as quickly shut off, when the door of some cabaret opened and
closed. When I heard footsteps on the uneven pebble pavement of the
street, and saw approaching me out of the gloom some cloaked
pedestrian, I mechanically gripped the handle of my sword, and kept a
wary eye on the stranger,--knowing that in passing each other we must
almost touch elbows. His own suspicious and cautious demeanor and
motions reflected mine.

At night, in the narrow streets of a great town, there exists in every
footfall heard, every human figure seen emerging from the darkness, the
possibility of an encounter, an adventure, something unexpected. So, to
the night roamer, every human sound or sight has an unwonted interest.

As I followed the turning of one of the narrowest streets, the darkness,
some distance ahead of me, was suddenly cleft by a stream of light from a
window that was quickly opened in the second story of a tall house on the
right-hand side of the way. Then the window was darkened by the form of a
man coming from the chamber within. At his appearance into view I stood
still. Resting for a moment on his knees on the window-ledge, he lowered
first one leg, then the other, then his body, and presently he was
hanging by his hands over the street. Then the face of a woman appeared
in the window, and as the man remained there, suspended, he looked up at
her inquiringly.

"It is well," she said, in a low tone; "but be quick. We are just in
time." And she stood ready to close the window as soon as he should be
out of the way.

"Good night, adorable," he replied, and dropped to the street. The
lady immediately closed the window, not even waiting to see how the
man had alighted.

Had she waited to see that, she would have seen him, in lurching over to
prevent his sword from striking the ground, lose his balance on a
detached paving-stone, and fall heavily on his right arm.

"_Peste_!" he hissed, as he slowly scrambled to his feet. "I have
broken my arm!"

With his right arm hanging stiff by his side, and clutching its elbow
with his left hand, as if in great pain, he hastened away from the spot,
not having noticed me. I followed him.

After a second turn, the street crossed another. In the middle of the
open space at the junction, there stood a cross, as could be seen by the
moonlight that now came through an interval in the procession of
wind-driven clouds.

Just as the man with the hurt arm, who was slender, and had a dandified
walk, entered this open space, a gust of wind came into it with him; and
there came, also, from the other street, a robust gentleman of medium
height, holding his head high and walking briskly. Caught by the gust of
wind, my gentleman from the second story window ran precipitantly into
the other. The robust man was not sent backward an inch. He took the
shock of meeting with the firmness of an unyielding wall, so that the
slender gentleman rebounded. Each man uttered a brief oath, and grasped
his sword, the slender one forgetting the condition of his arm.

"Oh, it is you," said the robust man, in a virile voice, of which the
tone was now purposely offensive. "The wind blows fragile articles into
one's face to-night."

"It blows gentlemen into muck-heaps," responded the other, quickly.

The hearty gentleman gave a loud laugh, meant to aggravate the other's
anger, and then said:

"We do not need seconds, M. de Quelus," putting into his utterance of the
other's name a world of insult.

"Come on, then, M. Bussy d'Amboise," replied the other, pronouncing the
name only that he might, in return, hiss out the final syllable as if it
were the word for something filthy.

Both whipped out their swords, M. de Quelus now seemingly unconscious of
the pain in his arm.

I looked on from the shadow in which I had stopped, not having followed
De Quelus into the little open space. My interest in the encounter was
naturally the greater for having learned the names of the antagonists. At
La Tournoire I had heard enough of the court to know that the Marquis de
Quelus was the chief of the King's effeminate chamberlains, whom he
called his minions, and that Bussy d'Amboise was the most redoubtable of
the rufflers attached to the King's discontented brother, the Duke of
Anjou; and that between the dainty gentlemen of the King and the bullying
swordsmen of the Duke, there was continual feud.

Bussy d'Amboise, disdaining even to remove his cloak, of which he quickly
gathered the end under his left arm, made two steps and a thrust at De
Quelus. The latter made what parade he could for a moment, so that Bussy
stepped back to try a feint. De Quelus, trying to raise his sword a
trifle higher, uttered an ejaculation of pain, and then dropped the
point. Bussy had already begun the motion of a lunge, which it was too
late to arrest, even if he had discovered that the other's arm was
injured and had disdained to profit by such an advantage. De Quelus would
have been pierced through had not I leaped forward with drawn sword and,
by a quick thrust, happened to strike Bussy's blade and make it diverge
from its course.

De Quelus jumped back on his side, as Bussy did on his. Both regarded me
with astonishment.

"Oh, ho, an ambush!" cried Bussy. "Then come on, all of you, messieurs of
the daubed face and painted beard! I shall not even call my servants, who
wait at the next corner."

And he made a lunge at me, which I diverted by a parry made on instinct,
not having had time to bring my mind to the direction of matters. Bussy
then stood back on guard.

"You lie," said De Quelus, vainly trying to find sufficient strength
in his arm to lift his sword. "I was alone. My servants are as near
as yours, yet I have not called. As for this gentleman, I never saw
him before."

"That is true," I said, keeping up my guard, while Bussy stood with his
back to the cross, his brows knit in his effort to make out my features.

"Oh, very well," said Bussy. "I do not recognize him, but he is evidently
a gentleman in search of a quarrel, and I am disposed to be
accommodating."

He attacked me again, and I surprised myself, vastly, by being able to
resist the onslaughts of this, the most formidable swordsman at the
court of France. But I dared not hope for final victory. It did not even
occur to me as possible that I might survive this fight. The best for
which I hoped was that I might not be among the easiest victims of this
famous sword.

"Monsieur," said De Quelus, while Bussy and I kept it up, with offence
on his part, defence on mine, "I am sorry that I cannot intervene to
save your life. My arm has been hurt in a fall, and I cannot even hold
up my sword."

"I know that," I replied. "That is why I interfered."

"The devil!" cried Bussy. "Much as I detest you, M. de Quelus, you know I
would not have attacked you had I known that. But this gentleman, at
least, has nothing the matter with his arm."

And he came for me again.

Nothing the matter with my arm! Actually a compliment upon my
sword-handling from the most invincible fighter, whether in formal duel
or sudden quarrel, in France! I liked the generosity which impelled him
to acknowledge me a worthy antagonist, as much as I resented his
overbearing insolence; and I began to think there was a chance for me.

For the first time, I now assumed the offensive, and with such suddenness
that Bussy fell back, out of sheer surprise. He had forgotten about the
cross that stood in the centre of the place, and, in leaping backward, he
struck this cross heavily with his sword wrist. His glove did not save
him from being jarred and bruised; and, for a moment, he relaxed his firm
grasp of his sword, and before he could renew his clutch I could have
destroyed his guard and ended the matter; but I dropped my point instead.

Bussy looked at me in amazement, and then dropped his.

"Absurd, monsieur! You might very fairly have used your advantage.
Now you have spoiled everything. We can't go on fighting, for I would
not give you another such opening, nor would I kill a man who gives
me my life."

"As you will, monsieur," said I. "I am glad not to be killed, for what
is the use of having fought Bussy d'Amboise if one may not live to
boast of it?"

He seemed pleased in his self-esteem, and sheathed his sword. "I am
destined not to fight to-night," he answered. "One adversary turns out to
have a damaged arm, which would make it a disgrace to kill him, and the
other puts me under obligation for my life. But, M. de Quelus, your arm
will recover."

"I hope so, if for only one reason," replied Quelus.

Bussy d'Amboise then bowed to me, and strode on his way. He was joined at
the next crossing of streets by four lackeys, who had been waiting in
shadow. All had swords and pistols, and one bore a lantern, which had
been concealed beneath his cloak.

De Quelus, having looked after him with an angry frown, now turned to me,
and spoke with affability:

"Monsieur, had you not observed the condition of my arm, I should have
resented your aid. But as it is, I owe you my life no less than he owes
you his, and it may be that I can do more than merely acknowledge the
obligation."

I saw here the opportunity for which a man might wait months, and I was
not such a fool as to lose it through pride.

"Monsieur," I said, "I am Ernanton de Launay, Sieur de la Tournoire. I
arrived in Paris to-day, from Anjou, with the desire of enlisting in the
French Guards."

De Quelus smiled. "You desire very little for a gentleman, and one who
can handle a sword so well."

"I know that, but I do not bring any letters, and I am not one who could
expect the favor of a court appointment. I am a Huguenot."

"A Huguenot?" said De Quelus. "And yet you come to Paris?"

"I prefer to serve the King of France. He is at present on good terms
with the Huguenots, is he not?"

"Yes,--at least, he is not at war with them. Well, gentlemen like you are
not to be wasted, even though Huguenots. Attach yourself to Duret's
company of the guards for the present, and who knows when you may win a
vacant captaincy? I will bring you to the attention of the King. Can you
be, to-morrow at eleven o'clock, at the principal gate of the Louvre?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Very well. I will speak to Captain Duret, also, about you."

He looked at my active figure, neither tall nor short, neither broad nor
too thin, observed the length of my arm, and remembered that I had made
so respectable a showing with the sword against Bussy, I could see that
he was thinking, "It is well to have in one's debt as many such strong
and honest young gentlemen as can be had. Even a Huguenot may be useful
in these days."

Then, when so many leaders contended, every man was desirous of gaining
partisans. At court, wise people were scrupulous to repay obligations, in
the hope of securing future benefit. I divined De Quelus's motives, but
was none the less willing to profit by them as to the possible vacant
captaincy.

"Then I thank you, monsieur, and will keep the appointment," I said.

"You are alone," said De Quelus. "One does not know when one may have
one's throat cut for a sou, after dark in the streets of Paris. Will you
accept the escort of two of my servants? They are waiting for me in the
next street. One does not, you know, let one's servants wait too near
windows out of which one expects to drop," he added with a smile.

"I thank you, monsieur, but I have already fared so well alone to-night,
that I should fear to change my fortune by taking attendants."

"Then good night, monsieur. No, thank you. I can sheathe my own sword. My
arm has lost its numbness. _Parbleu_, I should like to meet Bussy
d'Amboise now."

And he strode away, leaving me standing by the cross.

I hesitated between returning to the inn, and resuming my exploration of
the streets. I decided to go back, lest I be shut out for the night.

I had made my way some distance, in the labyrinth of streets, when, on
reaching another junction of ways, I heard steps at some distance to the
left. Looking in that direction, I saw approaching a little procession
headed by two men servants, one of whom carried a lantern. I stepped back
into the street from which I had just emerged, that I might remain
unseen, until it should pass. Peering around the street corner, I saw
that behind the two servants came a lady, whose form indicated youth and
elegance, and who leaned on the arm of a stout woman, doubtless a
servant. Behind these two came another pair of lackeys.

The lady wore a mask, and although heavily cloaked, shivered in the
January wind, and walked as rapidly as she could. The four men had swords
and pistols, and were sturdy fellows, able to afford her good protection.

The two men in advance passed without seeing me, stepping easily over a
pool of muddy water that had collected in a depression in the street, and
had not yet had time to freeze.

When the lady reached this pool, she stopped at its brink and looked down
at it, with a little motion of consternation.

"I cannot step across this lake," she said, in a voice that was
low-pitched, rich, and full of charm to the ear. "We must skirt
its borders."

And she turned to walk a short distance up the street in which I stood.

"Not so, madame," I said, stepping forth and bowing. "The lake is a long
one, and you would have to go far out of your way. I will convey you
across in a moment, if you will allow me." And I held out my arms,
indicating my willingness to lift her across the pool.

The two servants in the rear now hastened up, ready to attack me, and
those ahead turned and came back, their hands on their weapons.

The lady looked at me through the eye-holes of her mask. Her lips and
chin being visible, she could not conceal a quizzical smile that came
at my offer.

"Why not?" she said, motioning her servants back.

I caught her up in my arms and lifted her over the puddle. She slid from
my grasp with a slight laugh.

I sought some pretext to prolong this meeting. "When I came out
to-night," I said, "I dared not hope for such happiness as this."

"Nor did the astrologer predict anything of the kind to me," she replied.
From this I knew the cause of her being in the street so late,--a secret
visit to some fortune-teller. Then she called to the stout woman, who was
looking for a place to step over the pool. "Come, Isa, in the name of
Heaven. You know that if the guard is changed--"

She stopped, but she had already betrayed herself. She meant the guard of
the palace, doubtless; and that her secret entrance, so long after the
closing of the gates, depended for its ease on the presence of some
officer with whom she had an understanding. She must be one of the ladies
attached to the royal household, and her nocturnal excursion, from the
Louvre, was evidently clandestine.

Isa now joined her mistress, and the latter, with a mere, "I thank you,
monsieur," turned and hastened on her way. Soon the footsteps of her
attendants died out of hearing.

I had not even seen her face, save the white, curved chin and the
delicate mouth. I had only beheld her lithe figure, felt its heaving as I
carried her, had my cold cheek warmed for a moment by her breath, heard
her provoking laugh and her voice, rich with vitality. Yet her charm had
caught me and remained with me. I could not, nor did I try to throw it
off. I was possessed by a craving to see her again, to know more of her.
Already I made this unknown the heroine of my prospective love affair. I
could soon find her, after gaining the entrée of the court; and I could
identify her by her voice as well as by her probable recognition of me.
Heaving a deep sigh, I left the place of our meeting and found my way
back to the inn. Thanks to the presence of some late drinkers, I got in
without much pounding on the door; and in my little white-washed chamber
I dreamt of soft eyes that glowed through the holes of a lady's mask.




CHAPTER II.

LOVE-MAKING AT SHORT ACQUAINTANCE


The next morning was bright, and not too cold. At eleven I approached the
great gate of the Louvre, wearing the bold demeanor of a man determined
not to be abashed, even by the presence of royalty. Yet within me there
was some slight trepidation lest I should, on first setting foot within
the precincts of a palace, betray my rustic bringing up.

Others were being admitted at the gate, and some were coming out, both
the King's council and the reception having been over for some time. A
page, who had been waiting just inside the court, came out as I
approached, and asked me if I were M. de Launay. Astonished, that he
should have so easily picked me out, I replied that I was. He then said
that he had come to conduct me to Monsieur the Marquis de Quelus, and I
followed him into the great courtyard of the Louvre.

Before me was the imposing façade of the palace. Around me was an
animated scene of well-dressed gentlemen coming and going, meeting one
another forming little groups for a moment's interchange of news or
inquiries, and as quickly breaking up. There were soldiers on guard,
officers on duty and off, courtiers in brilliant doublets, dazzling
ruffs, rich hose; gentlemen with gay plumes, costly cloaks, jewelled
sword-hilts. There were pages, strutting about with messages; lackeys,
belonging only to the greatest nobles or royal favorites. Everybody,
whether gentleman, soldier, household officer, priest, page, or valet,
went with an air of great consequence, with head high in air, every
step, expression, and attitude proclaiming a sense of vast superiority
to the rest of the world. It was as if people attached to the court were
an elevated race of beings; or as if the court were Olympus, and these
were gods and the servitors of gods, who, very properly, regarded
mortals with disdain. Each man, too, maintained not only this lofty air
as befitting one of the court, but also an aspect of individual
preciousness as towards his fellow divinities. There was, in many a face
or bearing, an expressed resentment, in advance, of any affront that
might be offered. The soldiers swaggered, the gentlemen showed
self-esteem in every motion. Nevertheless, there was much good nature
and courtesy in the salutations, fragments of conversation, and
exchanges of gossip. Leaving the sunlit courtyard behind, the page
showed me up a fine stairway, where some gentlemen tarried in little
parties, while others ascended or descended. We passed through large
galleries, the same animation continuing everywhere. I had no time, as
we passed, to examine the superb hangings and fanciful decorations of
the galleries in detail. The clothes of the courtiers, the brilliant
display of velvet, silk, furs, and the finest linen, of every known hue,
made a continually changing, moving panorama of color.

We approached, at last, a group extraordinarily radiant in attire. It was
composed of very young men, some of whom had hardly yet acquired the
beard required by the universal fashion. Even at a distance I could see
that their cheeks were painted, could note their affectation of feminine
attitudes, could smell the perfumes with which they had deluged their
bodies. These were some of the favorites of the King, and more of the
imitators of the favorites. No wonder that Bussy d'Amboise and the sturdy
gentlemen of the King's ungainly brother, Anjou, had a manly detestation
for these bedaubed effeminates, and sought opportunities to extirpate
them with the sword. Yet these dainty youths, one of whom was De Quelus,
who now came forward to meet me, were not cowards.

The young Marquis wore a slashed doublet of brown velvet and gold. His
silken hose were of a lighter tint of brown. His ruff was so enormous
that he had to keep the point of his beard thrust forward at an
elevation.

"I shall present you when the King passes," he said to me. "I have
already spoken a word to Captain Duret, to whom you will report
to-morrow. He will make a veteran of you in a quarter of an hour. The
King, by the way, knows of your family. He knows every family in France,
for that matter. I spoke of you to him at his rising this morning. He
said that your father was a Huguenot, and I told him that you also were
Protestant. You know enough of things in France to be aware that your
Protestantism stands a little in your way at court, just now; but things
may change before there is a vacant captaincy in the Guards."

People who have thought it bad enough that I should have gone to Paris,
instead of to the court of Henri of Navarre, have been astonished,
beyond expression, at my having desired to serve in the King's infantry,
which, in the event of another civil war, might be arrayed against the
army of our faith. But it must be borne in mind that I had this desire
at a time when none knew how the different armies might be placed
towards one another in the civil war, which everybody admitted must, at
some time or other, occur. I was one of the many who believed that the
Duke of Guise, using the newly formed Holy League as his instrument,
would aim for the throne of France; that King Henri III. would be
forced, in self-defence, to make an alliance with the Huguenot leaders;
and that, therefore, I, in fulfilling my ambition to be of this King's
own soldiers, with quarters in or near Paris in time of peace, would, at
the outbreak of civil war, find myself in line with the armies of our
faith, opposed to the common enemy, the great Catholic Guise faction. Of
the various predictions as to the future of France, I chose this one,
perhaps because it was the only one which permitted me to follow out my
wishes without outraging my sense of duty.

Before I could answer De Quelus, a voice said, "The King!" At the end of
the gallery, where two halberdiers and two ushers stood, a pair of
curtains had quickly parted, and out came a slender young man all velvet,
silk, gold, and jewels; with the legs and the walk of a woman; with face
painted like a courtesan's; a very slight beard on his chin, and a weak
growth of hair on his upper lip; with a look half brazen, half
shamefaced; with eyes half wistful, half malicious; his pear-shaped face
expressing some love of the beautiful, some wit, some cynicism, much
personal vanity, vicious inclinations and practices, restlessness, the
torture of secret self-reproach, a vague distress, a longing to escape
somewhere and be at peace.

He wore ear-rings, a necklace, bracelets, and a small jewelled velvet
cap; but he was without his famous basket of little dogs. This was Henri
III., and he was going to pray in one of the churches.

As he came down the gallery, he noticed De Quelus, from afar, and then
glanced at me. When he was before us, De Quelus made obeisance and
presented me. Before I could finish my bow, the King said:

"Ah, it was your sword that helped to preserve my chamberlain from the
ambush laid for him?" (From which it appeared that De Quelus had given
his own account of the previous night's occurrence.) "And you wish to
enlist in my regiment of French Guards? My faith, I have done well in
reestablishing that corps, if such brave young gentlemen are induced to
enter it. I'll wager you hope to earn a commission soon."

I could only reply: "Such a hope is beyond my deserts, sire."

It was indeed beyond them, for I had seen no military service; but it was
not beyond them for any other reason.

"Nothing is beyond the deserts of one whose sword is always loyal," said
the King, with intended significance, and passed on; his gentlemen
falling in behind him. De Quelus gave me directions as to my reporting,
on the morrow, to Captain Duret, and added, "Rely on me for any favor or
privilege that you may wish, and for access to the palace. You have only
to send me word." He then joined the following of the King.

I seemed now at liberty to remain in the Louvre as long as I might
choose, having once entered it. I thought I would look about, knowing
that if at any time I should be about to trespass on forbidden ground,
there would be guards to hinder me. I went first to a window overlooking
the court. I had no sooner turned my eyes down upon the splendid and
animated scene below, then I felt a touch on my elbow. Looking around, I
saw a familiar face,--that of M. de Rilly, another Anjou gentleman, whom
I had known before his coming to court. He was now one of the King's
equerries.

He was a sprightly man of about thirty, with none of the effeminacy that
marked so many of the officers of the King's household. Though not of my
religion, he made me heartily welcome, and undertook, at once, to
initiate me into the mysteries of the court. He was a loquacious,
open-minded man, who did not fear to express his thoughts, even in the
shadow of royalty itself.

Hearing some clatter in the direction whither the King had gone, I looked
after him. A short, compact young gentleman, plainly, but richly dressed,
slightly stooping, with a rather surly face, and an envious eye, was
coming towards the King. He wore riding-boots and a cloak, and behind
him came a troop of young men similarly attired. The foremost of them was
Bussy d'Amboise, expressing defiance in every line of his bold, square
countenance.

"Ah," said De Rilly, "there is the Duke of Anjou, who has been riding in
the faubourg."

I took a second look at the surly gentleman. At this moment he exchanged
glances with his brother, the King. The look of each was eloquent. The
King's said, "I hate you for being a disloyal brother and a fractious
subject; for conspiring to take away part of my kingdom; and who knows
but that you are secretly aiming at my throne and my life?" The younger
brother's look conveyed this much: "I hate you for your suspicions of me;
for your not obtaining for me in your court the respect due the son and
brother of a king; for encouraging your favorites to ridicule me. If I am
driven to rebel against you, it is your own fault."

The King received the Duke's perfunctory salutation indifferently, and
passed on. Anjou and his men turned into a gallery leading to his own
apartments.

"I see that everybody is following the King," I said.

"Yes, but not I," replied De Rilly. "I find it no more amusing to pray
when the King does than at any other time. I came here, this morning, to
catch a glimpse of one of the Queen's ladies, but her Majesty has a cold,
and my lady is in attendance."

"Which of the Queens has a cold?"

"Queen Louise, the King's wife. It is true, one may well ask which, when
there is mention of the Queen nowadays. The Queen of France is a small
factor when compared with the King's mother, Queen Catherine, or even
with his sister, the Queen of Navarre, whose name is on everyone's
tongue, on account of her love affairs, and of her suspected plots."

"What plots?"

"Some think she plots with the Duke of Guise, who cannot wait to rule
France until Catherine's sons are both dead,--but Catherine will make
him wait. Others believe that she plots with her Huguenot husband, the
King of Navarre, to join him; and that the King keeps her here virtually
a prisoner, lest her departure might be taken as a concession to the
Huguenots; and, lastly and chiefly, they aver that she plots with her
brother Anjou, to help him to join the Huguenots and malcontents as
their leader."

"This is very interesting, M. de Rilly; but, pardon me, is it safe to say
these things openly at court? I am fresh from the country, and anxious
not to blunder."

"It is safe for me, because I am nobody at all, and, moreover, I say
whatever is in my thoughts, and am looked upon as a rattlebrain, and not
taken seriously. But it would not be safe for some. There comes the Queen
of Navarre now. She and her ladies have been walking in their garden."

A number of ladies were entering the gallery from a side stairway.
Marguerite de Valois, who ought to have been with her husband, the King
of Navarre, at his little court at Nerac, remained instead at the court
of France, to be its greatest ornament. She was, alas, its greatest
scandal, also. But I admired her none the less for that, as she stood
there, erect among her women, full of color and grace. Vast possibilities
of mischief seemed buried in the depths of the big and brilliant eyes
which gave so much life to the small, round face.

While she stood still for one of her maids to detach from her ruff a
dead leaf that had dropped there during her walk, Bussy d'Amboise
returned from Anjou's apartment. He walked up to her with a conquering
air, bowed, and said something that made her laugh. Then he looked
around and saw me. He spoke to her again, in a low tone, and she cast
her fine eyes in my direction. She directed her ladies to fall back out
of hearing, and again conferred with Bussy. At the end of this he left
her, and strode over to me.

"Monsieur," he said, "the Queen of Navarre would like to know your name.
I do not remember to have heard it last night."

I told him my name, and he took me by the arm, led me to Marguerite, and
presented me, somewhat to my confusion, so rapidly was the thing done.

"You are a newcomer at court?" she said.

"I arrived in Paris only yesterday."

"And have taken service with--whom?"

"In the French Guards."

"We shall doubtless hear more of your skill with the sword," said
Marguerite.

"I knew not I had any," I replied, "until I found out that I could stand
up for a minute against the sword I met last night. Now I am glad to know
that I possess skill, that I may hold it ever at the service of your
Majesty as well as of the King."

This speech seemed to be exactly what Marguerite had desired of me, for
she smiled and said, "I shall not forget you, M. de la Tournoire," before
she turned away.

Bussy followed her, and I returned to De Rilly.

"Why should they pay any attention to me?" I said to him.

"No newcomer is too insignificant to be sought as an ally where there are
so many parties," he replied, indifferently. "Those two are with Anjou,
who may have use for as many adherents as he can get one of these days.
They say he is always meditating rebellion with the Huguenots or the
Politiques, or both, and I don't blame a prince who is so shabbily
treated at court."

"But what could a mere guardsman do, without friends or influence?
Besides, my military duties--"

"Will leave you plenty of time to get into other troubles, if you find
them amusing. How do you intend to pass the rest of the day?"

"I have no plans. I should like to see more of the Louvre on my first
visit; and, to tell the truth, I had hoped to find out more about a
certain lady who belongs to the court."

"What do you know of her?"

"Only that she has a beautiful figure and a pretty mouth and chin. She
wore a mask, but I should recognize her voice if I heard it again."

"I wish you better luck than I have had to-day."

Marguerite and her damsels had turned down a corridor leading to her
apartments. Bussy d'Amboise was disappearing down the stairs. There came,
from another direction, the lively chatter of women's voices, and there
appeared, at the head of the stairs up which Marguerite had come, another
group of ladies, all young and radiant but one. The exception was a
stout, self-possessed looking woman of middle age, dressed rather
sedately in dark satin. She had regular features, calm black eyes, an
unruffled expression, and an air of authority without arrogance.

"Queen Catherine and some of her Flying Squadron," said De Rilly, in
answer to my look of inquiry. "She has been taking the air after the
King's council. Her own council is a more serious matter, and lasts all
the time."

"Queen Catherine?" I exclaimed, incredulously, half refusing to see, in
that placid matron, the ceaseless plotter, the woman accused of poisoning
and all manner of bloodshed, whom the name represented.

"Catherine de Medici," said De Rilly, evidently finding it a pleasure to
instruct a newcomer as to the personages and mysteries of the court. "She
who preserves the royal power in France at this moment."

"She does not look as I have imagined her," I said.

"One would not suppose," said De Rilly, "that behind that serene
countenance goes on the mental activity necessary to keep the throne in
possession of her favorite son, who spends fortunes on his minions, taxes
his subjects to the utmost, and disgusts them with his eccentric piety
and peculiar vices."

"Dare one say such things in the very palace of that King?"

"Why not say what every one knows? It is what people say in hidden
places that is dangerous."

"I wonder what is passing in the Queen-mother's mind at this moment," I
said, as Catherine turned into the corridor leading to Anjou's
apartments.

In the light of subsequent events, I can now give a better answer to that
query than De Rilly, himself, could have given then. Catherine had to use
her wits to check the deep designs of Henri, Duke of Guise, who was
biding his time to claim the throne as the descendant of Charlemagne, and
was as beloved of the populace as Henri III. was odious to it. Thanks to
the rebellion of Huguenots and malcontents, Guise had been kept too busy
in the field to prosecute his political designs. As head of the Catholic
party, and heir to his father's great military reputation, he could not,
consistently, avoid the duties assigned him by the crown. That these
duties might not cease, Catherine found it to her interest that rebellion
should continue indefinitely. The Huguenot party, in its turn, was kept
by the Guise or Catholic party from assaults on the crown. In fine, while
both great factions were occupied with each other, neither could threaten
the King. This discord, on which she relied to keep her unpopular son
safe on his throne, was fomented by her in secret ways. She shifted from
side to side, as circumstances required. The parties must be maintained,
in order that discontent might vent itself in factional contest, and not
against the King. The King must belong to neither party, in order not to
be of the party that might be ultimately defeated; yet he must belong to
both parties, in order to be of the party that might ultimately triumph.
To the maintainance of this impossible situation was the genius of
Catherine de Medici successfully devoted for many years of universal
discontent and bloodshed.

Now the Duke of Guise had found a way to turn these circumstances to
account. Since the King of France could not hold down the Huguenots, the
Holy Catholic League, composed of Catholics of every class throughout the
most of France, would undertake the task. He foresaw that he, as leader
of the League, would earn from the Catholics a gratitude that would make
him the most powerful man in the kingdom. Catherine, too, saw this. To
neutralize this move, she caused the King to endorse the League and
appoint himself its head. The Huguenots must not take this as a step
against them; on the contrary, they must be led to regard it as a shrewd
measure to restrain the League. The King's first official edicts, after
assuming the leadership of the League, seemed to warrant this view. So
the King, in a final struggle against the Guise elements, might still
rely on the aid of the Huguenots. But the King still remained outside of
the League, although nominally its chief. Catherine saw that it was not
to be deluded from its real purpose. The only thing to do was to
conciliate the Duke of Guise into waiting. There was little likelihood of
either of her sons attaining middle age. The Duke of Guise, a splendid
specimen of physical manhood, would doubtless outlive them; he might be
induced to wait for their deaths. The rightful successor to the throne
would then be Henri of Navarre, head of the Bourbon family. But he was a
Huguenot; therefore Catherine affected to the Duke of Guise a great
desire that he should succeed her sons. The existing peace allowed the
Duke of Guise the leisure in which to be dangerous; so every means to
keep him quiet was taken.

Some of these things De Rilly told me, as we stood in the embrasure of a
window in the gallery, while Catherine visited her son, Anjou,--whose
discontent at court complicated the situation, for he might, at any time,
leave Paris and lead the Huguenots and malcontents in a rebellion which
would further discredit her family with the people, demonstrate anew the
King's incompetence, and give the League an opportunity.

"And does the Duke of Guise allow himself to be cajoled?" I asked De
Rilly.

"Who knows? He is a cautious man, anxious to make no false step. They
say he would be willing to wait for the death of the King, but that he is
ever being urged to immediate action by De Noyard."

"De Noyard?"

"One of Guise's followers; an obscure gentleman of very great virtue, who
has recently become Guise's most valued counsellor. He keeps Guise on his
guard against Catherine's wiles, they say, and discourages Guise's amour
with her daughter, Marguerite, which Catherine has an interest in
maintaining. Nobody is more _de trop_ to Catherine just at present, I
hear, than this same Philippe de Noyard. Ah! there he is now,--in the
courtyard, the tallest of the gentlemen who have just dismounted, and are
coming in this direction, with the Duke of Guise."

I looked out of the window, and at once recognized the Duke of Guise by
the great height of his slender but strong figure, the splendid bearing,
the fine oval face, with its small mustache, slight fringe of beard, and
its scar, and the truly manly and magnificent manner, of which report had
told us. He wore a doublet of cloth of silver, a black cloak of velvet,
and a black hat with the Lorraine cross on its front. The tallest man in
his following--Philippe de Noyard, of whom De Rilly had just been
speaking--was the gentleman whom I had met on the road to Paris, and who
had refused to fight me after resenting my opinion of the Duke of Guise.

He must have arrived in Paris close behind me.

I was watching Guise and his gentlemen as they crossed the court to enter
the palace, when suddenly I heard behind me the voice that had lingered
in my ears all the previous night. I turned hastily around, and saw a
group of Catherine's ladies, who stood around a fireplace, not having
followed the Queen-mother to Anjou's apartments.

"Who is the lady leaning against the tapestry?" I quickly asked De Rilly.

"The one with the indolent attitude, and the mocking smile?"

"Yes, the very beautiful one, with the big gray eyes. By heaven, her eyes
rival those of Marguerite, herself!"

"That is Mlle. d'Arency, a new recruit to Catherine's Flying Squadron."

Her face more than carried out the promise given by her chin and mouth.
It expressed to the eye all that the voice expressed to the ear.

She had not seen me yet. I had almost made up my mind to go boldly over
to her, when the Duke of Guise and his gentlemen entered the gallery. At
the same instant, Catherine reappeared on the arm of the Duke of Anjou.
The latter resigned her to the Duke of Guise, and went back to his
apartment, whereupon Catherine and Guise started for the further end of
the gallery, as if for private conversation. His manner was courteous,
but cold; hers calm and amiable.

"Ah, see!" whispered De Rilly to me. "What did I tell you?"

Catherine had cast a glance towards Guise's gentlemen. De Noyard, grave
and reserved, stood a little apart from the others. For an instant, a
look of profound displeasure, a deeply sinister look, interrupted the
composure of Catherine's features.

"You see that M. de Noyard does not have the effect on the Queen-mother
that a rose in her path would have," remarked De Rilly.

He did not notice what followed. But I observed it, although not till
long afterward did I see its significance. It was a mere exchange of
glances, and little did I read in it the secret which was destined to
have so vast an effect on my own life, to give my whole career its
course. It was no more than this: Catherine turned her glance, quickly,
from De Noyard to Mlle. d'Arency, who had already been observing her.
Mlle. d'Arency gave, in reply, an almost imperceptible smile of
understanding; then Catherine and Guise passed on.

Two looks, enduring not a moment; yet, had I known what was behind them,
my life would assuredly have run an entirely different course.

The gentlemen of the Duke of Guise now joined Catherine's ladies at the
fireplace. For a time, Mlle. d'Arency was thus lost to my sight; then the
group opened, and I saw her resting her great eyes, smilingly, on the
face of De Noyard, who was talking to her in a low tone, his gaze fixed
upon her with an expression of wistful adoration.

"The devil!" I muttered. "That man loves her."

"My faith!" said De Rilly, "one would think he was treading on your toes
in doing so; yet you do not even know her."

"She is the woman I have chosen to be in love with, nevertheless," I
said.

It seemed as if the Duke of Guise had come to the Louvre solely for a
word with the Queen-mother, for now he took his departure, followed by
his suite, while Catherine went to her own apartments. As De Noyard
passed out, he saw me. His face showed that he recognized me, and that he
wondered what I was doing in the palace. There was nothing of offence in
his look, only a slight curiosity.

De Rilly now expressed an intention of going out to take the air, but I
preferred to stay where I was; for Mlle. d'Arency had remained in the
gallery, with some other of Catherine's ladies. So the loquacious equerry
went without me.

I formed a bold resolution. Quelling the trepidation that came with it, I
strode quickly over to Mlle. d'Arency, who still stood against the
tapestry as if she had been a figure in it but had come to life and
stepped out into the apartment.

Her large eyes fell on me, and opened slightly wider, showing at once
recognition and a not unpleasant surprise. I bowed very low, partly to
conceal the flush that I felt mounting to my face.

"Pardon me, Mlle. d'Arency," I said, in a voice as steady as I could make
it. Then I looked at her and saw her features assuming an expression of
such coldness and astonishment that for some time neither my tongue nor
my mind could continue the speech, nor could I move a step in retreat.
All the while she kept her eyes upon me.

I drew a deep breath at last, and said in desperation:

"Doubtless I ought not to address you, being unknown to you, but if you
will permit me, I will go and bring M. de Rilly, who will present me."

Her face softened somewhat, and she looked amused. "You seem quite able
to present yourself," she said.

I was immensely relieved at this melting of the ice, just when I was
beginning to feel that I was becoming a spectacle.

"I am Ernanton de Launay, Sieur de la Tournoire," I said, and to fill up
the embarrassing pause that followed, I added, "and, being a Huguenot, I
am a nobody in Paris,--in fact, a mere volunteer in the French Guards."

"Well, Monsieur Guardsman, what do you wish to say to me?"

She was now in quite a pleasant, quizzical mood.

"I trust you do not expect me to say it in one word," I answered; and
then I lowered my voice, "or in a single interview."

"It does not matter how many interviews it requires, if it is
interesting," she answered nonchalantly.

"Alas!" I said. "I fear it is a story which many others have told you."

"An old story may seem new, when it comes from new lips."

"And when it is new to the lips that tell it, as mine is. Actually, I
have never before made a confession of love."

"Am I to understand that you are about to make one now?"

"Have I not already made it?" I said.

We now stood quite apart from all others in the gallery, unnoticed by
them; and our voices had fallen almost to a whisper.

She smiled, as if refusing to take my words seriously.

"If you have waited so long before making any confession of love
whatever," she said, "you have certainly made up for the delay by the
speed which you use in making your first."

"On the contrary, I have had my confession ready for a long time, as my
love has existed for a long time. I waited only to meet its object,--the
woman of whom I had formed the ideal in my mind."

She looked as if about to burst into a laugh; but she changed her mind,
and regarded me with a look of inquiry, as if she would read my heart.
The smile was still on her lips, yet she spoke gravely when she said:

"Monsieur, I cannot make you out. If you are as sincere as you are
original,--but I must go to the Queen-mother now. To-morrow afternoon, I
shall walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, if the weather is clear."

"But one moment, I beg! M. de Noyard,--he is in love with you, is he
not?"

Her face again took on its mocking look. "I have not asked him," she said
lightly. Then she regarded me with a new and peculiar expression, as if
some daring idea had come into her mind, some project which had to be
meditated upon before it might be safely breathed.

"You look at me strangely, mademoiselle."

"Oh, I merely wonder at your curiosity in regard to M. de Noyard."

"My curiosity is not in regard to his feelings, but in regard to yours."

"Monsieur," she said, with a very captivating air of reproach, "have I
not told you that I shall walk in the gardens of the Tuileries to-morrow
afternoon?"

And she glided away, leaving behind her the most delighted and conceited
young man, at that moment, in France.




CHAPTER III.

THE STRANGE REQUEST OF MLLE. D'ARENCY


I was disappointed in the interview that I had with Mlle. d'Arency in
the gardens of the Tuileries, the next day. I saw her for only a few
minutes, and then within sight of other of Catherine's ladies. Although
I lost nothing of the ground I had taken, neither did I gain anything
further. Afterward, at court receptions and _fêtes_, and, sometimes, in
the palace galleries, when she was off duty, I contrived to meet her.
She neither gave me opportunities nor avoided me. All the progress that
I made was in the measure of my infatuation for her. When I begged for a
meeting at which we might not be surrounded by half the court, she
smiled, and found some reason to prevent any such interview in the near
future. So, if I had carried things very far at our first meeting in the
Louvre, I now paid for my exceptional fortune by my inability to carry
them a step further.

Thus matters went for several days, during which the assertion of De
Rilly was proven true,--that my duties as a member of the French Guards
would leave me some time for pleasure. Thanks to De Quelus, and to his
enemy, Bussy d'Amboise, I made acquaintances both in the King's following
and in that of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou. De Rilly made me
known to many who belonged to neither camp, and were none the worse for
that. Our company lodged in the Faubourg St. Honore, but I led the life
of a gentleman of pleasure, when off duty, and, as such, I had a private
lodging within the town, near the Louvre, more pretentious than the
whitewashed chamber in the Rue St. Denis. I drank often in cabarets,
became something of a swaggerer, and something of a fop,--though never
descending to the womanishness of the King's minions,--and did not allow
my great love affair, which I never mentioned save in terms of mystery,
to hinder me from the enjoyment of lesser amours of transient duration.
At this time everybody was talking of the feud between the King's
favorites and the followers of the Duke of Anjou. The King's minions
openly ridiculed Anjou for his ungainliness, which was all the greater
for his look of settled discontent and resentment. His faithful and
pugnacious Bussy retaliated by having his pages dress like the King's
minions,--with doublets of cloth of gold, stiff ruffs, and great
plumes,--and so attend him at the Twelfth Day _fêtes_. The minions, in
their turn, sought revenge on Bussy by attacking him, on the following
night, while he was returning from the Louvre to his lodgings. He eluded
them, and the next morning he accused M. de Grammont of having led the
ambuscade. De Quelus then proposed that all the King's gentlemen should
meet all those of the Duke in a grand encounter to the death. The Duke's
followers gladly accepted the challenge. Three hundred men on each side
would have fought, had not the King resolutely forbidden the duel. De
Quelus, that night, led a number of gentlemen in an attack on Bussy's
lodgings. Bussy and his followers made a stout resistance, the tumult
becoming so great that the Marechal de Montmorency called out the Scotch
Guard to clear the street in front of Bussy's house; and it was time.
Several gentlemen and servants were lying in their blood; and some of
these died of their wounds.

It was openly known, about the court, that the Duke of Anjou held the
King to be privy to these attacks on Bussy, and was frightfully enraged
thereby; and that the King, in constant fear of the Duke's departure to
join the Huguenots,--which event would show the King's inability to
prevent sedition even in the royal family, and would give the Guise party
another pretext to complain of his incompetence,--would forcibly obstruct
the Duke's going.

It was this state of affairs that made Catherine de Medici again take up
her abode in the Louvre, that she might be on the ground in the event of
a family outbreak, which was little less probable to occur at night than
in the daytime. She had lately lived part of the time in her new palace
of the Tuileries, and part of the time in her Hotel des Filles Repenties,
holding her council in either of these places, and going to the Louvre
daily for the signature of the King to the documents of her own
fabrication. At this time, Mlle. d'Arency was one of the ladies of the
Queen-mother's bedchamber, and so slept in the Louvre. What should I be
but such a fool as, when off duty, to pass certain hours of the night in
gazing up at the window of my lady's chamber, as if I were a lover in an
Italian novel! Again I must beg you to remember that I was only
twenty-one, and full of the most fantastic ideas. I had undertaken an
epic love affair, and I would omit none of the picturesque details that
example warranted.

Going, one evening in February, to take up my post opposite the Louvre, I
suddenly encountered a gentleman attended by two valets with torches. I
recognized him as De Noyard, who had twice or thrice seen me about the
palaces, but had never spoken to me. I was therefore surprised when, on
this occasion, he stopped and said to me, in a low and polite tone:

"Monsieur, I have seen you, once or twice, talking with M. Bussy
d'Amboise, and I believe that, if you are not one of his intimates, you,
at least, wish him no harm."

"You are right, monsieur," I said, quite mystified.

"I am no friend of his," continued M. de Noyard, in his cold,
dispassionate tone, "but he is a brave man, who fights openly, and, so
far, he is to be commended. I believe he will soon return from the
Tuileries, where he has been exercising one of the horses of the Duke of
Anjou. I have just come from there myself. On the way, I espied, without
seeming to see them, a number of the gentlemen of the King waiting behind
the pillars of the house with a colonnade, near the Porte St. Honore."

"One can guess what that means."

"So I thought. As for me, I have more important matters in view than
interfering with the quarrels of young hot-heads; but I think that there
is yet time for Bussy d'Amboise to be warned, before he starts to return
from the Tuileries."

"M. de Noyard, I thank you," I said, with a bow of genuine respect, and
in a moment I was hastening along the Rue St. Honore.

I understood, of course, the real reasons why De Noyard himself had not
gone back to warn Bussy. Firstly, those in ambush would probably have
noticed his turning back, suspected his purpose, and taken means to
defeat it. Secondly, he was a man from whom Bussy would have accepted
neither warning nor assistance; yet he was not pleased that any brave man
should be taken by surprise, and he gave me credit for a similar feeling.
I could not but like him, despite my hidden suspicion that there was
something between Mlle. d'Arency and him.

I approached the house with the colonnade, feigning carelessness, as if I
were returning to my military quarters in the faubourg. The Porte St.
Honore was still open, although the time set for its closing was past.

Suddenly a mounted figure appeared in the gateway, which, notwithstanding
the dusk, I knew, by the way the rider sat his horse, to be that of
Bussy. I was too late to warn him; I could only give my aid.

Three figures rushed out from beneath the supported upper story of the
house, and made for Bussy with drawn swords. With a loud oath he reined
back his horse on its haunches, and drew his own weapon, with which he
swept aside the two points presented at him from the left. One of the
three assailants had planted himself in front of the horse, to catch its
bridle, but saw himself now threatened by Bussy's sword, which moved with
the swiftness of lightning. This man thereupon fell back, but stood ready
to obstruct the forward movement of the horse, while one of the other
two ran around to Bussy's right, so that the rider might be attacked,
simultaneously on both sides.

This much I had time to see before drawing my sword and running up to
attack the man on the horseman's left, whom I suddenly recognized as De
Quelus. At the same instant I had a vague impression of a fourth
swordsman rushing out from the colonnade, and, before I could attain my
object, I felt a heavy blow at the base of my skull, which seemed
almost to separate my head from my neck, and I fell forward, into
darkness and oblivion.

I suppose that the man, running to intercept me, had found a thrust less
practicable than a blow with the hilt of a dagger.

When I again knew that I was alive, I turned over and sat up. Several
men--bourgeois, vagabonds, menials, and such--were standing around,
looking down at me and talking of the affray. I looked for Bussy and De
Quelus, but did not see either. At a little distance away was another
group, and people walked from that group to mine, and _vice versa._

"Where is M. Bussy?" I asked.

"Oho, this one is all right!" cried one, who might have been a clerk or a
student; "he asks questions. You wish to know about Bussy, eh? You ought
to have seen him gallop from the field without a scratch, while his
enemies pulled themselves together and took to their heels."

"What is that, over there?" I inquired, rising to my feet, and
discovering that I was not badly hurt.

"A dead man who was as much alive as any of us before he ran to help M.
Bussy. It is always the outside man who gets the worst of it, merely for
trying to be useful. There come the soldiers of the watch, after the
fight is over."

I walked over to the other group and knelt by the body on the ground. It
was that of a gentleman whom I had sometimes seen in Bussy's company. He
was indeed dead. The blood was already thickening about the hole that a
sword had made in his doublet.

The next day the whole court was talking of the wrath of the Duke of
Anjou at this assault upon his first gentleman-in-waiting. I was ashamed
of having profited by the influence of De Quelus, who, I found, had not
recognized me on the previous evening. Anjou's rage continued deep. He
showed it by absenting himself from the wedding of Saint-Luc, one of De
Quelus's companions in the King's favor and in the attack on Bussy.
Catherine, knowing how the King's authority was weakened by the squabbles
between him and his brother, took the Duke out to Vincennes for a walk in
the park and a dinner at the château, that his temper might cool. She
persuaded him to show a conciliatory spirit and attend the marriage ball
to be held that night in the great hall of the Louvre. This was more than
she could persuade Marguerite to do, who accompanied mother and son to
Vincennes, sharing the feelings of the Duke for three reasons,--her love
for him, her hatred for her brother, the King, and her friendship for
Bussy d'Amboise. It would have been well had the Duke been, like his
sister, proof against his mother's persuasion. For, when he arrived at
the ball, he was received by the King's gentlemen with derisive looks,
and one of them, smiling insolently in the Duke's piggish, pockmarked
face, said, "Doubtless you have come so late because the night is most
favorable to your appearance."

Suppose yourself in the Duke's place, and imagine his resentment. He
turned white and left the ball. Catherine must have had to use her utmost
powers to keep peace in the royal family the next day.

On the second morning after the ball, I heard, from De Rilly, that the
King had put his brother under arrest, and kept him guarded in the Duke's
own apartment, lest he should leave Paris and lead the rebellion which
the King had to fear, not only on its own account, but because of the
further disrepute into which it would bring him with his people. The
King, doubtless, soon saw, or was made to see, that this conduct towards
his brother--who had many supporters in France and was then affianced to
Queen Elizabeth of England--would earn only condemnation; for, on the day
after the arrest, he caused the court to assemble in Catherine's
apartments, and there De Quelus went ironically through the form of an
apology to the Duke, and a reconciliation with Bussy. The exaggerated
embrace which Bussy gave De Quelus made everybody laugh, and showed that
this peace-making was not to be taken seriously. Soon after it, Bussy
d'Amboise and several of his followers left Paris.

The next thing I saw, which had bearing on the difference between the
King and Monsieur his brother, was the procession of penitents in which
Monsieur accompanied the King through the streets, after the hollow
reconciliation. I could scarcely convince myself that the
sanctimonious-looking person, in coarse penitential robe, heading the
procession through the mire and over the stones of Paris, from shrine to
shrine, was the dainty King whom I had beheld in sumptuous raiment in the
gallery of the Louvre. The Duke of Anjou, who wore ordinary attire,
seemed to take to this mummery like a bear, ready to growl at any moment.
His demeanor was all that the King's gentlemen could have needed as a
subject for their quips and jokes.

Two evenings after this, I was drinking in the public room of an inn,
near my lodgings in the town, when a young gentleman named Malerain, who,
though not a Scot, was yet one of the Scotch bodyguard, sat down at my
table to share a bottle with me.

"More amusement at the palace," he said to me. "To think that, any one of
these nights, I may be compelled to use force against the person of the
King's brother, and that some day he may be King! I wonder if he will
then bear malice?"

"What is the new trouble at the Louvre?" I asked.

"It is only the old trouble. Monsieur has been muttering again, I
suppose, and this, with the fact that Bussy d'Amboise keeps so quiet
outside of Paris, has led the King to fear that Monsieur has planned to
escape to the country. At least, it has been ordered that every member of
the Duke's household, who does not have to attend at his retiring, must
leave the palace at night; and Messieurs de l'Archant, De Losses, and the
other captains, have received orders from the King that, if Monsieur
attempts to go out after dark, he must be stopped. Suppose it becomes my
duty to stop him? That will be pleasant, will it not? To make it worse, I
am devoted to a certain damsel who is devoted to Queen Marguerite, who is
devoted to Monsieur, her brother. And here I am inviting misfortune,
too, by drinking wine on the first Friday in Lent. I ought to have
followed the example of the King, who has been doing penance all day in
the chapel of the Hôtel de Bourbon."

"Let us hope that the King will be rewarded for his penance by the
submission of Monsieur. I, for one, hope that if Monsieur attempts to get
away, he will run across some Scotchman of the Guard who will not scruple
to impede a prince of France. For if he should lead a Huguenot army
against the King, I, as one of the Guards, might be called on to oppose
my fellow-Protestants."

"Oh, the Duke does not wish to join the Huguenots. All he desires is to
go to the Netherlands, where a throne awaits him if he will do a little
fighting for it."

"I fear he would rather revenge himself on the King for what he has had
to endure at court."

Presently Malerain left to go on duty at the Louvre, and soon I followed,
to take up my station in sight of the window where Mlle. d'Arency slept.
The night, which had set in, was very dark, and gusts of cold wind came
up from the Seine. The place where, in my infatuation and affectation, I
kept my lover's watch, was quite deserted. The Louvre loomed up gigantic
before me, the lights gleaming feebly in a few of its many windows,
serving less to relieve its sombre aspect than to suggest unknown, and,
perhaps, sinister doings within.

I laugh at myself now for having maintained those vigils by night beneath
a court lady's window; but you will presently see that, but for this
boyish folly, my body would have been sleeping in its grave these many
years past, and I should have never come to my greatest happiness.

Suddenly my attention was attracted to another window than that on which
I had fixed my gaze. This other window appertained to the apartments of
the King's sister, Queen Marguerite, and what caused me to transfer my
attention to it was the noise of its being opened. Then a head was thrust
out of it,--the small and graceful head of Marguerite herself. She looked
down at the moat beneath, and in either direction, and apparently saw no
one, I being quite in shadow; then she drew her head in.

Immediately a rope was let down into the moat, whose dry bed was about
five times a tall man's length below the window, which was on the second
story. Out of the window came a man of rather squat figure, who let
himself boldly and easily down the rope. As soon as he had reached the
bed of the moat, he was followed out of the window and down the rope by a
second man, who came bunglingly, as if in great trepidation. This person,
in his haste, let go the rope before he was quite down, but landed on
his feet. Then a third figure came out from the chamber and down the
cable, whereupon Marguerite's head again appeared in the opening, and I
could see the heads of two waiting-women behind her. But the Queen of
Navarre manifestly had no intention of following the three men. These now
clambered up the side of the moat, and the one who had been first down
turned and waved her a silent adieu, which she returned with a graceful
gesture of her partly bare arm. The three men then rapidly plunged into
one of the abutting streets and were gone. All this time I stood inactive
and unobserved.

Marguerite remained at the window to cast another look around. Suddenly,
from out the darkness at the base of the Louvre, as if risen from the
very earth at the bottom of the moat, sprang the figure of a man, who
started toward the guard-house as if his life depended on his speed.
Marguerite drew her head in at once with a movement of great alarm. An
instant later the rope was drawn up and the window closed.

Two conjectures came into my head, one after the other, each in a flash.
The one was that Marguerite had availed herself of the fraternal quarrel
that occupied the King's attention to plan an escape to her husband, King
Henri of Navarre, and that these three men had gone from a consultation
in her apartments to further the project. The other conjecture was that
they were but some of Monsieur's followers who had transgressed the new
rule, requiring their departure from the palace at nightfall, and had
taken this means of leaving to avoid discovery. If the former conjecture
embodied the truth, my sympathies were with the plot; for it little
pleased me that the wife of our Huguenot leader should remain at the
French court, a constant subject of scandalous gossip. If the second
guess was correct, I was glad of an opportunity to avert, even slight,
trouble from the wilful but charming head of Marguerite. In either case,
I might serve a beautiful woman, a queen, the wife of a Huguenot king.
Certainly, if that man, paid spy or accidental interloper, should reach
the guard-house with information that three men had left the Louvre by
stealth, the three men might be overtaken and imprisoned, and great
annoyance brought to Marguerite. All this occupied my mind but an
instant. Before the man had taken ten steps, I was after him.

He heard me coming, looked around, saw my hand already upon my
sword-hilt, and shouted, "The guard! Help!" I saw that, to avoid a
disclosure, I must silence him speedily; yet I dared not kill him, for he
might be somebody whose dead body found so near the palace would lead to
endless investigations, and in the end involve Marguerite, for suppose
that the King had set him to watch her? Therefore I called to him, "Stop
and face me, or I will split you as we run!"

The man turned at once, as if already feeling my sword-point entering his
back. Seeing that I had not even drawn that weapon, he, himself, drew a
dagger and raised it to strike. But I was too quick and too long of arm
for him. With my gloved fist I gave him a straight blow on the side of
the chin, and he dropped like a felled tree, at the very moat's edge,
over which I rolled him that he might recover in safety from the effects
of the shock.

I knew that, when he should awake, he would not dare inform the guard,
for the three men would then be far away, and he would have no evidence
to support his story. He would only put himself in danger of having
fabricated a false accusation against the King's sister.

I deemed it best to go from the vicinity of the Louvre at once, and I did
so, with a last wistful look at the windows behind which Mlle. d'Arency
might or might not be reposing. I did not reappear there until the next
morning. The first person I then met was Malerain, who was coming from
the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he had been making up for
previous neglect of devotions.

"Well," I said, as I stood before him, and twisted my up-shooting
mustaches, in unconscious imitation of him, "I trust you found your
quarter on duty last night an easy one. You must thank me for saving you
some labor."

"What do you mean?" he asked, with a look of sudden interest.

"Nothing, only that you might have been called on to give chase to some
flying bird or other, if I had not knocked down a rascal who was running
to inform the guard."

"And you saw the bird fly?" he said, with increasing astonishment.

"From an opening in that great cage," I replied, looking towards
the Louvre.

"Then I, for myself, am glad you knocked down the said rascal who would
have made falçons of us to bring the bird down. But be more cautious.
Suppose what you did should reach the ears of the King?"

"Why should the King concern himself?"

"Monsieur, is it possible that you don't know that the bird that flew
from the Louvre last night was the Duke of Anjou?"

It was now my turn to stare in astonishment.

"But," I said, "what use for him to leave the palace? There would be the
gates of Paris to pass."

"There is more than one way to cross the fortifications of Paris,
especially when one has such an ally as Bussy d'Amboise, free, to arrange
matters. Monsieur is at this moment certainly on his way to some
stronghold of his own. The King is mad with rage. Queen Marguerite is
looking innocent and astonished, but I'll wager she had a hand in this
evasion. My friend, I am under obligations to you!"

"How?"

"Why, since Queen Marguerite undoubtedly rejoices at her favorite
brother's escape, and you helped to make it good, she owes you gratitude.
So do all her maids, who, naturally, share in her feelings and benefit by
her joy. Now, that gratitude extends of course to your friends, of whom I
am one. Therefore a good turn is due me from one of those maids in
particular, and for that I am obliged to you!"

I laughed at this fantastic extension of a debt of gratitude.
"Doubtless," I said; "but since neither Marguerite nor the maid knows
anything about my share in the matter, I don't see how you are going to
collect the debt."

Malerain said nothing, but there was already that in his mind which,
absurd as it might seem at that time, was to save me when death should
rise threateningly about me on every side. It is a world in which much
comes from little.

I was somewhat agitated at realizing that I had been the means of aiding
an escape which might result in opposing the troops of the King to those
of certain Huguenot leaders; but this thought was suddenly driven from my
mind by a sight which caused me to leave Malerain abruptly, and make for
one of the streets that led from the Louvre to the midst of the town.

It was Mlle. d'Arency, mounted on a plumed horse, with tassellated
trappings, which was led by a young equerry who wore Catherine's colors,
and followed by two mounted lackeys in similar livery. Beside her rode
the stout, elderly woman who usually attended her. Mlle. d'Arency wore a
mask of black velvet, but that could not conceal her identity from eyes
to which every line of her pretty head, every motion of her graceful
person, had become familiar in actual contemplation and in dreams. Her
cloak and gown were, alike, of embroidered velvet of the color of red
wine, as was the velvet toque which sat perched on her dark brown hair.

I followed her at some distance, resolved to find an opportunity for a
seemingly accidental meeting. I supposed that she was going to visit some
of the shops,--perhaps for the Queen-mother, perhaps for herself.

She led me on and on, until I began to wonder what could be her
destination. She avoided the streets of fine shops, such as were
patronized by the court, skirted market-places, and continued, in a
general easterly direction, until she had crossed both the Rue St. Denis
and the Rue St. Martin. At last, turning out of the Rue St. Antoine, she
reached, by a little street lined with bakeries, a quiet square before a
small church, of which I never even learned the name. She and the stout
woman dismounted, and entered the church, leaving her male attendants
outside with the horse.

"Oho," I mused, stopping at the door of a pastry-cook's at the place
where the little street joined the square; "she chooses an obscure place
for her devotions. Evidently she prefers to mingle solitude with them, so
I must not disturb her."

I decided, therefore, to wait at the pastry-cook's till she should come
out, and then to encounter her as if by chance. I would have, at least, a
word in payment for having come so far afoot.

The pastry-cook must have been convinced of two things before Mlle.
d'Arency came out of church: first, that his fortune was made if this new
customer, myself, should only continue to patronize him; second, that
there existed, at least, one human stomach able to withstand unlimited
quantities of his wares.

I stood back in the shop, devouring one doughy invention after another,
with my ear alert for the sound of her horse's hoofs on the stones. At
last it occurred to me that she might have left the square by some other
street. I made for the door of the shop to look. As I did so, a man
rapidly passed the shop, going from the square towards the Rue St.
Antoine. Was not that figure known to me? I hastened to the street. My
first glance was towards the church. There stood her horse, and her three
attendants were walking up and down in the sunlight. Then I looked after
the man; I thought that the figure looked like that of De Noyard.

He disappeared into the Rue St. Antoine, having given me no opportunity
to see his face. I would have followed, to make sure, roused into an
intolerable jealousy at the idea of a secret meeting between Mlle.
d'Arency and him, but that I now heard the full melodious voice of the
lady herself. Looking around, I saw her on the steps of the church, with
her middle-aged companion. At that instant her eyes met mine.

I advanced, with an exaggerated bow, sweeping the stones of the street
with the plumes of my hat.

"So it is true!" I said, making no effort to control my agitation, and
restraining my voice only that the lackeys might not hear; "you love
that man!"

She looked at me steadily for a moment, and then said, "Do you mean M.
de Noyard?"

"Ah, you admit it!"

"I admit nothing. But if I did love him, what right would you have to
call me to account?"

"The right of a man who adores you, mademoiselle."

"That is no right at all. A man's right concerning a woman must be
derived from her own actions. But come inside the church, monsieur."

She made a gesture to her attendants, and reentered the church. I
followed her. We stood together before the font in the dim light.

"And now," she continued, facing me, "suppose I grant that I have so
acted as to give you a right to question me; what then? Is it my fault
that you have followed me this morning? Is it, then, any more my fault
that I have been followed, also, by M. de Noyard?"

"But he must have been here before you."

"What does that prove? A score of people in the Louvre knew yesterday
that I was coming to this church to-day."

"But so deserted a church,--so out of the way! Who would come here from
the Louvre but for a tryst?"

She smiled, indulgently. "Can a thing have no cause except the obvious
one?" she said. "I visit this church once every month, because, obscure
though it be, it is associated with certain events in the history of my
ancestors."

"But," I went on, though beginning to feel relieved, "if M. de Noyard was
thrusting his presence on you, why did he leave before you did?"

"Probably because he knew that I would not leave the church while he
remained to press his company upon me outside."

The low tones that we had to use, on account of our surroundings, gave
our conversation an air of confidence and secrecy that was delicious to
me; and now her voice fell even lower, when she added:

"I take the pains to explain these things to you, monsieur, because I do
not wish you to think that I have intrigues;" and she regarded me fixedly
with her large gray eyes, which in the dimness of the place were darker
and more lustrous than usual.

Delightfully thrilled at this, I made to take her hand and stoop to kiss
it, but stopped for a last doubt.

"Mademoiselle," I said, "I think you only the most adorable woman in the
world. But there is one thing which has cost me many a sleepless hour,
many a jealous surmise. If I could be reassured as to the nature of your
errand that night when I first saw you--"

"Oh!" she laughed, "I was coming from an astrologer's."

"But you were not coming from the direction of Ruggieri's house."

"There are many astrologers in Paris, besides Ruggieri. Although the
Queen-mother relies implicitly on him, one may sometimes get a more
pleasing prediction from another; or, another may be clear on a point on
which he is vague."

"But the hour--"

"I took the time when I was not on duty, and he kept me late. It was for
a friend that I visited the astrologer,--a friend who was required in the
palace all that evening. The astrologer had to be consulted that night,
as my friend wished to be guided in a course that she would have to take
the next morning. Now, Monsieur Curiosity, are you satisfied?"

This time I took her hand and pressed my lips upon it.

She was silent for a moment, noting the look of admiration on my face.
Then, quickly, and in little more than a whisper, she said:

"I have answered your questions, though not admitting your right to ask
them. Would you know how to gain that right?"

"Tell me!" I said, my heart beating rapidly with elation.

"Challenge M. de Noyard, and kill him!"

I stared in astonishment.

"Now you may know whether or not I love him," she added.

"But, mademoiselle,--why--"

"Ah, that is the one thing about which I must always refuse to be
questioned! I ask you this service. Will you grant it?"

"If he has given you offence," I said, "certainly I will seek him at
once."

"Not a word of me is to be said between you! He must not know that I have
spoken to you."

"But a man is not to be killed without reason."

"A pretext is easily invented."

"Certainly,--a pretext to hide the cause of a quarrel from the world. But
the real cause ought to be known to both antagonists."

"I shall not discuss what ought or ought not to be. I ask you, will you
fight this man and try to kill him? I request nothing unusual,--men are
killed every day in duels. You are a good swordsman; Bussy d'Amboise
himself has said so. Come! will you do this?" She looked up at me with a
slight frown of repressed petulance.

"If you will assure me that he has affronted you, and permit me to let
him know, privately, the cause of my quarrel."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with irritation, "must a lady give a hundred reasons
when she requests a service of a gentleman?"

"One sufficient reason, when it is a service like this."

"Well, I shall give none. I desire his death,--few gentlemen would ask a
further reason."

"I had not thought you so cruel, mademoiselle, as to desire the death
of any man."

"God forbid that I should desire the death of any other man! So,
monsieur, I must understand that you refuse to serve me in this?"

Her contemptuous look made me sigh. "Can you not see, mademoiselle, that
to resolve deliberately and secretly on a man's death, and with
premeditation to create a pretext for a challenge, is little better than
assassination?"

"A fine excuse to avoid risking your life!"

Again I had to endure a look of profound scorn from her.

"Mademoiselle," I replied, patiently, "I would that you might see how
ready I am to fight when an affront is given me or some one needs a
defender."

"Oh!" she said, with an ironical smile. "Then to show yourself a lion
against De Noyard, you require only that he shall affront you, or that
some one shall need a defender against him! Suppose that _I_ should ever
be in such need?"

"You know that in your defence I would fight an army."

Her smile now lost its irony, and she assumed a look of conciliation,
which I was both surprised and rejoiced to behold.

"Well, monsieur, it is pleasant to know that, if you will not take the
offensive for me, you will, at least, act readily on the defensive if
the occasion comes."

Much relieved at the turn the conversation had taken, I now undertook to
continue it to my advantage. After some bantering, maintained with gaiety
on her part, she said that she must return to the Louvre. Then, as she
would not have me accompany her in the streets, I begged her to appoint
another meeting. She evaded my petition at first, but, when I took her
hand and refused to release it until she should grant my request, she
said, after a little submissive shrug of her shoulders:

"Very well. Follow me, at a distance, from this church, and observe a
house before which I shall stop for a moment as if to adjust my cloak. It
is a house that has been taken by a friend of mine, one of the
Queen-mother's ladies. I shall be there tomorrow afternoon."

"Alas! To-morrow I shall be on duty till six in the evening."

"Then come at seven. Knock three times on the street door." And with that
she slipped her hand from mine, and hastened lightly out of the church. I
stood alone by the font, delighted and bewildered. There was so much to
mystify me that I did not even search my mind for explanations. I thought
my happiness about to be attained, and left it for the future to
explain,--as it did!




CHAPTER IV.

HOW LA TOURNOIRE WAS ENLIGHTENED IN THE DARK


It was already dark when I started, on the evening appointed, for the
house indicated by Mlle. d'Arency. I went without attendance, as was my
custom, relying on my sword, my alertness of eye, and my nimbleness of
foot. I had engaged a lackey, for whose honesty De Rilly had vouched, but
he was now absent on a journey to La Tournoire, whither I had sent him
with a message to my old steward. I have often wondered at the good
fortune which preserved me from being waylaid, by thieving rascals, on my
peregrinations, by night, through Paris streets. About this very time
several gentlemen, who went well attended, were set upon and robbed
almost within sight of the quarters of the provost's watch; and some of
these lost their lives as well as the goods upon their persons. Yet I
went fearlessly, and was never even threatened with attack.

On the way to the house, I reviewed, for the hundredth time, the
conversation in the church. There were different conjectures to be made.
Mlle. d'Arency may have made that surprising request merely to convince
me that she did not love De Noyard, and intending, subsequently, to
withdraw it; or it may have sprung from a caprice, a desire to ascertain
how far I was at her bidding,--women have, thoughtlessly, set men such
tasks from mere vanity, lacking the sympathy to feel how precious to its
owner is any human life other than their own;--or she may have had some
substantial reason to desire his death, something to gain by it,
something to lose through his continuing to live. Perhaps she had
encouraged his love and had given him a promise from which his death
would be the means of release easiest to her,--for women will, sometimes,
to secure the smallest immunity for themselves, allow the greatest
calamities to others. This arises less from an active cruelty than from a
lack of imagination, an inability to suppose themselves in the places of
others. I soon felt the uselessness of searching, in my own mind, for the
motive of Mlle. d'Arency's desire, or pretence of desire, for the death
of De Noyard. What had passed between them I could not guess. So, after
the manner of youth, I gave up the question, satisfied with knowing that
I had before me an interview with a charming woman, and willing to wait
for disclosures until events should offer them.

The street in which the house was situated was entirely dark and
deserted when I stepped into it. The house was wider than its neighbors,
and each of its upper stories had two chambers overlooking the street. At
the window of one of these chambers, on the second story, a light shone.
It was the only light visible in any of the houses, all of which frowned
down menacingly; and hence it was like a beacon, a promise of cheer and
warmth in the midst of this black, cold Paris.

I knocked three times on the street door, as she had directed me.
Presently the wicket at the side of the door was opened, and a light was
held up to it, that my face might be seen by a pair of eyes that peered
out through the aperture. A moment later the bolts of the door were
drawn, and I was let in by the possessor of the eyes. This was the
elderly woman who always attended Mlle. d'Arency when the latter was
abroad from the palace. She had invariably shown complete indifference to
me, not appearing aware of my existence, and this time she said only:

"This way, monsieur."

Protecting the flame of her lamp with her hand, she led me forward to a
narrow staircase and we ascended, stopping at a landing on which opened
the second story chamber whose street window had shone with light. She
gave three knocks at the door of this chamber. At the last knock, her
lamp went out.

"Curse the wind!" she muttered.

So I stood with her, on the landing, in darkness, expecting the door in
front of me to open, immediately, and admit me to the lighted chamber.

Suddenly I heard a piercing scream from within the chamber. It was the
voice of Mlle. d'Arency.

"Help! Help!" she cried. "My God, he will kill me!"

This was followed by one long series of screams, and I could hear her
running about the chamber as though she were fleeing from a pursuer.

I stood for an instant, startled.

"Good God!" cried the old woman at my elbow. "An assassin! Her enemies
have planned it! Monsieur, save her life!"

And the dame began pounding on the door, as if to break into the room to
assist her mistress.

I needed no more than this example. Discovering that the door was
locked on the inside, and assuming that Mlle. d'Arency, in the flight
which she maintained around the room, could not get an opportunity to
draw the bolt, I threw my weight forward, and sent the door flying open
on its hinges.

To my astonishment, the chamber was in complete darkness. Mlle. d'Arency
had doubtless knocked the light over in her movements around the room.

She was still screaming at the top of her voice, and running from one
side to another. The whiteness of the robe she wore made it possible to
descry her in the absence of light.

I stood for a second, just inside the threshold, and drew my sword. At
first, I could not see by whom or what she was threatened; but I heard
heavy footsteps, as of some one following her in her wild course about
the place. Then I made out, vaguely, the figure of a man.

"Fear not, mademoiselle!" I cried.

"Oh, monsieur!" she screamed. "Save me! Save my life!"

I thrust my sword at the figure of the man. An ejaculation of pain told
me that it touched flesh. A second later, I heard a sword slide from its
scabbard, and felt the wind of a wild thrust in my direction.

At this moment, Mlle d'Arency appeared between me and the street window
of the room. There was enough light from the sky to enable her head and
shoulders to stand out darkly against the space of the window. Her head
was moving with the violent coming and going of her breath, and her
shoulders were drawn up in an attitude of the greatest fright. Is it any
wonder that I did not stop to ascertain who or what her assailant might
be, or how he had come there? I could make out only that the man in the
darkness was a large and heavy one, and wielded a swift blade. All other
thoughts were lost in the immediate necessity of dealing with him. The
extreme terror that she showed gave me a sense of his being a formidable
antagonist; the prompt response that he had given to my own thrust showed
that he was not to be quelled by a mere command. In fine, there was
nothing to do but fight him as best I could in the blackness; and I was
glad for so early an opportunity to show Mlle. d'Arency how ready I was
to do battle for her when I found her threatened with danger.

From the absence of any sound or other demonstration, except what was
made by Mlle. d'Arency and the man and myself, I knew that we three were
the only ones in the room. The elderly woman had not entered with me,--a
fact whose strangeness, in view of the great desire she had first evinced
to reach her mistress's side, did not occur to me until afterward.

I made another thrust at the man, but, despite the darkness, he parried
it with his sword; and a quick backward step was all that saved me from
his prompt reply. Angered at having to give ground in the presence of the
lady, I now attacked in turn, somewhat recklessly, but with such good
luck as to drive him back almost to the window. Mlle. d'Arency gave
another terrified scream when he came near her, and she ran past me
towards the door of the apartment. Both my antagonist and myself were
now beginning to have a clearer impression of each other's outlines, and
there was sharp sword-work between us by the window. As we stood there,
breathing rapidly with our exertion and excitement, I heard the door
close through which I had entered. I knew from this that Mlle. d'Arency
had left the chamber, and I was glad that she was out of danger. It was
natural that she should close the door, instinct impelling her to put any
possible barrier between her assailant and herself.

The man and myself were alone together to maintain the fight which,
having once entered, and being roused to the mood of contest, I had no
thought of discontinuing now that Mlle. d'Arency was out of immediate
danger. It had reached a place at which it could be terminated only by
the disarming, the death, or the disabling of one of us.

I gradually acquired the power of knowing all my opponent's movements,
despite the darkness. I supposed that he was equipped with dagger as well
as with sword, but as he made no move to draw the shorter weapon, I did
not have recourse to mine. Though I would not take an advantage over him,
even in the circumstances, yet I was not willing to be at a disadvantage.
Therefore, as he was not encumbered with cloak or mantle, I employed a
breathing moment to tear off my own cloak and throw it aside, not
choosing to use it on my left arm as a shield unless he had been
similarly guarded.

So we lunged and parried in the darkness, making no sound but by our
heavy breathing and an occasional ejaculation and the tramping of our
feet, the knocking of our bodies against unseen pieces of furniture, and
the clashing of our blades when they met. Each of us fenced cautiously at
times, and at times took chances recklessly.

Finally, in falling back, he came to a sudden stop against a table, and
the collision disturbed for an instant his control over his body. In that
instant I felt a soft resistance encounter my sword and yield to it. At
once, with a feeling of revulsion, I drew my sword out of the casing that
his flesh had provided, and stood back. Something wet and warm sprinkled
my face. The man gave a low moan and staggered sideways over towards the
window. Then he plunged forward on his face. I stooped beside him and
turned him over on his back, wetting my gloves with the blood that gushed
from his wound and soaked his doublet. At that moment a splash of
moonlight appeared on the floor, taking the shape of the window. His head
and shoulders lay in this illumined space. I sprang back in horror,
crying out his name:

"De Noyard! My God, it is you!"

"Yes, monsieur," he gasped, "it is De Noyard. I have been trapped. I
ought to have suspected."

"But I do not understand, monsieur. Surely you could not have attacked
Mlle. d'Arency?"

"Attacked her! I came here by her appointment!"

"But her cry for help?"

"It took me by complete surprise. There was a knock on the door--"

"Yes,--mine. I, too, came by her appointment!"

"Mademoiselle instantly put out the light and began to scream. I thought
that the knock frightened her; then that she was mad. I followed to calm
her. You entered; you know the rest."

"But what does it mean?"

"Can you not see?" he said, with growing faintness. "We have been
tricked,--I, by her pretense of love and by this appointment, to my
death; you, by a similar appointment and her screams, to make yourself my
slayer. I ought to have known! she belongs to Catherine, to the
Queen-mother. Alas, monsieur! easily fooled is he who loves a woman!"

Then I remembered what De Rilly had told me,--that De Noyard's counsels
to the Duke of Guise were an obstacle to Catherine's design of
conciliating that powerful leader, who aspired to the throne on which her
son was seated.

"No, no, monsieur!" I cried, unwilling to admit Mlle. d'Arency capable
of such a trick, or myself capable of being so duped. "It cannot be
that; if they had desired your death, they would have hired assassins to
waylay you."

Yet I knew that he was right. The strange request that Mlle. d'Arency had
made of me in the church was now explained.

A kind of smile appeared, for a moment, on De Noyard's face, struggling
with his expression of weakness and pain.

"Who would go to the expense of hiring assassins," he said, "when honest
gentlemen can be tricked into doing the work for nothing? Moreover, when
you hire assassins, you take the risk of their selling your secret to the
enemy. They are apt to leave traces, too, and the secret instigator of a
deed may defeat its object by being found out."

"Then I have to thank God that you are not dead. You will recover,
monsieur."

"I fear not, my son. I do not know how much blood I lose at every word I
speak. _Parbleu_! you have the art of making a mighty hole with that toy
of yours, monsieur!"

This man, so grave and severe in the usual affairs of life, could take on
a tone of pleasantry while enduring pain and facing death.

"Monsieur," I cried, in great distress, "you must not die. I will save
you. I shall go for a surgeon. Oh, my God, monsieur, tell me what to do
to save your life!"

"You will find my lackeys, two of them, at the cabaret at the next
corner. It is closed, but knock hard and call for Jacques. Send him to
me, and the other for a surgeon."

De Noyard was manifestly growing weaker, and he spoke with great
difficulty. Not daring to trust to any knowledge of my own as to
immediate or temporary treatment of his wound, I made the greatest haste
to follow his directions. I ran out of the chamber, down the stairs, and
out to the street, finding the doors neither locked nor barred, and
meeting no human being. Mlle. d'Arency and her companion had silently
disappeared.

I went, in my excitement, first to the wrong corner. Then, discovering my
blunder, I retraced my steps, and at last secured admittance to the place
where De Noyard's valets tarried.

To the man who opened the door, I said, "Are you Jacques, the serving-man
of Monsieur de Noyard?"

"I am nobody's serving man," was the reply, in a tone of indignation; but
a second man who had come to the door spoke up, "I am Jacques."

"Hallo, Monsieur de la Tournoire," came a voice from a group of men
seated at a table. "Come and join us, and show my friends how you
fellows of the French Guards can drink!"

It was De Rilly, very merry with wine.

"I cannot, De Rilly," I replied, stepping into the place. "I have very
important business elsewhere." Then I turned to Jacques and said,
quietly, "Go, at once, to your master, and send your comrade for a
surgeon to follow you there. Do you know the house in which he is?"

The servant made no answer, but turned pale. "Come!" he said to another
servant, who had joined him from an obscure corner of the place. The two
immediately lighted torches and left, from which fact I inferred that
Jacques knew where to find his master.

"What is all this mystery?" cried De Rilly, jovially, rising and coming
over to me, while the man who had opened the door, and who was evidently
the host, closed it and moved away. "Come, warm yourself with a bottle!
Why, my friend, you are as white as a ghost, and you look as if you had
been perspiring blood!"

"I must go, at once, De Rilly. It is a serious matter."

"Then hang me if I don't come, too!" he said, suddenly sobered, and he
grasped his cloak and sword. "That is, unless I should be _de trop_."

"Come. I thank you," I said; and we left the place together.

"Whose blood is it?" asked De Rilly, as we hurried along the narrow
street, back to the house.

"That of M. de Noyard."

"What? A duel?"

"A kind of duel,--a strange mistake!

"The devil! Won't the Queen-mother give thanks! And won't the Duke of
Guise be angry!"

"M. de Noyard is not dead yet. His wound may not be fatal."

I led the way into the house and up the steps to the apartment. It was
now lighted up by the torch which Jacques had brought. De Noyard was
still lying in the position in which he had been when I left him. The
servant stood beside him, looking down at his face, and holding the torch
so as to light up the features.

"How do you feel now, monsieur?" I asked, hastening forward.

There was no answer. The servant raised his eyes to me, and said, in a
tone of unnatural calmness, "Do you not see that he is dead, M. de la
Tournoire?"

Horror-stricken, I knelt beside the body. The heart no longer beat; the
face was still,--the eyes stared between unquivering lids, in the light
of the torch.

"Oh, my God! I have killed him!" I murmured.

"Come away. You can do nothing here," said De Rilly, quietly. He caught
me by the shoulder, and led me out of the room.

"Let us leave this neighborhood as soon as possible," he said, as we
descended the stairs. "It is most unfortunate that the valet knows your
name. He heard me speak it at the tavern, and he will certainly recall
also that I hailed you as one of the French Guards."

"Why is that unfortunate?" I asked, still deprived of thought by the
horror of having killed so honorable a gentleman, who had not harmed me.

"Because he can let the Duke of Guise know exactly on whom to seek
vengeance for the death of De Noyard."

"The Duke of Guise will seek vengeance?" I asked, mechanically, as we
emerged from that fatal house, and turned our backs upon it.

"Assuredly. He will demand your immediate punishment. You must bespeak
the King's pardon as soon as possible. That is necessary, to protect
oneself, when one has killed one's antagonist in a duel. The edicts still
forbid duels, and one may be made to pay for a victory with one's life,
if the victim's friends demand the enforcement of the law,--as in this
case the Duke of Guise surely will demand."

"M. de Quelus can, doubtless, get me the King's pardon," I said, turning
my mind from the past to the future, from regret to apprehension. The
necessity of considering my situation prevented me from contemplating, at
that time, the perfidy of Mlle. d'Arency, the blindness with which I had
let myself be deceived, or the tragic and humiliating termination of my
great love affair.

"If M. de Quelus is with you, you are safe from the authorities. You will
then have only to guard against assassination at the hands of Guise's
followers."

"I shall go to M. de Quelus early in the morning," I said.

"By all means. And you will not go near your lodgings until you have
assured your safety against arrest. You must reach the King before the
Duke can see him; for the Duke will not fail to hint that, in killing De
Noyard, you were the instrument of the King or of the Queen-mother. To
disprove that, the King would have to promise the Duke to give you over
to the authorities. And now that I think of it, you must make yourself
safe before the Queen-mother learns of this affair, for she will advise
the King to act in such a way that the Duke cannot accuse him of
protecting you. My friend, it suddenly occurs to me that you have got
into a rather deep hole!"

"De Rilly," I asked, with great concern, "do you think that I was the
instrument of Catherine de Medici in this?"

"Certainly not!" was the emphatic answer. "The fight was about a woman,
was it not?"

"A woman was the cause of it," I answered, with a heavy sigh. "But how do
you know?"

"To tell the truth," he said, "many people have been amused to see
you make soft eyes at a certain lady, and to see De Noyard do
likewise. Neither young men like you, nor older men like him, can
conceal these things."

Thus I saw that even De Rilly did not suspect the real truth, and this
showed me how deep was the design of which I had been the tool. Everybody
would lay the quarrel to rivalry in love. The presence of so manifest a
cause would prevent people from hitting on the truth. Mlle. d'Arency had
trusted to my youth, agility, and supposed skill to give me the victory
in that fight in the dark; and then to circumstances to disclose who had
done the deed. "It was De Noyard's jealous rival," everybody would say.
Having found a sufficient motive, no one would take the trouble to seek
the real source,--to trace the affair to the instigation of Catherine de
Medici. The alert mind of De Rilly, it is true, divining the equally keen
mind of the Duke of Guise, had predicted that Guise might pretend a
belief in such instigation, and so force the King to avenge De Noyard,
in self-vindication. Mlle. d'Arency well knew that I would not
incriminate a woman, even a perfidious one, and counted also on my
natural unwillingness to reveal myself as the dupe that I had been.
Moreover, it would not be possible for me to tell the truth in such a way
that it would appear probable. And what would I gain by telling the
truth? The fact would remain that I was the slayer of De Noyard, and, by
accusing the instigators, I would but compel them to demonstrate
non-complicity; which they could do only by clamoring for my punishment.
And how could I prove that things were not exactly as they had
appeared,--that the woman's screams were not genuine: that she was not
actually threatened by De Noyard? Clearly as I saw the truth, clearly as
De Noyard had seen it in his last moments, it could never be established
by evidence.

With bitter self-condemnation, and profound rancor against the woman
whose tool I had been, I realized what an excellent instrument she had
found for her purpose of ridding her mistress of an obstacle.

It was not certain that the King, himself, had been privy to his mother's
design of causing De Noyard's death. In such matters she often acted
without consulting him. Therefore, when De Quelus should present my case
to him as merely that of a duel over a love affair, Henri would perhaps
give me his assurances of safety, at once, and would hold himself bound
in honor to stand by them. All depended on securing these before
Catherine or the Duke of Guise should have an opportunity to influence
him to another course.

I felt, as I walked along with De Rilly, that, if I should obtain
immunity from the punishment prescribed by edict, I could rely on
myself for protection against any private revenge that the Duke of
Guise might plan.

De Rilly took me to a lodging in the Rue de L'Autruche, not far from my
own, which was in the Rue St. Honore. Letting myself be commanded
entirely by him, I went to bed, but not to sleep. I was anxious for
morning to come, that I might be off to the Louvre. I lay speculating on
the chances of my seeing De Quelus, and of his undertaking to obtain the
King's protection for me. Though appalled at what I had done, I had no
wish to die,--the youth in me cried for life; and the more I desired
life, the more fearful I became of failing to get De Quelus's
intercession.

I grew many years older in that night. In a single flash, I had beheld
things hitherto unknown to me: the perfidy of which a woman was capable,
the falseness of that self-confidence and vanity which may delude a man
into thinking himself the conqueror of a woman's heart, the danger of
going, carelessly, on in a suspicious matter without looking forward to
possible consequences. I saw the folly of thoughtlessness, of blind
self-confidence, of reckless trust in the honesty of others and the luck
of oneself. I had learned the necessity of caution, of foresight, of
suspicion; and perhaps I should have to pay for the lesson with my life.

Turning on the bed, watching the window for the dawn, giving in my mind a
hundred different forms to the account with which I should make De Quelus
acquainted with the matter, I passed the most of that night. At last, I
fell asleep, and dreamt that I had told De Quelus my story, and he had
brought me the King's pardon; again, that I was engaged in futile efforts
to approach him; again, that De Noyard had come to life. When De Rilly
awoke me, it was broad daylight.

I dressed, and so timed my movements as to reach the Louvre at the hour
when De Quelus would be about to officiate at the King's rising. De Rilly
left me at the gate, wishing me good fortune. He had to go to oversee the
labors of some grooms in the King's stables. One of the guards of the
gate sent De Quelus my message. I stood, in great suspense, awaiting the
answer, fearing at every moment to see the Duke of Guise ride into the
Place du Louvre on his way to crave an interview with the King.

At last a page came across the court with orders that I be admitted, and
I was soon waiting in a gallery outside the apartments of the
chamberlains. After a time that seemed very long, De Quelus came out to
me, with a look of inquiry on his face.

Ignoring the speech I had prepared for the occasion, I broke abruptly
into the matter.

"M. de Quelus," I said, "last night, in a sudden quarrel which arose out
of a mistake, I was so unfortunate as to kill M. de Noyard. It was
neither a duel nor a murder,--each of us seemed justified in attacking
the other."

De Quelus did not seem displeased to hear of De Noyard's death.

"What evidence is there against you?" he asked.

"That of M. de Noyard's servant, to whom I acknowledged that I had killed
his master. Other evidence may come up. What I have come to beg is your
intercession with the King--"

"I understand," he said, without much interest. "I shall bring up the
matter before the King leaves his bed."

"When may I expect to know?" I asked, not knowing whether to be reassured
or alarmed at his indifference.

"Wait outside the King's apartments. I am going there now," he replied.

I followed him, saw him pass into the King's suite, and had another
season of waiting. This was the longest and the most trying. I stood, now
tapping the floor with my foot, now watching the halberdiers at the
curtained door, while they glanced indifferently at me. Various officers
of the court, whose duty or privilege it was to attend the King's rising,
passed in, none heeding me or guessing that I waited there for the word
on which my life depended. I examined the tapestry over and over again,
noticing, particularly, the redoubtable expression of a horseman with
lance in rest, and wondering how he had ever emerged from the tower
behind him, of which the gateway was half his size.

A page came out of the doorway through which De Quelus had disappeared.
Did he bring word to me? No. He glanced at me casually, and passed on,
leaving the gallery at the other end. Presently he returned, preceding
Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre, whom he had gone to summon.

"More trouble in the royal family," I said to myself. The King must
have scented another plot, to have summoned his sister before the time
for the _petite levée_. I feared that this would hinder his
consideration of my case.

Suddenly a tall figure, wearing a doublet of cloth of silver, gray velvet
breeches, gray mantle, and gray silk stockings, strode rapidly through
the gallery, and curtly commanded the usher to announce him. While
awaiting the usher's return, he stood still, stroking now his light
mustaches, and now his fine, curly blonde beard, which was little more
than delicate down on his chin. As his glance roved over the gallery it
fell for a moment on me, but he did not know me, and his splendid blue
eyes turned quickly away. His face had a pride, a nobility, a subtlety
that I never saw united in another. He was four inches more than six feet
high, slender, and of perfect proportion, erect, commanding, and in the
flower of youth. How I admired him, though my heart sank at the sight of
him; for I knew he had come to demand my death! It was the Duke of Guise.
Presently the curtains parted, he passed in, and they fell behind him.

And now my heart beat like a hammer on an anvil. Had De Quelus
forgotten me?

Again the curtains parted. Marguerite came out, but this time entirely
alone. As soon as she had passed the halberdiers, her eyes fell on me,
but she gave no sign of recognition. When she came near me, she said,
in a low tone, audible to me alone, and without seeming to be aware of
my presence:

"Follow me. Make no sign,--your life depends on it!"

She passed on, and turned out of the gallery towards her own apartments.
For a moment I stood motionless; then, with a kind of instinctive sense
of what ought to be done, for all thought seemed paralyzed within me, I
made as if to return to the chamberlains' apartments, from which I had
come. Reaching the place where Marguerite's corridor turned off, I
pretended for an instant to be at a loss which way to go; then I turned
in the direction taken by Marguerite. If the halberdiers, at the entrance
to the King's apartments, saw me do this, they could but think I had made
a mistake, and it was not their duty to come after me. Should I seek to
intrude whither I had no right of entrance, I should encounter guards to
hinder me.

Marguerite had waited for me in the corridor, out of sight of the
halberdiers.

"Quickly, monsieur!" she said, and glided rapidly on. She led me boldly
to her own apartments and through two or three chambers, passing, on the
way, guards, pages, and ladies in waiting, before whom I had the wit to
assume the mien of one who was about to do some service for her, and had
come to receive instructions. So my entrance seemed to pass as nothing
remarkable. At last we entered a cabinet, where I was alone with her. She
opened the door of a small closet.

"Monsieur," she said, "conceal yourself in this closet until I return. I
am going to be present at the _petite levée_ of the King. Do not stir,
for they will soon be searching the palace, with orders for your arrest.
Had you not come after me, at once, two of the Scotch Guards would have
found you where you waited. I slipped out while they were listening to
the orders that my mother added to the King's."

I fell on my knee, within the closet.

"Madame," I said, trembling with gratitude, "you are more than a queen.
You are an angel of goodness."

"No; I am merely a woman who does not forget an obligation. I have heard,
from one of my maids, who heard it from a friend of yours, how you
knocked a too inquisitive person into the moat beneath my window. I had
to burn the rope that was used that night, but I have since procured
another, which may have to be put to a similar purpose!"

And, with a smile, she shut the closet door upon me.




CHAPTER V.

HOW LA TOURNOIRE ESCAPED FROM PARIS


I heard the key turn in the lock, and the Queen of Navarre leave the
cabinet. She took the key with her, so that a tiny beam of light came
through the keyhole, giving my dark hiding-place its only illumination.

I felt complete confidence both in Marguerite's show of willingness to
save me, and in her ability to do so. All I could do was to wait, and
leave my future in her hands.

After a long time, I heard steps in the cabinet outside the closet door,
the beam of light from the keyhole was cut off, the key turned again, the
door opened, and Marguerite again stood before me.

"Monsieur," she said, "that we may talk without danger, remain in the
closet. I will leave the door slightly ajar, thus, and will sit here,
near it, with my 'Book of Hours,' as if reading aloud to myself. Should
any one come, I can lock your door again and hide the key. Hark! be
silent, monsieur!"

And as she spoke, she shut the door, locked it, drew out the key, and
sat down. I listened to learn what had caused this act of precaution.

"Madame," I heard some one say, "M. de l'Archant desires, by order of the
King, to search your apartments for a man who is to be arrested, and who
is thought to have secreted himself somewhere in the palace."

"Let him enter." said Marguerite. My heart stood still. Then I heard her
say, in a tone of pleasantry:

"What, M. le Capitain, is there another St. Bartholomew, that people
choose my apartments for refuge?"

"This time it is not certain that the fugitive is here," replied Captain
de l'Archant, of the bodyguard. "He is known to have been in the palace
this morning, and no one answering his description has been seen to leave
by any of the gates. It was, indeed, a most sudden and mysterious
disappearance; and it is thought that he has run to cover in some chamber
or other. We are looking everywhere."

"Who is the man?" asked Marguerite, in a tone of indifference.

"M. de la Tournoire, of the French Guards."

"Very well. Look where you please. If he came into my apartments, he must
have done so while I attended the _petite levée_ of the King; otherwise I
should have seen him. What are you looking at? The door of that closet?
He could not have gone there without my knowledge. One of the maids
locked it the other day, and the key has disappeared." Whereupon, she
tried the door, herself, as if in proof of her assertion.

"Then he cannot be there," said De L'Archant, deceived by her manner; and
he took his leave.

For some minutes I heard nothing but the monotonous voice of Marguerite
as she read aloud to herself from her "Book of Hours."

Then she opened my door again. Through the tiny crack I saw a part
of her head.

"Monsieur," she said to me, keeping her eyes upon the book, and retaining
the same changeless tone of one reading aloud, "you see that you are
safe, for the present. No one in the palace, save one of my maids, is
aware that I know you or have reason to take the slightest interest in
you. Your entrance to my apartments was made so naturally and openly that
it left no impression on those who saw you come in. I have since sent
every one of those persons on some errand, so that all who might happen
to remember your coming here will suppose that you left during their
absence. It was well that I brought you here; had I merely told you to
leave the palace, immediately, you would not have known exactly how
matters stood, and you would have been arrested at your lodgings, or on
your way to your place of duty. By this time, orders have gone to the
city gates to prevent your leaving Paris. Before noon, not only the
body-guard, the Provost of the palace, and the French and Scotch Guards
will be on the lookout for you, but also the gendarmes of the Provost of
Paris. That is why we must be careful, and why stealth must be used in
conveying you out of Paris."

"They make a very important personage of me," I said, in a low tone.

"Hush! When you speak imitate my tone, exactly, and be silent the instant
I cough. Too many people are not to be trusted. That you may understand
me, you must know precisely how matters stand. This morning my mother
went to see the King in his chamber before he had risen. They discussed a
matter which required my presence, and I was sent for. After we had
finished our family council, my mother and I remained for a few words, in
private, with each other. While we were talking, M. de Quelus came in and
spoke for a while to the King. I heard the King reply, 'Certainly, as he
preserved you to me, my friend.' De Quelus was about to leave the King's
chamber, when the Duke of Guise was announced. De Quelus waited, out of
curiosity, I suppose. M. de Guise was admitted. He immediately told the
King that one of his gentlemen, M. de Noyard, had been killed by the
Sieur de la Tournoire, one of the French Guards. I became interested, for
I remembered your name as that of the gentleman who, according to my
maid, had stopped the spy from whom I had had so much to fear. I
recalled, also, that you had the esteem of my brother's faithful Bussy
d'Amboise. My mother immediately expressed the greatest horror at De
Noyard's death, with the greatest sympathy for M. de Guise; and she urged
the King to make an example of you."

I remembered, with a deep sigh, what De Rilly had told me,--that
Catherine, to prevent the Duke of Guise from laying the death of De
Noyard to her, would do her utmost to bring me to punishment.

"The King looked at De Quelus," continued Marguerite. "That gentleman,
seeing how things were, and, knowing that the King now wishes to seem
friendly to the Duke, promptly said, 'This is fortunate. La Tournoire is
now waiting for me in the red gallery; I suppose he wishes to beg my
intercession. His presumption will be properly punished when the guards
arrest him there.'"

I turned sick, at this revelation of treachery. This was the gentleman
who owed his life to me, and, in the first outburst of gratitude, had
promised to obtain for me a captaincy!

"The King," Marguerite went on, "at once ordered two of the Scotch Guards
to arrest you. All this time, I had been standing at the window, looking
out, as if paying no attention. My mother stopped the guards to give them
some additional direction. No one was watching me. I passed carelessly
out, and you know what followed. At the _petite levée_, I learned what
was thought of your disappearance,--that you had seen the Duke of Guise
enter the King's apartments, had guessed his purpose, and had
precipitately fled."

I did not dare tell his sister what I thought of a King who would,
without hesitation or question, offer up one of his guards as a sacrifice
to appease that King's greatest enemy.

"And now, monsieur," said Marguerite, still seeming to read from her
book, "the King and the Queen, my mother, will make every effort to have
you captured, lest it be thought that they are secretly protecting the
slayer of M. de Noyard. To convince you that you may rely on me,
thoroughly, I will confess that it is not solely gratitude for your
service the other night that induces me to help you,--although my
gratitude was great. I had seen the spy rise out of the moat and all
night I was in deadly fear that he had reached the guard-house and
prevented my brother's flight, or, at least, betrayed me. When I became
convinced that he had not done so, I thanked Heaven for the unknown
cause that had hindered him. So you may imagine, when my maid told me
that a friend of her lover's was that unknown cause, how I felt towards
that friend."

"Madame," I said, with emotion, "I ought to be content to die, having had
the happiness of eliciting your gratitude!"

"But I am not content that you should die, for I wish you to serve me
once more, this time as a messenger to my brother, the Duke of Anjou, who
is at Angers; to M. Bussy d'Amboise, who is with him; and to my husband,
the King of Navarre, who is at Nerac, in Gascony. Thus it is to my own
interest to procure your safe escape from Paris. And if you reach Nerac,
monsieur, you cannot do better than to stay there. The King of Navarre
will give you some post more worthy of you than that of a mere soldier,
which you hold here."

"I enlisted in the French Guards," I hastened to explain, "because I was
unknown, and a Huguenot, and could expect no higher beginning."

"For the very reason that you are a Huguenot, you can expect a great deal
from the King of Navarre. His kingdom is little more than a toy kingdom,
it is true, and his court is but the distant echo of the court of France,
but believe me, monsieur,"--and here Marguerite's voice indicated a
profound conviction,--"there is a future before my husband, the King of
Navarre! They do not know him. Moreover, Paris will never be a safe
place for you as long as the Duke of Guise lives. He does not forget!"

I knew that Marguerite had excellent means of knowing the Duke of Guise,
and I did not dispute her assertion. Moreover, I was now quite willing to
go from the city wherein I was to have achieved such great things. My
self-conceit had been shaken a little.

"But if every exit is watched, how can I leave Paris?" I asked.

"The exits were watched to prevent the going of my brother Anjou," said
Marguerite, "but he went. He crossed the Seine with his chamberlain,
Simier, and his valet, Cange, and went to the Abbey of St. Genevieve, of
which the gardens are bounded by the city wall. The Abbot Foulon was
secretly with us. M. Bussy had returned to Paris, and was waiting at the
Abbey for Monsieur. They left Paris by way of the Abbey garden. The Abbot
is a cautious soul, and to protect himself, in case of discovery, he had
M. Bussy tie him to a chair, and after Monsieur and Bussy had joined
their gentlemen, outside, and galloped off toward Angers, the Abbot came
to the Louvre, and informed the King of Monsieur's escape. Now I suppose
we shall have to make use of the same ingenious Foulon."

"You know what is best, madame," I said.

"But the Abbot of Saint Genevieve would not do for you, or even for me,
what he would do for my brother Anjou. If he knew who you were, he might
gladly seize an opportunity to offset, by giving you up, the suspicion
that he had a hand in my brother's escape."

"But if there is a suspicion of that, will they not watch the Abbey now,
on my account?"

"No; for you are not of my brother's party, and the Abbot would have no
reason for aiding you. The question is how to make him serve us in
this. I must now think and act, monsieur, and I shall have to lock you
up again."

She rose and did so, and again I was left to meditate. It is astonishing
how unconcerned I had come to feel, how reliant on the ingenuity of this
charming princess with the small head, the high, broad forehead, the
burning, black eyes the curly blonde hair, the quizzically discrete
expression of face.

After some hours, during which I learned, again, the value of patience,
the door was opened, and Marguerite thrust in some bread and cold meat,
which she had brought with her own hand. I took it in silence, and
stooped to kiss the hand, but it was too soon withdrawn, and the door
locked again.

When the door next opened, Marguerite stood before it with a candle in
her hand. I therefore knew that it was night. In her other hand, she held
four letters, three of them already sealed, the fourth open.

"I have made all arrangements," she said, quickly. "This letter is to the
Abbot Foulon. Read it."

She handed it to me, and held the candle for me while I read:

This gentleman bears private letters to Monsieur. As he was about to
depart with them, I learned that the King had been informed of his
intended mission, and had given orders for his arrest at the gate. I call
upon you to aid him to leave Paris, as you aided my brother Anjou. His
arrest would result in a disclosure of how that matter was conducted.

MARGUERITE.

I smiled, when I had finished reading the letter.

"That letter will frighten Brother Foulon into immediate action," said
Marguerite, "and he will be compelled to destroy it, as it incriminates
him. Take these others. You will first go to Angers, and deliver this to
the Duke of Anjou, this to M. de Bussy. Then proceed to Gascony with
this, for the King of Navarre."

"And I am to start?"

"To-night. I shall let you down into the moat, as Monsieur was let down.
You cannot cross the bridges of the Seine, lest you be stopped by guards
at the entrances; therefore I have employed, in this matter, the same boy
who served me the other night. Go immediately from the moat to that part
of the quay which lies east of the Hôtel de Bourbon. You will find him
waiting there in a boat. He will take you across the river to the Quay of
the Augustines, and from there you will go alone to the Abbey. When
Foulon knows that you come in my name, he will at once admit you. I am
sorry that there is not time to have a horse waiting for you outside the
fortifications."

"Alas, I must leave my own horse in Paris! I must go forth as a deserter
from the Guards!"

"It is better than going to the executioner," said Marguerite, gaily.
"For the last time, monsieur, become a bird in a cage. I am about to
retire. As soon as all my people are dismissed, and the palace is asleep,
I shall come for you."

The door closed again upon my prison of a day. I placed the letters
within my doublet, and looked to the fastening of my clothes, as a man
who prepares for a race or contest. I straightened myself up in my place
of concealment, and stood ready to attempt my flight from this Paris of
which the King had made a cage to hold me.

More waiting, and then came Marguerite, this time without a candle. She
stood in the darkness, in a white _robe de nuit_, like a ghost.

"Now, monsieur," she whispered.

I stepped forth without a word, and followed her through the cabinet into
a chamber which also dark. Three of Marguerite's maids stood there, in
silence, one near the door, the other two at the window. One of the
latter held a stout stick, to the middle of which was fastened a rope,
which dangled down to the floor and lay there in irregular coils. I saw
this by the little light that came through the window from the clouded
night sky.

Marguerite took the stick and held it across the window. It was longer
than the width of the window, and hence its ends overlapped the chamber
walls on either side.

"Are you ready, monsieur?" asked Marguerite, in a whisper.

"Ready, madame."

Still holding the stick in position with one hand, she opened the window
with the other, and looked out. She then drew in her head, and passed the
loose end of the rope out of the window. Then she looked at me, and stood
a little at one side, that I might have room to pass.

Summoning a bold heart, I mounted the window-ledge, got on my knees with
my face towards the chamber, caught the rope in both hands, lowered my
head, and kissed one of the hands of the Queen of Navarre; then, resting
my weight on my elbows, dropped my legs out of the window. Two more
movements took my body after them, and presently I saw before me only the
wall of the Louvre, and was descending the rope, hand after hand, the
weight of my body keeping the stick above in position.

When I was half-way down, I looked up. The wall of the palace seemed now
to lean over upon me, and now to draw back from me. Marguerite was gazing
down at me.

At last, looking down, I saw the earth near, and dropped. I cast another
glance upward. Marguerite was just drawing in her head, and immediately
the rope's end flew out of my reach.

"There's no going back the way I came!" I said, to myself, and strode
along the moat to find a place where I could most easily climb out of it.
Such a place I found, and I was soon in the street, alone, near where I
had been wont to watch under the window of Mlle. d'Arency. I took a last
look at the window of Marguerite's chamber. It was closed, and the rope
had disappeared. My safety was no longer in the hands of the Queen of
Navarre. She had pointed out the way for me, and had brought me thus far;
henceforth, I had to rely on myself.

I shivered in the cold. I had left my large cloak beside the dead body of
M. de Noyard the previous night, and had worn to the Louvre, in the
morning, only a light mantle by way of outer covering.

"Blessings on the night for being so dark, and maledictions on it for
being so cold!" I muttered, as I turned towards the river.

I had reached the Hôtel de Bourbon, when I heard, behind me, the sound
of footsteps in accord. I looked back. It was a body of several armed
men, two of them bearing torches.

Were they gendarmes of the watch, or were they guards of the King? What
were they doing on my track, and had they seen me?

Probably they had not seen me, for they did not increase their gait,
although they came steadily towards me. The torches, which illuminated
everything near them, served to blind them to what was at a distance
from them.

Fortunately, I had reached the end of the street, and so I turned
eastward and proceeded along the quay, high walls on one side of me, the
river on the other. It had been impossible for Marguerite to indicate to
me the exact place at which the boat was to be in waiting. I did not
think it best, therefore, to go to the edge of the quay and look for the
boat while the soldiers were in the vicinity. They might come upon the
quay at the moment of my embarking, and in that event, they would
certainly investigate. So I walked on along the quay.

Presently I knew, by the sound of their steps, that they, too, had
reached the quay, and that they had turned in the direction that I had
taken. I was still out of the range of their torchlight.

"How far will I be made to walk by these meddlesome archers?" I asked
myself, annoyed at this interruption, and considering it an incident of
ill omen. I looked ahead, to see whither my walking would lead me.

I saw another body of gendarmes, likewise lighted by torches, just
emerging from a street's end, some distance in front of me. They turned
and came towards me.

I stopped, feeling for an instant as if all my blood, all power of
motion, had left me. "Great God!" I thought, "I am caught between two
rows of teeth."

I must wait no longer to seek the boat. Would God grant that it might be
near, that I might reach it before either troop should see me?

I ran to the edge of the quay and looked over into the river. Of all the
boats that lay at rest there, not one in sight was unmoored, not one
contained a boatman!

The two bodies of men were approaching each other. In a few seconds the
two areas of torchlight would merge together. On one side were walls,
frowning and impenetrable; on the other was the river.

I took off my sword and dagger, on account of their weight, and dropped
them with their sheathes into the river. I started to undo the fastening
of my mantle, but the knot held; my fingers became clumsy, and time
pressed. So I gave up that attempt, threw away my hat, let myself over
the edge of the quay, and slid quietly into the icy water. I immediately
dived, and presently came to the surface at some distance from the
shore. I then swam for the middle of the river. God knows what powers
within me awoke to my necessity. I endured the cold, and found strength
to swim in spite of the clothes that impeded my movements and added
immensely to my weight.

Without looking back, I could tell, presently, from the talking on the
quay that the two detachments of gendarmes had met and were standing
still. Had either one descried me, there would have been loud or hurried
words, but there were none. After a while, during which I continued to
swim, the voices ceased, and I looked back. Two torches remained on the
quay. The others were moving away, along the river. I then made a guess,
which afterward was confirmed as truth. The boy sent by Marguerite had
been discovered in his boat, had been taken to the guard-house, and had
given such answers as led to the suspicion that he was waiting to aid
the flight of some one. The captain of the Guard, thinking so to catch
the person for whom the boatman waited, had sent two bodies of men out,
one to occupy the spot near which the boy had been found, the other to
patrol the river bank in search of questionable persons. I had arrived
on the quay in the interval between the boy's capture and the arrival
of the guards.

My first intention was to reach the left bank and proceed to the Abbey of
St. Genevieve. But it occurred to me that, although a boat could not pass
down the river, out of Paris, at night, because of the chain stretched
across the river from the Tour du Coin to the Tour de Nesle, yet a
swimmer might pass under or over that chain and then make, through the
faubourg outside the walls, for the open country. Neither Marguerite nor
I had thought of this way of leaving Paris, because of the seeming
impossibility of a man's surviving a swim through the icy Seine, and a
flight in wet clothes through the February night. Moreover, there was the
necessity of leaving my sword behind, and the danger of being seen by the
men on guard at the towers on either side of the river. But now that
necessity had driven me into the river, I chose this shorter route to
freedom, and swam with the current of the Seine. In front of me lay a
dark mass upon the water in the middle of the river. This was the barge
moored there to support the chain which stretched, from either side,
across the surface of the water, up the bank and to the Tour de Nesle on
the left side, and to the Tour du Coin on the right. I might pass either
to the right or to the left of this barge. Naturally, I chose to avoid
the side nearest the bank from which I had just fled, and to take the
left side, which lay in the shadow of the frowning Tour de Nesle.

By swimming close to the left bank of the river, I might pass the
boundary without diving under the chain, for the chain ascended obliquely
from the water to the tower, leaving a small part of the river's surface
entirely free. But this part was at the very foot of the tower, and if I
tried passage there I should probably attract the attention of the guard.
I was just looking ahead, to choose a spot midway between the barge and
the left bank, when suddenly the blackness went from the face of things,
a pale yellow light took its place, and I knew that the moon had come
from behind the clouds. A moment later, I heard a cry from the right bank
of the river, and knew that I was discovered. The shout came from the
soldiers whom I had so narrowly eluded.

I knew that it was a race for life now. The soldiers would know that any
man swimming the Seine on a February night was a man whom they ought to
stop. I did not look back,--the one thing to do was to pass the Tour de
Nesle before the guards there should be put on the alert by the cries
from the right bank. So on I swam, urging every muscle to its utmost.

Presently came the crack of an arquebus, and spattering sounds behind me
told me where the shot had struck the water. I turned to swim upon my
left side, and so I got a glimpse of the quay that I had left. By the
hurried movement of torches, I saw that the body that had gone to patrol
the river bank was returning to rejoin the other force. Of the latter,
several men were unmooring and manning a large boat. I turned on my back
to have a look at the sky. I saw that very soon a heavy mass of black
cloud would obscure the moon. At once I turned, and made towards the left
bank, as if not intending to pass the chain. I could hear the men in the
boat speaking rapidly at this, as if commenting on my change of course.
Again looking back, I saw that the boat had pushed off, and was making
towards that point on the left bank for which I seemed to be aiming. And
now I had something else to claim my attention: the sound of voices came
from the Tour de Nesle. I cast a glance thither. A troop of the watch was
out at last, having taken the alarm from the movements on the right bank.
This troop from the Tour de Nesle was moving towards the place for which
I seemed to be making; hence it was giving its attention solely to that
part of the left bank which was inside the fortifications. I felt a
thrill of exultation. The moon passed under the clouds. I changed my
course, and struck out for the chain. The light of the torches did not
reach me. Both the boat from the right bank and the watch from the Tour
de Nesle continued to move towards the same point. I approached the
chain, took a long breath, dived, felt the stifling embrace of the waters
for a season, rose to the surface, breathed the air of heaven again, and
cast a look behind. The chain stretched between me and the distant boat
and torches. I was out of Paris.

I swam on, past the mouth of the Paris moat, and then made for the left
bank. Exhaustion seized me as I laid hold of the earth, but I had
strength to clamber up. I fell into a sitting posture and rested my tired
arms and legs. What pains of cold and heat I felt I cannot describe.
Presently, with returning breath, came the strength to walk,--a strength
of which I would have to avail myself, not only that I might put distance
between myself and Paris, but also to keep my wet clothes from freezing.
I rose and started.

Choosing not to follow the left bank of the Seine, which was unknown
territory to me, I turned southeastward, in the hope of finding the road
by which I had entered Paris. To reach this, I had but to traverse the
Faubourg St. Germaine, along the line of the wall of Paris. I had already
gone some distance along the outer edge of the moat, with the sleeping
faubourg on my right, when I heard, behind me, the sound of men treading
a bridge. I looked back. The bridge was that which crossed the moat from
the Tour de Nesle.

Had the guards at last discovered my way of eluding pursuit, and was I
now being sought outside the walls? It appeared so, for, after crossing
the moat, the troop divided into two bodies, one of which went toward the
left bank below the chain, where I had landed, while the other came along
the moat after me. I began to run. The moon came out again.

"Look! he is there!" cried one of my pursuers. I heard their footsteps on
the frozen earth,--they, too, were running. But I had the advantage in
one respect: I had no weapons to impede me. The coming out of the moon
did not throw me into despair; it only increased my determination to make
good the escape I had carried so far. Though nature, herself, became the
ally of the King of France and the Duke of Guise against me, I would
elude them. I was filled with hate and resolution.

Suddenly, as I ran, it occurred to me that I was a fool to keep so near
the fortifications, for, at any of the gates, guards might emerge,
alarmed by the shouts of my pursuers; and even as I thought this, I
looked ahead and saw a number of halberdiers coming from the Porte St.
Germaine. My situation was now as it had been on the quay, with this
disadvantage, that I was seen by my enemies, and this advantage, that I
had a way of retreat open on my right; and I turned and sped along a
street of the Faubourg St. Germaine, towards the country.

It matters not how many pursue you, if you can run faster and longer
than the best of them all. Gradually, as I went, panting and plunging,
onward, heedless of every obstacle, I increased the distance between me
and the cries behind. Soon I was out of the faubourg, but I did not stop.
I do not know what ground I went over, save that I went southward, or
what village I presently went through, save that it was silent and
asleep. I came upon a good road, at last, and followed it, still running,
though a pain in my side warned me that soon I must halt. All my hunters
had abandoned the chase now but one. Every time I half turned for a
backward look, I saw this one coming after me. He had dropped his
weapons, and so had enabled himself to keep up the chase. Not being
weakened by a previous swim in the Seine, he was in better form than I,
and I knew that he would catch me in time. And what then? He was a large
fellow, but since the struggle must come, I would better let it come ere
I should be utterly exhausted. So I pretended to stagger and lurch
forward, and presently came to my knees and then prone upon the ground.
With a grunt of triumph, the man rushed up to me, caught me by the collar
of my doublet, and raised me from the ground. Hanging limp, and
apparently senseless, I put him quite off his guard.

"Stand up!" he cried. "Stomach of the Pope! Have I come so far only to
take a dead man back?"

While he was trying to make me stand, I suddenly gathered all my energy
into my right arm and gave him a quick blow in the pit of the stomach.
With a fearful howl, he let me go and fell upon his knees. A blow in the
face then made him drop as limp as I had pretended to be; and I resumed
my flight, this time at a more leisurely pace.

And now all my physical powers seemed to be leaving me. Pains racked my
head, and I seemed at one time to freeze and burn all over, at another
time to freeze in one part and burn in another. I ached in my muscles, my
bones, my stomach. At every step, I felt that it was vastly difficult to
take another, that it would be ineffably sweet to sink down upon the
earth and rest. Yet I knew that one taste of that sweetness meant death,
and I was determined not to lose a life that had been saved from so great
peril by so great effort. Despite all the soldiers at their command, the
King of France and the Duke of Guise should not have their will with me.
At last,--I know not how far from Paris,--I came to an inn. There were
still a few crowns in my pocket. Forgetting the danger from which I had
fled, not thinking that it might overtake me here, feeling only the need
of immediate shelter and rest, I pounded on the door until I got
admittance. I have never had any but the vaguest recollection of my
installation at that inn, so near to insensibility I was when I fell
against its door. I have a dim memory of having exchanged a few words
with a sleepy, stolid host; of being glad of the darkness of the night,
for it prevented him from noticing my wet, frozen, begrimed, bedraggled,
half-dead condition; of my bargaining for the sole occupancy of a room;
of his leading me up a winding stairway to a chamber; of my plunging from
the threshold to the bed as soon as the door was opened. I slept for
several hours. When I awoke, it was about noon, and I was very hungry and
thirsty. My clothes had dried upon me, and I essayed to put them into a
fairly presentable condition. I found within my doublet the four letters,
which had been first soaked and then stiffened. The now useless one
addressed to the Abbot Foulon, I destroyed; then I went down to the
kitchen, and saw, with relief, that it was empty. I ate and drank
hurriedly but ravenously. Again the fear of capture, the impulse to put
Paris further and further behind, awoke in me. I bought a peasant's cap
from the landlord, telling him that the wind had blown my hat into the
river the previous night, and set forth. It was my intention to walk to
La Tournoire, that my money might last. Afoot I could the better turn
from the road and conceal myself in woods or fields, at any intimation
of pursuit. At La Tournoire, I would newly equip myself with clothes,
weapons, horse, and money; and thence I would ride to Angers, and finally
away, southward, to Nerac.

It was a fine, sunlit day when I stepped from the inn to take the road
going southward. I had not gone four steps when I heard horses coming
from the north. I sought the shelter of a shed at the side of the inn.
There was a crack between two boards of this shed, through which I could
look. The horses came into sight, ten of them. The riders were
brown-faced men, all armed with swords and pistols, and most of them
having arquebusses slung over their backs. Their leader was a large,
broad, black-bearded man, with a very ugly red face, deeply scarred on
the forehead, and with fierce black eyes. He and his men rode up to the
inn, beat on the door, and, when the host came, ordered each a
stirrup-cup. When the landlord brought the wine, the leader asked him
some questions in a low tone. The landlord answered stupidly, shaking his
head, and the horsemen turned to resume their journey. Just as they did
so, there rode up, from the south, a merry-looking young cavalier
followed by two mounted servants. This newcomer gaily hailed the
ill-looking leader of the troop from the north with the words:

"Ah, M. Barbemouche, whither bound, with your back towards Paris?"

"For Anjou, M. de Berquin," growled the leader.

"What!" said the other, with a grin. "Have you left the Duke of Guise to
take service with the Duke of Anjou?"

"No, M. le Vicomte," said the leader. "It is neither for nor against the
Duke of Anjou that we go into his province. It is to catch a rascal who
may be now on the way to hide on his estate there, and whom my master,
the Duke of Guise, would like to see back in Paris."

"Indeed? Who is it that has given the Duke of Guise so great a desire for
his company?"

"The Sieur de la Tournoire," replied Barbemouche. "Have you met him on
the road?"

"I have never heard of him, before," said the young cavalier,
indifferently; and he rode on northward, while Barbemouche and his men
silently took the opposite direction.

He had never heard of me, as he said, nor I of him; yet he was to know
much of me at a time to come, was the Vicomte de Berquin; and so was
Barbemouche, the scowling man who was now riding towards Anjou in
search of me.




CHAPTER VI.

HOW HE FLED SOUTHWARD


When one is pursued, one's best course is to pursue the pursuer. So, when
M. Barbemouche and his troop of Guisards had gone some distance down the
road, I came forth from the shed and followed them, afoot, keeping well
to the roadside, ready to vanish, should any of them turn back. It was
evident that Barbemouche had little or no hope of catching me on the
road. His plan was to surprise me at my château, or to lie there in wait
for me. He had not shown any persistence in questioning the landlord. The
latter, through laziness or sheer stupidity, or a fear of incurring blame
for having sheltered a fugitive, had not given him any information that
might lead him to suspect that the man he was seeking was so near. So I
could follow, in comparative safety, into Anjou.

Their horses constantly increased the distance between the Guise
man-hunters and me, their desired prey. In a few hours they were out of
sight. Thus they would arrive at La Tournoire long before I could. Not
finding me there, they would probably put the servants under restraint,
and wait in ambush for me. Several days of such waiting, I said to
myself, would exhaust their patience; thereupon, they would give up the
hope of my seeking refuge at La Tournoire, and would return to their
master. My best course, therefore, would be to take my time on the road,
to be on the alert on coming near La Tournoire, and to lie in hiding
until I should be assured of their departure. In order to consume as much
time as I could, and to wear out the enemy's patience without putting my
own to the test, I decided to go first to Angers, deliver Marguerite's
letters to Monsieur and Bussy d'Amboise, and then make for La Tournoire.
Therefore, when, after a few days of walking, I came to LeMans, I did not
turn southward, towards La Tournoire, but followed the Sarthe
southwestward to Angers.

On this journey, I skirted Rambouillet, Anneau, and the other towns in my
way, and avoided large inns, for fear of coming up with the Guise party.
I made my money serve, too, by purchasing cheaply the hospitality of
farmers and woodmen. My youth had withstood well the experiences
attending my escape from Paris, and enabled me to fare on the coarse food
of the peasantry. There was plenty of healthy blood in my veins to keep
me warm. Outside of my doublet, my shoulders had no covering but the
light mantle, of which I was now glad that I had been unable to rid
myself in my swim down the Seine. People who saw me, with my rumpled
clothes and shapeless ruff and peasant's cap, probably took me for a
younger son who had endured hard fortune.

Such was my condition when I reached Angers and presented myself at the
gate of the château wherein the Duke of Anjou had taken residence. There
were many soldiers in and about the town, and horsemen were arriving and
departing. I might not easily have obtained audience of the Duke, had not
Bussy d'Amboise ridden up at the head of a small troop of horse, while I
was waiting at the gate. I called out his name, and he recognized me,
showing surprise at my appearance. I gave him his letter, and he had me
conducted to the Duke, who was striding up and down the hall of the
château. His mind was evidently preoccupied, perhaps already with fears
as to the outcome of his rebellious step, and he did not look at me when
he took the letter. His face brightened, though, when he saw the
inscription in Marguerite's handwriting, and he went, immediately, to a
window to read the letter. Bussy d'Amboise, who had dismounted and come
in with me, now beckoned me to follow him, and when we were outside, he
offered to supply me with a horse, money and arms, proposing that I enter
the service of the Duke of Anjou. But I told him that I was bound for
Gascony, and when he still offered me some equipment, I protested that I
would refurnish myself at my own château; so he let me go my way. I could
see that he was in haste to break the seal of Marguerite's letter.

I had gone two leagues or more northward from Angers, and was about to
turn eastward toward La Tournoire, when I saw a long and brilliant
cortege approaching from the direction of Paris. Several men-at-arms
were at the head, then came a magnificent litter, then a number of
mounted ladies and gentlemen, followed by a host of lackeys, a number of
mules with baggage, and another body of soldiers. This procession was
winding down the opposite hillside. The head of it was already crossing
the bridge over a stream that coursed through the valley toward the
Sarthe. Slowly it came along the yellow road, the soldiers and gentlemen
holding themselves erect on their reined-in horses, the ladies chatting
or laughing, and looking about the country, the wind stirring the plumes
and trappings, the sunlight sparkling on the armor and halberds of the
guards, the sword-hilts of the gentlemen, the jewels and rich stuffs
which shone in the attire of the riders. There were velvet cloaks and
gowns; satin and silk doublets, breeches, and hose; there were cloth of
gold and cloth of silver. Here and there the cavalcade passed clumps of
trees that lined the road, and it was then like pictures you have seen
in tapestry.

Concealment had lately become an instinctive act with me, and I now
sought refuge in the midst of some evergreen bushes, at a little distance
from the road, from which I could view the cavalcade as it passed. On it
came, the riders throwing back their shoulders as they filled their lungs
with the bracing country air. The day was a mild one for the time of
year, and the curtains of the litter were open. Inside sat a number of
ladies. With a start, I recognized two of the faces. One was Mlle.
d'Arency's; the other was the Queen-mother's. Mlle. d'Arency was
narrating something, with a derisive smile, to Catherine, who listened
with the slightest expression of amusement on her serene face.

Catherine was going to try to persuade her son, the Duke of Anjou, to
give up his insurrectionary designs and return to the court of his
brother. I guessed this much, as I lay hidden in the bushes, and I
heartily wished her failure. As for Mlle. d'Arency, I have no words for
the bitterness of my thoughts regarding her. I grated my teeth together
as I recalled how even circumstance itself had aided her. She could have
had no assurance that in the combat planned by her I should kill De
Noyard, or that he would not kill me, and yet what she had desired had
occurred. When the troop had passed, I arose and started for La
Tournoire. It seemed to me that a sufficient number of days had now
passed to tire the patience of Barbemouche, and that I might now visit my
château for the short time necessary.

Nevertheless, it was with great caution that I approached the
neighborhood in which all my life, until my departure for Paris, had been
passed. At each bend of the road, I stopped and listened before going on.
When I entered a piece of woods, I searched, with my eyes, each side of
the road ahead, for a possible ambush. When I approached the top of a
hill, it was with my ears on the alert for the sound of horsemen or of
human feet, and, when I reached the crest, I found some spot where, lying
on my stomach or crouching behind underbrush, I could survey the lowland
ahead. And so, meeting no indication of peril, treading familiar and
beloved ground, I at last reached the hill-top from which I would have my
long-expected view of La Tournoire. It was just sunset; with beating
heart, I hastened forward, risking something in my eagerness to look
again upon the home of my fathers. I gazed down, ready to feast my eyes
on the dear old tower, the peaceful garden, the--

And I saw only a smouldering pile of ruins, not one stone of my château
left upon another, save a part of the stables, before which, heeding the
desolation no more than crows are repelled by the sight of a dead body,
sat M. Barbemouche and two of his men throwing dice. Only one tree was
left in the garden, and from one of its limbs hung the body of a man,
through which a sword was thrust. By the white hair of the head, I knew
the body was that of old Michel.

So this was the beginning of the revenge of the Duke of Guise upon a poor
gentleman for having eluded him; thus he demonstrated that a follower of
his might not be slain with impunity. And the Duke must have had the
assurance of the King that this deed would be upheld; nay, probably the
King, in his design of currying favor with his powerful subject, had
previously sanctioned this act, or even suggested it, that the Duke might
have no ground for suspecting him of protecting me.

Grief at the sight of the home of my youth, the house of my ancestors,
laid low, gave way to rage at the powerful ones to whom that sight was
due,--the Duke who despoiled me, the King who had not protected me, the
Queen as whose unknowing tool I had made myself liable to this outrage.
As I stood on that hill-top, in the dusk, and looked down on the ruins of
my château, I declared myself, until death, the enemy to that Queen, that
Duke, and that King,--most of all to that King; for, having saved the
life of his favorite, having taken humble service in his Guards, and
having received from him a hinted promise of advancement, I had the
right to expect from him a protection such as he gave every day to
worthless brawlers.

At nightfall, I went to the hovel of a woodman, on whose fidelity I knew
I could depend. At my call, he opened the door of his little hut, and
received me with surprise and joy. With him was a peasant named
Frolichard.

"Then you are alive, monsieur?" cried the woodman, closing the door after
me, and making for me a seat on his rude bed.

"As you see," I replied. "I have come to pass the night in your hut.
To-morrow I shall be off for the south."

"Alas, you have seen what they have done! I knew nothing of it until
Michel was dead, and the servants came fleeing through the woods. They
have gone, I know not where, and the tenants, too. All but Frolichard. As
yet, the soldiers have not found this hut."

By questioning him, I learned that M. Barbemouche had denounced me as a
heretic and a traitor (I could see how my desertion from the French
Guards might be taken as implying intended rebellion and treason), and
had told Michel that my possessions were confiscated. What authority he
pretended to have, I could not learn. It was probably in wrath at not
finding me that he had caused the destruction of my château, to make
sure that it might not in any circumstances shelter me again.

I well knew that, whatever my rights might be, my safety lay far from La
Tournoire; and so did my means of retaliation.

"If I had but a horse and a sword left!" I said.

"There is a horse which I have been using, in my shed," replied the
forester; "and I made one of the servants leave here the swords that he
was carrying away in his flight. Moreover, he had filled a bag with
crowns from Michel's strong box. So you need not leave entirely
unprovided."

I thanked the faithful fellow as he brought forth the swords and the
little bag of gold pieces from under his bed, and then I lay down to
sleep. The peasant Frolichard was already dozing in a corner by the fire.

I was awakened suddenly by a shake of the shoulder. The woodman stood by
the bed, with every sign of alarm on his face.

"Monsieur," he whispered, "I fear you would best eat and begone. That
cursed rascal, Frolichard, left while I was asleep. I am sure that the
devil has been too much for him. He has probably gone to tell the
soldiers that you are here. Eat, monsieur!"

I sprang up, and saw that the forester had already prepared some
porridge for me.

"It is nearly dawn," he added, as I looked around I swallowed a few
mouthfuls of the porridge, and chose the better one of the swords. Then I
took up the little bag of golden crowns, and went out to mount horse. The
animal that the woodman held for me was a sorry one, the ugliest and
oldest of my stable.

Yet I rode blithely through the woods, happy to have again a horse
under me, and a sword at my side. I knew that the forester could take
care of himself as long as there should remain woods to hunt in or
streams to fish in.

When I reached, the road it was daylight. I made for the hill-top, and
stopped for a last look at my fields. I did not have to hesitate as to my
course. In my doublet was Marguerite's letter, to be borne to the King of
Navarre. Yet there was another reason why I should not attach myself to
the Duke of Anjou, although he was already in rebellion against the King:
the look on his face, when I saw him at Angers, had convinced me that he
would not hold out. Should Catherine not win him back to allegiance, his
own weakness would. I would place my hopes in the future of Henri of
Navarre. Nothing could, as yet, be predicted with assurance concerning
this Prince, who, being the head of the house of Bourbon, which
constituted the younger branch of the Royalty of France, was the highest,
by blood, of the really Huguenot leaders. Some, however, whispered that
there was more in him than appeared in his amours and his adventures of
the chase.

I was just about to turn my horse's head towards the south, when a man
came out of my half-ruined stable and looked up at me. Instantly he
called to some one in the stable, and two or three other soldiers came
out. I recognized the burly form of one of these as that of Barbemouche.
Another figure, a limp and cringing one, was that of Frolichard the
peasant. Barbemouche gave some orders, and two or three brought horses
out of the stable. I knew what all this meant.

I turned my horse, and galloped off towards the south. In a few moments I
heard the footfalls of galloping horses behind me. Again I was the object
of a chase.

When I had gone some distance, I looked back and saw my hunters coming,
ten of them, down the hillside behind me. But the morning was bracing,
and my horse had more life in him than at first sight appeared. I put
another hill behind me, but in time my followers appeared at its crest.
Now they gained on me, now I seemed to leave them further behind. All day
this race continued. I bore directly southward, and hence passed far east
of Angers. I soon made up my mind that M. Barbemouche was a man of
persistence. I did not stop anywhere for food or drink. Neither did M.
Barbemouche. I crossed the Loire at Saumur. So did he.

"Very well," I said. "If my horse only holds out, I will lead you all the
way to Gascony."

Once I let my horse eat and rest; twice I let him drink.

At nightfall, the sound of the hoofs behind me gradually died away. My
own beast was foaming and panting, so I reined in to a walk. Near Loudun,
I passed an inn whose look of comfort, I thought, would surely tempt my
tired pursuers to tarry, if, indeed, they should come so far. Some hours
later, coming to another and smaller inn, and hearing no sound of pursuit
behind me, I decided to stop for a few hours, or until the tramp of
horses' feet should disturb the silence of the night.

The inn kitchen, as I entered, was noisy with shouts and curses. One
might have expected to find a whole company of soldiers there, but to my
surprise, I saw only one man. This was a robust young fellow, with a big
round face, piercing gray eyes, fiercely up-sprouting red mustache, and a
double--pointed reddish beard. There was something irresistibly
pugnacious, and yet good-natured, in the florid face of this person. He
sat on a bench beside a table, forcibly detaining an inn maid with his
left arm, and holding a mug of wine in his right hand. Beside him, on the
bench, lay a sword, and in his belt was a pistol. He wore a brown cloth
doublet, brown breeches, and green hose.

"A thousand devils!" he roared, as I entered. "Must a fighting man stand
and beg for a kiss from a tavern wench? I don't believe in any of your
painted saints, wooden or ivory, but I swear by all of them, good-looking
girls are made to be hugged, and I was made to hug them! Here, you ten
times damned dog of a landlord, bring me another bottle of your filthy
wine, or I'll make a hole in your barrel of a body! Be quick, or I'll
roast you on your own spit, and burn down your stinking old inn!" At this
moment he saw me, as I stood in the doorway. "Come, monsieur!" he cried,
"I'm not fastidious, curse me, and you might drink with me if you were
the poxy old Pope himself! Here, wench, go and welcome the gentleman with
a kiss!" And he shoved the girl towards me and began to pound, in sheer
drunken turbulence, on the table with his mug.

I left the kitchen to this noisy guest, and took a room up-stairs, where
the landlord presently brought me light and supper.

I paid in advance for my night's lodging, and arranged to have access, at
any time during the night, to the shed in which was my horse, so that at
the least alarm I might make hasty flight. I opened my window, that the
sound of horses on the road might be audible to me from a distance.
Then, having eaten, I put out my light and lay down, in my clothes, ready
on occasion to rise and drop from the window, take horse, and be off.

From the kitchen, below, came frequent sounds emitted or caused by the
tipsy young Hercules in the brown doublet. Now he bellowed for wine, now
he thundered forth profanity, now he filled the place with the noise of
Gargantuan laughter; now he sang at the top or the depth of his big, full
voice; then could be heard the crash of furniture in collision. These
sounds continued until far into the night.

I had intended not to sleep, but to lie with ears alert. I could not yet
bring myself to feel that I was safe from pursuit. So used had I become
to a condition of flight, that I could not throw off the feeling of being
still pursued. And yet, I had hoped that Barbemouche would tire of the
chase. My plan had not been to confuse him as to my track, by taking
by-roads or skirting the towns, but merely to outrun him. Because I
wished to reach Nerac at the earliest possible moment, and because the
country was new to me and I desired not to lose my way, I had held to the
main road southward, being guided in direction by the sun or the stars.
Moreover, had I made detours, or skirted cities, Barbemouche might have
gone ahead by the main road and lain in wait further south for my coming
up, for Frolichard, the peasant, had heard me tell the woodman my
destination. So, in that first day's flight, I had trusted to the speed
of my horse, and now there was some reason to believe that Barbemouche
had abandoned pursuit, as the soldiers had done who chased me from Paris.
And yet, it seemed to me that this ugly Barbemouche was not one to give
up his chosen prey so soon.

Despite my intention, I feel asleep, and when I awoke it was daylight. I
sprang up and went cautiously down-stairs, sword in hand. But there was
no danger. Only the host and a servant were stirring in the inn. I made a
rapid breakfast, and went to see my horse fed. Before the shed, I saw the
young man who had made such drunken tumult in the kitchen the previous
night. He was just about to mount his horse; but there was now nothing of
the roysterer about his look or manner. He had restored neatness to his
attire, and his expression was sedate and humble, though strength and
sturdiness were as apparent in him as ever.

"A fine morning," I said, as the inn-servant brought out my own horse.

"Yes, monsieur," said the young man, in a very respectful tone. "A
sunrise like this is a gift from the good God."

"Yet you look pensive."

"It is because I know how little I deserve such mercy as to live on such
a day," answered the man, gravely; and he bowed politely, and rode
southward.

This devoutness and humility impressed me as being strangely out of
harmony with the profanity and turbulence of the night before, yet the
one seemed no less genuine than the other.

My horse fed, I mounted and rode after the sturdy youth.

Not far from Mirebeau, happening to turn my head towards the north, I
saw, in the distance, a group of horsemen approaching at a steady gallop.
From having looked back at this group many times during the preceding
day, I had stamped certain of its figures on my memory, and I now
recognized it as Barbemouche and his party.

"Another day of it," I said, to myself, and spurred my horse to a gallop.

An increase in their own pace told me that they in turn had
recognized me.

"This grows monotonous," I mused. "If there were only fewer of them, or
more of me, I would make a stand."

Presently I came up with the young man in the brown doublet. He stared at
me with a look of inquiry as I passed at such speed; then he looked back
and saw the distant horsemen coming on at equal speed. He appeared to
realize the situation at a glance. Without a word, he gave his own horse
a touch of the spur, with the manifest intention of keeping my company in
my flight.

"You have a good horse," I said to him, at the same time watching him out
of the corner of my eye, seeking some indication that might show whether,
on occasion, he would stand as my friend or my enemy.

"Better than yours, I fear, monsieur," he replied.

"Mine has been hard run," I said, lightly.

Presently he looked back, and said:

"Ah, the devil! Your friends, back there, are sending out an advance
guard. Three of them are making a race of it, to see which shall have the
honor of first joining you."

I looked back. It was true; three of them were bearing down with
great speed, evidently on fresh horses. Barbemouche remained back
with the rest.

I urged on my horse.

"It is useless, monsieur," said the young man at my side. "Your beast is
no match for theirs. Besides, you will not find a better place to make a
stand than the bridge yonder." And he pointed ahead to a bridge that
crossed a narrow stream that lay between high banks.

"What, face ten men?" I said.

"There are only three. The thing may be over before the others come up."

I laughed. "Well, admitting that, three against one--" I began.

"Oh, there will be two of us," replied the other.

My heart gave a joyous bound, but I said, "I cannot expect you to risk
your life in my quarrel."

And he answered, "By God! I myself have a quarrel with every man that
wears on his hat the white cross of the Guises!" His grey eyes flashed,
his face became red with wrath. "Let us stop, monsieur."

We stopped and turned our horses on the narrow bridge. We both drew sword
and waited. My new-found ally threw back his hat, and I saw across his
forehead a deep red scar, which I had not before noticed.

The three men rode up to the attack. They all stopped suddenly before
they reached the bridge.

"Give up your sword and come with us, monsieur," cried one of them to me.

I said nothing. "Go to hell!" roared my companion. And with that he
charged with the fury of a wild beast, riding between two of the
horsemen, and thrusting his sword through the eye and into the brain of
one before either could make the least show of defence. His horse coming
to a quick stop, he drew his weapon out of the slain man's head and
turned on the other. While there was some violent fencing between the
two, and while the dead man's horse reared, and so rid itself of its
bleeding burden, the third horseman urged his horse towards me. I turned
the point of his rapier, whereupon he immediately backed, and then came
for me again just as I charged on him. Each was too quick to meet the
other's steel with steel. His sword passed under my right arm and my
sword under his right arm, and we found ourselves linked together, arm to
arm. I saw him reach with his left hand for his dagger, and I grew sick
at the thought that I had no similar weapon with which to make matters
even. He plucked the dagger from his belt, and raised it to plunge it
into my back; but his wrist was caught in a clutch of iron. My man in the
brown doublet, in backing his horse to make another charge on his still
remaining opponent, had seen my antagonist's motion, and now, with a
twist of his vigorous fingers, caused the dagger to fall from a limp arm.
Then my comrade returned to meet his own enemy, and I was again on equal
terms with mine. We broke away from each other. I was the quicker to
right myself, and a moment later he fell sidewise from his horse, pierced
through the right lung.

I backed my horse to the middle of the bridge, and was joined by my
stalwart friend, who had done for his second man with a dagger thrust
in the side.

"Whew!" he panted, holding his dripping weapons on either side of him, so
as not to get any more blood on his clothes. Then a grin of satisfaction
appeared on his perspiring face, and he said:

"Three Guisards less to shout '_Vive la messe_.' It's a pity we haven't
time to exchange horses with these dead whelps of hell. But the others
are coming up, and we ought to rest awhile."

We sheathed our weapons and spurred on our horses, again southward.
Looking back, soon, we saw that the other pursuers, on coming up to their
dead comrades, had chosen first to look after the belongings of the
latter rather than to avenge their deaths. And while Barbemouche and his
men, of whom there were now six, tarried over the dead bodies, we made
such good speed that at last we were out of sight of them.

My first use of my returned breath was to thank my stalwart ally.

He received my gratitude with great modesty, said that the Lord had
guided his arm in the fight, and expressed himself with a humility that
was in complete contrast to the lion-like fury shown by him in the
combat. Judging him, from his phrases, to be a Huguenot, I asked whether
he was one, by birth, as I was.

"By birth, from my mother," he replied. "My father was a Catholic, and in
order to win my mother, he pretended to have joined the reformers. That
deceit was the least of his many rascally deeds. He was one of the chosen
instruments of the devil,--a violent, roystering cut-throat, but a good
soldier, as was shown in Italy and at St. Quentin, Calais, Jarnac, and
elsewhere. My mother, though only the daughter of an armorer's workman,
was, in goodness, an angel. I thank God that she sometimes has the upper
hand in me, although too often it is my father that prevails in me." He
sighed heavily, and looked remorseful.

In subsequent talk, as we rode, I learned that he was a soldier who had
learned war, when a boy, under Coligny. He had fought at his father's
side against Italians, Spanish, and English, and against his father in
civil war. His father had died of a knife-wound, received, not in battle,
but from a comrade in a quarrel about a woman, during the sacking of a
town. His mother, when the news of the fate of her unworthy spouse
reached the village where she lived, died of grief. The son was now
returning from that village, which was near Orleans, and whither he had
been on a visit to his relations, to Gascony, where he had been employed
as a soldier in the small army with which Henri of Navarre made shift to
garrison his towns.

I told him that I hoped to find a place in that little army.

"You do well, monsieur," said the young soldier, whose intelligence and
native dignity made him, despite his peasant origin, one with whom a
gentleman might converse. "Some day they will learn in France of what
stuff the little Bearnaise King is made. I have stood watching him when
he little supposed that a common soldier might take note of such things,
and I have seen on his face the sign of great intentions. More goes on
under that black hair than people guess at,--he can do more than drink
and hunt and make love and jest and swear."

He was in no haste to reach Gascony, he said, and so he intended to visit
a former comrade who dwelt in a village some leagues from my road. In the
afternoon, coming to the by-road which led to this place, he left me,
with the words:

"My name is Blaise Tripault, and should it happen that you ever enroll a
company for the King of Navarre--"

"The first name on my list shall be Blaise Tripault," I replied, smiling,
and rode on, alone.

Whenever I heard riders behind me, I looked back. At evening I reached an
eminence which gave a good view of the country through which I had
passed. Two groups of horsemen were visible. One of these consisted of
seven men. The chief figure was a burly one which I could not
mistake,--that of Barbemouche.

"_Peste_!" I muttered, frowning. "So they are following me into Poitou!
Am I never to have any rest?"

I took similar precautions that night to those which I had taken the
night before. The next day, about noon, emerging out of a valley, I saw
my pursuers on the top of the hill at my rear. Plainly, they intended to
follow me to the end of the earth. I hoped they would stop in Poitiers
and get drunk, but they tarried there no more than I. And so it was,
later, at Civray and at Angoulême.

Every day I got one or two glimpses of this persistent pack of hounds.
Every night I used like measures to make sudden flight possible. One
night the sound for which I kept my ears expectant reached them,--the
sound of horses' hoofs on the hard road. I dropped from the open window
of the inn at which I was, led out my horse from the shed, and made off,
southward. The noise made by their own horses prevented my pursuers from
hearing that made by mine. Presently the clatter abruptly ceased,
whereupon I knew that they had stopped at the inn which I had left. My
relief at this was offset by chagrin at a discovery made by me at the
same moment: I had left my bag of golden crowns in the inn chamber. I
dared not now go back for them. Well, Nerac could not be far away, now. I
had traversed a good part of Guienne. The Dordogne was behind me.

I was glad that I had taken better care of the letter from Marguerite to
her husband than I had taken of my crowns. Fortunately it had not left
my doublet. I felt that my future depended on the delivery of that
letter. There could be no doubt that Marguerite had recommended me in it
with a favor that would obtain for me both protection and employment from
the King of Navarre.

Daylight came, and with it hunger. I stopped at an inn, and was about to
dismount, when I remembered that I had no money.

I could do without food for a time, but my horse could not. I told the
landlord,--a short, heavy, square-faced, small-eyed man,--that I would,
later, send him payment for a breakfast. He looked at me with a
contempt that even a peasant dare show to a gentleman, when the
gentleman has no money.

"Very well, then," I said. "I will leave you security."

He looked more respectful at this, and made a quick examination of me
with his eyes.

"Unless you have some jewelry about you," he said, "your sword is the
only thing that I would accept."

"You clod," I exclaimed, in a rage. "I ought to give you my sword through
the body."

"A gentleman ought not to demand, for nothing, that which a poor man
makes his living by selling," answered the host, turning to go in.

I looked down at my horse, which had already shown an endurance beyond
its stock, and which now turned its eyes, hungrily, towards the inn
stable. At the same time I thought I heard the sound of hoofs, away
northward. After all, the delivery of the letter depended more on the
horse than on my sword, for one horse is more likely to beat seven horses
than one sword to beat seven swords.

To try whether it were possible, I made one movement, as if to hand over
the weapon. But my arm refused. As well try to pluck the heart out of my
body, and give it to the dog's keeping. Rather kill the man on his own
threshold and, like a brigand, help myself. But I chose to be merciful.

"Be quick, then," I said. "Bring me some wine, and feed my horse as it
stands here. I could take, for nothing, what you ask such high
security for."

"And I have three strong sons," said the innkeeper, impudently. But he
brought the wine, and ordered one of his sons to bring oats for the
horse. So we made our breakfast there, horse and man, standing before the
inn door. When the animal had licked up the last grain, I suddenly hurled
the heavy wine-mug at the innkeeper's head, wheeled my horse about, and
galloped off, shouting back to the half-stunned rascal, "Your three sons
must be swift, as well as strong, to take my sword." And I rode on,
southward.

"Will the Guisards follow me over this river, also?" I asked myself, as
I crossed the Garonne.

In the afternoon, I stopped for another look backward. There was not a
soul to be seen on the road.

"Adieu, M. Barbemouche!" I said. "I believe you have grown tired of
me at last."

At that instant a group appeared at the distant turn of the road. I
counted them. Seven! And they were coming on at the speed of the wind.

I patted my horse on his quivering neck. "Come, old comrade," I said.
"Now for one last, long race. In your legs lies my future."

He obeyed the spur, and his increased pace revealed a slight lameness,
which had not before been perceptible.

"We have only to reach some Gascon town," I said to him. "The soldiers
of the King of Navarre will protect the bearer of a letter to him from
their Queen."

I turned in my saddle, and looked back. They were gaining ground.

"They know that this is their last chance," I said. "We are near the
country held by the King of Navarre, and so they make a last effort
before giving up the chase. On, my staunch fellow! You shall have fine
trappings, and shall fare as well as your master, for this!"

The animal maintained its pace as if it understood; but it panted
heavily and foamed, its eyes took on a wild look, and its lameness
increased.

"They are coming nearer, there is no doubt of it!" I told myself. "Have I
escaped from the Louvre and from Paris, led my enemies a chase through
five provinces, to be taken when refuge is at last in sight? Shall
Marguerite's letter to Henri of Navarre fall into the hands of those who
wish him no good?"

Tears gushed from my eyes as I thought of the cruelty of destiny, which
had sustained me so far in order to betray me at the end. I took the
letter from my doublet, and held it ready to tear into pieces should I
indeed be caught. Although Marguerite was thought to have secrets with
the Duke of Guise, it was likely that she would not wish him to know what
she might write to her husband, whose political ally she always was.

And now my horse dropped its head lower at each bound forward. The seven
horses behind showed no sign of tiring.

"Thank God, I kept my sword! I can kill one of them, at least!"

I no longer looked back. Blindly forward I went, impelled only to defer
the end to the last possible moment. God knew what might yet intervene.

Suddenly my horse gave a snort of pain, stumbled blindly, and fell to his
knees. He slid forward a short distance, carried on by his impetus, and
then turned over on his side, and lay quivering. I had taken my feet from
the stirrups at his stumble, so that I now stood over his body.

I heard the loud clank of the hoofs behind. I stepped over the horse, and
drew my sword. A short distance ahead was a clump of scrubby pines; there
I would turn and make my stand.

Then was the time when I might have torn up the letter, had I not
suddenly forgotten my intention. I held it clutched in my hand,
mechanically, as I ran. I was conscious of only one thing,--that death
was bearing down on me. The sound of the horses' footfalls filled my
ears. Louder and louder came that sound, drowning even the quick panting
of my breath. Again came that aching in the side, that intolerable pain
which I had felt in my flight from Paris.

I pressed my hand to my side, and plunged forward. Suddenly the road
seemed to rise and strike me in the face. I had fallen prostrate, and now
lay half-stunned on the earth. I had just time to turn over on my back,
that I might face my pursuers, when the foremost horse came up.

"Well, my man," cried the rider, in a quick, nervous voice, as I looked
stupidly up at his short, sturdy figure, hooked nose, keen eyes, black
hair and beard, and shrewd, good-natured face, "did you think the devil
was after you, that you ran so hard? _Ventre Saint Gris_! You would make
an excellent courier."

"I am a courier," I answered, trying to rise. "I ran so fast that I might
soon reach Nerac with this letter for your majesty."

And I held the letter out to King Henri of Navarre.




CHAPTER VII.

HOW HE ANNOYED MONSIEUR DE LA CHATRE


I had never seen Henri of Navarre, before, but had often heard him
described, and no other man exactly fitted his description. His favorite
oath confirmed my recognition.

He took the letter, saying, "It looks as if it had been through fire
and flood."

"I had to swim the Seine with it," I said.

He read it, sitting on his horse in the middle of the road, I standing
beside the horse, the other six riders eyeing me curiously.

Having finished it, he looked at me with some interest and approval. "And
what made you run from us?" he asked.

"Sire, there were seven horsemen left in the party that has been chasing
me for some days past. Counting seven in your group, I too quickly
assumed that it was the same."

The King of Navarre laughed, and ordered one of the lackeys to give me
his horse and proceed afoot to the nearest town. When I was mounted, he
asked me to ride beside him.

"The speed at which you rode excited our curiosity," he explained, "and
th

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